THE USE OF ECONOMY IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH Part II

My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Our Only True Lord, God, and Savior,

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.

THE USE OF ECONOMY IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH [Part II]

From the viewpoint of modern Western sacramental theology, the variations in the Greek and Russian attitude towards Latin Baptism indicate a state of intolerable vagueness and confusion. But once the principle of economy is taken into account — so Orthodox argue — it will be realized that there "has been no change in Orthodox theology or sacramental theology, but simply a change in disciplinary practice." The Orthodox Church has sometimes been willing to use economy and sometimes not; "but this does not mean that her sacramental teaching as such has varied."

Guided always by practical considerations Orthodoxy has exercised economy when this aided the reconciliation of heterodox "without obscuring the truths of the Orthodox faith"; but when leniency seemed to endanger the well-being of the Orthodox flock, exposing them to infiltration and encouraging them to indifferentism and apostasy, then the Church authorities resorted to strictness.

Therefore, a declaration by an Orthodox Bishops that a person’s non-Orthodox baptism in the heterodox rite previously experienced by the person seeking reception a FORM (i.e., Apostolic: triple immersion) and INTENTION (of the heterodox group — i.e., to baptize into what they consider to be the Church) that do not need repetition. When the person is received by OIKONOMIA, the empty baptismal form is filled with ecclesial Grace by the Holy Spirit.

They mystery of Orthodox baptism, by which we "…accept the death of our propensity for visible things," to quote Saint Maximos the Confessor, involves not only an immersion into the inner life of the Church, but signifies a move away from the external grace that touches those outside Orthodoxy to that internal grace which is a sign of those baptized into Orthodoxy.

Archbishop Chrysostomos, "BEM and Orthodox Spirituality" writes: "Baptism outside of the Orthodox Church, then, is an act detached from the inner life of the Church and separated from the special state of enlightenment that rise above those who while confessing Christ and honoring the form of baptism put forth in the Gospels, nonetheless are not part of life of the evangelical call to struggle that is embodied in death to one’s self and to the "putting on of Christ" within Orthodoxy. OIKONOMIA, like a magnet of evangelical love, draws those who have embrace the iron faith of Christ. In accepting a non-Orthodox act of baptism, it takes that iron, melts on the forge of the Church’s divine authority, and gives it form and internal strength. In no case, however, does it recognize that which is purportedly spiritual formation outside Orthodoxy to be anything other than crude filaments of faith. There is BUT ONE BAPTISM, if indeed baptism are many callings and many confessions. And that one baptism is not one in form, but one in grace-bestowing efficacy, raising out of the unique and exclusive authority of the criterion of truth which is the Orthodox faith. [Resources: The Non-Orthodox]

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"Glory Be To GOD
For
All Things!"
– Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Divine and Glorious Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+ Father George