Monday, February 24, 2014

Conversation with a Protestant Church Historian.



Protestant Church Historian: 1. What do you mean when you use the terms "worldly history" and "secular history" in reference to my sources?

You yourself have described your work as non-dogmatic. And the tools you use are that of a secular historian. I am not minimizing the good that secular history can bring, indeed all Christians have been ultimately blessed by the work of secular historians, from every field of scholarly research including every form of hermaneutics, even from the secular traditions that have attacked the validity of scripture and tradition. Yours is a rational pursuit of the extant publicly available record of history, correct? I think this is correct, because it corresponds to everything I've read on your website so far - and it is very good but not "complete" as the tools of secular history cannot rightly judge Sacred History. The tools are different between secular history and sacred history. The Sacred Historian needs look no further than the deposit of the Liturgy of the Church, which is in fact the Church's record of itself, to find both the history and the dogma of The Christian Church. Sacred history is in fact, worship. The bible itself was created not as a document of secular history, to be anatomized by secular means, but rather as a "liturgical" instrument, containing the Tradition (big T) that is the dogma and history allowed to be read and taught during the church's worship. The Worship of the Orthodox Church is Living Tradition, containing both the history, tradition, and dogma of The Church. Nothing I've said negates the value of secular research. It is simply a different field of endeavor.


2. You refer to those who hold "sola" as heretics. So if someone holds to "sola" you view them as non-Christian heretics?
There are no non-christian heretics. Heretic only has meaning inside the family of those calling themselves Christian. Sometimes we substitute the more polite word heterodox, which means "other than Orthodox" and holds the exact same meaning as heretic. I was heretic/heterodox for most of my life, and held a genuine love of and for Jesus Christ, but my knowledge of the true Jesus Christ was greatly wounded by my lack of Orthodox understanding of who He really was and what He really did and further HOW to commune IN Him. It didn't stop me from creating healing in my life and the life of others, by the power of the Holy Spirit through my personal connection to Jesus Christ. Yet, it was not the "fullness of the Gospel" just one of the warped wheels with broken spokes, in fact some very important spokes missing altogether. (Spokes missing)  So for the Orthodox the term heretic is not an insult or even a judgement of the person's FAITH, but an ontological understanding of their grasp of the Gospel. There is a saying "It is upon the field of Faith, where the Orthodox meet the heterodox and the pagan alike." And as you are discovering under the umbrella of the name Christian is found Orthodox, Heterodox and yes, Pagans. I was and probably in some ways still am a heretic. But as an Orthodox Christian I constantly look for the errors in my own understanding and life, and am very quick, having found the security of the clear waters, to trust them and to spit out any muddy water when I come to view it and choose instead the clear.

BTW, I can imagine the guff you have taken from Church-hating protestant/evangelical friends, family and acquaintances. When I became Orthodox Catholic my friends and family thought I had gone nutz. It took them nearly two decades before they began to ask questions. The last few years has been a marvelous period of teaching them, because over the years they have seen my heart and the solidity of my walk in The Way. I'm not talking about some religious act, they have witnessed me become more truly natural and human, more understanding and compassionate, my heart grow. They have bumped up against the lines I will not cross and seen the strength of my convictions. They have come to realize that my Orthodox understanding and practice is not all that foreign after all or indeed removed from simple faith in Jesus Christ. They would be hard pressed to criticize it now, since those questioning have themselves gained much understanding and year by year come to grasp the various heresies of their evangelical teachers. This new understanding has allowed them to see the REASONS for the great confusion of evangelicalism and how wrong teachings have harmed them in their own life's experience and damaged their witness. Even my childhood pastor (Pentecostal - a PhD in philosophy and ThD) called me to his bedside when he was close to death and requested Holy Unction. He kept me for hours, telling me about his own journey into orthodox understanding and how he had come to completely rely on the early Holy Fathers to explicate the Holy Scriptures to negotiate the confusion of his "denomination." And how he had come to understand the absolute need of purification and that it would happen here or in the next life as the true scriptures state. (Septuagint) He was 90 years old and had lost his wife several years previous. He told me about her coming to him in vision and explaining that on the other side there was "remedial training." It was a great blessing to me.

Consider if you will. For the Orthodox having found the Body of Christ, where we meet Jesus Christ in the power of His Spirit and His REAL Body and Blood, we know this to be precious and we know this precious "thing" does not extend to every person and sect calling themselves "Christian." We know that the Holy Spirit Authority for this and thus the reality of the unbloody sacrifice (the Divine Liturgy) flows in our Tradition (in our Ortho-doxia and Ortho-praxis - proper beliefs, proper worship, proper practices) directly from the Apostles. Not that this Orthodoxia and Orthopraxis create some kind of "correctness" of which we can hold human pride, rather that these things protect the purity of the Living Water that flows to us, healing and saving us. Those outside the bounds of the Church, we know have some admixture in their practice and teaching that warps to one degree or another the IKON of the Cross, damaging its healing efficacy and sometimes killing it all together. So all heterodox are not equal. Some are like branches broken from the vine, still containing LIFE but dying, heading toward rot and decay. We have been greatly heartened by some of the moves in Roman Catholicism toward their foundational Orthodox Catholicism, which was in very real danger, the errors creating much confusion, pain and heartache in her ranks. We witness the great apostasy taking place in the Protestant world, as not only the life of the Eucharist is missing but also where all true moral teachings are becoming very cloudy and even absent, where myriad of substitutes are offered instead, like a great carnival show, where the hucksters sell snake oil. This is not to say that there are not failures of clergy and laity in the Orthodox Church, no rather the Church Militant is filled with saints and sinners. When we see any person or group of these Christians being graced with an especial mercy and grace of the Holy Spirit, that Spirit not absent ANYWHERE, but present everywhere willing to lead to Christ any who will truly seek him . . . when we see those escaping the false teachings, and abandoning their attacks on Christ's Body the Church, we are greatly encouraged for them, and seek to simply further enliven their efforts.

No comments:

Post a Comment