My Journey, Part 11.3: Holy Tradition

This is part 11.3 of my rebooted series on my journey from Evangelicalism to Eastern Orthodoxy. The full series can be found here:

1	Back to the beginning
2	Cracks appear
3	Questions multiply
4	Questioning the "gospel"
5	The big question
6	A better hermeneutic
7	Explorations in epistemology
7.5	Excursus on oversystematization
8	Back to the gospel
9	The new direction
10	Ecclesiological foundations
11.1	Sola scriptura
11.2	The insufficiency of Scripture
11.25	Addenda on sola scriptura
11.3	Holy Tradition
12	Bridging the cracks
13.1	Orthodoxy and Genesis 1–3
13.2	A Better Atonement (Against Penal Substitution)
13.3	Faith Alone?
13.4	The Colour and the Shape of the Gospel
14	Worshipping with the Church
15	Mary, Saints, Baptism, and Other Odds/Ends
16	Looking Back, Coming Home

In the last twothree posts, I've told how I came to stop believing sola scriptura, and with it much of my old Protestant take on the Bible. In this post, I'll try to explain the contrasting Orthodox concept of Holy Tradition.

What is Tradition?

The Greek word that translates to "tradition" is παραδοσις, paradosis, which means something that is handed over or passed down. The corresponding Latin word traditio has a similar meaning and is the basis for the English word. The thrust of these definitions is not that tradition is somehow artificial or fabricated, but just the opposite: tradition is delivered. preserved, passed down. Timothy Ware, again in his helpful book The Orthodox Church, says this about what Tradition is:

A tradition is commonly understood to signify an opinion, belief, or custom handed down from ancestors to posterity. Christian Tradition, in that case, is the faith and practice which Jesus Christ imparted to the Apostles, and which since the Apostles' time has been handed down from generation to generation in the Church. ... It means the books of the Bible; it means the [Nicene] Creed; it means the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils and the writings of the Fathers; it means the Canons, the Service Books, the Holy Icons—in fact, the whole system of doctrine, Church government, worship, spirituality and art which Orthodoxy has articulated over the ages. Orthodox Christians of today see themselves as heirs and guardians to a rich inheritance received from the past, and they believe that it is their duty to transmit this inheritance unimpaired to the future.

A few other definitions:

• The Orthodox Church in America: Tradition is "the total life and experience of the entire Church transferred from place to place and from generation to generation. Tradition is the very life of the Church itself as it is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit."
• Elder Cleopa, in this interview: "Holy Tradition is the teaching of the Church, given by God with a living voice, a portion of which was later written down. ... Holy Tradition is the life of the Church in the Holy Spirit; and, in concord with the enduring life of the Church, it is a wellspring of holy revelation, and thus it possesses the same authority as Holy Scripture."
• Fr. Sergius Bulgakov: tradition is "the living memory of the church".
• Peter Bouteneff: "Tradition is an activity or dynamism; it is the 'handing down' or 'handing over' of faith and practice from one person to another, one generation to another. It is an ongoing activity, which is why we continue to speak of 'the living Tradition.'"
• Georges Florovsky: Tradition is Scripture rightly understood.
• Vladimir Lossky: Tradition is the unique mode of receiving the truth that is found in Scripture. "Tradition is not the content of revelation, but the light that reveals it; it is not the word, but the living breath which makes the word heard at the same time as the silence from which it came; it is not the truth, but a communication of the Spirit of truth, outside which the truth cannot be received. 'No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit' (1 Cor 12.3)."

I should clarify that Lossky probably isn't opposing Tradition with Scripture in that last quote: he is opposing it with Christ himself, who is himself the Truth to which Scripture and Tradition both lead the believer.

The above definitions give a basic, but complete understanding of what Tradition is. I will emphasize a few salient points:

• As I will explain shortly, the content of Tradition is more than just doctrines. It is also liturgies, prayers, the writings of the fathers, the councils, the lives of the saints, religious artwork, etc. The Bible is the most fundamental part of Tradition, but not the only part.
• Orthodox speak of one Tradition as well as lesser traditions. Tradition is the rich, multi-aspect body of teaching and truth passed down through the Orthodox Church, which also passes down numerous small-t traditions. These may be beneficial or not, and are not infallible. You could say that Tradition is the life, experience, and memory of the whole Church, whereas traditions are held by parts of the Church. Ware writes, "many traditions which the past has handed down are human and accidental—pious opinions (or worse), but not a true part of the one Tradition, the fundamental Christian message. You may notice some similarities between the Orthodox definition of "traditions" and the Protestant view on all tradition.
• What the apostles left, most basically, was Tradition. Until the New Testament was written down and widely circulated, the Church was led by Tradition, and it was by no means made irrelevant when the New Testament was completed. (The Church's authoritative decision on which books belong in the New Testament canon is also a part of Tradition) Again, Tradition is not simply a static body of words; it is living, dynamic, active. No body of writing, however divinely inspired, can fully replace it.

The role of the Bible

How does the Bible fit together with Tradition? In the first place, it is the product of Tradition. Tradition preceded both testaments of the Bible, which record it in writing. Consequently, the Scriptures are part of tradition. Let me say that again, because it is the most misunderstood thing about Tradition by Protestants:

The Scriptures exist within Tradition, not alongside or over it. Tradition is not a separate source for the Christian faith. The Bible is part of Tradition. Ware says of this, "there is only one source, since Scripture exists within Tradition. To separate and contrast the two is to impoverish the idea of both alike."

With that said, Orthodox also teach that the Bible is the center of Tradition. This is because the Scriptures, especially New Testament, and especially the four gospels, testify to Jesus Christ, the Truth and the content of the faith, the divine revelation to which all Tradition points. Every part of the Orthodox faith traces back to the central reality of Christ, and since it is to the mystery of Christ that the Scriptures witness (Luk 24:27, 44-45), they are the most important part of Holy Tradition. This is how Protestant critics of Holy Tradition are able to see sola scriptura in the writings of the early church fathers: everything goes back to the Scriptures for them not because the Bible is somehow set over the Church and Tradition, but because it witnesses to the transcendent reality of the gospel of Christ, the true content of the faith. Scripture, then, is an expression of the faith delivered from Christ to the apostles, not a constitution for the church or a collection of texts and statements to be assembled into a faith. I glimpsed something like this when I journaled:

The early church didn't believe in Jesus because of the Bible; they believed in the Bible because of Jesus. (2013-6-6) 

The Bible, in the Orthodox understanding, is not authoritative in and of itself. This is because the Bible does not "speak" on its own, independently of the Church. It must be interpreted to "say" anything; this is evident given how multiple interpretations, many of them wrong, can be (and, more often than not, have been) gleaned from virtually any part of it. It was inspired in its writing; likewise, it must also be inspired in its reading. So the Bible is only "authoritative" when it is interpreted authoritatively, namely by and within the Church. Interpretation of the Bible is not democratic; not everyone is equally qualified to do so. Christians can't be expected to automatically get the right meaning from the Scriptures when left to their own hermeneutical devices. As the Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip, "How can I [understand what I am reading], unless some one guides me?" (Acts 8:31)

Orthodox do not deny biblical perspicuity because they think God somehow spoke unclearly or inadequately through Scripture, but because they have a much deeper view of how the Bible "speaks" and operates within the faith than Protestants. Understanding the Scripture is much more involved than simply discerning the original intended meaning of the human author (which, even then, is not always evident) and then applying it. The point of Scripture is not just to reveal information, but to reveal Christ to the Church. The inspiration of Scripture doesn't simply mean, to Orthodox, that everything it says is true and that you have to believe it. It also means that Scripture is deep. As the Church has consistently confessed since its earliest days, the Scriptures have multiple levels of meaning, only the most basic of which can be uncovered by mere historical-grammatical exegesis.

Going deeper takes wisdom, discernment, and godliness. Not everyone is able to glimpse Christ as he truly is by reading the Scriptures, even the gospel accounts of him. (After all, the disciples were there and they still didn't understand what was happening) Further, being fallible and sinful we are prone to misreading Scripture and glimpsing a fabricated version of Christ, more often than not one who looks suspiciously like us and our preconceptions. (2 Pet 3:16 makes a similar point) Fortunately, we aren't merely left to our own devices when interpreting Scripture. Tradition in all its aspects and forms, is the Church's reading and application of Scripture, and its encounters of Christ therein. It guides those in the Church to interpret and live the Scriptures rightly, to experience Christ as he truly is (and not as we simply make him out to be in our pious opinions) through them. As St. Jerome said, "You cannot advance in the Holy Scriptures unless you have an experienced guide to show you the way."

Tradition includes many teachings, like the Trinity, that Protestants simply consider to be "biblical" and not part of "tradition". But even when something resembling our biblical canon became commonplace in the Church, it took centuries for the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity to be firmly established. The Trinity is "biblical" in that it is based on the Bible, but it also goes beyond the Bible, being based on careful interpretation. (And keep in mind that it is not even "biblical" to all Protestants, e.g. Unitarians and Modalists) Thus it is a product of Tradition, the Church's interpretation of Scripture, as well as Scripture itself, demonstrating their unity.

Perhaps the crucial difference in relation to the Bible between sola scriptura and Holy Tradition is ecclesiological: Tradition views the Church itself, rather than individuals within the Church, as the authoritative interpreter of Scripture. Being the body of Christ, the Church is personified to a degree. It was to the Church, the pillar of the Truth (1 Tim 3:15), that the promise of the Spirit to guide us into all truth (Jhn 16:13) was given. Sola scriptura is true, in a sense, but for the Church as a whole, not for individual, fallible exegetes. Protestantism arguably sees no distinction between the Church and the sum of its members; Orthodoxy does (1 Cor 12:27). Tradition is the right reading of Scripture, while Scripture determines what is of Tradition. This process is not merely a circle but a spiral, and again it is the Church as a whole that partakes in it, not simply individual interpreters.

