eastern-orthodoxy-jan-feb-2018

MODERN REFORMATION VOL.27 | NO.1 | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 | $6.95

“ Is it possible Orthodoxy has turned from the sufficiency of Christ to the shadows of the law?”

ONE SUBSCRIPTION, 25 YEARS OF ARCHIVES A S A S U B S C R I B E R YO U H AV E A C C E S S T O T H E E N T I R E M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N A R C H I V E F O R F R E E !

Requires a one-time free registration at whitehorseinn.org. Log in any time and visit the MR archives at WhiteHorseInn.org/issue.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/ISSUE

V O L .2 7 | N O.1 | JA N UA R Y- F E B R UA R Y 2 0 18

FEATURES 12

Are Evangelicalism and Eastern Orthodoxy Compatible?

B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

24

Drifting East: A Pastoral Approach to Christians Considering Conversion

BY MICHAEL BROWN

38

The Forgotten Reformer: Cyril Lucaris B Y J O H N S T O VA L L

46

Beware the Convert

BY PERRY C. ROBINSON

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY NICK MISANI

1

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! As a small, independent, nonprofit publisher, Modern Reformation depends on each and every subscription and the additional donations we receive to continue our mission of engaging the big questions about God, this world, and your life in it.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG/DONATE

V O L .2 7 | N O.1 | JA N UA R Y- F E B R UA R Y 2 0 18

DEPARTMENTS

5

55

62

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

BOOK REVIEWS

GEEK SQUAD

A Call for Orthodox Churches to Preach the Gospel

Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken REVIEWED BY

Differences between the Reformed and Eastern Orthodox Churches

S I M O N E T TA C A R R

BY TIM MASSARO

BY ADRIEL SANCHEZ

9

Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture

64

REVIEWED BY ANNA SMITH

B A C K PA G E

T H E O LO GY

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? B Y M AT T H E W R I C H A R D

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and its ScriptureCentered Proclamation

The Communion of Saints

BY ERIC LANDRY

REVIEWED BY S I LV E R I O G O N Z A L E Z

Creative Direction and Design Metaleap Creative Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith

Modern Reformation © 2018. All rights reserved.

ISSN-1076-7169

Modern Reformation (Subscription Department) P.O. Box 460565 Escondido, CA 92046 (855) 492-1674 info@modernreformation.org | modernreformation.org Subscription Information: US 1 YR $32. 2 YR $50. 3 YR $60. Digital Only 1 YR $25.

US Student 1 YR $26. 2YR $40. Canada add $10 per year for postage. Foreign add $9 per year for postage.

3

LETTER from the EDITOR

should not be skimmed over. Mike Brown’s report on the recent migration of Reformed churchgoers to the Eastern Orthodox (EO) fellowship tells us that the beauty and mystery of the liturgy is one of most reasons frequently given for joining the EO communion, which Alison Sailer confirms in her discussion of her own journey from Geneva to Constantinople. John Stovall illustrates the historical context of Eastern Orthodox and Protestant distinctives with his fascinating portrait of Cyril Lucaris, the patriarch of Constantinople who was assassinated for his commitment to Reformed teaching. While there eauty has a hard time in confessional is much we share with our Orthodox brethren, Protestant circles, and it’s easy to there are also significant differences that warrant understand why. In our sex-saturated serious consideration, particularly for highsociety, this powerful and elevating profile Protestant teachers, as Perry Robinson value has been exploited and degraded to the points out in his essay on the conversion of Hank level of commercial property. Once ranked as Hanegraaff (the Bible Answer Man). the necessary companion to truth and goodness, There is certainly a place for beauty and majit’s devolved into little more than the ultimate esty in worship. If the divine service is indeed an selling point for everything from smartphones in-breaking of the glorious kingdom age on our and cars to Hollywood starlets and earthly reality, then the church’s politicians. As heirs to a historiphysical building and liturgy cally iconoclastic church, we’re not ought to reflect this. Ultimately, “ THERE IS sure what to do with it. Scripture at we do not come to a facility that once gives us Solomon and his bride’s holds however-many hundreds CERTAINLY ecstatic rejoicings at one another’s of people and hosts so-many A PLACE FOR beauty, and Peter’s admonition that conferences a year at such-andBEAUTY AND women ought not to let their adorning such an address. We come to the be with “the braiding of hair and the city of the living God, the heavMAJESTY IN putting on of gold jewelry.” If we’re enly Jerusalem, to innumerable WORSHIP.” honest, the simplicity (we won’t call angels in festal gathering, to the it ugliness) of the church buildings assembly of the firstborn who are we worship in today has more to do enrolled in heaven, to God, the with primarily pragmatic considerations than judge of all, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new scriptural principle. covenant (Heb. 12:22–24). As this year begins, Not so with the Eastern Orthodox Church. we rejoice that the city of the living God continThey may have a few problems, but a nuanced ues to grow, unshackled by small budgets and and well-articulated view of beauty (particularly, hostile city councils, and unencumbered by the the beauty of worship) isn’t one of them. While grandeur of the greatest cathedral.

Protestants could certainly stand to take a leaf or two out of the EO’s aesthetic book, Editorin-Chief Michael Horton reminds us that the theological principles that inform that aesthetic BRO OKE VENTURA assoc iate editor

B

4

L E F T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y A R T H U R M O U N T; R I G H T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

01

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

A Call for Orthodox Churches to Preach the Gospel

by Adriel Sanchez

have had several close friends convert to Orthodoxy over the years, and they’re always excited to talk about their transition. “Come and see,” said one friend, smiling.

“The iconography, the vestments, the beauty!”

It’s not just the visual engagement. There is also an ancient stimulation of the other senses—the smells, the chanting, all of it so different from what evangelicals are used to. But I’ve never had a friend who converted to Orthodoxy say, “Come and hear the preaching!” Why is that?

Some time ago, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick spoke at an Orthodox homeschooling conference and posted his talk “Do Orthodox Christians Know the Gospel Message?” on the Ancient 1 Faith blog. The speech was both encouraging

I

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

(because Fr. Damick was able to critique his tradition in an important area) and disheartening.

