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Frequently Asked Questions about God and the Orthodox Christian Faith

The Orthodox Church is over 2000 years old. Even though Orthodox Christinianity is a deep rooted part of the Russian culture and experience, it is by far not an exclusive, ethnic phenomenon. With over 300 million people on the world's five continents, the Orthodox Church is universal and encompasses people of all nations and languages.

With the onslaught of Marxism in Russia came a militant persecution of the Church which it miraculously survived, as it had earlier persecutions (i.e. the Pagan Roman and Islamic Ottoman eras). Today's post-Soviet Russian society, emerging from the religion of "scientific atheism" is in many ways similar to western societies that are increasingly abiding by the creeds of secular humanism and moral relativism. Many of the same questions emerge about faith, the need for the Church, how Orthodoxy compares to various world ideologies, and is there such thing as the Truth?

The following questions and answers were translated from a Russian book, "400 Questions and Answers about Faith, the Church, and Christian Life" written by Fr. Maxim Kozlov, rector of the Church of the Martyr Tatiana, Moscow State University. These questions are a mere sampling of the many he receives and answers from students who wish to learn more about Orthodoxy.

Faith in God :

Skepticism :

The need for the Church :

Faith and psychology :

Orthodoxy and other faiths :

How can one believe in God if one has never seen Him or His miracles?

This was already mentioned by Jesus Christ Himself in the end of the Gospel by John. When apostle Thomas, having not believed the other disciples that Christ has risen, wanted to affirm this for himself and put his fingers into the wounds of the Savior, he was not denied this consolation, but during this he heard such words: because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed! (John 20:29). Easy is that faith which is based on an external attestation, on a profound miracle which turns around the soul from the extraordinary nature of the experience, but it is not always solid. If a person thanks to such a turn around livens up for faith, then later doesn't take any further steps, then he will still fall and return to that state which he was in before.

By the way, this is also spoken of in the Gospel in the parable of the beggar Lazarus who ended up after his death in the bosom of Abraham, and the rich man who ended up in hell, who prays to Abraham to send Lazarus to his still living brothers, so that at least they would not end up in the same place as he. To this Abraham answers neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. (Luke 16:31). In reality they will think that this is either an apparition or some extrasensory experience before them, or by today's times they'd take it to be a visitor from the cosmos. One could not believe even the deepest miracle. But that faith which is acquired thanks to the understanding of the fact that there is no life outside of God, when there already is a certain experience of answered prayers, when there is a hope in the Savior which has not been in vain - that faith is strong, and it can grow step by step. The Lord has also indicated that as the higher step of our lives in the Church.

When John the Baptist was interred into prison by king Herod and it was already understood that sooner or later this will end in execution, he sent his disciples to Christ to ask: Art thou he that should come? or look we for another? (Luke 7:19). But Christ did not answer him directly, as in 'Yes, I am the One for which you lived and for which you will terribly die'. He only gave a new basis for his faith, having said the words of an ancient prophet: how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me (Luke 7:22, 23). In other words He once again tested the faith of John before his death and John, having heard these words, understood by a feat of faith that Jesus of Nazareth is That Same Christ the Savior Which he has awaited. It is to that faith that Christ calls us, not in bowing to magical miracles.

Why does a person believe that God exists at all?

I think that every believer will give their own answer to that. This includes the believer who after an initial push, after an experience, steps over the threshold from disbelief to belief, and the one who gets his faith not as an inheritance from his parents, but as a personal faith and is strengthened in it through the inner spiritual experience of communication with God, which every real Christian has. It is because of this you cannot disbelieve if you have begun believing for real. When it is said that there are people who stop believing and become atheists - it's a lie. One cannot become an atheist from a believer, a believer can only become a resister of God. The entire experience of atheism from antiquity to our twentieth century affirms this to us. An atheist must be ambivalent and calm in relation to that from which he came away. But how much energy, enthusiasm, not to say anger, is found in those people who renounce their religious convictions. This is always a rebellion against God. The soul knows that the issue is not doubt in God's existence, but in an aversion to accept that which Christ teaches in the Gospel. It is the pushing away from this teaching that pushes a person to resist God.