Other parts of Tradition

As I mentioned above, Tradition includes many things besides the Scriptures, which are interpretations and applications of them. Peter Bouteneff, in his helpful book Sweeter than Honey, summarizes them.

• Councils: At numerous times leaders in the Orthodox Church have met to seek a decision on some part of the faith—often to answer a pressing question that no one has answered before, or to seek a ruling on the orthodoxy of a questionable teaching that may turn out to be heresy. In particular, from the fourth to the eight centuries the Church convened seven ecumenical (involving the whole known world) councils, in which bishops representing the entire Church met. The creeds, definitions, and other decisions of these councils are considered dogmatic, infallibly true and binding on all Christians; these definitions include things like Orthodox Christology, the doctrine of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the proper veneration of icons. Also, the decisions of local councils can be considered ecumenical if they are later accepted by the whole church (such as the New Testament canon).
• Liturgy: The Orthodox Church is much less prone to making formal doctrinal statements and definitions than the Catholic Church. Rather, much of its theology is contained and beautifully expressed in its liturgies. The liturgy includes more than truths about God: it also includes, right prayer, right worship, and the Eucharistic partaking in the body of Christ. The liturgy is theology brought to life. The liturgy is also an expression of the unity of the Church; explains Bouteneff, "The fact that Orthodox Christians gathered almost anywhere in the world are singing and doing more or less the same thing (calendar differences notwithstanding) has a profound unifying effect on the Church. ... We are not singing anyone's opinion of new idea. We're singing words that have been tried and tested as true." As anyone who has been to an Orthodox divine liturgy (including me) will attest, it is profoundly scriptural; besides the readings themselves, many of the words are biblical quotations or allusions. I will write more about this a few posts from now.
• Fathers: The fathers of the Church are understood to be those who faithfully convey the gospel, preserving what was entrusted to them, which is none other than the apostolic faith." The Church fathers (and mothers) were godly individuals steeped in the Scriptures and the sacramental life of the church, whose writings are acknowledged as invaluable expressions of the faith that has been held by all people at all times. Of course, since they are individual exegetes, they are not infallible, and their writings are decidedly less central to Tradition than the Bible. Nonetheless, their writings are precious for teaching from the Scriptures, defending the faith against challenges, and pointing the way to a greater understanding of the gospel.
• Art: To the Protestant eye, the most striking thing about entering an Orthodox Church (once you get used to the incense) is the imagery. There are icons, paintings, stained-glass images, and other depictions of people from the Bible and the life of the Church. I will talk more about this in a few posts, but these images are not just for inspiration. They themselves depict the truth of Holy Tradition, albeit in pictorial format, for those who understand their significance. For example, this icon of the resurrection depicts important teachings of the Church about Christ's victory over death. He stands triumphant over the grave, with the gates of Hades (which he has broken out of) under his feet. He is pulling Adam and Eve out with him by the hand, and around him stand other saints of the Old Testament. At first I thought it looked bizarre, but now I've come to appreciate icons like these as different ways of conveying Tradition that go beyond words.

The preservation of Tradition

You may be asking (as I did): how do we know that the Church has reliably preserved Holy Tradition? How do we know it hasn't been corrupted somehow? Isn't it safer to stick with the Bible, whose original contents we can reconstruct to a high degree of accuracy? This is an understandable question for Protestants to ask, since most of their experience with Tradition tends to be with that of the Catholic Church, which Orthodox agree has corrupted the Apostolic teaching. I ask that you at least judge Orthodox Tradition on its own merits, not by association with the Catholic Church.

Orthodox believe the Church has reliably preserved Tradition because God has promised as much. The Church is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15), guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit (Jhn 16:13); Orthodox take these promises seriously. Christ is the head of the Church (Eph 1:22-23), which is his body (Rom 12:5, 1 Cor 12:27, Eph 4:16), "the fullness of him who fills all in all". The fullness of the apostolic faith, the true presence of Christ, the knowledge of the truth—for Orthodox, these things are not conditional; they are spiritual realities. Losing the apostolic Tradition would mean that the Church has ceased to exist, which Jesus promised cannot happen (Mat 16:18). Thus Orthodox see no period of corruption in the Church which was only rectified by the Reformation.

The essence of Tradition is that which has been believed throughout the whole Church throughout its history. In other words, Orthodox believe the Church preserves Tradition across both time and space. Councils, as previously described, serve to ensure that Tradition is consistent across the whole Church. Likewise, apostolic succession is a major way that Christ preserves the Church's teaching through time. Originally developed as a rebuke to heretics who claimed to have preserved "secret teachings" of Christ, apostolic succession bases the preservation of the faith on the unbroken chain of succession linking all Orthodox bishops to the apostles and, therefore, to the teaching of Christ. I will expand on this more from the Bible and the church fathers below.

This may not satisfy Protestants who prefer scientific assurance that the textform of the Bible we have reconstructed today substantially matches that of the original autographs; what more needs to be preserved? Orthodox teaching would respond, again, that merely preserving the text of the Scriptures in no way ensures the preservation of the whole Apostolic Tradition. By reading the Scriptures apart from Tradition, apart from the universal Church, it is easy (inevitable, even) to construct a faith (or many faiths) quite different from that of the early Church.

Clearing the air

I will take a moment to correct a few other misunderstandings I have seen regarding Tradition:

• Holy Tradition is not the "traditions of men" against which Christ and the apostles warn (Mat 15:6; 1 Cor 2:4-5,10,13; Col 2:8; 1 Ths 2:13). Tradition is not "merely human" any more than Christ (the body of Christ) is. Elder Cleopa explains, "Holy Tradition is neither a tradition of men, nor a philosophy, nor some kind of trickery; it is the word of God which He personally delivered to us." Again, the Orthodox Church does not maintain a dualistic view of the Scriptures vs. every other source. In keeping with its incarnational theology of theosis (humanity taken up into the divine), the Tradition of the Church can be divine as well as human.
• But even if the teaching of the Church is not merely human, neither it is entirely divine and infallible. As I mentioned above, Orthodox draw a distinction between Tradition and traditions, and between helpful traditions and false ones. Just as Christ was corruptible in his humanity but imperishable in his divinity, so the earthly Church is not totally immune to false traditions. In his handy book The Orthodox Faith, Fr. Thomas Hopko writes about this:

It is also important to recognize that there are also things in the Church which not only do not belong to Holy Tradition, but which are not even to be counted among its positive human traditions. These things which are just sinful and wrong are brought into the life of the Church from the evil world. The Church in its human form, as an earthly institution, is not immune to the sins of its unholy members. These deviations and errors which creep into the life of the Church stand under the judgment and condemnation of the authentic and genuine Holy Tradition which comes from God.

• One major way I misunderstood Tradition was thinking it means that everyone in the Orthodox Church is supposed to believe exactly the same thing—submitting to the Church's one infallible interpretation of the Bible, regardless of conflicting voices from conscience or doubts. This is based partly on the Protestant view that each verse in the Bible has one correct interpretation and our job as interpreters is to find them. But again, Orthodox view the Bible as much deeper than this. Consequently, Tradition is much more than simply the one right way to read the Bible. John Breck describes patristic hermeneutics as being shaped by theoria, "an 'inspired vision' of divine Truth as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and in the biblical witness to him." This mindset is not simply a set of right answers or interpretations to which Orthodox are constrained; rather, it frees us to read the Scriptures in a life-giving, Christocentric way that transcends the literal sense.
  
  Another analogy I came up with and hope is accurate is that Tradition is not like a single road or railroad tracks, but more like a set of guardrails to keep you from falling off the edges of Orthodoxy, and a compass to point you in the right general direction. (The guardrails and compass correspond, roughly, to dogma and theoria) So within Tradition, there is much freedom and room for questioning (just not for false teaching). Ware wisely writes, "It is absolutely essential to question the past. ... True Orthodox fidelity to the past must always be a creative fidelity; for true Orthodoxy can never rest satisfied with a barren 'theology of repetition', which, parrot-like, repeats accepted formulae without striving to understand what lies behind them."
• Tradition also does not mean that anyone, layman or patriarch, gets to champion his or her personal interpretation of Scripture as the truly "Orthodox" or traditional one. We are all fallible; only the Church as a whole is infallible.

Biblical evidence for going beyond the Bible

Besides the aforementioned verses about the nonperspicuity of Scripture and supporting the preservation of tradition, the traditioning process itself is commanded by Jesus and Paul:

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age." (Mat 28:18-20 RSV)

and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2Ti 2:2 RSV)

The faithful reception and preservation of Tradition is also commanded:

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. (Gal 1:8-9 RSV)

So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter. (2Th 2:15 RSV)

O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith. Grace be with you. (1Ti 6:20-21 RSV) 

Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus; guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. (2Ti 1:13-14 RSV)

Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son. If any one comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting; (2Jo 1:9-10 RSV)

And other passages describe Tradition:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, (Luk 1:1-2 RSV) 

And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Act 2:42 RSV) 

I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you. (1Co 11:2 RSV) 

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." (1Co 11:23-24 RSV) 

Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. (1Co 15:1-6 RSV) 

For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not man's gospel. (Gal 1:11 RSV) 

And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. (1Th 2:13 RSV) 

Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. (2Th 3:6 RSV) 

For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. (2Pe 2:21 RSV) 

Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jde 1:3 RSV)

Historical evidences

Orthodox theologians can produce an abundance of patristic citations to show that the Church has held the centrality of Holy Tradition (and not something like sola scriptura) since its inception. The second-century church father Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in his book Against Heresies, spoke about the Valentinians (a heretical Gnostic sect of Christianity) and outlined the Orthodox understanding of Tradition, apostolic succession, and the necessity of reading Scripture with the Church:

But, again, when we refer them to that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition, saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth. ... It comes to this, therefore, that these men do now consent neither to Scripture nor to tradition. (III.2.2)

It is within the power of all, therefore, in every Church, who may wish to see the truth, to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries, which they were in the habit of imparting to the perfect apart and privily from the rest, they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the Churches themselves. (III.3.1)

Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere. (III.3.2)

Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. (Revelation 22:17) For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account are we bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches? (III.4.1)

Granted, the heretics Irenaeus was sparring against were anything but sola scriptura Protestants. They held that the apostles had secretly entrusted them with a strictly oral, Gnostic tradition, a "living voice" that supplanted even the Scriptures as their true witness. Yet I think his words also apply to anyone who would rely on the Scriptures but reads them in a way that contradicts the faith of the Church. Irenaeus does not simply equate the "tradition of the apostles", the rule of faith against which heresies are tried, with Scripture.

