Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

There is so much that Orthodoxy shares with both Catholicism and Conservative
Protestantism, especially in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, with its commitment to the
doctrines of the Trinity, the real humanity and deity of Jesus, and Jesus as sole Saviour and
Lord. It has much to offer the West in its „apophatic theology‟, 30 its truth of theosis, its
freedom from a central overpowering authority and in its sense of the majesty and mystery of
the Godhead in the Divine Liturgy.
In September 2006, the Russian Orthodox Church called for „traditionalist‟ Christian
churches to join to meet the threats of secularism and liberal theologies. An appeal was made
by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna, the Moscow Patriarchate‟s representative to ecumenical
organisations, during the Dialogue of Civilisations forum in Rhodes. His appeal for an
alliance was not just to Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox and traditionalist
Anglicans, but also to traditionalist Protestants, which in effect meant Conservative
Evangelicals.
Earlier, in August of the same year, Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the
Russian Church‟s chief of external relations, contacted Pittsburgh‟s Bishop Robert Duncan,
seeking to restore relations between Moscow and the traditionalist dioceses in the Episcopal
Church. 31
This is surely evidence of something new happening in the Church, which ought not to be
ignored by any of the three traditions.
Orthodoxy does challenge some Western theology, in particular its doctrine of original sin
seen as original guilt. In Orthodoxy man is seen to inherit Adam‟s fallen corruption and
mortality but not his guilt, and consequently in Orthodox teaching an unbaptised baby is not
in danger. Recent theological developments in the Roman Catholic Church on the question of
limbo, an intermediate, eternal place for unbaptised babies outside heaven, are pointing in the
direction of the doctrine being dropped, which would bring Catholicism closer to Orthodoxy
and Protestantism.
All three traditions agree, however, that mankind is fallen and cannot bring itself back to God
without the Incarnation and the Atonement.
While Orthodoxy and Catholicism share much in common – sacramental worship,
„sacerdotalism‟, 32 veneration of Mary, and belief in the efficacy of the prayers of the departed
– yet Orthodoxy can be quite close to Protestantism, especially in its Evangelical form. For
instance, on the question of purgatory Orthodoxy parts company with Catholicism:
30 Apophatic theology, also known as „Negative theology‟. A theology that attempts to describe God,
the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect
goodness that is God. In brief, negative theology is an attempt to achieve unity with the Divine Good
through discernment, gaining knowledge of what God is not (apophasis), rather than by describing
what God is.
31 Church of England Newspaper, 6 October 06.
32 Sacerdotalism. The idea that a propitiatory sacrifice for sin must be offered by the intervention of
an order of men separated to the priesthood.
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