On the other hand the inner spiritual experience of a faithful person is multifaceted. It is that happiness that you feel when you've communed after a serious and sincere confession, that comforting which you receive from litanies for our dearly departed ones, that trepidation of the heart which you feel when God is speaking to you in the Gospel, and finally, it is that which every one of us knows: if you pray, ask, and try to live in accordance to the commandments, God immediately comes to us in greeting. This is known to every faithful person.

Also see:

Faith: The Key to God's Treasury by Bp. Alexander Mileant.

How Metropolitan Anthony of Surouzh came to faith from atheism

The modern human consciousness is soaked in skepticism. In our time it is accepted to doubt everything. Is it possible to somehow limit these doubts?

You won’t be able to limit them because one who wishes to doubt will doubt. You won’t be able to set any limits here. The Church should not in any way enter into a competition with the modern but hardly new skepticism, nor the quickly outdated discoveries of science, cosmology, or quantum physics. The Church must witness the eternal. The human soul which “by nature is a Christian” will answer to this eternity, unless of course it is enslaved by the passions to the furthest level of murkiness. It is not deep scientific discoveries but an unrepentant sin which makes a person a non-believer or a positivist.

Today is not so much the age of agnosticism, but relativism, in other words moving away from the general ontological questions of existence, where practicality is militantly worshipped. Can a person resist such a surrounding pressure from within?

I think that outside of the church it is impossible to withstand this pressure, because throughout different epochs the spirits of the unseen world, ruled by the lord of this world, have tried to distort the spiritual structure of mankind’s existence. This happened through the debauchery of the passions as, for instance, in the Roman empire of the first centuries, through atheism and relativistic apathy or indifference. Have your idea, but don’t insist on it. Consider that you have a mere fragment of the truth, and let all flowers bloom. Most importantly, don’t dare say that the whole truth is accessible to your understanding and that somebody else is mistaken. A Christian is a person of a monistic system of views, which helps look at all phenomena of the surrounding world from one point of view and foreshortening, which helps explain the hierarchy of existence and the primary, God given order of all existing: I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6) – said the Savior. In other words truth is not just a speculation, tossed around in handfuls amidst various world views, it is Christ. It is not a compilation of rules, not the Typikon even or the canons of this or that council, but Christ Himself. The one who exists in God exists in truth, he knows where it is. The one not existing in God will seek it left and right but never find it.

What about the fact that today’s relativists or pluralists, nonwithstanding one major logical flaw, confess only one irrevocable truth for them – that all truths are relative?

This is the delusion of the modern mind, a dangerous and dishonest one. This currently widespread pluralism permits as many relative truths as possible, except the one truth, which says that not all truths are relative.

Why is it that to this day many people level humanist and Christian ideas?

This is not a simple question, but if we try to formulate it within a framework, humanism, which was born in the Renaissance, declared itself an inheritor of ancient thought, yet was born in the base of Christian civilization and consciousness. However, humanism confirms man as the final value and measure of all things. From here we know of the Rennaisance rebelliousness found in all those great and unrestrained people of which we know: as in their virtues, as in their vices. It is interesting to note that while humanism was being established in Western Europe, which decided the enlightened or liberal bourgeois consciousness which followed, in Orthodox Byzantium church teachings were being formulated about human dignity. They were being developed thanks to the strength of the hesychasts, the carriers of the wise prayer – Gregory of Palamas, Gregory the Sinaite, Nicholas Kavasilas, and other movers of piety of that epoch. It is exactly in this time that many teachings and treasties were written in which Orthodox Christian anthropology was described, seeing the essential dignity of man not in his independent values as the center of the world, but in the discovery of the image and likeness of God within him, in his likening to the Creator on his path to spiritual growth.

After world war two many stopped believing in God, as they were not able to explain to themselves why He permitted this. Why does God permit the death of children, horrific wars, natural catastrophes?

Let’s begin by saying that ultimately for this question there is no other world view that can provide a satisfactory answer other than the Christian one. Any non Christian answer comes down to ascertaining that since such is the way of things, there is no other way it can be; or to the hopeless reliance that together with progress there will be a time when there will be no wars, or sicknesses, and humanity will discover the yet unknown truth of human longevity and the development of abilities; or – and this, perhaps, is the highest to which non Christian stoic thought rose – that once a person is given two possibilities, as a dog tied to a carriage: either run after it, or if you wish to run away from it, you're dragged along, getting hit by rocks all over – that everything is explained only by fate which takes us into the unknown.