Irenaeus' contemporary Tertullian, in his Prescription Against Heretics, gave a similar description of Tradition, apostolic succession, and the continuity of Orthodox doctrine:

after first bearing witness to the faith in Jesus Christ throughout Judæa, and founding churches (there), they next went forth into the world and preached the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations. They then in like manner founded churches in every city, from which all the other churches, one after another, derived the tradition of the faith, and the seeds of doctrine, and are every day deriving them, that they may become churches. Indeed, it is on this account only that they will be able to deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic churches. Every sort of thing must necessarily revert to its original for its classification. Therefore the churches, although they are so many and so great, comprise but the one primitive church, (founded) by the apostles, from which they all (spring). In this way all are primitive, and all are apostolic, while they are all proved to be one, in (unbroken) unity, by their peaceful communion, and title of brotherhood, and bond of hospitality—privileges which no other rule directs than the one tradition of the selfsame mystery. (20)

From this, therefore, do we draw up our rule. Since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, (our rule is) that no others ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed; for no man knows the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. (Matthew 11:27) Nor does the Son seem to have revealed Him to any other than the apostles, whom He sent forth to preach— that, of course, which He revealed to them. Now, what that was which they preached— in other words, what it was which Christ revealed to them— can, as I must here likewise prescribe, properly be proved in no other way than by those very churches which the apostles founded in person, by declaring the gospel to them directly themselves, both vivâ voce, as the phrase is, and subsequently by their epistles. If, then, these things are so, it is in the same degree manifest that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches— those moulds and original sources of the faith must be reckoned for truth, as undoubtedly containing that which the (said) churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God. Whereas all doctrine must be prejudged as false which savours of contrariety to the truth of the churches and apostles of Christ and God. It remains, then, that we demonstrate whether this doctrine of ours, of which we have now given the rule, has its origin in the tradition of the apostles, and whether all other doctrines do not ipso facto proceed from falsehood. We hold communion with the apostolic churches because our doctrine is in no respect different from theirs. This is our witness of truth. (21)

But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs ] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,— a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. (32)

I should note that Irenaeus and Tertullian probably didn't advocate for the apostolic succession of churches, per se. Rather, they believed in the apostolic succession of the faith. A church was not labeled "heretical" if it could not produce, as Tertullian said, "the roll of their bishops".  Rather, it was heretical if it held to a faith or a teaching at odds with the churches that could, especially the oldest churches that were directly founded by the apostles.

Finally, the fifth-century theologian Vincent of Lérins, in chapter 2 of his Commonitory, wrote the most direct early Christian rebuke I know of to sola scriptura, with which I think my main argument lines up exactly (emphasis added):

If I or anyone else wish to detect the deceits of the heretics or avoid their traps, and to remain healthy and intact in a sound faith, we ought, with the help of the Lord, to strengthen our faith in two ways: first, by the authority of the divine law, and then by the tradition of the catholic church. Here someone may ask: since the canon of the scriptures is complete, and is in itself adequate, why is there any need to join to its authority the understanding of the church? Because Holy Scripture, on account of its depth, is not accepted in a universal sense. The same statements are interpreted in one way by one person, in another by someone else, with the result that there seem to be as many opinions as there are people. ... Therefore, on account of the number and variety of errors, there is a need for someone to lay down a rule for the interpretation of the prophets and the apostles in such a way that is directed by the rule of the catholic church. Now in the catholic church itself the greatest care is taken that we hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all people. This is what is truly and properly catholic.

I couldn't have said it any better.

The personal angle

So those are the reasons why I feel confident that the Orthodox teaching of Holy Tradition is true. But as with sola scriptura, I should also ask the slightly different, more subjective question: how did I come to my current view on it? Why is it convincing to me? (Note that unlike the preceding sections, what follows are not so much arguments as reflections)

First, Orthodoxy tears down a lot of false dichotomies and modern biases I was tired of from Protestantism. Whereas sola scriptura imposes a dualistic separation between a divine Bible and the traditions of men, Orthodoxy is incarnational in its understanding of Tradition. Because the Church is the body of Christ, it can be more than a human institution. This also translates to a better balance between the human and divine natures of Scripture in methodology (ironic, given how much more spiritually Orthodox tend to interpret the Bible) that strongly affirms them both at once instead of affirming only the literal sense of Scripture backed by divine authority.

The Orthodox perspective on "authority" is also less dualistic; rather than a single, uniformly authoritative body of truth surrounded by human opinions, there are levels of significance both inside and outside the Bible. There is a lot more respect even for merely human traditions, rather than innate skepticism of them and a constant drive to get "back to the Bible". Rather than a quasi-foundationalist attempt to derive a complete Christian faith from the Bible (which never seems to work), Orthodoxy recognizes that the faith is living and present already, as it has been since the Great Commission. Finally, Orthodox theology is pleasantly center-oriented rather than boundary-oriented, concerned with seeing and living Christ rather than trying to figure out what everyone must believe to be considered "biblical" (because universal consensus on this already exists).

Orthodox theology is relatively untouched by Enlightenment rationalism (I will get into the epistemology of this next time). Tradition is readily acknowledged to be far more than doctrinal truth; ultimately, Truth is a person. It was tremendously refreshing when Bouteneff, in his book, started with this point and expounded on it at length rather than bringing it up at the end as a tantalizing possibility. Similarly, the Church is led by people (both Christ as head and the bishops), not simply a body of "truth" that no one can seem to agree on. Though Orthodoxy does still have seminaries, there is far less of a gap between church and academy than in Protestantism. Theology is done within the Church, for the Church, not alongside it.

I also find Holy Tradition historically convincing. (Remember that I first became interested in it by studying its history) Previous to learning about Orthodoxy I was pessimistic about being able to really know what the early Church believed. Did they have bishops or were they Presbyterian, or congregationalists? Did they hold a symbolic view of baptism? Did they believe in sola scriptura? In hindsight, trying to convince myself that the early Church was basically Protestant was intellectually dishonest of me. But I had to do so, because the alternative seemed to be that "true" Christianity was lost. No, it has not been lost—and there is no need to recover or rebuild it from perspicuous source texts, as if we were studying a past civilization as archaeologists. It lives in the life of the Church as it always has. There is a posture of humbly receiving from the past instead of skeptically passing judgment on it that I find much more amenable to the faith.

Finally, as I have said before, I was convinced of Holy Tradition because it works. By and large, it really delivers the unity on essentials of the faith and charitable disagreement on non-essentials that sola scriptura promises. Because the boundary between Orthodoxy and heresy is well-defined, there are virtually no continuing arguments on where it lies on such-and-such theological issue. (The current question of whether the Monophysite churches are really heretical might qualify) Orthodox are able to have deep discussions, even disputes on doctrine without sowing division. Tradition lets them have faithful confidence in their reading of Scripture, within the Church, without risk of becoming epistemologically arrogant.

(Yet another) name change

Once again, the name of this blog has become inadequate. I no longer consider myself a "faithful skeptic" because, by the grace of God, I now have an alternative to questioning things I'm taught out of a vague sense of uneasiness about them. I've realized that every journey of doubt has not just a starting point, but a destination—and that destination may be a place of greater, more wholehearted faith than before, just as I hoped. In my main post on doubt, I said, prophetically, "doubt is only temporary; one day it will become obsolete, and we will be all the more blessed for it!" Now I see this prediction (partially) fulfilled. God has richly answered my prayer to help me believe in Him, though I still have a lot of room to grow.

At its worst, doubt is a denial of faith, a refusal to trust and love our Father God as He wants us to. But at its best, doubt is a scalpel in God's hands, cutting away our beliefs and habits that are unworthy of Him. By suppressing doubt, we may prevent God from performing life-saving work on our hearts. But doubt is only temporary by design; it cannot (or at least should not) be allowed to keep cutting away until there is nothing left. I think I have entered a period of rebuilding and reevaluating my faith in the bright light of the Orthodox tradition, and simultaneously connecting it back to my old tradition.

While thinking about what to rename my blog for the third time, I was tempted to go with a totally nondescriptive name that could never again change, like David's Blog. But then something about Irenaeus' analogy of the mosaic hit me. Here is his telling of it again:

Such, then, is [the Valentinians'] system, which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge. They gather their views from other sources than the Scriptures; and, to use a common proverb, they strive to weave ropes of sand, while they endeavour to adapt with an air of probability to their own peculiar assertions the parables of the Lord, the sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, in order that their scheme may not seem altogether without support. In doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked are in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. 

Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skilful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king's form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. 

In like manner do these persons patch together old wives' fables, and then endeavour, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions. We have already stated how far they proceed in this way with respect to the interior of the Pleroma.

I realized that this analogy is quite descriptive of my journey through doubt. I experienced crashing waves of doubt caused by reading the Bible, yet not by the Bible itself but by how I was reading it. My presuppositions, the "big picture" I expected to put together from the Scriptures, were wrong. I was trying to assemble the Scriptures into the image of a fox, because that was what I'd been taught they were supposed to point to. I was further taught that this image was truly that of the king, even if it can be hard sometimes to see the resemblence. But in Orthodox Tradition I see the true image of a king, the way to read the Scriptures and put the mosaic together rightly as I'd wanted to do all along. In light of this, I decided that my blog's new name will be εἰκών βασιλέως (or in English, "Image of a King"). May it record my progress as I learn to read the Scriptures so as to assemble them into this image.

The name has added significance because of a souvenir I brought home from my trip to Europe. The trip came right as I was beginning to take an interest in Orthodoxy. Interestingly, each week of the trip took us through a historically different part of Christianity: Lutheran Germany, Catholic Italy, and Orthodox Greece. In Greece, I was of course interested in learning more about Orthodoxy "in its native environment". So on my first day in Athens, when I had some free time, I found a shop where I purchased a museum copy of a beautiful Christ Pantokrator (Christ Almighty) icon. I've used it in my morning prayers ever since, and I'm happy to be able to name my blog after it.

Position Paper: Christology, Soteriology, and Pneumatology

The following is the fourth position paper for my systematic theology class, on Christology, soteriology (study of salvation), and pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit). The paper format (a series of affirmations and denials) was dictated by the assignment requirements, but I found it very helpful for expressing my views on all three subjects concisely.

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I affirm that Jesus is the Word of God (Jhn 1:1,14), the Truth of God and the Way to God (Jhn 14:6, 17:17), the eternal Logos of God, who was incarnated on earth for our salvation. "Christ doesn't just speak the truth, he is the truth."[1] The fact that Truth is a person has far-reaching implications. The content of the Word of God, then, is not simply truth about God, but God himself, in the flesh. (Hence both Jesus and the Bible are considered fully divine as well as fully human[2]) Knowing the Truth, that is, knowing God through the incarnate revelation of Christ (Col 1:15-20, Heb 1:1-3), inseparably involves both knowing truth and living truth.[3] As John Chrysostom said, "Virtue is really true, vice is falsehood."[4] Theology, to the extent that it prioritizes knowing things about God over living them, falls short of the Truth.

The personal nature of truth means that those who don't know Jesus consciously and personally still know him partially because of their partial knowledge of what is true and right. "Everything that is true, whether or not it is said by a Christian, is true because of Christ; anything that is approaching truth is approaching Christ. And everyone who is doing the truth is making some kind of approach to Christ, whether or not they name him as Christ."[5] As Justin Martyr wrote, Christ's role as the universal Logos (reason or wisdom) of God means that all people and faiths have at least an "implanted seed of the Logos" in them.[6] This does not mean that everyone has a salvific knowledge of Christ, but it does make dialogue and common ground with nonbelievers of all kinds possible.

I affirm that Jesus is fully God (Mat 25:31-33, 26:64; Mar 14:62; Jhn 8:58, 19:7, 20:28; Phil 2:6; Col 1:15) and fully human (Luk 2:51-52; Jhn 1:14; Gal 4:4; Phil 2:7-8). We do not come to this truth by trying to combine our pre-understandings of divinity and humanity into one person, but by glimpsing in his person both what divinity and humanity truly are.[7] "Rather than measure Christ's divinity by the norm of our humanity ... we can only grasp the mystery of the preexistent Logos, and understand the meaning of that incarnation for our salvation, insofar as we measure our humanity by the norm of his divinity."[8] Christ is the clearest revelation of God to us (Jhn 1:18, 14:6-11; Heb 1:1-3) and shows us true humanity as it is meant to be, free from the corruption of sin and death, as we who are in Christ will be. (1 Cor 15) The more like Christ we become, the more we are living as fully human, and vice versa.

I affirm the Nicene Creed and Chalcedonian Definition as orthodox descriptions of the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ, that he is both fully God and fully human. The Creed truly depicts Christ's nature as "true God" and relationship with the Father as the only-begotten Son, "of one substance with the Father", and the reality that for our sake he took on flesh, suffered, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven. The Chalcedonian Definition teaches how true humanity and true divinity can coexist in one person with two natures "without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation", that Christ is "of one substance with the Father in relation to his divinity and ... of one substance with us in relation to his humanity."

I affirmthat through his death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the power of sin and death by dying (Jhn 11:25-26; Rom 8:34-39; 1 Cor 15:20-26,51-57; Col 2:9-15, 3:3; Heb 2:9,14-15), ransomed us from the power of the devil (Mat 20:28; Mar 10;45; 1 Cor 6:20, 7:23), and demonstrated to us what true love is (Jhn 15:13, 1 Jhn 3:16). These correspond to the Christus victor, ransom, and moral influence theories of atonement. In keeping with his role as the Truth of God, Jesus also saves us by bringing us to knowledge of God, which is eternal life (Jhn 17:3). The truth makes us free (Jhn 8:32), and God wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of him. (1 Tim 2:4) "For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." (2 Cor 4:6 RSV)

Regarding ransom theology a little more must be said. Christ's ransom to sin, death, and the devil was not legal in nature, as if these powers had somehow obtained a legal right to us that God must honor. This language is metaphorical; for example we are "sold under sin" (Rom 7:14) not in an actual legal transaction that Christ has to reverse, but in that we are "under sin's power", “owned” by sin, as if we were sold to it in a real transaction. Our salvation from sin does not consist in Christ literally but rather metaphorically buying us back from sin by destroying its power over us and freeing us to live in him. Similarly, Basil the Great wrote that Christ "gave himself as a ransom to death" in his Eucharistic prayer.[9] Again, it strains belief (and the imagination) to see how death could have legal rights over us and demand a literal ransom. Ransom theology does not describe a literal transaction between Christ and sin/death/the devil, but is one of the many ways the church has described his victory over these things for our sake.

I affirm that Christ's death is intended and sufficient for the salvation of all humanity, but is only effectual for those who believe in him. Abundant evidence for the former is found in Jhn 1:29, 3:16-17; 2 Cor 5:14-15; 1 Tim 2:6; Heb 2:9; 1 Jhn 2:1-2, 4:14, and it can also be inferred from God's universal love for and desire to save all people (Eze 33:11; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9). The latter is seen in numerous passages like Hab 2:3-4; Jhn 1:12-13, 3:16; Rom 5:1. I believe that in this formulation I express the same meaning that Paul did when he said that Christ is "the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." (1 Tim 4:10) Passages like Mat 1:21; Jhn 10:11,15,26-27; Acts 20:28; Rom 8:32; Eph 5:25 that appear to limit the scope of Christ's atonement are merely speaking of those for whom it is effective and actualized, and are not intended to limit the extent of the atonement to a special subgroup of humanity.

I deny that the historical reality of the person of Jesus Christ is in any way unknowable or dispensable, as modern theologians like Barth and Bultmann have claimed. It has been the witness of the church from the beginning that the "historical Jesus" is real, knowable, and important. The apostle John takes pains to establish this against Gnostics. (1 Jhn 1:1-4) To dismiss these references to the God-man who entered history, took on a tangible body, and lived among us for 33 years as secondary to the kerygma (preaching and theologizing) of the church about Jesus is to subvert that very kerygma (which has always affirmed the historical importance of the "Christ event") in the name of modern, often existential philosophies.

I deny that Jesus' atonement somehow served as a ransom/payment to the Father, or that it was necessary to "satisfy" his justice. I will expand on this in the section on salvation below.

I deny that Christ "atoned" for our diseases and sufferings, as Mat 8:16-17 and Isa 53:4 are sometimes interpreted to mean. It is true that Jesus' atonement is intended to do away with sickness and suffering; like every other part of our human condition, Jesus bore these things, as the prophet says, to redeem them. The substitutionary nature of the atonement means that Jesus bore the weight of sin and death as our representative (so that we might share in his life and redemption as he shared in our sorrows), not our surrogate (so that we no longer have to go through what he went through). Like the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), God is eager and ready to forgive our sins, but never does he promise to make us sinless the moment we are saved; neither does he promise to heal us of every affliction on request, as Paul learned (2 Cor 12:1-10). These things are part of the labor pains of the creation (Rom 8:22-25); we await deliverance from them with faith and patience.

I affirm that salvation is the saving knowledge of God in and through the person of Christ (2 Cor 4:6), reconciliation with God (Rom 5:1, Col 1:21-23), forgiveness of sins (Mat 26:28, Act 10:43, Col 1:14), and freedom from "the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:2) that the devil wields against mankind. (Heb 2:14-15) Most fundamentally, though, salvation is life: true, eternal life in Christ (Jhn 5:24, 10:10, 17:3; Rom 8:9-11). By participating in Jesus' death, we also participate in the eternal life he has in himself. (Jhn 5:26, 2 Cor 4:8-12, Gal 2:20) This will be realized at the resurrection of the dead. (1 Cor 15:51-57) The point of salvation is not what we are saved from but what we are saved to. We are freed from sin and death not merely because they are bad in themselves but because they are separation from the author of life. "Salvation cannot be understood only in the narrow terms of liberation from self, from evil powers, and from death. 'Salvation' in the fullest sense leads to the acquisition of life through grace."[10]

I affirm that nothing can imperil our salvation or pull us away from God (Jhn 10:27-30; Rom 8:31-39, 14:4; 1 Cor 10:13; 2 Tim 1:12; 1 Pet 1:3-5), but that we can remove ourselves from our saving union with Christ by apostasy. This is shown by warnings against doing so (Mat 24:3-14; 1 Cor 8:27, 10:12; Heb 2:1), mentions of the conditionality of our perseverance in faith (Col 1:21-23; Heb 3:14, 6:11-12), and teachings about apostasy (Heb 6:4-6, 10:27-27), as well as countless examples of apostasy both in the Bible and in contemporary Christianity. Just as God respects the freedom he created us with by not compelling anyone to believe in him, so he also does not prevent us from rejecting him. It is misleading to speak of "losing" your salvation the way you might lose your car keys; salvation is not something we merely possess but something we actively partake in. Genuine salvation is not “lost”, but ceased or renounced.

