Here is a report on the Baptist rite of baptism: "At the end of the choir singing, Brother A. N. Karpov invites the congregation to sing in common singing a cheerful, joyful hymn No 306 from the Collection of Spiritual Songs, which the faithful sing with a special spiritual uplift: "I am at the shore of the burial, at the grave of the water, as a sacrifice to God without a doubt I give myself with all my soul. Oh, receive me, O Saviour, into Thy faithful Church; I believe, my Redeemer, in Thy Blood shed"... The clock struck 7. The presbyter-baptizer approaches the baptistery filled with water and descends into it by the steps. Before beginning the baptism, he performs a brief prayer in his mind in the baptistery, chest-deep in water, after which, to the accompaniment of the choir, which sings the hymn "That wondrous tidings I firmly believe," one by one the baptized approach the baptistery... Throughout the baptismal process, the choir sings the hymn "That Wonderful Tidings I Firmly Believe," repeating each verse several times until all forty have been baptized. The baptism is over. After thanking the Lord, brother A. N. Karpov also went to change clothes. At the pulpit at that time there was brother Y. I. Zhidkov, who proposed to sing hymns No 113 and No 229 from the Collection of Spiritual Songs in common singing. After the singing of the choir, Brother Y. I. Zhidkov proposes to sing another hymn in common singing: "How Happy I Am" (Collection, No 305), which the faithful sing with great enthusiasm. "By faith in Him I was baptized, rejecting sin and the power of the flesh," these words are sung with a particularly joyful feeling by the newly baptized. During the singing, voluntary donations are collected for the needs of the church: the maintenance of the premises, heating, lighting, repairs, the purchase of wine for the breaking of bread, the publication of the magazine "Bratsky Vestnik", for various business trips of the brothers and the salaries of both church ministers and other employees working in the Moscow community and in the All-Union Library"[199]. And what is freer, deeper, more humane, more poetic than the Orthodox rite of baptism?

According to Protestants, the Orthodox revere man-made, human shrines too much, which for them obscure the Living God. But it is the Protestants who gain faith in creation—for them, the Word of God is the Bible. The Logos was incarnated not so much in the flesh of Jesus as in the lines of the book. An Orthodox person will not say that God lives in an icon or that God is an icon. A Protestant is ready to say this about the Bible. When talking to Protestants, the most difficult answer to the question is what Christ left to people after His Ascension. They insist on repeating the Bible. I try to explain to them that Christ left Himself to us, left His Spirit in the Body of His Church, but my interlocutors stand their ground to the last opportunity: the Savior has left us books, books, we will live by books, we will be guided by books, the Revelation of God is contained for us in the book...

Protestants also accuse the Orthodox of ritualism, of performing actions the meaning of which the parishioners do not understand. But at least we know that there is a meaning in our sacraments and rites, and — as far as the sacraments allow explanations — we try to explain them to the people. But Protestants commit a number of actions, the meaning of which is basically unclear to them. For example, the breaking of bread, ordination and baptism.

These actions, as sacred and necessary in the life of the Church, are prescribed by the authority of Scripture. But why? Protestants, according to their theologians, do not have sacraments. This means that there are just symbols, just rituals. "A rite can be called an external ritual established by Christ in order to be performed in the Church as a visible sign of the saving truth of the Christian faith. Neither in baptism nor in the Lord's Supper is there any special manifestation of grace"[200]. According to the Baptists (a community that took its name from baptism!), "baptism is not considered a sacrament, but a rite symbolizing the initiation (acceptance) of a person into the church, the washing away of sins, the promise of a good conscience to God and obedience to Him" [201].

But if someone simply wants to promise God his conscience, he can do it himself, at home, without witnesses: simply and in silence turning to the Creator. And even in the public sphere, there are many "rites of acceptance" and many ways of taking an oath ("promise of conscience"). If baptism is reduced to an oath, if "baptism is our public witness before men and before God,"[202] then how does it differ from the oath of a young pioneer: "I, in the presence of my fellows, solemnly promise and swear wholeheartedly to serve the ideas of the New Testament..."? Except that the "comrades" are different... Why baptize in water? Why does the entrance to the Christian community lie precisely through the waters of baptism? Why ordain priests? Maybe it is enough just to hand them the appropriate certificates? Why commune with bread and wine? Why "remember" Christ's suffering with food? [203]. You can remember the sufferings of Christ by watching a video.

A Protestant will indignantly retort, "But we baptize, ordain, and celebrate the Supper because Christ has ordained it!" Is there any mystical significance to these actions? If you do them simply because you have been ordered to do so, and you cannot explain to yourself the meaning of what you are doing, then it is you who can be accused of the most fanatical ritualism.

