I can't help feeling sorry for those who believe in the error called, "scripture only" (Sola Scriptura) who have to constantly re-invent the Christian Wheel, and create their own theology outlining an opinion on EVERYTHING. I'm not exaggerating, here is a quote from a FB Friend I assume to be a sincere Christian, yet, he like every other person caught in the error of Sola Scriptura is lost in the minefield of creating a belief system and theology by his Bible and his "enlightened" opinion alone. That is "re-inventing the Christian Wheel." Would that these efforts truly created the beauty of the Christian Wheel, held most clearly by the Church, but instead it creates millions of approximations, broken, bent, flat, warped, truncated, small and inadequate, more times than not that wheel is missing spokes and even rim.
Here is my friend's statement of absolute pride - after all, in Christianity when we don't seek the teaching of the LIVING Body of Christ, The Church, it is an exercise in pride and leads to cynicism and such statements as, "I for one am not interested in opinion or people's interpretation of what God is saying. I am only interested in what God says. And that can only be found in His Word and illuminated by His Spirit."
That sounds great, until you look at the result evangelicals and protestants in general have produced with this very dictum! And it suggests, that he alone has the power of perfect interpretation and explication of scripture. He would of course say, "No, of course I don't, but the Holy Spirit Does!" And he would be partly right, the Holy Spirit does illuminate, but that same Holy Spirit speaking through the Apostle Paul cautioned against the very method of interpretation he is using, saying, "2 Peter 1:20 (KJV) Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." Prophetic speech is the ability to speak what is TRUE, this is its first meaning, and truth is eternal, so it may appear at times and does at times make the "prophet" appear as a "seer." But who is Saint Peter addressing here, but the INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN. My dear friend also fails to realize the difference between God's Living Word, who is a person, who is OF HIMSELF, TRUTH, Truth the person, not a book, and the Blessed Ikon of that person, Jesus Christ, that is the Bible. The Ikon requires interpretation and the Holy Spirit says that NO Truth is of PRIVATE interpretation.
Submitting to Holy Spirit Placed Teachers requires some level of humility. I came to that humility late. So much of my spiritual life was spent for decades wading through the lies and false teachers, trying to grasp just exactly what was the Church? how did it really exist? did it really exist at all or was it just an analogy, as shadow of some "ideal? and what did it really teach? I spent decades knowing that the Church I saw witnessed by the earliest Church fathers, and the religionism in which I was raised, held very little in common. The plethora of competing and confused Protestant dogma left me without theological anchor. My study of Hermaneutics and Greek informed me that the standard "fundamentalism" of my family and friends could not be actually defended without deforming scripture, and literally ripping scripture from its historical context, making of it a mere "koran" if you will, a magic book with all the answers, but objectively observed through subjective interpretation creating "chaos." As a Methodist pastor when someone would ask me. What denomination are you? I would answer, "I'm devout nothingness. I haven't found any denomination's theology that doesn't ended in rational idiocy, conflicting positive statements and teachings refuted in Scripture. But I know and love Jesus Christ. I know he loves me, but none of it makes any sense to me." I was always surprised and disappointed that my Methodist Bishop and my theology teachers didn't find my response a little "shocking." Instead I could see they found identity, assurance and satisfaction in it. I felt a real kinship to Wesley's writings but still they were too "emotional" for me, but still there was something real there. The problem was, that "something" was totally absent in my experience of the United Methodist Church. I have to admit that the SEARCH was all consuming and exciting. I held much pride in the knowledge I had gained. I studied every major religion, the mystical classics, and not in a cursory manner. The Search became part of my identity. The thrill of the hunt, came to a crashing end when I found Orthodox Christianity, and I experienced two conflicting reactions. The first was tears and extreme comfort and the feeling of finding home, of literally walking into the communion of Jesus Christ, meeting not "religionists" but friends of his and at the same time extreme grief having to give up the thrill of the hunt. You see, by that time I was addicted to it. It took time to realize that the hunt had just begun, merely the field of investigation had changed. It was and is a search now on a different plane, this time in my interior, with different rules that require much prayer and discipline, and most of all humility before the LOVE that is Christ held in the deposit of The Faith, which is limitless and inexhaustible. So now, I for one am so very relieved as an Orthodox Christian, that The Church Teaches, and I don't have to create a self-invented theology and hold a self-created opinion about EVERYTHING. I can say, "The Church Teaches" and she does and has preserved the RICHNESS AND FULLNESS of the Gospel, in tact for almost 2100 years. And has also created a wealth of testimony of the Saints as they have shared their stories of healing/salvation with us. We have now not just "a cloud of witnesses" but a cloud of examples, teachers and prayer partners, in the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant.