Disheartening because Fr. Damick recognizes a deficiency in Orthodoxy today among the laity: the average Orthodox Christian does not know what the gospel is. “It would probably be no big stretch to say that, if one were to ask the average Orthodox Christian the question, ‘What is the gospel?’ he would not have an answer.” More recently, retired priest Fr. Aidan Kimel lamented, Since my retirement I have heard numerous Orthodox homilies. With few exceptions, they have been horrid—poorly constructed, poorly delivered, and lacking in substance.

But bad technique may be forgiven if the preacher is at least attempting to proclaim

5

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

the good news. Alas that has not usually been the case. What I have heard is exhortation . . . to imitate Christ, obey the ten commandments, be nice to my neighbors, pray more often, confess my sins . . . even a lengthy harangue scolding the congregation for its failure to support the parish festival. Exhortation and more exhortation—dreary, impotent words that do not convert, do not heal, do not transform, do not deify. A few years ago I listened to an interview with Fr Theodore Stylianopoulos in which he described the kinds of sermons he heard growing up. He called them “try harder” sermons. Yes, I thought, that’s what I’m hearing now. No wonder church is so depressing. If “try harder” is the only word the pastor has to share, then it would be far better to skip the sermon and allow the Divine Liturgy itself to enact the good news of Pascha.

steadfast adherence to tradition, yet the good news of Pascha remains unpreached.

To these congregations—but especially to the priests who have been entrusted with the stewardship of the gospel—the terrifying condemnation of Jesus is spoken: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt 23:27). Exhortations and admonitions will never create the righteousness that justifies. Those who are dead in sin cannot raise themselves from their graves; they cannot pull themselves up by their Pelagian bootstraps. Only the unconditional promise, spoken in the power of Spirit and absolute Love, can bestow the new life that is repentance and faith. But if that word is never declared, where will 2 faith be found?

“Behold, the days are coming,” the prophet declares in the Name of the Lord, “when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). We are experiencing this famine today. Many priests and congregations pride themselves on their dogmatic orthodoxy and

This problem was noted by another Orthodox Christian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, just a few decades ago: One can observe an undoubted decline or even crisis in preaching in contemporary church life. The essence of this crisis lies not in the inability to speak, in a loss of

“When the word was rehabilitated in the church, the result was spiritual renewal, a reformation our churches desperately need in modern times.”

6

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

“style” or in any intellectual deficiency on the part of the preacher, but in something far deeper: in an oblivion to what preaching in the church assembly is supposed to be.

The homily can be, and often is even today, intelligent, interesting, instructive and comforting, but these are not the criteria by which we can distinguish a “good” homily from a “bad” one—these are not its real essence. Its essence lies in its living link to the gospel that was read in the church assembly. For the genuine sermon is neither simply an explanation of what was read by knowledgeable and competent persons, not a transmission to the listeners of the theological knowledge of the preacher, nor a mediation “a propos” of the gospel text. In general, it is not a sermon about the gospel (“on a gospel theme”) but the preaching of 3 the gospel itself.

Fr. Schmemann’s call is for the church to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, not just to talk about it (or depict it in iconography, I might add). Until the Orthodox Church rediscovers this emphasis upon the importance of the preached word as well as the sacrament, I suspect that its laity will continue to suffer from gospel illiteracy. The beauty of Orthodox liturgy, with its sensory emphasis, cannot compensate for the sacramental word, which alone creates faith in the hearts of dead sinners. God has promised to save humanity through the foolishness of preaching (1 Cor. 1:21), not through the veneration of icons or burning of incense.

If a church focuses on the latter, or even on the sacrament apart from the word, it is destined to produce disciples who cannot articulate the simplicity of the gospel.

The Protestant Reformers would have sympathized with critiques like this, because they too believed the church needed to “rediscover” gospel preaching. This is one of the reasons I am grateful for the Reformed tradition, in which the emphasis has always been “Come and hear the gospel!” In fact, one of the chief complaints MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

the Protestant Reformers had against the Roman Catholic Church (a complaint that may also be raised in the context of this discussion) was that while Rome did not abolish the word, it had subordinated it to the sacraments and shrouded it in extrabiblical traditions. This abasing of the word led to the moral and theological failures of the medieval church. The genius of the sixteenth-century Protestants was in restoring the primacy of the preached word.

When the word was rehabilitated in the church, the result was spiritual renewal, a reformation our churches desperately need in modern times.

What then is the solution to the present crisis that exists not only in Orthodox churches, but in many evangelical churches as well? It begins with a proper understanding of the word’s primacy. This lofty position isn’t bestowed on the word by any individual or church, but is inherent to its nature. Since the word comes to us from God (2 Tim. 3:16), it needs no external authority to authenticate it. With a recovery of the word’s primacy comes an understanding of the word’s power. When God compared his word to that of the false prophets in Jeremiah’s day, he said, “Is not my word like fire, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29). The word alone has the power to warm calloused hearts and break rock-hard wills. It doesn’t just deconstruct—Isaiah likened God’s word to a life-giving rainfall, sent out to accomplish God’s purposes in the world (Isa. 55:10–11).

The heavenly shower of apostolic preaching is the foundation upon which the church is constructed (Eph. 2:20), and wherever that word is not upheld, God’s temple is in disrepair.

It also isn’t enough to say we need to have a high view of God’s word. There are many churches that believe in the divine inspiration and power of Scripture, but they still fall short when it comes to communicating the substance of Scripture. This type of preaching (as Schmemann put it) misses the essence of the gospel and (according to Kimel) doesn’t deify. The verbum agraphon (unwritten word) spoken by the prophets and apostles and the

7

C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

“Once congregations experience the life-giving power of the preached gospel, they won’t settle for replacements (regardless of their aesthetic beauty).”

verbum engraphon (written word) inscripturated for subsequent generations were always meant to lead us to the Word as Person, Jesus.

This happens only when our preaching transitions from moral exhortations (law) to the powerful proclamation of God’s victory over our moral failures (gospel). This is the rain that arid souls long for—the solution to our parched spirituality.

When pastors rightly understand the primacy and the power of God’s word, they won’t grow tired of preaching it; and once congregations experience the life-giving power of the preached gospel, they won’t settle for replacements (regardless of their aesthetic beauty). I remember being pleasantly surprised when a member of a Reformed congregation lamented to me about the church he visited while on vacation, “The pastor only preached the law, not the gospel!” We should preach the gospel so clearly that the laity in our churches lament when it is

8

missing. I’m reminded of Calvin’s commentary on Galatians 3:1.

