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When someone changes or distorts dogma—the truth about Christ and the Holy Trinity—they are outside the Church. If you add or remove even a single “and” from the Creed—as the Papists have done—you are outside the Church. This is a decision of the Third Ecumenical Council.
Why is dogma so important? Because dogma is the truth about Christ; when you change it, that is, distort it, you distort the truth about Christ. And when we say “truth about Christ,” we do not mean a mere statement—we mean Christ Himself.
For Christ said: “I am the Truth” (John 14:6).
He did not say, “Learn some things about Me, theoretically.” No—He said, “I am the Truth.” Truth is personal; it is hypostatic—it is Christ Himself.
Therefore, when you distort the Truth, you distort Christ. Consequently, you do not have Christ—the true Christ. And if you do not have Christ, who is the physician of souls and bodies, then you cannot be healed. This is the significance of dogma: when you corrupt dogma, you cannot be healed.
For this reason, the holy Fathers defended dogma even to the point of death, because dogma is the prescription for our healing.
We must know that there are two fundamental dogmas: the Trinitarian and the Christological. Of course, all the dogmas of our faith are important, such as those concerning icons, etc., but these two are the most essential, because all the others are based on them.
The Trinitarian dogma teaches that our God is Triune: three Persons and one God—not three gods, but one God in three Persons, who share the same essence, the same energy, and the same will, yet have distinct personal hypostatic properties: the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds. These are their distinguishing characteristics.
The second very important dogma is the Christological one, which teaches that Christ is perfect God and perfect Man. He is the incarnate Son and Word of God, who became man for our salvation.
When these dogmas are altered or distorted—as, for example, Arius did, who distorted both the Trinitarian and the Christological dogmas—he diminished the Son, saying that the Son is not God but inferior, a created being. In this way, he distorted the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The Fathers rightly reacted and deposed him at the First Ecumenical Council.
Dogma, as we have said, is the head, and we must guard it at all costs. We are Orthodox Christians, which means that we have the correct dogma—that is what “Orthodox” means. However, this does not mean that we will be saved simply because we have the right faith. For along with the right faith, a second thing is also needed for a person to be saved: this is the right way of life, the proper life.
And in order for someone to have a proper life, two things are again required. One must have ascetic practice—obedience to the Church, what is called the ascetic and hesychastic life—and secondly, one must have a sacramental life: to participate in the sanctifying Mysteries, and above all in the three basic Mysteries: Baptism and Chrismation, Confession, and Holy Communion. In Baptism and Chrismation we already partake from infancy, but we must also participate in the other two—Confession and Holy Communion.
Even these, by themselves, do not save a person. There must also be the ascetic life—that is, the effort for a person to put to death their passions, to be crucified with respect to the world, and for the world to be crucified to them. In other words, the Christian must have no worldly attachments.
The Fathers emphasize that salvation does not come from Orthodox dogma alone. It is not dogma that saves a person. Dogma simply opens the way for a person to reach purification and illumination. It opens the path; it is a prerequisite. However, without Orthodox dogma, one cannot reach purification and illumination. As we said, it is the prescription.
Just as when you go to the hospital, the doctor gives you a prescription so that you may obtain the medicine, this does not mean that you have already been healed. The prescription, however, opens the way to healing. If you do not follow the prescription, of course you will not be healed.
Yet together with correct dogmatic awareness—that is, the right dogma—there must also be Orthodox practice, the Orthodox liturgical life.