Epilogue

Scientific validity was not the edifice upon which the Church of Christ was built. For which of the physical or biological sciences is able to explain the parting of the Red Sea? Or the Incarnation of the Pre-Eternal Logos? Or God being born of a Virgin? Or the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead? While the Orthodox Church has never rejected the advancement of the sciences, as the progress of such knowledge is indeed given by God to assist us in this ephemeral life, it was built on the eternal truths revealed to us by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself through the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers of the Church. The Church was founded on the traditions, teachings, and laws passed down by the Holy Apostles, the God-Bearing Fathers, and the Œcumenical Synods. From the inception of the problem, the proponents of the New Calendar argued that the Old Calendar had flaws and that the Church needed to correct these. But what this does not take into consideration is that the 318 God-Bearing Fathers of the First Œcumenical Synod were aware of the minor imperfections of the Julian Calendar, the calendar they used to standardize the liturgical cycles of the Church. Nevertheless, despite any inadequacies in the Julian Calendar, the Holy Spirit, which undisputedly operated through these Fathers, inspired them to use that very calendar to set the eternal ordinance for calculating the Feast of Feasts—Pascha. If calendrical perfection had been required, there is no doubt that the Holy Spirit would have inspired those unsurpassable vessels of Grace to deliberate and create a new calendar before setting the rules for the calculation of Pascha. But they were not moved to do so. They established what they did with the Julian Calendar precisely so as to bring unity to the Church….