Let those who would discharge aright the ministry of the gospel learn, not merely to speak and declaim, but to penetrate into the consciences of men, to make them see Christ crucified, and feel the shedding of his blood. When the church has painters such as these, she no longer needs the dead images of wood and stone, she no longer requires pictures; both of which, unquestionably, were first admitted to Christian temples when the pastors . . . uttered a few words from the pulpit in such a cold and careless manner, that the power and efficacy of the ministry 4 were utterly extinguished.

We can learn a great deal from our Orthodox brothers. The staple liturgy of John Chrysostom, with its holistic engagement of mind and body, reminds us that we’re not simply souls trapped in bodies. Worship should engage the whole person. Orthodox churches, however, should recover the expository rigor of John Chrysostom, whose homilies weren’t ten-minute musings but in-depth biblical exhortations; they should reclaim the “preaching of the gospel itself,” as Fr. Schmemann called it, and prioritize the weekly refrain Christos Anesti! (“Christ is risen!”) over the “try harder” sermons that leave people in despair. Only when the liturgy of John Chrysostom is accompanied by his expositional preaching can we expect today’s famine to end.

ADRIEL SANCHEZ is a graduate of Westminster Seminary in California and a church planter at North Park Presbyterian Church (www.northparkpres.com) in San Diego.

1 From http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/roadsfromemmaus/2015/05/08/ do-orthodox-christians-know-the-gospel-message.

2 From https://publicorthodoxy.org/2016/12/17/the-politics-of-pascha.

3 Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 77.

4 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, vol. XXI (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 80–81.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

02

THEOLOGY

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

by Matthew Richard

hould we take a hammer and chisel to the Jesus of the Bible and shape him into our own personal Jesus? Of course not! This does not, however, stop North Americans from getting out their toolbox.

Obviously I’m not speaking literally, but the tendency of people to “rebrand” the Jesus of history into their own personal avatar is quite real. Truly did Calvin say that our hearts are idol factories, carving out that which is uncomfortable and enhancing that which speaks to our desires. Remaking Jesus into an image of our choosing results in a happy medium between the discomfort of bowing one’s knee before the real Jesus and the guilt-inducing conviction of an outright rejection.

S

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

The fact that we like to make Jesus over in our own image isn’t exactly big news. When we consider the general mind-set of our North American society, it makes sense. We are a culture that personalizes just about everything—playlists, food, smartphones, relationships, even gender. Why shouldn’t we customize Jesus? And this is precisely what we do. We redefine Jesus according to our own image, desires, and aspirations. He becomes the Giver of Bling, the Feminized, the Mystical Friend, the National Patriot, the Moral Example, the New Moses, and the Mascot. We twist him into a funhouse-mirror image of ourselves, since life is easier when we can convince ourselves that what Jesus really wants is what we really want.

9

THEOLOGY

“We can taste, see, and believe the real Jesus right here and right now.”

The problem with our false christs is that they can’t fix our problem. They may make us feel better, but they can’t address the foundational flaw in our existence. They have no power to appease the wrath of God. Our problem isn’t ultimately that we die, suffer physically, mentally, and emotionally, or that there is rampant injustice and corruption. Our problem is that we have offended a holy God and that we cannot, by our own powers, be reconciled to him. Our false christs cannot resurrect us from the dead—they crumble at the slightest discomfort; they smash to the ground as we stumble into the traps of our own sin and despair; they stare back with vacant eyes as we plead for salvation.

They cannot forgive sin or resurrect dead people, because they are not real. Like trees cut down and carved into idols one day and used as firewood the next, these false christs are essentially puppets of their creators (Isa. 44:9–20).

Like their mutable and easily swayed originals, they vacillate from one thing to another—a savior one moment and kindling the next.

They are frail and will never have more power than those who fashioned them, which means they cannot overcome sin, death, the devil, or the world. They may possess the qualities of the Jesus of Scripture, but they are not God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, the Savior of both body and soul.

There’s an old saying, “If you want to show up a crooked stick, put a straight one next to it.”

We need the real Jesus to stand up so we can clearly see who he is and hear what he has done, because it is only the power of that gospel that will set us free from the sin that ensnares us into

10

believing that the Jesus of our imagination can fulfill our deepest human desires. While false christs stand or fall by our own power, Jesus Christ continually sits at the right hand of the Father. He stood in our place as he became flesh and blood and walked through the wilderness of depravity on our behalf. He conquered the temptations to which we so easily succumb, drinking the vile cup of our suffering and sin, stumbling up the hill to Golgotha. He was displayed on a bloody cross, his body pierced, and blood and water poured out for each and every one of us who desperately hold onto hollow, fake christs.

Unlike the idols of our creation, which harden our hearts against the inborn knowledge of sin, Jesus declared from his cross that our sins have been paid for. Unlike our false christs, who ultimately require that we live and die for them, the true Christ lived the righteous life we ought to have lived and died the death we should have died. Unlike the “rebranded” Jesus, who is hampered by the finite and flawed power of their creators, the historical Jesus rose victorious from the grave, taking his seat at the right hand of the Father in glory, allowing all who believe in him to share in his triumph. Through his word and sacraments, we not only hear who he is and what he did, but we receive him and his benefits of forgiveness, life, and salvation.

When our culture, society, and circumstance shift like reeds blowing in the winds of change, this Word does not change but remains forever (Isa. 40:7–8). We can taste, see, and believe the real Jesus right here and right now.

This is the real Jesus—the Jesus you and I do not deserve but certainly need. This is the God who is for you, who has saved you, and who will not fail you. Unlike idols that cannot see or speak, he has drawn near to you in his word to reveal himself to you, so that you might receive him by faith and be his own. This is the real Jesus: Christ crucified and resurrected, the only one who forgives sin and grants everlasting life.

REV. DR. MATTHEW RICHARD is pastor of Zion Lutheran

Church in Gwinner, North Dakota.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

V O L .2 7 | N O.1

FEATURES

We have beheld enough of his love, peace, and glory, to worship him, sense his love, and know that one day we will enjoy full, soulful, peaceful resonance with him.” ­

— MICHAEL BROWN, “DRIFTING EAST”

12

24

38

46

ARE EVANGELICALISM AND EASTERN ORTHODOXY COMPATIBLE?

