Christianity or the Church? - St. Hilarion Troitsky (III/III)

Part III of "Christianity or the Church?"

Read the text here: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/sthilarion_church.aspx

0:00 St. Irenaeus on how Christ’s incarnation is not about teaching but about man becoming a new creation in Christ

1:26 If Christ is only a teacher he is not very original

2:18 “The essence of Christ's activities, as we have seen, is not at all in teaching, but in salvation.”

4:13 People seeking life from the Bible and not the Church are like Adam and Eve seeking life from the apple and not from the God-Man

5:25 Leo Tolstoy, the infamous preacher of churchless Christianity in Russia

7:10 Tolstoy also denied the Holy Spirit, calling the Church “the Holy Spirit’s” and not Christ’s

8:35 At least Tolstoy showed us the logical conclusion of separating Christ’s salvific acts from his teaching

10:00 The example of Tolstoyism shows that churchless Christinaity even destroys Christiniaty itself, but not the Church, refuted by its own lifelessness

10:40 What have the Protestants obtained? Hopeless disunity and the destruction of Church life

12:46 An Orthodox researcher summarizes the state of Lutheranism

13:44 On Protestant student missions to Russia

15:31 St. Hilarion’s pain of heart of the chasm between Protestant “Christian” life and true Church life

16:28 Appeals to create and obtain a common religion, a “union” of religions under general, abstract theses

17:27 Many think the Orthodox teaching on the Church is too lofty and too despotic, but true love requires humility and this is a great burden to egotists

19:00 Those who reject and misunderstand the true teaching on the Church may even condemn those who are enthusiastic about the Church and Church life

21:37 Churchless Christianity is death

22:56 Many are positive toward Christian teaching and even call themselves Christian while disdaining the Church and Church life

25:26 Can the Church not excommunicate those who reject Her?

28:00 The reason the Church’s right of excommunication from the Church was readily accepted in past times

29:58 It seems the Church is in great disorder, what are we to do?

31:14 Many today are asking, “Where is the Church?”

32:13 Without clear boundaries between the Church and what is outside the Church, those seeking the Church can easily become wanderers and not Orthodox Christians

34:15 Orthodox Christians are responsible for making bright and clear the light of the Church for those seeking Her

35:27 “Only one who has come to believe in the Church, …one who has felt a Church life within himself, he and only he is on the correct path.”

36:12 One only comes to realize the truth and power of the Church by experience, not scholarly research

37:28 Any talk of “reviving the Church” is nonsense to one who lives Church life, for the life of the Church is the Holy Spirit

38:33 Church life is fullness of Christ and we must treasure and preach the truth and beauty of Church life

39:46 “While believing in the Church, we constantly seem to pardon ourselves for the fact that we still believe in it.”

41:08 CONCLUSION - “Thus it must be considered as the most vital necessity of the present time to confess openly that indisputable truth that Christ created precisely the Church and that it is absurd to separate Christianity from the Church and to speak of some sort of Christianity apart from the Holy Orthodox Church of Christ.”

42:05 A parable about a bird in storm, the tree he finds in refuge in is the Church

"Members of the Church are very guilty in that they fail to point the way clearly and they poorly illuminate with their examples the final point of arrival for those who are seeking. This point is not the abstract understanding of Christianity, but precisely the Church of the living God."