About the Bible

 

Are you interested in Orthodoxy?

You are not alone. Each year the number of Western Christians finding a secure, stable and transforming life in Orthodoxy is growing. The British Orthodox Church is made up almost entirely of converts from a wide range of Christian backgrounds, other religions and no faith at all. We have all come together to find the fulness of the Christian life in Orthodoxy.

We are very glad that you have taken the time to visit our website and we hope that these resources will help you understand a little more of what Orthodoxy is all about, experience something of our spiritual life, and even discover how you can be a part of real Christianity for yourself.

Orthodoxy has so much to offer the modern world. It has a stability of faith and doctrine that rejects our preoccupation with the immediate. Orthodoxy does not change its moral base to reflect the mores of those around us, rather it demands that we ourselves be transformed day by day. So the practice of any form of homosexuality, or indeed the practice of heterosexuality outside marriage, is not condoned. There is no agitation for the ordination of women. The Bible remains the central pillar of Church teaching, and the traditional doctrines about Christ are vigorously defended. Our life in the Church has the aim of transforming us, we do not seek to make the Church merely reflect our own spiritual mediocrity.

If you have any questions then please make sure you ask them. We will do our very best to support your spiritual pilgrimage as best we can.

 


THE BIBLE is the divinely inspired Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16), and is a crucial part of God's self-revelation to the human race.

The Old Testament tells the history of that revelation from Creation through the Age of the Prophets.

The New Testament records the birth and life of Jesus as well as the writings of His Apostles. It also includes some of the history of the early Church and especially sets forth the Church's apostolic doctrine.

Though these writings were read in the churches from the time they first appeared, the earliest listing of all the New Testament books exactly as we know them today is found in the Thirty-third Canon of a local council held at Carthage in A.D. 318 and in a fragment of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria's Festal Letter for the year 367.

Both sources list all of the books of the New Testament without exception. A local council, probably held at Rome under Saint Damasus in 382, set forth a complete list of the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. The Scriptures are at the very heart of Orthodox worship and devotion.

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