DRIFTING EAST: A PASTORAL APPROACH TO CHRISTIANS CONSIDERING CONVERSION

THE FORGOTTEN REFORMER: CYRIL LUCARIS

BEWARE THE CONVERT

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

11

ARE

by

MICHAEL S. HORTON

E VA N G E L I C A L I S M A N D

EASTERN ORTHODOXY illustration by

C O M PAT I B L E ?

JOE CAVAZOS

A cursory comparison of the indices of any primary or secondary work on Eastern Orthodoxy and evangelicalism exposes an interesting contrast—in the Eastern Orthodox index, one will find such entries as chrismation, deification, energies of God, recapitulation, theosis, and the like, but notable absences will include original sin, grace, justification, sanctification, substitutionary atonement, and related terms that are familiar to confessional Protestants.

It is an oversimplification, but it may be said generally that, while Western theological systems often follow a Trinitarian pattern reflected in the Apostles’ Creed, the focus is often more on the work of the persons than on their perichoretic unity and the nature of the hypostatic union of the God-Man. This becomes most apparent in the second article, where Western theology tends to regard Christology as an essential means to the end of soteriology. Thus there is an emphasis on the cross and resurrection as the apex of human redemption. In Eastern patristic and Byzantine theology, however, the accent falls on the incarnation itself. Jesus Christ the God-Man is not only who he is in order to be a Savior; he is a Savior precisely in being who he is.

13

Regarding the first five centuries as definitive, Orthodox theology revolves around Christological issues, and this is why one may find teeming citations for hypostasis, Arianism, and the filioque, but few for guilt, Pelagius, forgiveness, reconciliation, and propitiation. In many cases, further conversation between Eastern and Western partners reveals considerable agreement in substance despite different taxonomies. The heart of our differences emerges over the material principle: justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone.

SIN AND FREE WILL

A

nselm’s famous retort to his imaginary friend Boso “You have not yet considered how great your sin is” applies to all of our communions, especially in this day of optimism about human capabilities. Despite the agreements noted above, the Christian East, in the Reformed view, possesses an inadequate view of sin. This becomes apparent in its treatment of original sin, excluding inherited guilt from the picture and embracing a synergistic view of regeneration as well as a medicinal view of justifying grace.

To do justice to the Orthodox view, we must again recall that the reigning paradigm is relational and transformative. Humanity is on a pilgrimage from innocence to mortality to immortality. Father Palachovsky explains:

THE HEART OF OUR DIFFERENCES EMERGES OVER THE MATERIAL PRINCIPLE: JUSTIFICATION BY GRACE ALONE THROUGH FAITH ALONE BECAUSE OF CHRIST ALONE.

We have been made in His image through Creation, but we must become like Him by ourselves, through our own free will. To be the image of God belongs to us by our primordial destination, but to become like God depends upon our will….Human nature has not remained intact, as some theologians teach, but has become corrupt.

Nevertheless, this corruption does not go 1 so far as the Protestant theologians teach.

We must appreciate the categories of Orthodox thought on this issue, since the context of early patristic development was Gnosticism,

14

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

Manichaeism, and their kindred heresies in which creation and redemption were set against one another. Matter was inherently evil because it was intrinsically temporal rather than eternal, physical rather than spiritual, and so forth.

Sin was accounted for in a cosmic fatalism grounded in ontological dualism. It would only make sense that the church fathers would confront this pagan determinism and dualism with an emphasis on human responsibility and freedom, as well as on the goodness of the Creator 2 God (and therefore of every natura he creates).

There are some passages in Augustine, particularly in his description of the origin of sin, that come perilously close to viewing nature qua 3 nature as sinful. This is thoroughly rejected by the Reformers and their successors.

Still, even granting this important point, Orthodoxy appears to deny clear biblical statements on this important question. Corruption and mortality are hardly the only categories in biblical teaching. Nevertheless, as Constantine N. Tsirpanlis writes in presenting the Orthodox view, Now, Adam’s sin was a personal choice and act, not a collective guilt nor a “sin of nature.” Hence, inherited guilt is impossible….In other words, the posterity of Adam inherited the consequences of his sin, i.e., physical death and mortality, sickness of corruption, and obscurity or distortion of 4 God’s image, but not his personal guilt.

John Meyendorff concurs that there is, in fact, “a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions in identifying the inheritance of the Fall as an inheritance essentially of mortality rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being 5 merely the consequence of mortality.” “The opposition between the two Adams is seen in terms not of guilt and forgiveness but of death 6 and life,” he says, citing 1 Corinthians 15:47–48.

First Corinthians 15:47–48 is a marvelous and much-overlooked side of the sin-and-grace mes7 sage. Orthodoxy offers profound insight on this aspect, but in presenting half of the picture as if it were the whole, it ignores the obvious juridical elements and consequently leaves us not MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

merely with an incomplete account but with an erroneous one. Can sinfulness be regarded as a consequence of mortality and vice versa when Scripture so clearly states that “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12)? “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Here in Romans 6, “wages” is a similarly legal category, a debt that is owed.

The biblical testimony to the Savior’s payment of a debt is so replete as not to require citations.

The New Testament language for sin (e.g., condemnation of the law) and redemption (e.g., justification, imputation, reconciliation, acquittal) is unmistakably forensic as well as relational.

Even those who have not in their own persons committed exactly the same sin as Adam’s are nevertheless guilty of that sin (Rom. 5:14). “The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation” (v. 16), and “by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man” (v. 17).

“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). (I have purposely reserved the corollary of the second Adam for our discussion below.) Paul repeats for effect, “through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” (v. 19). Death comes through sin, inherited both in its power and in its guilt. Therefore, the consequence is inherited. That is Paul’s logic in this text.

The Orthodox view excludes original guilt, while the Western view admits both original guilt and original corruption/mortality. Despite Augustinian (and Roman Catholic) distortions of sin and nature, the confessional Protestant articulation of original sin is thus able to do greater justice to the fuller teaching of Scripture, even if it needs to give more attention to the emphasis on immortality in the second Adam.