There is, however, something among Protestants that I sincerely envy. This is their name, trade mark (English "trademark, brand name" - Ed.). I would also like to call myself a "Protestant." This is a very beautiful, courageous word, consonant with the modern fashion for dissidence. But where is there more protest and rebellion – in modern Protestantism or in modern Orthodoxy? Any person notices in Orthodoxy (condemning or admiring) an amazing reluctance to bend under the wind of modernity and rebuild according to the requirements of newspapers and fashions. Orthodoxy is a protest that has carried through twenty centuries the ability to bold modernity. It is impossible to accuse Orthodoxy of collaborationism, opportunism, and worldliness at the same time, and at the same time to scold it for its inability and unwillingness to modernize. I know that among those priests and Orthodox intellectuals who defend the Church Slavonic language, many feel in the denial of the Russian language precisely the aesthetics of protest. There was its own beauty in pre-reform Catholicism. There was a beauty in the fact that at the end of the nineteenth century, in the age of liberalism, Catholics adopted the outrageous dogma of papal infallibility. It is precisely because it is outrageous that it is beautiful. But today they have lost their admirable stubbornness, their certainty that they are standing on the rock of Peter and on the rock of salvation, and they have become less interesting.

In order to defend Orthodoxy in Russia today, one needs more firmness and readiness to endure insults, slander and attacks than to scold Orthodoxy. In order to accept, fulfill and apply to oneself the norms of church-Orthodox life, faith and asceticism, one needs more determination, consistency, I would say, more perseverance and discipline of protest than to run to "evangelical" gatherings and cabbage parties in houses of culture. I know the most educated young people whose natural thirst for protest for a young man is expressed in the fact that they regard the Orthodox church as a citadel besieged by the spirits of this age (the spirit of their parents). And the thickness of age-old traditions, the cement of canons and the stones of dogmas are for them fortress walls that protect them from the service of the vulgarity of the age. Who said that it is necessary to rebel against the present only in the name of a "bright future"? And in the name of Tradition, is it not possible to rebel against the current total dominance of modernism?

In general, Protestants have found a good name for themselves. I even hope that one day they will suddenly compare their life with their name and indignantly grieve in their hearts: "Where is our protest? What have we exchanged the fervor of the Gospel faith for? What is left in us for which the world can still hate us? Have we become too much of a part of the post-Christian civilization of the new America?" [205].

Unfortunately, I cannot call myself a Protestant. And even my protests against the state implantation of occultism in Russia do not give me the right to such a self-designation. For the term "Protestantism" is a technical term and acquired its very concrete meaning long before I was born. I cannot call myself a Protestant, firstly, because in 1529 at the Council of Speyer I did not sign the "protest" of the minority, and secondly, because on the main point of the Speyer schism I am on the side of the traditionalist majority: I consider Communion to be a valid sacrament, and not just a symbol. I understand that the Reformers protested against the Catholics. And on some points, as an Orthodox, I fully agree with their anti-Catholic protests. But on the whole, I still cannot agree with the program of the Protestants, with what is specific to their confession. And therefore I cannot call myself a beautiful word "Protestant".

Well, life is not reduced to protest. Sometimes you have to start with a resolute and defensive "no!", but then it's time to move on to a creative "yes". From the denunciation of falsehood to the confession of truth. To Orthodoxy. The Church is not "a protest against falsehood," but something more positive: "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).

And Protestants still do not have sufficient grounds to look at the Orthodox world from top to bottom. The diseases that we suffer from are also in them. But some medicines that are in the Orthodox tradition, unfortunately, do not exist in Protestantism.

History After Christ: Waste or Hoarding?

Protestantism differs from Orthodoxy and Catholicism in that of the two sources of spiritual knowledge – Scripture and Tradition – Protestantism recognizes only the first. Sola Scriptura. Only the Scriptures. This slogan of Protestantism is attractive only until you think about what exactly has been left out of this sol. What is excluded by this formula? Living the Scriptures is wonderful. But what goes out of sight of a person who reads only the Gospel? "Legend is leaving. In reality, this means that the philosophical and religious outlook of an ordinary convinced Protestant is much narrower than the circle of knowledge of a convinced Orthodox: he selects one Bible from the church library, declaring everything else to be an unnecessary speculation. Augustine and Chrysostom clearly turn out to be burdensome reading, interesting only for historians. Orthodoxy is a library; "Evangelism" is the religion of one book. The Baptists do not see the point in the Liturgy, which means that the choirs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff were written in vain, and Gogol should have thrown into the oven not only the second volume of Dead Souls, but also the manuscript of his Meditations on the Divine Liturgy. Since the icon is something other than the Gospel, it inevitably follows from the principle of Sola Scriptura that St. Andrei Rublev is nothing more than an idolater...