Salvation History - New Life, Church History.

The Church's history records the progress of Christ's work throughout the course of the human experience. History in Orthodoxy has a theological importance because of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that just as God chose to become a physical, living, breathing human being, he also chooses to work in and through human history to bring about salvation. Thus, the Church's history becomes a sacred history, not in the same sense as the Biblical history which forms the salvation story itself, but rather as a record of the continued effects of the salvation story in the experience of man.

In the Scriptures the Church is called the Body of Christ ^{(Rom 12; 1 Cor 10, 12; Col 1)} and the Bride of Christ ^{(Eph 5; Rev 21)}. It is likened as well to God's living Temple ^{(Eph 2; 1 Pet 2)} and is called "the pillar and bulwark of Truth" ^{(1 Tim 3:15)}.