The answer that the Gospel’s good news gives us comes down to one decisive affirmation: yes, into this world entered the sin of disease, cataclysm, wars, cruelty and unfairness incomprehensible for the human mind, but also for the sake of salvation into this horrible world came not an Angel, nor prophet, not a teacher of moral values, but God, who had become a part of this world. This is the heart of our faith: God became a part of this world, totally known to us, in order to recreate it from the inside. It is because of this we know that there is no child’s tear which wouldn't be wiped in the Heavenly Kingdom. There is no misery that would not be overcome and defeated when a person in the end of his path will meet Christ. There is nothing unfair, unjustified, unrealized, which would not be given to us, where God will be all in all. (Corinthians 15:28 ). This is the only true answer, for Christ came into our world, having shared with us all of this horror and pain, to recreate it from the inside, and not to press a button and re-start a program so that everything would be right, like in Windows 98.

Many consider that faith must be in the soul, but going to church isn’t necessary. Is this so?

Those who say that faith must only be in the soul are making two substantial errors. First of all “faith in the soul” as a rule comes to an abstract and speculative recognition of God’s existence, out of which one almost can’t make any real conclusions from in their life. Tying into that one can remember the words of Christ, that the devils also believe, and tremble (James 2:19). Such a person usually doesn’t even tremble but lives as if there has never been a ransom sacrifice of Christ for each one of us. Second of all, this position can in no way be concluded from the Holy Scripture, nor from the Church tradition. Christ told us that He came to create on this earth a Church, not to create a mass union of God with individual people who are in no way tied to each other. He came to give the commandment of love not just to God, but to one’s neighbor. Only this can bring about the completeness of man.

A Christian commits acts of kindness not as some ancient hero and not as a model of communist/atheist morality and values. He strives to have God act through him. Christ said for without me ye can do nothing (John 15:5). These words are the very heart of a Christian’s life.

According to Apostle Paul, strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians, 12:9) Not in the weakness of avoidance and accepting with false modesty oneself as a sinner, as in I’m a sinner, I can’t do this or that, but in the weakness that is similar to that of a child learning to write, who gives his hand to his mother who guides it, and then once again words become neat, legible, and beautiful. But if a child begins to resist and does something on his own, then we get scribbles. So it is in our spiritual life. When we begin showing the weakness of a child or the weakness of a sail which is blown full of wind, then we get somewhere. But this is possible only within the church. Why? Because parishioners are not a society of people but an organism, a priest is not a pagan style priest, a party official, a psychotherapist, but a person who has a special grace from God to administer the mysteries and give people spiritual help. It is not in the strength of some special abilities, but because the grace of priesthood for the aid of others is given by God. In essence, all of history affirms the words of St. Cyprian of Carthage, “To whom the church is not a mother, God is not a father”. It is one thing is to be speculative about the most complex forms of matter, it is another to try to survive an intense spiritual life for at least the forty days of Great Lent. Let those who say “faith is in the soul” try to do this as specified in the Church tradition and they will see how their feelings will change, because for a genuine spiritual life one needs spiritual purity. This is something which many forget today.

Those who are pulled towards a live, personal communication with God most frequently believe that the Church, as a social, public institution, emaciates faith and therefore it’s better to get by without church sacraments, and without unified prayer. Is there any logic behind this?

The question here is how responsibly do we relate to the initial sources of the Christian faith. Of course, if within our faith the most important criterion is “I”, “my personal mind”, and “my personal desire”, in other words the desire to live the way I want – and the heart is prone to various temptations – then in that case of course one can move the Church on the back burner. But if we can agree on the fact that the Gospel is the true witness of the teachings of Christ, then we cannot extinguish that cardinal truth that He came to the earth not to give us an ethical doctrine, nor an enlightened compilation of moral norms which His students would follow, nor to explain the secrets of the world and create the greatest of all philosophies that ever existed. He came to establish the Church – the sacred spiritual organism in which we, together with Him as the head, are united. This path was shown to us by the Savior through the sacraments. …by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved (John 10:9), yet those who consciously turn away from the cross will be condemned. Those who participate in the eucharist, who commune with the Blood and Body that is offered to us in God’s feast, will become the inheritors of the Heavenly Kingdom, but those who say “I don’t need this” will remain outside of the feast of glory. These are the words of Christ Himself, not the later fabrications of hierarchs who wished to have the the widest and most obedient flock. From the very beginning the Church’s existence was a social unity around the sacrament of the eucharist, as the unity of many in the acceptance of the Gospel’s good news, not the existence of a numberless mass of self-secluded monads, contemplating how to live more comfortably in this world and not loose the wonders of eternal promise.