This is not cause for worry, however. It is important to distinguish between "losing" one's salvation and losing one's consciousness (subjective awareness) of it. "Dark nights of the soul" are not unknown to any of the great figures in the Bible, even Jesus (Mat 26:38). These experiences, when we fear and struggle to maintain faith (trust) in God the most, are exactly the situations which the biblical assurances of our perseverance are meant to address: no external circumstances can separate us from God's love. But if we are living as God's redeemed children, fear that we will actually reject his salvation is not only baseless; it is impossible, excluded by our faith in and love for him. I believe this is actually more comforting than the alternative, the Calvinist teaching of perseverance. For if all those who claim to have been Christian and fallen away were never really Christians at all, no matter how sure they were of their salvation, what confidence can we have that we are? How are we any better? So the teaching of perseverance merely substitutes uncertainty about the reality of our salvation for uncertainty about its continuation. I consider the latter easier to deal with and more in line with the biblical teaching.

I deny that God's justice had to be "satisfied" by Christ's death, that our salvation is literally forensic, or that we are literally saved from God's wrath. This doctrine, the "satisfaction theory" of atonement, was formulated by the late-eleventh-century bishop Anselm of Canterbury and is based on an inverted understanding of God's justice (based on the judicial system which Anselm knew) that is inward-directed and demanding rather than outward-directed and generous like his other moral attributes. This is in contrast to the abundance of biblical evidence depicting God's justice as something we positively desire from him, no different than his love, wisdom, righteousness, etc. (Isa 59:15, Hos 2:19, Mat 12:18) God's justice means that he "waits to be gracious to you", not that he is obligated to avenge all offenses against his honor. (Isa 30:18) In effect, the God who has no need of anything is said to "need" satisfaction for his justice, or else the moral economy of the universe will be disrupted! But God's justice is most basically his righteousness and love distributed, not a need that must be satisfied. Construing it as such makes God incapable of truly forgiving sin, as he has commanded us to do in his example (Mat 6:12, 14-15; Eph 4:32; Col 3:13); he can only accept satisfaction for wrongs committed against him.

In effect, satisfaction theology trades the patristic understanding of sin, death, and/or the devil as the one from whom we are saved, to whom the ransom is paid, with the God of "justice". In addition to its implications for God's character and verses depicting God's justice as the means of our salvation (Isa 1:27, 51:4-5; Hos 2:19; Mat 12:18) rather than the reason we need salvation, this switch lacks historical consciousness. Such an understanding of salvation is absent from the writings of the early church. Gregory of Nazianzus, preaching some seven hundred years before Anselm, denied satisfaction theology surprisingly specifically:

But if [the ransom is paid] to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honour of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things?[11]

My use of the word "literally" in the denial is important. The biblical testimony about Christ's death as paying a debt or legally justifying us or about our salvation from God's wrath (e.g. Rom 1:18, 2:5, 3:21-26, 4:15) is not simply there to mislead us. These things are metaphorical descriptions of our salvation, not literal definitions. Athanasius wrote that Christ's death paid a "debt"—but to death, not sin.[12] Obviously this is not a legal debt, but an analogical description of Christ's death as doing all that is necessary, "paying the price in full", so to speak, to purchase us from death's clutches. Similarly, we are saved from God's wrath because we are saved from our sins, which bring God's wrath upon us. This wrath is not the demand for satisfaction or punishment for failing to give it, but the destruction and corruption that result from cutting ourselves off from our Creator. Of course God wishes all men to be saved, not to facilitate our destruction in the name of "justice". (1 Tim 2:4)

I deny that our salvation is most basically from sin. This idea has historically been held as a corollary of the satisfaction theory of atonement and its belief that Christ's death primarily served to deal with the guilt of sin. Rather, I believe the forces of sin, death, and the evil coexist as a sort of "unholy Trinity", and that we are equally saved from the power of all three.[13] The wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), but the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:56). Sin separates us from the author of life in whom all things hold together (Col 1:17) so that we disintegrate into nothing, but death enslaves us to sin and the devil (Heb 2:14-15), whose temptation is revealed to be at the root of the first sin and our mortality. (Gen 3) Our most basic predicament, then, is not sin, but simply man's alienation from God and our ensuing corruptibility, which is the common factor in our subjection to these things.[14] But as we are saved now from the domain of sin, death, and the devil as Christ reconciles us with God, so we will be saved even from our mortality at the resurrection. (1 Cor 15:51-55)

I deny that God individually predestines some individuals and not others for salvation. Again, in light of God's desire to save everyone and that no one would suffer death (Eze 33:11, 2 Pet 3:9), if God really did elect people in eternity past and infallibly perform everything necessary to render their salvation certain and there was no secret duplicity in his will, the result would be universalism, which unfortunately does not appear to be the case. (Mat 25:46, Jhn 5:28-29, Rom 9:22) Rather, faith in God is the necessary condition, and this faith necessarily involves (but is not solely) our free response to God's grace. Salvation is a complex combination of God's grace acting and our will (which, again, we have by God's grace) responding, and is not reducible either to Pelagian synergism or Augustinian predestination.[15] In this I hold what I consider to be the historic semi-Augustinian belief of the church. It is perfectly compatible which make God's "drawing" a necessary component of salvation, as in Jhn 6:44.

Language about God's election must be understood in its context. It is written that we are chosen by God as part of our salvation (Jhn 15:16, Eph 1:3-4). These passages are not speaking about individuals, but about God's redeemed people, the church. The "choice" here was not the secret election of certain individuals for salvation, but the choice to purchase the salvation of all through the blood of Jesus Christ, who "gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds." (Tit 2:14) In Romans 9, the passage most often cited in support of predestination, the focus is again not on individual election of some individuals over others, but Paul's justification of the corporate election of the church over ethnic Israel, the problem he deals with through chapters 9-11. (9:1-5) In Christ we see that God's true people is not a specific nation, but the children of the promise (v. 8), to whom we belong by faith. This is the particular thrust of Paul's discussion on election, at least here. Basically, I understand biblical affirmations that we are "chosen" by God as referring to the church, with no implication of rejection for those outside it except their own rejection of God.

I affirm the full divinity (Mat 28:19; Luk 1:35; Rom 15:19; 1 Cor 3:16-17, 6:19-20; 2 Cor 13:14) and personality (Jhn 14:16,26, 16:14; Rom 8:26; 1 Cor 12:11; Gal 4:6; Eph 4:30) of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force, energy field, power, bond between the personal members of the Trinity, or any other such thing. He is the third member of the Trinity, functionally subordinate to the Father and the Son, but fully God and ontologically equal to them.

I affirm the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is indispensable for our salvation, being responsible for our regeneration (Jhn 3:3-8); conversion is baptism in the Holy Spirit (Luk 3:16). The Spirit is also instrumental in our continuing salvation. He empowers us to perform even greater works than Christ (Jhn 14:12, 16:7) and sanctifies us (Rom 8:9-17, Gal 5:25). The Spirit also helps us to bear the fruit of our salvation (Gal 5:22-23) and gives gifts to the church (Rom 12:6-8, 1 Cor 12:4-11, Eph 4:11, 1 Pet 4:11) as he wills (1 Cor 12:11) to build up the church (12:7, 14:12). He inspired the Scriptures (2 Tim 3:16-17), and he is the one who guides us (as the church, not enlightened individuals) into the all truth as we read and interpret them to grow in salvific knowledge of God in Christ. (Jhn 16:13)

I affirm the testimony of the Nicene Creed to the Holy Spirit, that he is Lord and giver of life, that he should be worshipped and glorified along with the Father and Son, and that he spoke by the prophets (as well as the apostles). I affirm the original text of the Nicene Creed when it states only that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, as does Jhn 15:26. The addition to the Creed saying that he proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father, the filioque, originated in Spain as early as the fourth century and slowly made its way into the western Christian consciousness until Pope Benedict VII formally approved the amended creed for the Roman rite.[16] All who reject the doctrine of papal supremacy should agree that the form of the Creed arrived at by the ecumenical council of Constantinople cannot be changed except by another ecumenical council, which it has not been. Regardless of the theological issues behind the single or double procession of the Spirit (which are easy to oversimplify), I affirm the historic belief of the church that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (or from the Father through the Son).

I deny that certain spiritual gifts are normative for all Christians, or that a second "baptism of the Holy Spirit" is necessary following conversion to receive any such gifts. Paul specifically (albeit rhetorically) challenges the expectation that any gift of the Spirit is universal in 1 Cor 12:29-30. Earlier he also teaches that the Spirit "apportions [gifts] to each one individually as he wills" (v. 11). Though we are to seek after the greater gifts (v. 31), we should not make any gift, "supernatural" or otherwise, mandatory for all believers. We do better to expect the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), which we have every reason to expect to see manifested in every believer. As well, Paul considers entry into the Church to be the true "baptism by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:12-13). The experience of the first Christians in Acts 2, in which the Spirit descends on them accompanied by glossolalia, is not how we should always expect receiving the Holy Spirit to look. Its timing following their conversion by weeks or months reflects the unique and promised bestowal of the Spirit on the church by Christ (Jhn 14:25-26); thereafter, baptism in the Holy Spirit was and is simply Christian baptism.

