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.
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