Today many people having entered a church consider that they will find heaven here, and the priest must be sinless – almost like God Himself. But when they come across misunderstandings or some kind of conflicts, they fall into despair and as a result leave the Church. Is such a reaction justified?

One can advise to such a person only one thing – to return to one’s senses and and say “Well, thank God the Lord allowed me to understand that I wasn’t really going to Church for the right reasons.” It is good that God allows us to feel this through certain difficulties in Church life, in conflicts with the priest, or other members of the parish. It is for our own soul’s benefit. We begin to understand that we didn’t go to Church to Christ, but to an understanding priest, for pleasant socializing, to the good smell of incense, to the glorious singing of the choir, to the sense of a special warmth, which like a shell protects us from all the ill that comes from the world. In other words, we came like almost to a club or a pleasant social circle and sought in the Church emotional comfort, not the salvation of the soul. When we are reminded that Christ saves, not the incense and the calmly speaking priest, we have to thank God for this. Having understood this we go to Church to Him, not to people.

Ephraim the Syrian wrote that the Church is not just a community of saints, but a crowd of repenting sinners. If everyone began to judge how pleasant or not it is to stand next to one other in a particular parish, they’d start running all over and we’d have to build millions of churches throughout all of Russia. We’d have to have private cabins where everyone could be together with their psychoanalyst.

But in reality, within the Church you will meet people who live honorable lives and that warmth of the soul which you will never find anywhere else, and you will find it when you are not seeking to get this as some free emotional consolation. Go to Christ, But one thing is needful, as it is said in the Gospel, and all these things shall be added unto you.

It is often considered that people come to church in a critical situation, but when in a prosperous situation they don't feel it necessary to go. How can a person want to go if they are by worldly measures living successfully and even happily?

First of all it is untrue that people come to God only or usually when they are either unhappy, in crisis, or after their worldly goals crumble, etc. This is typical of a secular, humanistic world view: a person goes to God when something in life isn't right. Behind this it is often an un verbalized self-justification, which says that outside of these unhappy people, everything is okay with me and I don't belong in their circle. With exceptional cruelty, the memorable leader of the world proletariat said, sans any intellectual drooling, something to the effect of "Who goes to church? Various beggars, invalids, lunatics, social outcasts, or thieves - there's no place for anyone else there". Basically this same idea in a more smoothly packaged form is perpetrated today by various intellectuals of different kinds. However, there is a grain of truth here. It is in the fact that success, and not only in a material sense but in terms of a settled personal life, professional life, health, respect, and social acceptance can also become temptations that are difficult to overcome. A person can become so attached to this that he no longer wants to raise his head a bit higher. He forgets that the anthropos ("person" in Greek) is, unlike other creations, one who's eyes are focused up into the sky. The Lord, not wanting us to perish or fall asleep, reminds of us our calling that is not of this world, even if it can be called a creative jolt in an upper middle class sense. Sometimes we are reminded quietly through an inner sadness or dissatisfaction, which often occurs in people who are rich and externally succesful, for example through that eagerness of moving to new places which Pushkin so beautifully described. Sometimes we hear a sharper knock on our door, and we find that it's been long due for us to look at our lives and understand that everything is not as successful as everyone thought. At this point the novel is written or the project is finished with greater difficulty, and suddenly we see that our loving wife isn't as close as we thought, but we in our blind self love or by habit don't see that which is happening in the soul of our dearest one, and have ended up quite far from one another. When we finally discover this we are shaken up: are we living correctly? But we're forever postponing and postponing this… Sometimes the Lord even more clearly reminds us of Himself, through sicknesses and tragedies, so we can finally awaken from our slumber and remember that our calling is to eternity. It is best of course for a person who is spiritually attentive not to allow their life to get to the point where the loudest knock is necessary, and to answer as early as possible.

