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Introduction: The Good News We Have Received

Orthodox Christianity is not merely a set of ideas to be memorized; it is a way of life, a living tradition that invites us into communion with the living God. We confess that God created the world in love, entered history to save us in Jesus Christ, and poured out the Holy Spirit to make us members of His Body, the Church. Our faith is ancient yet ever new, tested through centuries of prayer, worship, and faithful witness. It is the good news that in Christ, death has been overthrown and life has triumphed.

When people ask what Orthodox Christians believe, we can say simply that we believe in the Holy Trinity, in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit who sanctifies, in the Church as the ark of salvation, and in the kingdom that has already begun to dawn. But each of these phrases is like a door that opens onto a spacious, sunlit room. In the pages that follow, let us step across these thresholds together and discover the depth and beauty of the main truths of our faith.

The Holy Trinity: One God in Three Persons

At the heart of everything we believe is the mystery of the Holy Trinity: one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is not a philosophical puzzle; it is the living truth of who God is and how He has revealed Himself to us. We were commanded to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the single Name shared by three Persons, as our Lord taught in Matthew 28:19. Eternal life itself is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, as the Lord prays in John 17:3. The grace, love, and communion we receive come from the Trinity, as the apostolic blessing proclaims in 2 Corinthians 13:14.

This God is not a lonely monarch but a communion of love, and He creates, saves, and glorifies out of that love. The doctrine of the Trinity is not an ornament on the shelf of faith; it is the very shelf that supports the story of salvation. We worship the Father as source and fountainhead, the Son as His eternal Word who became man, and the Holy Spirit as the Giver of Life who proceeds from the Father, and who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.

Creation and the Human Vocation

We believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, good and beautiful, and that He fashioned humanity in His image and likeness. This is the charter of our dignity and our calling: to reflect God by living in love, freedom, and holiness. Scripture declares that God made us in His image in Genesis 1:26–27, and the psalmist sings that the earth is the Lord’s in Psalm 24:1. Creation is not raw material for exploitation; it is a gift to be received with thanksgiving, offered back to God, and cared for with reverence. Even now, creation groans for its liberation in Romans 8:19–22. Our vocation is priestly: to lift creation into the light of praise and to receive it as a means of communion with God.

The Tragic Fall and the Mercy of God

Yet we have not lived up to this high calling. Our first parents turned from God, and their rupture with Him introduced death, corruption, and sin into the human condition. We see this in the story of the fall in Genesis 3 and in the apostolic teaching that through one man sin entered the world in Romans 5:12. But God’s response is not to abandon us; it is to seek, to heal, to rescue. He desires that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, as we hear in 1 Timothy 2:4. The story of salvation is the story of this relentless divine mercy.

The Incarnation: Jesus Christ, True God and True Man

The turning point of history is the Incarnation: the eternal Son of God took flesh from the Virgin Mary and dwelt among us. Orthodoxy confesses that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, without confusion or division. He is the Word who became flesh in John 1:14, and the One who humbled Himself to the point of death to exalt us, as hymned in Philippians 2:5–11. Because He is like us in every way except sin, He can sympathize with our weakness and heal it from within, as we are assured in Hebrews 4:15.

Orthodox Christians cherish the title Theotokos for the Virgin Mary, meaning God-bearer, not to glorify a creature apart from God but to protect the truth about Christ Himself: the One born of her is truly God incarnate. In the face of every reduction of Jesus to mere teacher or moral example, the Church points to the one Person in two natures, the Savior who unites heaven and earth in His very being.

The Cross and the Resurrection

At the center of our faith is the Cross and the Resurrection. The Son of God offered Himself for our sake, trampling down death by death and opening a path from sin to righteousness, from despair to joy. The apostolic witness declares that Christ died for our sins and rose on the third day in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4. Through baptism we are united to His death and resurrection, so that we too may walk in newness of life, as taught in Romans 6:3–5. The Gospels bear witness to the empty tomb and the appearances of the risen Lord in John 20 and Luke 24.

Orthodoxy does not celebrate the Cross apart from the Resurrection, nor the Resurrection apart from the Cross. It is one victory: the healing sacrifice of Christ, the descent into death to shatter its bars, and the rising again to fill all things with life. This is why our churches blaze with candles and gold at Pascha, and why every Sunday is a little Pascha.

The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic

We believe that Christ established His Church as His Body on earth, a living organism animated by the Holy Spirit. We are no longer strangers but fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God, built together into a dwelling place of the Spirit, as Ephesians 2:19–22 tells us. The first Christians continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers, as described in Acts 2:42. The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth, as 1 Timothy 3:15 proclaims, and Christ prayed that His disciples would be one, in John 17:21.