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1. Peter C. Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma and Truth (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 25.
2. John Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press), 39.
3. Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey, 22.
4. John Chrysostom, “Homily XIV. Philippians iv. 4-7,” The Complete Works of Saint John Chrysostom, Kindle Edition.
5. Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey, 27.
6. Justin Martyr, “Justin Martyr on Philosophy and Theology,” in The Christian Theology Reader (ed. Alistair E. McGrath; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 1.1.
7. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 671.
8. Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 189–190.
9. Basil the Great, “The Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, (5 November 2014).
10. Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 190.
11. Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Second Oration on Easter,” New Advent, (5 November 2014), XXII.
12. Athanasius, “On the Incarnation of the Word,” New Advent (5 November 2014), 9, 20.
13. Richard Beck, The Slavery of Death (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 17.
14. Beck, The Slavery of Death, 14.
15. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 324.
16. Breck, Scripture in Tradition, 171–172.

Emerging Christianity

The following is a paper I wrote for my systematic theology class. The general focus of the assignment was contemporary theological issues; for my subject, I chose the emerging church movement. (And if you were wondering, I did visit Solomon's Porch for some firsthand impressions)

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Each Sunday evening, several hundred people gather in south Minneapolis seeking to grow in love for God, each other, and the city. The walls are lined with artwork and the meeting hall is filled with couches and chairs in rings around a bar stool. Between the conversations, screams of children, and acoustic music coming through the PA system, the mood is one of barely-organized chaos. Though they meet in a former Methodist church, they don't refer to themselves as a "church" so much as a "Holistic Missional Christian Community". This is Solomon's Porch, one of the major influences in the movement known as emerging Christianity.

Emerging Christianity is not a church. It is a decentralized movement of believers who share a conviction that much of modern, western Christianity has gone wrong somehow, or is not as it should be, and that the time has come to move past tired old answers to fresh expressions of the historic Christian faith. It is "communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures,"[1] seeking not to change the faith, but to rethink how it is thought about and practiced in a way that is viable for the twenty-first century and truly representative of its participants. Doug Pagitt, the pastor of Solomon’s Porch, considers this to be what faithful Christians of all centuries have done.[2] Brian McLaren, one of the visionaries at the forefront of the emerging movement, believes that Christianity, like every faith, must be reborn to each new generation.[3] Speaking for many emerging Christians, he asks: "how can we go back and get reconnected to Jesus with all of his radical, profound, far-reaching message of the kingdom of God?"[4]

The emerging movement began in the 1990s among evangelical leaders concerned with declining rates of attendance among young people.[5] They realized that changes in worship and ministry styles to appeal to "Generation X" didn't go deep enough.[6] The real disconnect was not as much between young and old as between the established ways American churches went about worship and practice and the increasingly postmodern culture to which they ministered. Around the same time, McLaren wrote an influential book entitled A New Kind of Christian, in which he wrestled with conventional evangelical understandings of God and Christianity in light of the questions posed by postmodernity. To these early emerging Christians, it became increasingly clear that deep changes in how their faith was expressed were in order to close the gap between western Christianity as it is and a new kind of Christianity that the unchurched, de-churched, and spiritually disillusioned in today's postmodern world can truly call their own.

What emerging Christians emerging from? Though they tend to resist labels, most in the movement are characterized by three "post-"s: postmodernity, post-evangelicalism, and post-Christendom. These reflect disillusionment with established forms of Christianity as well as the desire to creatively seek out new expressions that are both faithful and relevant.

First, the emerging movement is marked by its interaction with postmodernity. This is not a denial of all absolute truth but rather wariness about trying to use limited human language and systems to define or explain God and the Christian faith.[7] Emerging Christians believe western Christianity has unwisely allied itself with modernity. The result is an emphasis on abstract, propositional truth above all else, a quest for the "one right way" to believe and live, a deep divide between sacred and secular, and the silencing, intentional or not, of individuals and questions that need to be heard. Modernity places the mind, with its ability to know the "absolute truth" about God, front and center, marginalizing other forms of communication and knowledge that are important to those in the increasingly postmodern culture.[8] Emerging Christians seek a new expression of their faith that is compatible with postmodernity rather than opposed to it.

One way in which this change of focus works itself out is that emerging churches seek to bridge the modern division between thinking, feeling, and doing. To them, the quest of countless theologians to "get it all right" is misguided, as shown by how much they have disagreed. They like to quote sayings of Jesus like "you will know them by their fruits" (Mat 7:20) to shift the focus from believing to living. Scot McKnight, a professor at Northern Seminary who pays attention to the emerging movement, summarizes: "We may not get it right when it comes to theology, so what we are called to do is live right".[9] The gospel, to emerging Christians, is experienced at least as much as it is known; the truth is not rational so much as it is relational.[10]

This means emerging Christians like to experiment with worship and spirituality. Hence the in-the-round layout at Solomon's Porch, meant to foster a sense of community and equality. Pagitt says that with the couches, "we’re trying to say something about where power lies in our community. And so to meet in the round says all of these people matter."[11] They seek practices that foster the external dimension of faith, not providing an inward retreat from the world so much as a dream of a world that is nothing but sacred space. They are also adventurous about drawing from traditional Christian devotional/mystical practices like prayer incorporating the body, walking the labyrinth, the stations of the cross, lectio divina, and the liturgical calendar.[12]

Second, those in the emerging movement are post-evangelical. They may still identify with part of the culture, values, or mission of evangelicalism at-large, but they also feel disconnected and disaffected from it. Part of their motivation for detaching from mainstream evangelicalism is to build new communities where they can spiritually belong and grow, to rediscover (in the words of Pagitt’s book) a Christianity worth believing. Tony Jones, the national coordinator for the clearinghouse Emergent Village, says, "we’re [starting new churches] to save our own faith, basically. So we’ll have a place where we can go and hold out heads up high."[13] McLaren similarly moved away from mainstream evangelicalism due to growing questions and doubts about it, on a “quest for authenticity.”[14]

Influenced by postmodernity, they are tired of attempts to gain a monopoly on "what the Bible says". "The goal, so we in the emerging movement often say, of the Christian life is not to master the Bible but to be mastered by the Bible."[15] Evangelicals usually cite 2 Tim 3:16-17 to explain how "all Scripture is inspired by God" and what that entails; emerging Christians focus on the practical goal of this inspiration, "that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." They are similarly more interested in living out their theology than in getting it right and codified in a comprehensive system that treats the Bible as a book of prooftexts and easy answers. They are inclined to view theology as an open-ended conversation sparked by the Bible rather than as a science, in which no one has all the answers and each voice has something to contribute. Jones speaks for many in the movement when he says, "The emerging church is a place of conversation and dialogue and movement. Where that’s going to go, we don’t know. We’re figuring this out together. We don’t have an agenda of what it looks like at the end of the road. We just want to gather up people who are on this road, who want to go together on it."[16]

This conversational format for theology means acknowledging our epistemological limitations and questioning our interpretations, even those behind sacred cows of evangelical doctrine like substitutionary atonement and hell that have become obstacles to belief for many. Emerging churches seek a bigger vision of the gospel than the individual one in which Jesus dies to save souls so they can go to heaven and have a "personal relationship" with him instead of facing hell.[17] The point is not questioning old answers to find the "right" ones, but to be freed to live out the gospel instead of thinking and arguing about it.

Emerging Christians also want to leave behind the exclusivism that so often characterizes evangelicalism. They are skeptical of the "in vs. out" mentality behind the common distinction between "saved" and "unsaved', or at least about our ability to clearly distinguish the groups.[18] They are more willing to trust that others may be in the family of God than to judge whether they are or not. Similarly, they seek to be inclusive of different Christian traditions, not just in their spiritual practices but in a generously defined vision of what Christianity can be, seeking healing for old divisions and schisms. Brian McLaren "describes himself as evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Catholic — among other things."[19]

Even more than being epistemological or theological, the emerging movement is ecclesiological. "Christendom", the central place of the church in society and culture, is becoming a relic of the past at least as quickly as modernity, replaced by secular pluralism.[20] Emerging observers of this trend see the old, institutional, bureaucratic brand of church as a creature of modernity which will have to change to survive this transition. Jones believes that bureaucracy is bad for the gospel, and that the church can do better as a sort of open-source network.[21] The "church", he says, is not so much a global, monolithic spiritual institution defined by correct belief as it is something local, contextualized, and personal marked by Christlike living; there is not one “right” way that Christianity is always supposed to look or work. McLaren defines the church broadly (and in terms of practice rather than belief) as “a space in which the Spirit works to form Christ-like people, and ... in which human beings, formed in Christ-like love, co-operate with the Spirit and one another to express that love in word and deed, art and action”.[22] Doug Pagitt sees God as working in the world independently of the church, which has the choice of whether to join in his work or not rather than being at the center of it.[23]

As seen in communities like Solomon's Porch, the emerging vision for "doing church" does away with hierarchy, which is viewed as contrary to the inclusive reality of the body of Christ as well as the postmodern culture. Scripture and responsive readings are done by whoever in the meeting speaks up rather than by a designated leader, and the "sermon" is a creative, guided discussion playing off the biblical text that seeks to draw everyone's voice into the conversation. Even the Sunday meeting itself is deemphasized in favor of more organically building community throughout the week. In support of such practices, Jones asks: "why do we have these different ontological categories of leadership in the church? And how do some people – based on their sinfulness – not qualify, while other people do qualify?"[24]

I have intentionally focused more on studying the emerging movement than on passing judgment on it. I think it tears down some false dichotomies of western Christianity that have long overstayed their welcome, but also creates others, demonstrating the difficulty of rehabilitating Christianity starting from a fragmented, modern reference point. The movement reaches some praiseworthy conclusions and plenty of wrong ones (when it settles on a conclusion at all!). But I do think that the questions it asks about modern Christianity are real, important, and worth asking and answering sincerely.

