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THE TRUE CHRISTIAN FAITH

 

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Below is the Foreword from the Christian classic de fide Orthodoxa by St. John of Damascus in the eighth century. I've just finished re-editing, reformatting, updating and cleaning up the text. You can read it online and save this link for future reference: https://agape-biblia.org/literatura/#de-fide. You can also download it as a free *.epub-format e-book! Here it is:

This book, De Fide Orthodoxa in Latin, by St. John of Damascus was the first systematic theology of the whole Christian Church, and was originally written by a man who lived at the time when the Church was still united. St. John labored under Arian Muslim rule in Damascus. He produced this first systematic theology of Orthodox Christian doctrines and he is considered a saint in both Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism, and is also commemorated by the Lutherans, Anglicans, and Episcopalians.

In the seventh and eighth centuries when St. John lived, there was no "Roman Catholic Church" or "Eastern Orthodox Church" - there was just one true Christian Church and one pre-schism, pre-denominational, true Christian faith, although the East disputed the Roman claim to total papal supremacy. The words "orthodox" and "catholic" had different meanings than they do today: the word "catholic" meant "universal" in the same sense as "ecumenical" (the Ecumenical Patriarch lived in Constantinople), and "orthodox" meant "true faith" or "right praise (worship)." In other words, there was just one true faith for the Christian Church world-wide. This is the sense in which we should understand the Latin title "de Fide Orthodoxa" - one true faith of the entire Christian Church.

St. John was highly educated in the sciences of his day. With our modern instruments, we now know that the universe does not rotate around the earth, but that is how it appeared to people at that time. Today we still use words like "sunrise" and "sunset" although we know better - we still see the world from our human perspective. In St. John's day, however, people had not given up on the search for objective truth as many have done today. The Church through the oversight of the councils of bishops has remained true to the Christian Faith, even if one Christian, even a saint, may have human failings.

At the end of the Liturgy that dates back to three centuries before St. John of Damascus, we sing - "We have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith, worshiping the Holy Trinity Who has saved us." To the modern ear, this sounds rather audacious - claiming to have the true faith. But there is the true faith, not just one of many denominations that each claim to have the truth, which has led to the worldview of relativism that says truth is relative and subjective, each person has his own truth, his own reality...

You can read and download the whole article at https://agape-biblia.org/literatura/#de-fide, and share it!

Get the full article on our ARC-News blog at blogspot.com.

 

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  Please remember to pray for Christians in Secularized Countries, and for...

  Your fellow-servants,

  Bob & Cheryl

  p.s. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. - George Washington