REDEMPTION

N

eo-orthodox theologies prepared the soil for a wide-scale reassessment of the Western tradition in terms of “relational” versus “legal” categories. Protestants have subjected what they have referred to as “Augustinian legalism” to

15

relentless criticism. Perhaps partly because of the society in which many evangelical theologians now live, with its therapeutic culture in which justice must give way to love in every instance, the Pauline explanation for how God is, in Christ, both “just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26) has lost its attraction for a growing number of those theologians. The difference between the two categories is the difference between a “courtroom” model and a “family room” model.

The former is indisputably Roman, while the latter is thoroughly scriptural, it is suggested. This is precisely the view expressed by modern Orthodox theologians, such as Christos Yannaras: A great misconception and distortion of the ecclesial truth about the abolition of death by the cross of Christ had already appeared in the West by the first centuries and progressively dominated the spiritual climate. Tertullian, Augustine, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas are the great landmarks in the formation and imposition of this distortion which was finally proclaimed as an official teaching of the Western church at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). It is a matter of a legalistic interpretation of the biblical images of “ransom” which Christ paid with his death on the cross. . . . In the teaching of Luther and of Calvin later, it is not simply divine justice, but the wrath of God which must be appeased by the sacri8 fice of Christ on the cross.

This account Yannaras can regard only as “sadistic,” leading to “egocentric justification 9 as well.” Individualistic and legalistic, this theology fails to recognize the ecclesial and cosmic redemption that comes from God as a passionate lover.

Orthodox theologians should attempt to understand the surprise of those who have seen in both Old and New Testaments a recurring emphasis on the cross of Christ as “payment,” “propitiation,” “sacrifice,” “satisfaction,” and the like. Acknowledging the important theme of

16

Christus Victor, Reformation theology has nevertheless recognized the victory of Christ over Satan, mortality, evil, and the demonic as the consequence of his satisfaction of the Father’s plan to propitiate God’s wrath against sin. Even in one of the clearest Christus Victor passages, Paul apparently makes this very connection: When you were dead in your sins [a moral category, since his readers are still physically alive] and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col. 2:13–15) That last statement depends on that which precedes it. The power of Satan over us was chiefly God’s own law, a recurring Pauline theme; but once this was satisfied by the substitution of Christ for sinners, the powers and authorities were disarmed. The “public spectacle” is a courtroom scene in which God judges his Son in our place.

Here, once again, this view accounts for both the Christus Victor motif and the substitutionary motif, while the Orthodox emphasis apparently cannot accept the very premise (i.e., God’s wrath against sinners) that would provide a context for Christ’s victory. Irenaeus, for one, incorporates both motifs in his thought.

Not only by his incarnation but “by means of his passion” Jesus Christ has conquered death: For doing away with that disobedience of man which had taken place at the beginning by the occasion of a tree, “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”; rectifying [a legal term] that disobedience which had occurred by reason of a tree, through that obedience which was [wrought out] upon the tree [of the cross] (CONTINUED ON PAGE 19)

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

ACKNOWLEDGING THE IMPORTANT THEME

O F

C H R I S T U S

T H E O L O G Y

R E C O G N I Z E D

V I C T O R ,

H A S

T H E

R E F O R M A T I O N

N E V E R T H E L E S S

V I C T O R Y

O F

C H R I S T

OVER SATAN, MORTALIT Y, EVIL , AND THE

D E M O N I C

A S

T H E

C O N S E Q U E N C E

O F

H I S

SATISFACTION OF THE FATHER’S PLAN TO

PROPITIATE GOD’S WRATH AGAINST SIN.

17

ARE PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST OUR “BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST”?

E

very day brings another gruesome story of men, women, and children in the Middle East being persecuted for their faith in Christ. Churches are destroyed, families are pushed out of their homes and villages, individuals have their throats slit— and the entire world watches with horror. Western Christians regularly pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ, but some wonder if it is proper to think of them as fellow Christians.

After all, missionaries have been at work in many of those same regions for years, trying to convert people from Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches to Protestantism. Why were they trying to convert them, if they were already “in Christ” with us?

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (IV.1.8), John Calvin refers to “a certain charitable judgment whereby we recognize as members

18

of the church those who, by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us.” Taking their mark from Calvin, other Reformed theologians have often spoken of the “judgment of charity” with regard to how we evaluate another person’s claim to faith. The idea here is that unless someone proves by their profession or their actions that they are not Christians, we should take them at their word and not second-guess their profession of faith.

This attitude should help us give the benefit of the doubt to those men, women, and children who are being persecuted simply for being Christians.

The important theological distinctions we discuss in the free West are not even under consideration among those whose very lives are threatened by their simple profession, “Jesus is Lord.” We can and should rejoice with them when their towns and villages

are freed, when they can worship in peace, and when their lives are safe from threats of harm.

That does not mean, however, that we shouldn’t still seek to bring them—as we do our neighbors here in the West—to a better, fuller, and richer understanding of the Christian faith. As circumstances allow, our missionaries should try to convince them of the significant errors of Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Being freed from a theology of works righteousness will give them significant peace and assurance of their standing in Christ today. Along the way, we may discover that some Middle Eastern Christians were Christians in name only—having a cultural connection because of family and place of birth, but no vital, living faith. In that sense, they are no different from many Americans who are Christians in name only, identifying as a Christian because of a family or cultural connection.

BY ERIC LANDRY

In April 2017, a video of Coptic Christians chanting the Nicene Creed went viral on social media.

People claimed it was a response of the small Christian minority in Cairo, responding to attacks on Palm Sunday that killed dozens of worshippers. If we watch that video and are moved to question the veracity and vitality of the faith of those who—at the risk of their own lives— appear in public to profess their faith with the same words we recite on Sunday mornings, then we lack the judgment of charity Calvin enjoins on us. Instead, we should be moved to prayer and praise instead.

For there will “always be a church on earth” to worship God (WCF 25.5), and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Matt.

16:18).

ERIC LANDRY is exeutive editor of Modern Reformation and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16)

….In the second Adam, however, we are reconciled, being made obedient even unto death. For we were debtors to none other but to him whose commandment we had 10 transgressed at the beginning.

