An Interesting Reversal
I was talking to a Protestant a couple of days ago (very nice fellow, and pretty sharp, too), and he asked me what I was looking for that I left the Baptist world and became Orthodox. I said I was looking for the living continuation of the Church of the Apostles, although I'm not quite sure I could have articulated it quite so cleanly then. Somehow he misunderstood me to be saying I was looking for a church that did all the things the exact way the Apostles did, based on having figured that out from Scripture — which of course is not what I meant at all, and I said so. What I meant, I explained, was that I was looking for the living community of faith that had maintained the fullness of the Apostolic life in the Holy Spirit from generation to generation from then until now, having received it from them in the first place. I mentioned that, "Yes, I'm sure there are practices in our Church that the Apostles didn't do." (This is a common objection, and I was simply