This struggle with Sola Scriptura as been on my mind of late. I ran across a man's work on the net that was truly impressive as he has worked with amazing energy to "re-created the christian wheel," while rejecting the Wheel that already exists, the wheel whose rotations are powered by the Holy Spirit protected by the Bishops of each age. I recognized the "zeal" of it, and listening to him teach with "zeal" as he wanted to share what he has learned. He is an historian, very learned, very polished. The depth of his work is really quite something to see. I will be very quick to say that I have learned some things of the Secular History of the Church I did not previously know, some details of things and one major event that I have verified and did not previously know. Yet, with his PhD., sophistication he has only invented one more protestant approximation and may have truly missed the very CORE. He teaches a "philosophy 101" course at some college, and I listened to him describe to the class the very thing that blocks most birth Protestants from finding the Living Waters in The Church Militant. He stated that everyone approaches any subject with preconceived notions that color, and even blind one to the very object they observe. This was certainly me, in my anti-catholic, anti-sacramental days. I have to give him credit because to a degree he has stepped out of his previous Sola Scriptura heresy, and his history work has brought him to a new level of understanding. That Tradition is not evil, and that the early Church fathers were (wait for it) actually Christian - though I get the impression he believes them guided more by secular philosophy than by The Holy Spirit. To describe his work (and that of some others I come across) I coined the phrase, "Sola Scriptura et Secularis Historia", i.e. "Only Scripture and Worldly History," upon which private interpretation of these creates a new "Tradition" a new deformed Christian Wheel. The evangelicals have several of these movements working at the moment, "First Things" and "New Advent" are two examples.
Contemporary with my reading this "historian's website", I have been watching Jimmy Swaggart's particular show called "The Message of the Cross." What is amazing is that he is giving (so far) a very Orthodox interpretation of the meaning of the Cross and its relationship to healing/salvation, (as accurate as can be given by an anti-sacramentalist) mostly devoid of the sloganeering of the Evangelicals, and the myriad FALSE teachings on the subject, using Saint Paul's Letter to the Galatians to outline the struggle for purification, etc. It is obvious that Swaggart's own personal/public humiliation has produced "understanding" most evangelicals do not share.
Of course Swaggart is framing the teaching as some "deeper revelation" when in fact it has been the constant teaching of the Church for 2000 years. I assume that he has secretly been reading some of the saints because he has adopted some of their language, where he is talking about "distorting the image" (Ikon) of the Cross by false teaching concerning the Cross, and false teachings (error) being poison to the means of healing salvation. He even said as many of the saints have said, "It might just ruining it and make it of little use, or it might be deadly error that will succeed in killing the people who drink it."
There are five panel members, two have been offering very Orthodox explications (it may just be a fluke, I don't know), two have remained mostly quiet, and the last has struggled and struggled trying to place this correct theology within his anti-church/anti-catholic/anti-tradition evangelical theological "spirit-filled" construct. It is obvious comment after comment that he just does not grasp what was CLEARLY taught by Saint Paul and the young man (panelist) Larson's explication of it.
Having met Jimmy Swaggart in his arrogant days, in fact having played music with him many times in the 1960s, to me, he is not the "clown" the media makes him to be, he is not merely the disgraced T.V. Evangelist, struggling to regain an audience, but a human person for whom I hold love and respect, a fellow sinner, struggling to come to sanctity, day, by day, by day, by day. I have kept him on my prayer list for decades. And I don't mean that sentence in any superior way. Trust me I am no better than Swaggart. Knowing the theological confusion in which he was brought up, having shared most of it, I hope that God continues to open Christian Orthodoxy to him, and that he manages to overcome his evangelical pride and continues to be taught the Ancient Christian Faith.
What is sad and not Orthodox in his teaching is the "Context." They constantly referencing "The Church" when they (the panel) mean merely "differing evangelical schools of religion." Yet, the heresies they have been exposing, the errors contained in these self-invented theologies that differ group to group, that distort the IKON of the Cross and put barriers between people and its healing efficacy have been very insightful . . . so-far.
"The CHURCH of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth." 1 Timothy 3:15 - note it does not say, the BIBLE of the Living God, but the CHURCH of the living God. The CHURCH imbued with the Holy Spirit formed the Bible, the Bible being a dead letter DID NOT form Christ's Body, THE CHURCH.
Jesus Christ himself said, "Matthew 18:17 (KJV) And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." Matthew 18:17
WHAT? Have you never heard these scriptures?
IF you accept the heresy of Sola Scriptura, then tell me, how do you know what books belong in the Bible? How can you tell me from whence the Bible came to be? Chances are the answers you give, IF you are a true Sola Scriptura Heretic, will have more in common with the magic of Mohammed and the Koran, than with the Sacred Tradition of Christianity, the creation of the Bible in HISTORY, INSIDE CHRIST'S BODY, THE CHURCH.
Or maybe you can quote me the chapter and verse in the Bible, that tells us which books belong in the Bible?
As much as you HATE to hear it. It is ONLY the Sacred Tradition of the Church, imbued with the HOLY SPIRIT, that formed the Bible, that defines to this day, the Books in it.
_______________________
Our Heavenly Father
Let us not be caught in the fear of servile religion; keeping Tradition out of ignorance and offering our "correctness" as sign of righteous enlightenment.
Let us not be caught in the tyranny of our rational minds, which creates "innovations" upon the faith, which leads us to hold prideful "theologies" that diminish God to the level of our understanding, or worse, which deny Him altogether.
Let us not be caught by the tyranny of our emotions, mistaking our soul's phantasy producing powers for the working of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.
Let us not be caught in the mere form of the visible church, but in the LIFE of it, who is Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God, present to all that truly seek Him. Let our keeping of Tradition spring from the warmth of your Love, from a heart that seeks continual repentance, from a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart you will not despise. Amen.
Archpriest Symeon Elias (Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. - Archbishop Alexander (Bykowetz) -Detroit MI)
No comments:
Post a Comment