Orthodoxy confesses the Church to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. One, because Christ is one. Holy, because the Holy Spirit dwells in her. Catholic, not in the sense of a denomination but in the sense of wholeness and universality. Apostolic, because she preserves the faith handed down from the apostles through the life of worship, doctrine, and succession.

Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture

We revere Holy Scripture as the inspired Word of God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, and for training in righteousness, as St Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16–17. At the same time, we receive the apostolic preaching transmitted in the life of the Church as Holy Tradition, heeding the exhortation to stand fast and hold the traditions which we were taught in 2 Thessalonians 2:15. Scripture and Tradition are not competing authorities; they are two streams of the same living water, the one interpreted within the worshiping community that produced, preserved, and canonized it.

Thus, the Orthodox approach to Scripture is deeply liturgical and patristic: we read the Bible in the Church, guided by the consensus of the saints, with Christ at the center. The lectionary weaves the whole story of salvation into the year, and our hymns interpret the Scriptures, not as isolated proof texts but as the symphony of God’s revelation.

The Mysteries of the Church: Grace in Visible Signs

The Church is a sacramental life, what we call the Holy Mysteries, through which God’s grace is given to heal and to transform. In Baptism, we are born again of water and the Spirit, as the Lord says in John 3:5, and we are buried and raised with Christ, as Romans 6:4 teaches. In Chrismation, the gift of the Holy Spirit is sealed upon the newly baptized, echoing the apostolic laying on of hands in Acts 8:14–17.

In the Divine Eucharist, we receive the Body and Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. The Lord calls Himself the living bread in John 6:51–56, and St Paul teaches that the cup and the bread are a communion in the Blood and Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 10:16, handed down from the Lord Himself in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. In Confession, we receive absolution through the ministry Christ entrusted to His apostles when He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit, in John 20:22–23.

In Holy Matrimony, a man and a woman are united in a lifelong sacrament of love that reveals the mystery of Christ and the Church, as Ephesians 5:31–32 declares. In Holy Orders, the grace of the priesthood is bestowed for pastoral service and sacramental ministry, seen in 1 Timothy 4:14. In Holy Unction, the sick are anointed for healing, as the Lord’s brother exhorts in James 5:14–15. These Mysteries are not magic rites; they are encounters with the living Christ in His Church, offered for the life of the world.

Salvation as Theosis: Partakers of the Divine Nature

Orthodoxy speaks of salvation not only as forgiveness of sins but as theosis, deification by grace, our becoming partakers of the divine nature, as 2 Peter 1:4 states. This does not mean we become gods by nature; it means we are united to God’s life and energies, healed and transfigured by communion with Him. The Savior came that we might have life, and have it abundantly, as He promises in John 10:10. We can say with St Paul, It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, from Galatians 2:20.

Theosis is not reserved for a spiritual elite. It is the ordinary calling of every Christian, beginning at the font, nourished by the chalice, shaped by prayer, repentance, love for neighbor, and fidelity to Christ in daily life. We do not ascend a ladder by our own strength; we cooperate with grace, and God makes our small offerings shine with His light.

Prayer and the Ascetical Life

Prayer is the heartbeat of Orthodoxy. The Lord teaches us to pray in secret in Matthew 6:6, and to pray without ceasing in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Our prayer is personal and communal, with the Divine Liturgy at the center and the daily prayers of the home as its echo. The Jesus Prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, is a cherished way to keep the heart turned toward God, inspired by the humility of the publican in Luke 18:10–14.

Asceticism is simply training in love. Fasting, almsgiving, and watchfulness are the tools that free us from the tyranny of our passions and open us to the joy of the Holy Spirit. None of this is gloomy or severe when rightly practiced; it is the gentle discipline of a soul learning to sing in harmony with God.

The Mother of God and the Communion of Saints

We honor the Virgin Mary as Theotokos, the one who said yes to God with her whole being. The angel greets her as highly favored in Luke 1:28, and all generations call her blessed in Luke 1:48. At the foot of the Cross, the Lord entrusts her to the beloved disciple and, by grace, to all of us in John 19:26–27. We do not worship Mary; worship belongs to the Trinity alone. We venerate her and ask her prayers, as we ask the prayers of any friend of God, because the Church is one family, in heaven and on earth.

This communion of saints is a living reality. Surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, as Hebrews 12:1 says, we approach the throne of grace with confidence, for the saints offer their prayers like incense before God, echoing Revelation 5:8. Their lives are not museum pieces; they are roadmaps for our own pilgrimage.

