Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

„Khomiakov, seeking to describe the Orthodox attitude to other Christians, in one of his
letters makes use of a parable.
A master departed, leaving his teaching to his disciples. The eldest faithfully respected
what his master had taught him, changing nothing. Of the two younger, one added to
the teaching, the other took away from it. At his return the master, without being angry
with anyone, said to the two younger: „Thank your elder brother, without him you
would not have preserved the truth which I handed over to you.‟ Then he said to the
elder: „Thank your young brothers, without them you would not have understood the
truth which I entrusted to you.‟
Clearly, Khomiakov, a strong upholder of Orthodoxy as the divinely appointed guardian of
Christian truth, was prepared to see the value and authenticity of other traditions, the Catholic
and the Protestant.
Note the comment „without being angry with any one.‟ Fear and distrust of each other, as
potential threats to our standing as Christian churches, is beginning to die away.
However, ecumenists who hope for the organic union of churches will probably be dismayed
by the recent measures (October 2009) of the Roman Catholic Church to encourage „catholic‟
Anglicans to leave their Communion and enter a special relationship within the Catholic
Church. These may well seem to be an attempt to diminish a fellow Christian community.
Others may see it differently as offering a way out of a dilemma for traditionalists in the
Anglican Communion.
This whole issue is not relevant to the kind of ecumenism advocated in this book. „Digging
out the (real) embedded Church‟ is what matters.
Many Roman Catholics are already having fellowship, worshipping and witnessing with the
Christians of other denominations, and any Anglicans who do not take advantage of the
Catholic Church‟s recent offer can also enjoy „spiritual ecumenism„ with other believers if
they are willing.
d) There is a suspicion among some Protestants that members of Catholic and
Orthodox Churches are not, on the whole, real Christians.
Some Protestants feel that Catholic and Orthodox believers cannot be real Christians because
they are relying on the sacraments or the prayers of saints to bring them to God.
In „folk Catholicism‟ there may well be people who are relying on these things, but they are
uninstructed members of their church. The official teaching of both the Roman and Orthodox
churches places salvation very squarely on the grace of the Saviour and his sacrifice. The gift
of this salvation is received by faith. An increasing number of members of the Roman
Catholic Church call themselves Evangelical Catholics, and have testimonies of personal
conversion to Christ as clear as anything heard among Protestant Evangelicals.
The church at Corinth was full of Christians who were very mixed doctrinally, and some with
a low standard of morality were nevertheless called „saints‟ by Paul because they „called
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