---

1. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 44.
2. “Doug Pagitt Extended Interview,” Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, 15 July 2005, < http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2005/07/08/july-8-2005-doug-pagitt-extended-interview/11764/> (1 November 2014).
3. Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith (London: Hotter & Stoughton, 2010), ix–x).
4. “The Emerging Church, Part Two,” Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, 15 July 2005, (1 November 2014).
5. “The Emerging Church, Part One,” Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, 8 July 2005, (1 November 2014).
6. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 34.
7. Scot McKnight, “What is the Emerging Church?”, Fall Contemporary Issues Conference, Westminster Theological Seminary, 26–27 October 2006, (1 November 2014), 13.
8. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 20.
9. McKnight, "What is the Emerging Church?", 18.
10. McKnight, "What is the Emerging Church?", 13.
11. "The Emerging Church, Part One".
12. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 226.
13. Darren King, “An Interview with Tony Jones: Part 3,” Precipice Magazine, (1 November 2014).
14. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 8.
15. McKnight, "What is the Emerging Church?", 23.
16. "The Emerging Church, Part One".
17. McKnight, "What is the Emerging Church?", 22.
18. McKnight, "What is the Emerging Church?", 25.
19. "The Emerging Church, Part Two."
20. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 17.
21. Darren King, “An Interview with Tony Jones: Part 2,” Precipice Magazine, (1 November 2014).
22. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 228.
23. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 42.
24. "An Interview with Tony Jones: Part 2".

Gregory the Theologian on Christus Victor

I just came across this great exposition of Orthodox atonement theory (that is, Christus Victor) by St. Gregory the Theologian during some preliminary research for my next class paper. The second paragraph is a fairly clear (and persuasive) rebuttal to penal substitutionary atonement, which is impressive considering Gregory predated its earliest expression by seven hundred years.

Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth enquiring into. To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was It shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and High priest and Sacrifice. We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. 

But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? [Genesis 22] Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honour of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things? 

So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence. But that brazen serpent Numbers 21:9 was hung up as a remedy for the biting serpents, not as a type of Him that suffered for us, but as a contrast; and it saved those that looked upon it, not because they believed it to live, but because it was killed, and killed with it the powers that were subject to it, being destroyed as it deserved. And what is the fitting epitaph for it from us? O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? You are overthrown by the Cross; you are slain by Him who is the Giver of life; you are without breath, dead, without motion, even though you keep the form of a serpent lifted up on high on a pole.

Gregory the Theologian, second Easter oration 

My Journey, Part 11.25: Addenda on Sola Scriptura

This is part 11.25 of my rebooted series on my journey from Evangelicalism to Eastern Orthodoxy. The full series can be found here:

1	Back to the beginning
2	Cracks appear
3	Questions multiply
4	Questioning the "gospel"
5	The big question
6	A better hermeneutic
7	Explorations in epistemology
7.5	Excursus on oversystematization
8	Back to the gospel
9	The new direction
10	Ecclesiological foundations
11.1	Sola scriptura
11.2	The insufficiency of Scripture
11.25	Addenda on sola scriptura
11.3	Holy Tradition
12	Bridging the cracks
13.1	Orthodoxy and Genesis 1–3
13.2	A Better Atonement (Against Penal Substitution)
13.3	Faith Alone?
13.4	The Colour and the Shape of the Gospel
14	Worshipping with the Church
15	Mary, Saints, Baptism, and Other Odds/Ends
16	Looking Back, Coming Home

A few addenda

In the discussion ensuing from my attack on sola scriptura, I realized a few other reasons why I no longer hold to it, which I'll mention in brief here instead of simply editing into the previous post.

First, equating the New Testament with the apostolic tradition implies that the apostles who didn't write or contribute to Scripture (Andrew, James the son of Zebedee, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and possibly Matthias) left no legacy of their own. Either their teaching was not part of the apostolic tradition, or it consisted entirely of things written by the Scripture-writing apostles. I find this hard to believe. Given how much the situations and contexts of the other New Testament writers affect their expressions of the gospel (Matthew's prophecy-conscious presentation of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, Luke the Gentile's presentation of him as the savior of all humanity, Paul's Pharisee-turned-apostle perspective, James practical, pastoral teaching, etc.), it is very hard to see how, say, Simon the Zealot had nothing unique to contribute to the apostolic tradition from his own context.

Second, as I may have implied last post, every Christian is part of some kind of tradition, even those who would deny it. Reformed Christianity is a Christian tradition with its own dogmas, its own rule of faith that sets the parameters for how its members read Scripture and is authoritative for that tradition. So is Wesleyan Christianity, broadly speaking, or Lutheranism, or the Anabaptist movements. They would be quick to point out that their dogmas, their rules of faith, are based on Scripture—but so would Eastern Orthodoxy! None of these rules of faith are read directly from Scripture (the Bible is not a catechism), but are the result of (and the reason for) different interpretations of it. In light of this, the question at hand is not properly "Scripture or tradition?", but "Which tradition interprets Scripture truly?".

Third, in response to Catholic/Orthodox arguments that the number of denominations or divisions in Protestantism demonstrates the unworkability of sola scriptura, Protestant apologists often like to point out the divisions within Catholicism and Orthodoxy, as well as their Great Schism from each other in 1054. If Protestants can't agree on what Scripture says, it seems equally true that Christians who believe in an authoritative church and Holy Tradition can't agree on what they say, either.

Let me address these two kinds of division separately. First, divisions within Orthodoxy. These include things like schisms over which calendar to use, whether to use leavened or unleavened bread in the Eucharist, minor details in the liturgy, etc. I would respond to these accusations in three ways.

1. A Protestant telling an Orthodox Christian that his church is divided is a bit like a Unitarian telling a Calvinist that his tradition is incoherent and jumbled. Or, to use a biblical analogy, it is like pointing out the speck in your neighbor's eye while blind to the plank in your own eye. More to the point, the Orthodox view of Tradition does not deny that the Church is full of sinful, imperfect people who can be prone to disagreement. This is just as true for Orthodoxy as it is for Protestantism. But, as I have explained, Orthodox see the Church as more than the sum of its members. It is the divine body of Christ, into which its human members are joined through the mystery of the Incarnation. This makes it possible, at least, to distinguish between schisms from the Church and schisms of the Church, though not merely empirically but by faith. At least to Orthodox, a small minority of believers breaking away from the majority consensus is easily distinguishable from the Church itself dividing due to irreconcilable differences on an issue. It does not prove that the Church itself is divided or that its teaching is confused, only that the people in it are still sinful and in need of grace.
2. Protestant attempts to demonstrate the disunity of Tradition impose on it the same notion of democratic perspicuity that they impose on Scripture itself, a view that is not held by Orthodox. Due to the larger body of writings, practices, and other sources it involves, Tradition is even less of an "open book" than Scripture is. Thus these arguments will fail to be convincing because they proceed from assumptions considered wrong by those they seek to convince, somewhat like an atheist attempting to show that the Christian Scripture is full of contradictions. (After all, Scripture, like the Church, is a reflection of the incarnate Word of God, diverse in its humanity but one in its divinity)
3. While Protestants like to point to the relative pettiness of reasons for division among Orthodox as evidence of the absurdity of manmade tradition, I would interpret this fact in a different way. If the biggest things Orthodox have seriously disagreed over since the Reformation are liturgical calendars, the kind of bread to use in the Eucharist, or the precise way to make the sign of the Cross, then they agree on everything of substance! That's great! Clearly this Church has a settled understanding of the essentials of the faith.

Second, divisions of Orthodoxy from other traditional forms of Christianity, namely Catholicism and Oriental Orthodoxy. As I said in my post on ecclesiology, these schisms remain my two biggest standing disagreements with the Orthodox teaching of the Church's indivisibility. I have no answer for them right now. Yet I don't consider them deal-breakers. Why is this? Well, I agree with the Orthodox Church in these schisms and believe its position is in continuity with the apostolic church. I don't believe that Jesus established St. Peter and his successors as infallible monarchs over his church (the incredible corruption of some historical popes makes this hard to see), and I believe that the Chalcedonian definition provides the best, fullest description of the mystery of the Incarnation. These reasons are subjective, but I don't think it's possible to objectively "prove" that a given church is the "true" church any more than it is that Christianity is true. This does not mean it isn't possible to know the truth about these things, simply that no one can be argued to that truth.

Finally, in response to the Protestant argument that sola scriptura Christians differ on non-essential matters but are led by the Holy Spirit to the truth on matters of salvation: if you define the "essentials" of the Christian faith as those beliefs on which sola scriptura Christians agree, you are quickly left with little of real substance. Sure, there may be broad agreement on, say, the Nicene Creed, but behind its words wildly different beliefs can be held. How is God the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and does it matter? How did Christ's incarnation work out our salvation? Are the crucifixion and resurrection equally important in this, or is one of them the decisive completion of salvation? In what manner will Christ come again to judge the living and the dead, and does that matter? Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son? How is the Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic; and if so, how? How is the one baptism for the remission of sins to be administered, and what is its meaning? I believe these questions are important and not simply matters of individual conscience. The Orthodox Church can offer one consistent, "biblical" answer/set of complementary answers to the essential questions and clearly distinguish which ones these are. Can Protestants?

