On Fr. Stephen’s site, I asked how to answer a person who asks the question: “What do I have to believe to be Orthodoxy? Where do I go to find it?” Fr. Freeman, around that time, wrote several excellent posts:
How much is too little? How Much is Enough?
Ships and Saints and all the Company of Heaven
One other commenter, “Michael,” posted a further reply that helped and was an interesting “encapsulation” of “what we have to believe” to be Orthodox. Of course, both he and Fr. Stephen pointed out that this is only the beginning, and that we will never exhause the whole Truth in our journey into the Trinity. But, it’s a starting point.
A fascinating question that got me thinking back to my own approach to the Church. I still remember my sponsor telling me that the Church is an inexhaustible supply of spiritual riches that I would spend the rest of my life and beyond exploring if I so chose. I remember nodding my head as if I knew what he meant, politely and somewhat arrogantly, agreeing. Twenty years later, I am just beginning to find out a little of what he meant. No one believes it all because the Church is infinite, a toehold of the divine Persons in His Creation. Like Narnia, each person has his own entry point come upon suddenly, unexpectedly. However, there are six basics to being received by the Church: 1. Rejection of Satan and all His works which includes specific repentance from our own sins; 2. wanting to be united with Christ (our union with Christ is not just mental, or emotional or a “personal relationship” {whatever that means}, but is an interpenetration of our soul by Him); 3. acceptance of the teaching authority of the Church by renouncing all heresies ancient and modern; 4. being cleansed of sin by Baptism; 5. anointing by Chrism to receive the Seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit; 6. a public articulation of the faith by recitation of the Nicean-Constantinopolitan Creed of the 4th century.
If you read this, Michael, thanks again!