Note that he says we were debtors to the commandment we had transgressed at the beginning—in Adam. Hence, human beings “are not justified of themselves, but the advent 11 of the Lord.” There is, therefore, no basis for “trusting to works of righteousness.”12 It is important to recognize that while certain affectations from Roman jurisprudence—or, more directly, medieval feudalism—appear in Western discussions (especially in Anselm’s account), the Reformers explicitly criticized these tendencies while building on their labors.

It is difficult to dismiss the Old Testament’s legal character. In fact, as recent scholarship has underscored, much of the Old Testament may be read as a covenantal charter in the pattern of the ancient Near Eastern suzerainty 13 treaty. Without recognizing the legal character of the Mosaic economy, involving strict observances for remaining in the land and requiring the shedding of blood for remission of sins, and the anticipation in the prophets of a Servant who will bear the guilt of sinners, the Old Testament loses its plot and the New Testament loses its claim as the fulfillment of all types and shadows.

JUSTIFICATION

T

he parallel between the first and second Adams in Romans 5 draws together tightly the corollary of “double imputation”: Adam’s guilt and Christ’s righteousness. Orthodoxy’s apparent denial of original guilt and its reticence toward legal categories cannot help but lead to a denial of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, or “justification.” Orthodox theologians frequently dismiss the entire discussion of justification as a Western debate, although it was the debate at the heart of Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees, MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

of Paul’s controversy with the Galatians, and the writer of the book of Hebrews’ controversy with the Judaizers. “The righteousness that is by works” is set in opposition to “the righteousness that is by faith,” not because works and faith are opposed in the least, but because the righteousness that God’s justice requires is found only in Christ. It must be imputed, or credited—terms that are of Pauline, not Protestant, origin.

At this point, proof-texts could be sent back and forth, but Orthodox theologians will not be likely to find ours appealing, since they do not accept the motif these texts assume. For instance, the gospel we find in Scripture (Luke 18:14) says that the believing tax collector (publican) went home justified once and for all, rather than the Pharisee who had been trying to attain righteousness by his own efforts (perhaps even with the help of grace, since he does thank God that he is not like the tax collector).

After demonstrating that the Old Testament saints were justified through faith alone, Paul announces, “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works” (Rom. 4:5–6 NKJV). Paul says that a person is justified not when he ceases being ungodly but while he or she is ungodly, and that God imputes righteousness apart from works— not apart from works alone or through works that are performed in cooperation with God’s grace, but by faith apart from works. We find the same construction earlier in Romans: But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God which is through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by his blood, through faith. (Rom. 3:21–25 NKJV)

19

A denial of this point is no small thing for the apostles, as Paul relates in his distress: Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:1–4 NKJV) Just before, Paul had argued that salvation does not “depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (Rom. 9:16), and later (ch. 11) he will warn Gentile Christians that they must not rely on their pedigree, since if the physical descendants of Abraham may be broken off to make room for believing Gentiles, God will certainly not fail to reject Gentiles who place the least confidence in their own cooperation with God. Whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, we must all take this to heart. It is trusting in Christ’s merit alone, not in our cooperation with grace, that we are justified. It is by embracing the apostolic message, not tracing one’s ministerial ancestry to the apostles, that a person or a church is approved by God. Discerning in these New Testament lines of thought a clear distinction between law and gospel—that which commands without promise or assistance and that which gives without command or judgment—Reformation theology observes in Orthodox theology a serious confusion on this point. Despite the fact that the Orthodox use the Greek New Testament (as well as the Septuagint), Father Palachovsky cites Acts 2:38 in its erroneous Vulgate translation: 14 “Do penance.” The Greek metanoeo (repent) is transformed into the Latin command “Do penance,” and this leads to the same confusion of justification and penitential merit one finds in Roman Catholic soteriology. He distinguishes between peccata leviora and peccata graviora, the latter of which John apparently has in mind

20

when he says, “Whosoever has been born of God 15 does not sin” (1 John 3:9 NKJV).

Even Father Callinikos’s catechism asks, “On what basis will Christ judge the world?” The answer: On the basis of His Gospel. Whosoever has believed in it and has acted in accordance with its dictates, will sit up on the right hand of the Judge….Faith in Christ without good works is not enough to save us.

Good works by themselves are also not sufficient. Our salvation will be the outcome of a virtuous life permeated and sealed by the inestimable blood of the Only-begotten 16 Son of God. C i t i n g Au g u s t i n e a p p r o v i n g l y, Fa t h e r Palachovsky says that daily sins “may be cleansed through (1) the recitation of the Miserere, 17 (2) almsgiving, and (3) fasting.”

Daniel Clendenin, who describes himself as an evangelical student of Eastern Orthodoxy, offers a sympathetic reading of this position: Orthodox theologians contend that in the West the doctrines of sin and salvation have been unduly dominated by legal, juridical, and forensic categories. These categories, they insist, are not only overly negative and alien to the spirit of Eastern Christianity, but, when allowed to dominate are actual distortions of the biblical message. Ernst Benz suggests that this legal framework predominates in Western thinking (both Catholic and Protestant). He notes how the apostle Paul [that great Western thinker!] frames his Epistle to the Romans in terms of divine law and justice, categories that are perhaps taken from Roman civil law, and that his idea of justification by faith answers the question of how guilty people can stand before a just God. Benz suggests that the Catholic church especially, with its doctrines of penance and indulgences, its concepts of the church, the role of the priest, and canon law, developed in this [Paul’s?] legalistic direction. This accent VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

on legal concepts, in contrast to the idea of mystical union, perpetuated in the East, is seen by Orthodoxy as the “real issue that unites the West theologically and divides it 18 from the East."

Clendenin correctly notes that this is irreconcilable with the position of the Reformers:

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, BOTH ORTHODOX AND ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGIES TEND TO COLLAPSE ONTOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL CATEGORIES— THE EAST IN A PREFERENCE FOR GOOD CREATION OVERWHELMING SIN, WHILE THE WEST TILTED TOWARD CONFUSING SIN WITH CREATION.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

In his Institutes Calvin described justification by faith as “the hinge on which all true religion turns,” and in his precise definition of the doctrine he compares it to an acquittal in the courts of divine justice: “just as a man, deemed innocent by an impartial judge, is said to be justified, so a sinner is said to be justified by God when he asserts his righteousness.” In the history of Orthodox theology, on the other hand, it is startling to observe the near total absence of any mention of the idea of justification 19 by faith.