The church always speaks of sin, pride, and the passions of a human, calling him a servant of God. How does this reconcile with the understanding of human dignity in society?

The Church does not share the humanistic view that man is the crowning value of the world, or as the measure of all things, nor as an independent king and conqueror. The Church sees the dignity of man within the image and likeness of God in which he was made by the Creator. In the image that is expressed in free will, thought, capability of word, and in a likeness which must be understood as a consistent spiritual growth in Christ. In the letters of St. Ambrose of Optina there are the wonderful words of St. Peter of Athos, “God saves us not without us”, in other words not without our own responsive efforts. The Church knows how difficult – with blood, sweat, and tears – this battle is to fight. The two thousand year experience of Christian life witnesses to us that without humility, without the help of God’s grace, it is impossible to be saved. From here comes a constant reminder to man how little he can do on his own. Outside of the vessel of the Church, in which one swims to salvation, it is impossible to swim across the ocean of this world, no matter how proudly man thinks of himself.

For a faithful person is there such an understanding as loneliness?

Loneliness in its final most tragic definition doesn’t exist for a faithful person. We must always remember that we can be betrayed and abandoned by people, even those closest to us. But we will never be left alone by the Savior, if only we don’t walk away from Him to a far and distant land. The sort of loneliness which causes a person’s soul to be gripped by despair and grief to such a degree that he is even considering leaving this worldly life cannot be felt by a truly faithful person. Becoming distant from our immediate environment either by our own weaknesses, or by differences in ideology and world view is unavoidable throughout various periods of our life. When there is a temporary distancing from our loved ones and friends who are not going along the same path as we are, one must be soberminded and believe that this can be overcome with our calmness and the peaceful carrying of our cross, in the hopes that if we ourselves live a Christian life, in other words in kindness, without grudges, with prayer for those close to us, we will once again be together, only in a totally different way that is better than it was before. I myself know of many such examples.

What is the difference between a confession and a psychoanalytical session?

From the perspective of a Christian world view it is unquestionable. But first of all one must say that if one recognizes one of the psychoanalytical methods as giving a result not harmful to the soul, then the therapeutic session can offer that help which a professional is trained to give the needy patient. I am specifically discarding a significant part of psychoanalysis which is built on deliberate non Christian anthropological premises and is therefore unacceptable for us. For example, the teachings of Freud from a Christian anthropological perspective are extremely one sided and false, as they distort human nature. I am speaking only of those areas of psychoanalysis from which we are expecting more benefit than harm, but even in that case this will be help from a person to a person, of a medical professional to a sick person or one lost and confused in life. Confession is help to a person from God. This is the main difference between a confession and a psychoanalytical session. In this case a priest can be very young and not very prepared, he may not be an elder or soul doctor, nor thoroughly enough understand our inner situation nor what we have really bought to the confession and couldn’t formulate or somehow clouded with our words. But if there is a genuine desire to really confess a sin and cleanse oneself from it the Lord forgives and removes it from one's soul. In this is the immeasurable superiority of God’s miracle which occurs during confession, over even the best psychosomatic help which can be given on the basis of super modern psychological or psychotherapeutic methods.

What is the cardinal difference between Christianity and other different religions?

Recognizing the relative value of other religions, one cannot but see that the Christian revelation from God is unique. There is not one single religion in which the chasm between God and the created world is bridged when God becomes a human and when His sacrifice on the cross gives everyone a path to salvation. This bridging of God and creation makes once and for all the goal of life the act of “obozhenie” (man becoming Godlike), which is the unique trait of Christianity.

The world has many different religions, each one professes a certain truth?

