Today the Orthodox Church
celebrates the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the first Sunday of Lent. However, what
does Orthodoxy mean? The following passage is taken from an article written by
Nikos Nissiotis, who explains the significance of the word ‘Orthodoxy’.
“’Orthodoxy’ is not the adjective
or the qualification of one local church or even of all of our Eastern Orthodox
Churches: it is the synonym of the words ‘catholic’ and ‘apostolic’. It is not
an exclusive but an inclusive term which goes beyond the limits of the churches
which call themselves Orthodox. It includes all those churches and believers
who seek to offer an honest confession and achieve a life which is untouched by
heresies and schisms and to arrive at the wholeness of the divine relevation in
Christ. We could echo the words of Father George Florovsky in his analysis of
the word ‘Orthodoxy’ as meaning precisely ‘right doxa’, that is with a view to
sharing in common in rendering glory to the Lord in thanksgiving, in and
through the One Undivided Church. Orthodoxia
is the right martyria of truth and is
based on the union of God with man in Jesus, lived and understood as the full
communion of all those believers who are ready to share fully with each other
the glory of the God revealed in the Orthodoxy of the One Catholic and
Apostolic Church. If, therefore, Orthodoxy silently accepts that there is
salvation in other churches outside its limits, limits which, in this context,
seem to be narrow as a result of the very fact of the abnormal situation of division;
this means that an Orthodox, through his faith, is invited to become really
‘Orthodox’ by offering himself in humility in order to effect a full
realization of Orthodoxy in the life of the Universal Church. It is only then
that this ecumenical Orthopraxia would
prove and confirm the local existing Orthodoxia”[1].
[1] Nissiotis,
Nikos, “The Witness and the Service of Eastern Orthodoxy to the One Undivided
Church”, Sobornost, Series 4, No.7, Summer 1962, p. 354-355
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