Clendenin goes on to suggest that we need to balance Orthodoxy’s emphasis on mystical 20 union and Protestantism’s forensic emphasis.

It is true that a genuinely Pauline theology will emphasize both mystical union and the “summing up” of all things in Christ on the one hand, and individual justification and reconciliation on the other. However, how one relates the two is all-important. Any view of union and recapitulation that denies that the sole basis for divine acceptance of sinners is the righteousness of Christ and that the sole means of receiving that righteousness is imputation through faith alone apart from works is a denial of the gospel.

Calvin especially had a developed doctrine of mystical union with Christ, and it was in fact central to his thought, linking justification and sanctification in an inseparable bond, as both depended on Christ and all his benefits.

I wonder what our Orthodox interlocutors would make of the following conclusion: From my perspective, both Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologies tend to collapse ontological and ethical categories—the East in a preference for good creation overwhelming sin, while the

21

West tilted toward confusing sin with creation.

It seems to me that the Pauline line of thought in particular presses us to distinguish ontological and ethical categories without either setting them in opposition or allowing one side to swallow the other whole. To be sure, God made the world and pronounced it good. Nothing evil can be attributed to nature as nature. And yet, Western theology is correct to recognize that sin has become an inherited part of human existence. By clearly distinguishing the ontological goodness of nature from the ethical depravity that makes the attainment of salvation impossible even for the most morally committed, one is able to uphold the integrity of creation and its consummation on one hand while doing justice to the imputation of guilt that leads to death on the other. In this way, both a subtle form of Manichaeism on one hand and a subtle form of Semi-Pelagianism on the other can be avoided.

In The Philokalia, Clendenin recognizes “a very clear synergism or cooperation between 21 the grace of God and human effort.” But Clendenin simply takes this as a restatement of James: “Thus, faith without works and works 22 without faith are equally rejected.” A further concession is made, one that could easily be made by an Arminian Protestant who shares the Orthodox understanding of synergism (i.e., regeneration as the fruit of free will’s cooperation with grace): “The Orthodox emphasis on the importance of the human response toward the grace of God, which as the same time clearly rejects salvation by works, is a healthy synergistic antidote to any antinomian tendencies that might result from (distorted) juridical under23 standings of salvation.”

I include this because it seems to me that Clendenin’s approach is typical of many evangelical responses to both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. “Balance” would suggest neither Pelagian denial of grace nor what he calls an “antinomian” rejection of synergism.

However, this seems to me to be wrong on two counts. First, it is simplistic. Reformation theology emphasizes “the importance of the human response toward the grace of God” just as

22

vigorously as any, while denying what Clendenin regards as “a healthy synergistic antidote to any antinomian tendencies.” Synergism, in our reading of Scripture, is never healthy, and as an antidote to antinomian tendencies it can only prove to be a cure worse than the disease.

In fairness, Clendenin does encourage the Orthodox not to dismiss such biblical motifs as justification by faith as Augustinian corrup24 tions. However, to miss these biblical motifs is not merely to leave out a few pieces of the puzzle but is to make the puzzle into something else entirely. Orthodoxy has many healthy emphases, but its denial of the full seriousness of sin and its consequently high appreciation for the possibilities of free will keep it from recognizing the heart of the gospel.

SANCTIFICATION

I

f antinomianism is what one calls being freely justified (declared righteous, not made righteous) once and for all the moment one looks away from oneself to Christ and his merit as sufficient for all sins for all time, then I confess to being an antinomian.

But, of course, classic Reformation teaching has always affirmed sanctification—the process of being conformed to Christ’s likeness.

Reformation theology has drunk deeply from the same wisdom as the Christian East on this reality of the new creation and the renewal that even now is taking believers “from glory to glory.” But it has opposed every tendency to confuse justification and sanctification, rendering the former the goal of the latter rather than its basis.

John Meyendorff provides a helpful explanation of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis that, I would argue, can be understood in a manner consistent with evangelical theology: The man Jesus is God hypostatically, and, therefore, in Him there is a “communication” (perichoresis—circumincessio) of the “energies” divine and human. This “communication” also reaches those who are “in Christ.” But they, of course, are VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

human hypostases, and are united to God not hypostatically but only “by grace” or 25 “by energy.”

In fact, Meyendorff clearly distinguishes the Orthodox view from Pelagianism, but then he reiterates the synergistic perspective that remains at the heart of the debate between Reformation theology and its rivals: It is not through his own activity or “energy” that man can be deified—this would be Pelagianism—but by divine “energy,” to which his human activity is “obedient”; between the two there is a “synergy,” of which the relation of the two 26 energies in Christ is the ontological basis.

In spite of his repudiation of Pelagianism, Meyendorff confirms our suspicion that Orthodoxy reflects a Semi-Pelagian consensus. Although it will sound like a gross oversimplification, many of us will regard this as a difference—although an important one—of degree. To what extent can humans be said to contribute to their own salvation?

Pelagians answer, “Entirely”; Semi-Pelagians say, “In part.“ Neither of these answers, from a classic evangelical perspective, does justice to the biblical account of sin; nor does either give the comfort that is held out to us in “the good news.”

priesthood that could never and can never take away sin?

MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

The above excerpt is adapted from “Are Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism Compatible? No” by Michael Horton, taken from Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism Copyright © 2004 by James J. Stamoolis. Used by kind permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.

1 V. Palachovsky and C. Vogel, Sin in the Orthodox Church and in the Protestant Churches (n.p.: Desclee, 1960), 31, 35.

2 Cf. Saint Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh et al. (New York: Image Books, 1958), bk. 12, chs. 3–5.

3 Saint Augustine, bk. 13, chs. 13–16. See also Saint Augustine, Confessions, bk. 1, chap. 7; bk. 21, chap. 27.

4 Constantine N. Tsirpanlis, Introduction to Eastern Patristic Thought and Orthodox Theology (n.p.: Michael Glazier Books, 1990), 52.

5 Tsirpanlis, 145.

6 Tsirpanlis, 146.

7 See Richard Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1978).

8 Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology, trans. Keith Schram (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), 111–13.

