Why Become A Catechumen?

[John Charmley]

Dear Mark,

When you write

Quote: I find it very difficult to believe that these men were not "Sons of God" in just the same way that Jesus Christ was.

I wonder what you mean?

We believe in a Triune God, Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Word, made flesh for us men (inclusive, of course) and for our salvation. Other prophets can be 'sons of God' in a figurative sense, but Christianity means believing in the Resurrected Lord, the Only-Begotten Son. The Incarnation, by assuming our flesh, heals it. There is a very specific Christian anthropology and soteriology at work here, which the western Church rather tends to neglect.

I have tremendous sympathy with the direction of your queries, and elsewhere, as Peter knows, have written about the 'limits of the Church'. Indeed, one reason why I admire the BOC is its emphasis upon mission; God did not not reveal Himself only to one people, He charged His Church with the Commission of bringing His word to all men and women.

It is by no means impossible that good and holy men and women elsewhere gained some glimpses, and even some whole parts, of the great Truth of God, and I suspect that anyone who dismisses all other faiths as worthless knows little of them; and even, possibly, too little of his own faith.

Neither you nor I 'know', which is one reason why the Orthodox Church is as it is. It transmits unchanged the message it received from the Fathers, to whom it was handed down from the Apostles, who received it once from Our Lord Himself.

That is not to say that Truth cannot be be found, in parts, elsewhere; just that its fullness is to be found within the Orthodox Church, not because of its great virtue, but because it has humbly received the Truth from Him. There is no requirement of anyone to believe this; God loves us, He made the world in love and will redeem it through the same; He gives us free will to hear and reject - or simply to hear and say 'that's interesting ... but!'

If you get a chance to get hold of The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian by (Bishop) Hilarion Alfeyev (Cistercian Publications, 2000) I'd recommend it as strongly as I can. It will lead you towards answers to some of your questions - but perhaps not the ones you might expect.

In Christ,

John