Reflection on my story

I experienced this confusion about "non-essential" teachings of the Bible firsthand, and it was a major factor in my own rejection of sola scriptura. As I've previously told my story, a major driver of my journey of faith has been my growing questions and doubts about the "gospel" as I've been taught it within evangelicalism. I started facing questions like:

• Atonement theories: Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? What did his death accomplish, both objectively and subjectively? How do the crucifixion and resurrection tie into this?
• God's providence: How do God's sovereignty and our freedom intersect in our faith and salvation? Does God accomplish everything apart from our contributions, or do we cooperate with his grace somehow?
• Soteriology: Is salvation to be thought of primarily in individual or corporate terms? Is there a prominent legal dimension to it, or does it consist of something else? Can we lose our salvation, or were we never really saved if we fall away? Is salvation an instantaneous event or somehow more distributed?
• Origins: Were Adam and Eve historical people who introduced sin and death into the world by committing the first sin? If not, where did sin and death come from?
• Theodicy: However it happened, was the fall a tragic and unintended disaster or is it somehow part of God's greater plan? That is, is God working to restore the creation to its former perfection, or is it part of his ongoing creation of something even better?
• The law: Why was the Mosaic law given? How is it fulfilled in Christ? How are faith and obedience to the law (or, more generally, "works") related? How do the testaments fit together?

Later, after my big crisis of doubt, I started searching for different answers to these and other questions. These answers were often at odds with the ones my church held (which, after all, were what prompted my doubts). In light of sola scriptura, there were a few ways to explain this discrepancy:

I was wrong. My church's theology was correct, at least on the essentials, and my questions were based on personal sin or misunderstanding. This was the approach I took until around last February, when I realized that suppressing my doubts and questions, pretending to myself that they weren't well-founded, would never make them go away and was eroding the life of my faith as God ceased to make sense to me. Since then, this option has been closed for me. I had never been able to wholeheartedly affirm things like Calvinism or penal substitutionary atonement, even when I wanted to and sought to understand them as biblically as I could. I couldn't deny the problems I saw with them without compromising my theological integrity and my belief in God's basic goodness, which was not under any question. Submitting to evangelical tradition would be a much bigger compromise of my conscience than to Orthodox tradition.

These questions are about non-essential doctrines, on which differing opinions are to be expected. Then what is essential? The biblical authors certainly didn't seem to consider things like the workings of God's providence or the nature of salvation to be merely matters of godly speculation. They seemed to have strong views on these things and to expect their readers to as well. My conscience, my reading of Scripture in sincere pursuit of the truth of God, had led me to some seriously differing conclusions than the Reformed-evangelical tradition I was a part of. If I simply set aside any matter on which there was disagreement as "non-essential", what remained was so minimal and anemic as to not even qualify as a "gospel". It was also intolerably relativistic. As I explained when I started this series, my questions had progressed so that I wasn't even sure what the gospel was anymore, only some things it probably wasn't. Clearly I was lacking an understanding of the "essentials" of the Christian faith.

My church was wrong (and maybe I was too). This was the option I had pretty much settled on when I started the present series on the gospel. I sought to clearly define the things I disagreed on and seek out better answers to my questions that I didn't have to force myself to believe.

But necessary as this quest seemed, I started to feel uneasy about it. Striking out on my own to seek the truth of Scripture, apart from any tradition I knew of, far from a glorious exercise of my sola scriptura rights, felt terribly individualistic, even narcissistic. My lack of trust in established traditions seemed to imply that God's promise to lead his people into the truth applied only to me, and no one else, that he had instead simply left them to their own (insufficient) ability to figure things out. How was I so much smarter than all the theologians and exegetes I was sparring with, both past and present? Regardless of how much "biblical" sense whatever answers I found made to me, how did I know that they were actually true? You see, by this point, I was acutely aware of the difference between what the Bible actually says and how we interpret it. I couldn't see how I could trust that my interpretations were any more reliable or true than those of my former tradition. I was tired of simply judging things as my fallible eyes saw them. The "that's just your interpretation" defense I had used so many times on others turned back on myself.

Yet even if I didn't go it alone and sought another tradition, another denomination, another "church" with which to read Scripture, one that shared my new convictions, what did that prove? Instead of my interpretation against theirs, it was simply some other tradition's interpretation against theirs—two "churches" each reading Scripture in such a way as to make it say things congruent with their own convictions. How was this any more decisive? It simply kicked the theological problems I was having up to the institutional level rather than the individual. It seemed tribalistic, like simply seeking a tradition that would echo and validate my own convictions. There was nothing to commend, say, Methodism to me except that it made more sense to me. So I was disinclined to switch churches, but I also grew increasingly pessimistic and relativistic about the ability of any church or individual to read Scripture truly. It seemed like it was always just someone's opinion/interpretation against someone else's. What was there to assure me that any interpretation, besides being more pleasing to me, was actually true? Could we even know? So I journaled:

It’s not so much that Protestant traditions are the personal domains of individuals—although this does happen, and more traditions begin or are identified with a single person. The real issue is that choosing these traditions is highly individualized—it’s an a la carte approach to belief where we can easily surround ourselves with those we agree with. (2014-3-21)

Maybe you can understand a bit of my excitement about finding the Orthodox Church, then. Here was a tradition that articulated the answers I had been seeking about God, the Bible, and the gospel, better than any other I had heard from before. But even more importantly than this, its claim to being true rested on more than its own say-so. The legitimacy of Orthodox Tradition was not simply by fiat, but was based on history, on Orthodoxy's real, visible continuity with the Church that Christ founded on and through the apostles to celebrate, proclaim, and preserve his teaching. It was also based on the incredible, unbelievable (to my Protestant eyes so used to disagreement and confusion) degree of unity I saw among Orthodox. It was precisely the kind of unity that sola scriptura promised, but never seemed to deliver.

The most excellent way

Let me be clear what I do and don't mean by that. In the Orthodox tradition there is no simple list of doctrine that clearly answers all the above questions. There is no single "official" story on origins, or theodicy, or salvation. But there are also no conflicts concerning them between theological positions that resemble political camps. Instead, there is conversation between a number of different, complementary views and emphases, all of which may well be correct dimensions of the faith. The essentials have been clearly defined, the parameters for doing theology on these things set, so that we can be free to do so with the Church, not independently from it and so often against it. With my current understanding, I can only offer the barest sketch of how Orthodoxy handles my Protestant confusions:

• Atonement theories: Orthodox teaching holds a combination of the Christus Victor, ransom, moral example, and substitutionary atonement theories (and probably has some other dimensions I'm forgetting). Penal substitution is ruled out, and I have a feeling Orthodox would also disagree with the governmental theory, though I don't know of any interaction with it. The crucifixion and resurrection are viewed largely as one event with neither getting an unfair share of the attention; to a lesser extent this is true of Jesus' whole life, and the Incarnation in general.
• God's providence: Orthodoxy is unabashedly synergistic, like Arminianism (but without the influence of Reformed theology). Though the necessity of God's grace, administered inwardly and outwardly, is stressed at every point, people are expected to cooperate with God in working out their salvation (Phil 2:12-13). Far from there being an ongoing debate between two major "camps" regarding God's providence, Calvinism and the Augustinian view of God's sovereignty and predestination it holds are considered heterodox.
• Soteriology: Salvation is more corporate and ontological than individual and legal. It is not an instantaneous event but growth in Christian righteousness, maturity, and union with God in all that he is. It does depend on our holding to God in love and faith, and can be "lost" if we deliberately turn away and reject him.
• Origins: The Orthodox Church is not dogmatic about the historicity of Adam and Eve (though with its bias towards historical interpretations, it tends to speak about them as though they were historical people). What is more important than the literal truth of Genesis 1-3 is its spiritual truth, especially in light of Christ's redemptive role as the second Adam (Gen 5:12-21). The theology of Irenaeus, among others of the church fathers, offers a compelling vision for interpreting the origins accounts that doesn't depend on their historical truth,
• Theodicy: Irenaeus also articulates a theology of the fall that is distinct from Augustine's and, again, does not depend entirely on its reality as a historical event to make sense of the human condition. Rather than through Adam, our predicament is fully understood only through Christ, eschatologically rather than historically. This most helpful blog post by Fr. Stephen Freeman explains this in some more detail.
• The law: As I have explained, the New Perspective on Paul has done more than Orthodox theology to resolve my confusion on this point, but they are definitely not incompatible. When the "law" is spoken of in Orthodoxy, it is generally the "law" of sin and death that we are saved from rather than the Mosaic law, which was a redemptive (though incomplete) dispensation of God for the Israelites. Because the gospel accounts and their later interpretation through Tradition are much more determinative to the Orthodox understanding of the "gospel" than the epistles of Paul, there is much less of a law-grace dichotomy, which is what contributed to my confusion in the first place; it is set into its proper context, not front and center as the bread and butter of the gospel message. There is no dichotomy between faith and works in salvation; both are necessary and expected to accompany each other, and both are considered to be made possible by God's grace.

On some of these things, Orthodox teaching offers fairly clear and compelling answers. In all cases, though, the way to greater knowledge of the Truth is clear, and no one is required to choose sides against each other. This way is Christ, the heart and ultimate meaning of the Scriptures. Holy Tradition is, very simply, the life of the Church as it interprets them, inspired by the Spirit with Christ as the key. Scripture is still, in a sense, the church's authority for matters of faith and practice, but Scripture interpreted rightly. I will (finally) write more about what this means next time.