§ 171. Entry Into the Church From Other Faiths

The Church receives everyone who turns to her in repentance for his errors and with a pure faith, whatever faith he may have professed before. In this the Church fulfills upon earth the task laid upon her by her Founder (Matt. 28:19–20).

Among those who do not belong to the Church, and who may express the wish to enter the Church, some profess a non-Christian faith and do not believe in Christ—these are: Jews, Muhammadans, and all the various pagans; others believe in Christ but do not profess the faith of the Church with full exactness—these are the various heretics and schismatics. According to the essential difference between these non-believers, the manner of receiving the one and the other into the Church also differs. For the former, the absolute condition of reception is baptism, since they are not baptized; for the latter, what is decisive is the degree to which they diverge from Orthodox Christian teaching, and accordingly they are received into the Church in three different ways.[1]

I. Pagans who wish to be received into the Church must, for a determined time, study the Christian teaching as catechumens (κατηχούμενοι),[2] then solemnly renounce all their former religious errors and solemnly confess the Orthodox faith; after which they are baptized, chrismated, and given Holy Communion.[3] This holds also for the Jews and the Muhammadans.[4]

II. The heterodox are received into the Church either a) by baptism, or b) by chrismation, or c) by repentance and the confession of the Orthodox faith. This was established as early as the fifth century, as we learn from the presbyter of the Church of Constantinople, Timothy, in his epistle to his fellow-minister John. This epistle of Timothy is reproduced in the Kormchaia, where it reads: «Три чины обрѣтаемъ приходящихъ къ святѣй Божіей соборнѣй и апостольстѣй церкви: и первый убо чинъ есть требующихъ св. крещенія, вторый же некрещаемыхъ убо но помазуемыхъ святымъ муромъ, и третій ни крещаемыхъ же ни помазуемыхъ, но точію проклинающихъ свою и всякую ересь», and thereafter all the heterodox are named in turn, according to which order is to be applied to their reception.[5] The basis for this is the 7th canon of the Second Ecumenical Council.[6] These three orders for receiving the heterodox into the Church retain their full force and validity in the Orthodox Church today. By the first order, the Church receives those heretics who teach a distorted doctrine of the Holy Trinity, who do not acknowledge baptism, or who do not perform it according to the Lord’s command; such heretics are received into the Church exactly as pagans are. By the second order, that is, by chrismation, are received those heretics who do not deny the Holy Trinity but err on particular points of the faith, and who were baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, likewise those who do not have a lawful sacred hierarchy nor the mystery of chrismation. Here belong all the various Protestants. By this same order Roman Catholics and Armenians are received also, if they have not yet been chrismated by their own bishops or priests. But if these—Roman Catholics and Armenians—have been chrismated in their own church, then they are received into the Orthodox Church by the third order, which consists in this: that the person concerned, having for a determined time studied the Orthodox catechism, renounces his former belief in writing or by word of mouth, solemnly confesses the symbol of the Orthodox faith, and is then, after the prescribed prayer of the Orthodox bishop or priest, communicated.[7]

III. From this general canonical norm for receiving the heterodox into the Church, the Greek Church makes an exception, in which there exists to this day a law that every Roman Catholic, and likewise every Protestant, who wishes to pass over into the Orthodox Church must be baptized anew. This was established at the Council of Constantinople of 1756, under Patriarch Cyril V. The rationale of this conciliar decision lies in this: that Western Christians are baptized by pouring (per adspersionem) and not by a threefold immersion (ἐν τρισὶ καταδύσεσι καὶ ἀναδύσεσι), and since correct baptism is only that performed by a threefold immersion, Western Christians must therefore be regarded as unbaptized (ἀβαπτίστους), since they were not so baptized, and hence must be baptized when they wish to pass over into the Orthodox Church.[8] This decision of the said Council of Constantinople was occasioned by the extraordinary circumstances that had arisen in the eighteenth century between the Greek Church and the Latin, and was an expression of the reaction of the Greek Church against the assaults made upon her by Latin propaganda. From the formal standpoint, the rationale of that decision is well founded, for the canons of the Orthodox Church prescribe that baptism be performed by a threefold immersion of the person concerned in water, and it is from this very act of immersion (ἐμβαπτίζειν, immergere) that baptism itself is called βάπτισμα (Lat. baptismus); and these same canons condemn a baptism performed with a single immersion only, or “into the death of the Lord,” “in the name of the three of the Trinity” and the like, as various heretics of the early centuries of the Christian church used to do.[9] But the Church has never condemned baptism performed by pouring—on the contrary, she herself permitted such baptism in case of necessity, and held that baptism by pouring is not contrary to apostolic tradition.[10] Accordingly, the aforesaid decision of the Council of Constantinople cannot be regarded as binding on the whole Orthodox Church, for it conflicts with the practice of the Eastern Church in every century, and in particular with the practice of the Greek Church herself from the time of the separation of the churches down to that Council of Constantinople.[11]

CHAPTER TWO. The Church’s liturgical life.

Footnotes

[11] How strictly the decision of that council is observed in the Greek church—that every Roman Catholic must be baptized when he passes over to the Orthodox faith—may be seen from the Pedalion, in which what is said runs precisely in the sense of that decision. Here is what it says there: “The baptism of the Latins is called by that name only falsely; it is not a baptism at all (βάπτισμα), but only a mere washing (ἀλλὰ ῥάντισμα μόνον ψιλόν).” “Therefore we do not say that we re-baptize the Latins, but that we baptize them.” “The Latins are unbaptized (οἱ Λατῖνοι εἶναι ἀβάπτιστοι), for they do not perform the three immersions at baptism, as this was handed down from the very beginning to the Orthodox church by the holy apostles.” The commentary on Ap. canons 46 and 47 (the aforementioned ed., pp. 55, 58)—And in the Russian church, too, there was a time when Roman Catholics were baptized upon their conversion to the Orthodox church. This had been established at the Council of Moscow in the year 1620 under Patriarch Filaret, as a result of events of exactly the same kind as those which later occasioned the decision of the Council of Constantinople in the year 1756—namely, the hatred between the Russians and the Latins, which the Poles stirred up by their religious intolerance toward the Orthodox. This decision of the Moscow council of the year 1620 concerning the baptism of Roman Catholics remained in force until the second Council of Moscow in the year 1667, at which the decision of that first council was abolished and the old church practice was restored, which still prevails in Russia today—namely, that Roman Catholics are received into the Orthodox church either by chrismation, if they have not been chrismated, or else merely by repentance and the renunciation of the Roman Catholic religious teaching, if they were chrismated in their own church. By the decision of that same Moscow council of the year 1620, Protestants too were baptized in the Russian church when they passed over to the Orthodox church. This was abolished in the year 1718, and it was determined that Protestants are not to be baptized but only chrismated when they pass over to the Orthodox church. See on all this in the aforementioned book of Bishop Sergius, pp. 117, 126.

§ 171. Entry Into the Church From Other Faiths

§ 171. Ступање у цркву из других вјера

§ 171

§ 171. Причины расторжения брака