"The Church's purpose is to lead man to deification. When we release the Church from this purpose, we will make it more an ideology, a religious and human organisation. And we know very well that there is a great difference. I would say a chaotic one, between ideology and Church. The former has ideas, while the Church has life, a life which is an overcoming of death."
Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, "The Mind of the Orthodox Church," p. 45
"One hears that, in foreign lands, people are now learning to swim, lying on the floor, with the aid of equipment. In the same way, one can become a Catholic or Protestant without experiencing life at all--by reading books in one's study. But to become Orthodox, it is necessary to immerse oneself all at once in the very element of Orthodoxy, to begin living in an Orthodox way. There is no other way."--Fr. Pavel Florensky
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