Icons: Windows to Heaven

Orthodox churches are filled with holy icons, not as decorations but as theology in color. Because the Word became flesh, matter can reveal God’s glory; what is seen can convey the unseen. The Lord instructed Israel to fashion cherubim for the mercy seat in Exodus 25:18–19, and in the fullness of time the invisible God became visible in Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, as Colossians 1:15 declares. Icons, then, are not idols; they bear witness to the Incarnation and invite us to a face-to-face encounter with the saints and with Christ Himself in prayer.

The Divine Liturgy: Heaven on Earth

The Divine Liturgy is the beating heart of Orthodox life, a foretaste of the kingdom where heaven and earth meet. Its hymns echo the song of the seraphim, Holy, holy, holy, in Isaiah 6:3, and the worship of the elders around the throne in Revelation 4–5. When the bread is broken and the eyes of faith are opened, we remember the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:30–35.

The Liturgy is not a performance to watch but a work of the people. We bring our lives, our griefs and joys, our bread and wine, and Christ returns them to us as His own life. In this way, the Liturgy teaches us how to live: with thanksgiving, with awe, with love poured out for the life of the world.

The Last Things: Judgment, Resurrection, and the Life of the Age to Come

Orthodox Christians confess that Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. We do not fear judgment as a trap; we prepare for it as a meeting with the One who loves us. The Lord speaks of the coming hour when all who are in the graves will rise in John 5:28–29. St Paul teaches the resurrection body will be raised in incorruption and glory in 1 Corinthians 15:42–44. The Lord’s parable of the final judgment in Matthew 25:31–46 soberly reminds us that love is the measure of our lives. And we hope for the new heaven and new earth where every tear will be wiped away, as Revelation 21:1–4 promises.

This is not escapism; it is the most practical hope imaginable. Because eternity has weight, every act of love matters. Every kindness is a seed of the world to come.

The Moral Vision: Love, Mercy, and Human Dignity

Orthodox moral teaching is not a list of prohibitions but a vision of human flourishing in Christ. The great commandments to love God and neighbor summarize the Law and the Prophets, as the Lord declares in Matthew 22:37–40. To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God is the ancient call echoed in Micah 6:8. We meet Christ in the hungry, the stranger, and the prisoner, as He teaches in Matthew 25:40. The fruit of the Spirit is the character of the Christian life: love, joy, peace, and all the rest named in Galatians 5:22–23.

In this vision, the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, relationships are sacred trusts, and our choices are seeds that shape the heart. Repentance is not humiliation; it is the joyful return of a child to the Father’s house.

How We Live This Faith Daily

What does all this mean for daily life? It means we keep a living rhythm shaped by worship and prayer. We gather for the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feast days, frequent the Mysteries, and keep the fasts as the Church appoints. In our homes, we set up an icon corner, read the Gospels, and bless our meals. We make room for silence and for mercy.

Consider a simple example. A busy parent lights a candle before work, whispers the Jesus Prayer while packing lunches, and offers a quiet apology when impatience flares. Later, the family attends Vespers, hears the psalmody, and receives a word of counsel in confession. No fireworks, no grand gestures, just the steady turning of the heart toward God. This is the Orthodox way: ordinary life warmed by grace.

Orthodoxy also calls us outward. We recognize Christ in the faces of the poor, the lonely, and the overlooked. We practice hospitality, generosity, and peacemaking. We work with integrity, forgive quickly, and keep short accounts. This is how doctrine becomes doxology in the streets.

The Ecumenical Mind and the Steadfast Heart

The Orthodox Church holds fast to the faith once delivered to the saints, in continuity with the apostles and the early councils. This steadfastness is not stubbornness but fidelity to the truth that sets us free. At the same time, we seek peace with all and pray for the unity of Christians. The clear confession that Jesus is Lord and that the Scriptures testify to Him is the bedrock on which we can speak and serve together, without compromising the fullness of the faith entrusted to the Church.

Come and See: An Invitation

In the Gospel of John, when Philip told Nathanael about Jesus, the invitation was simple and disarming: Come and see, from John 1:46. That is still our invitation today. The truths we have described are not abstract propositions; they are treasures best discovered in worship, sacrament, and community. Come and see an Orthodox parish. Stand in the rising incense, hear the ancient hymns, watch the Gospel carried in procession. You will encounter a faith that is profound yet practical, old yet ever young, a faith that names the deepest desires of the human heart and answers them in Christ.

These are the main truths of our faith: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Cross and Resurrection, the Church and her Mysteries, the call to theosis, and the hope of the age to come. They are not separate stones but one living temple, held together by the love of God poured out through the Holy Spirit. May He grant us strength to live what we confess, and joy to share it with a world that longs for life. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.