I think we have to analyze non-Christian religions from the position of sober religiosity. On one end, many different non-Christian religions have a certain fragment of truth that defines a certain stage of the spiritual development of the human race. Of course, it is often very relative, mixed up with much un-truth and seeded with a few sinister weeds. In ancient paganism we see a certain recollection of early human contact with God. Islam, although in a distorted way, contains a significant part of books of the Old Testament and several narratives leading up to the New Testament. In ancient Chinese religion or the traditions of Indian cultures there is a certain ethic and ascetic norm that teaches self restraint for the sake of one’s neighbor, for the sake of higher spirituality. All of this must be soberly stated and recognized as a certain positive beginning to non-Christian religions, as a certain reflection of that initial recognition of God that in one or another way is preserved in the human race.

On the other end, with all due respect to Hinduism as the religion of the Hindus, which has formed the civilization of Hindustan for over a millennium and a half, with all due respect to Islam, Islamic written language, architecture, and so on, one cannot forget that as soon as these religions came into contact with Christianity, all of the relative elevated-ness and truths that they had descended to the lower depths. Instead, elements of demonic anger emerged along with rejection, a battle against Christian piety and that absolute truth that exists in its entirety only within the Church.

A rather vivid example of this is ancient civilization. As a thing in and of itself relatively significant, elevated, harmonious, and beautiful, it in many ways paved the way for the development of all European literature, architecture, artistic culture. Together with that from the lives of the saints and historical chronicles, which speak of the first three pre-Constantinian centuries of the existence of Christ’s Church, we know of a truly satanic hysteria in the persecution of Christians. The Greco-Roman pagan world as a competitor to Christianity was demonic by its nature, and the phenomenon of the sinister Eroshka also sharply peaks out from there.

Many non-Christian religions and cults profess a rejection of everything worldly, of pleasures, of attachments. Isn’t this what the Orthodox Church teaches as well?

Moderation is a good thing, and any sermon by any faith about moderation from the excesses of worldly pleasures can only be welcomed. But between the asceticism of Christians and that of, let’s say, the Hare Krishna's there is a principled difference. The point of Christian asceticism is not in the attainment of apathy towards everything that happens around a person. Christianity, on the contrary, develops and heightens the faithful, fills them with love and empathy for the entire world, to all of God’s creation, calls them to likening themselves to God, and first of all likening themselves to the sacrificial love of Christ the Savior. St. Isaac the Syrian said that all who sincerely commit themselves fill their heart with love and sympathy, and not only towards the loyal children of Christ’s church, but to the sinful, and even to the enemies of the truth. The doctrine of the Hare Krishna's, alas, doesn’t say anything about this to us.

If a person was born in a non Orthodox country, was not raised Orthodox and died without baptism, is there no salvation for this person?

From our side it would be inconceivably presumptuous to take on the role of that one Judge in the hands of Whom are the souls of all people. Let us instead remember another thing, if any of us Orthodox suddenly go away to a far and distant land, in order to seek some new spirituality either in some mysticism or cult, then we will definitely leave the path to salvation. In the last century, St. Theophan the Recluse answered one lady who asked him if the Catholics would be saved, "I don't know if the Catholics will be saved, I only know that without Orthodoxy I will not be saved". In our hearts we must not judge others, but genuinely desire, as one of the ancient church teachers says "the return of our brothers who's separation from us is tormenting us". If we don't have this desire but a sense of self satisfaction as in we're the only ones to be saved, and millions of people around us in this world that is lying in evil will perish, then we are showing a true sign of cult psychology.

Also see:

Orthodox Christianity and the "Branch Theory"

What is the difference between Orthodoxy and Western Confessions by Mit. Anthony Khrapovitski

Orthodoxy and Buddhism

 

 

Fr. Maxim's popular book "400 Questions and Answers about Faith, the Church, and Christian Life" is currently available only in the Russian language. The book is broken down into eleven chapters: Faith in God and the unseen world, Orthodoxy and science, Orthodoxy and modern consciousness, Orthodoxy and culture, The Church and social-political realities, Orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and different non Christian religions, Being Orthodox today, Temptations and sins, Love to thy neighbor, The ladder to spiritual rebirth, The basic holidays of the Church calendar. It can be ordered here from the Sretenski monastery.

Resources on Orthodoxy in Russian:

Pravoslavie.ru (also features select English articles): a weekly updated page with news and articles on Orthodoxy, Russian history, current events, etc.

Radonezh.ru - features a radio program, plus archived audio and video programs on Orthodoxy (also includes an audio Q&A with several clerics).

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