9 Yannaras, 113.

10 Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” 544.

11 Irenaeus, 499.

12 Irenaeus, 500.

13 Cf. Meredith G. Kline, The Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963).

14 See Palachovsky and Vogel, 14.

CONCLUSION

T

he treasure that the church carries in earthen vessels is the gospel—the announcement that God has done for us in Christ that which we could never do for ourselves, even with his help. This is all we have at the end of the day, and without it our ancient pedigree and customs, liturgies and rites, ecclesiastical offices and powers, are worthless. Is it possible that Orthodoxy has, like the recipients of the epistle to the Hebrews, turned—even so soon—from the sufficiency of Christ and his eternal priesthood to return to the shadows of the law and its temporal MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

15 Palachovsky and Vogel, 16.

16 Constantine N. Callinikos, The Greek Orthodox Catechism: A Manual of Instruction on Faith, Morals and Worship (n.p.: Greek Archdiocese of No. and So. America, 1960), 31.

17 Palachovsky and Vogel, 47.

18 Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 122.

19 Clendenin, 123.

20 Clendenin 124.

21 Clendenin, 135. The Philokalia is a collection of texts written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition. First published in Greek in 1782 and translated into Slavonic and later into Russian, The Philokalia has exercised a greater influence than any book other than the Bible in the recent history of the Orthodox Church.

22 Clendenin, 136.

23 Clendenin, 158.

24 Clendenin, 158.

25 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), 164.

26 Meyendorff, 164.

23

by

illustration by

24

MICHAEL BROWN

ISABEL SELIGER

hy are people leaving Reformed churches for Eastern Orthodox churches? While there have always been some who have left Protestant churches to be received (chrismated) into Eastern Orthodoxy (EO), significant cultural differences have generally prevented it from being a significant draw to Protestant “searchers.” With the advent of a distinctly American flavor of EO found in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America and the Orthodox Church in America, and the influence of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, many are being drawn to EO who evidently had a limited familiarity and access before.

In the 1960s and ’70s, a large number of evangelicals left Campus Crusade for Christ and founded a movement called the New Covenant Apostolic Order. Those who belonged to this movement had spent significant time reading the early church fathers in an effort to discover the New Testament church. They came to the conclusion that EO was that church, and in coming years, large numbers of pastors and laypeople were received into that fellowship.

Peter Gillquist spearheaded a publishing effort to teach Protestants about EO, resulting in a steady stream of converts who now saw EO as a way to participate in an ancient faith without 1 the trappings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Generally, there are three categories of reasons why people join Eastern Orthodox churches: mystery, history, and beauty.

W

DRIFTING EAST A Pastoral Approach to Christians Considering Conversion

ATTRACTED TO MYSTERY O worship is described as participation in and expression of fundamental unknowable realities: the Trinity, the incarnation, Creation, 2 the sacraments, and the church. For many converts to EO, a main draw is the idea that EO worship (and even theological formulations) supremely reflects these mysteries, especially in contrast to Western Protestantism.

Many who have left for EO would say that the West is more focused on talking about God

E

25

rather than actually experiencing, loving, and serving him. They perceive a conflict between an attempt to define, explain, and codify God and to revel mystically in the unknown. Many EO convert stories highlight being carried away in some aspect of beauty, mystery, or experience, rather than having a question answered; they may speak less of finding some elusive answer in EO theology, and more of being soothed out of existential angst by the EO experience. They speak of being alive to possibility, of being lost in spectacle and grandeur as they see, hear, and touch, in contrast to the stagnancy they felt in a bland or shallow Western religious program.

They speak of finding the West’s dogmatic assertions unsatisfying and lacking, the product of callously spouted answers and touted systems that swallow up purity, piety, and humility.

MYSTERY: KNOWING THROUGH NOT KNOWING or EO, mystical experience is an ascent toward God—an experience that surpasses all human understanding, and an existential attitude that involves the whole being. One implication of this is that knowing begins in prayer, in liturgy, in sacraments, as opposed to starting with, as is said to characterize the Reformed and Western church, a preoccupation with mere rationalistic constructs.

Thus in EO, the beginning place of knowing is, ironically, in unknowing. Central to EO is the idea of apophaticism, a way of knowing in which one knows God primarily through mystical contemplation, rather than through positive propositions or intellectual activities. It is an emptying of the mind of logic and engaging in prayer in one’s ignorance. The goal is not knowledge but union with the Triune God, what EO calls deification. This negative way of apophaticism is the only way to open the door to a legitimate positive way of cataphaticism (a way of saying something positive about God). Denials, or negations, are the beginning point of EO theology, and everything else is God (as displayed by the negations of the central Athanasian Creed and

F

26

by descriptors of God, such as ineffable, incomprehensible, invisible, and inconceivable).

Protestants are said to give lip service to God’s incomprehensibility, but then they compromise it via their theological systems, confessions, and philosophies when they explain that which was just confessed as incomprehensible. Vladimir Lossky says: We must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, and inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically. Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other…there is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism….

Mysticism is…the perfecting and crown of 3 all theology: as theology par excellence.

SOME REFORMED THOUGHTS ON MYSTERY s human beings created in the image of God, we are more than thinking 4 beings. It would not surprise us that many of our friends attracted to EO will need more deliberate, patient, personal, holistic (body and soul) care. This is the care, after all, that the Father gives us. We can model and teach holistic piety in the way we 5 interact in church and in the world.

To provide this care would first be to ensure that our own local churches’ love and communion extend beyond the walls of the church on the Lord’s Day. Thoughtful, intentional, and sacrificial seeking to love and serve one another daily is our calling. The phrase “They will know we are Christians by our love” is not just a platitude but a calling, a privilege, a responsibility, a participation in the life of God and his people.

If we wish to minister most effectively to those believing that EO is a more desirable place to experience the mysteries of the Christian life,

A

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

then let us spend time with one another, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice, chasing after the wandering, binding up the wounded, bearing with one another, and by the Spirit serving and loving one another 6 as God the Father loves and serves us in Christ.

It behooves us to examine ourselves in light of God’s word to see if we sound like the noisy gongs 7 and clanging cymbals that lack love.

But alongside living in caring community and ministering to the whole person the entire week, it will likely be helpful to review and affirm some of our thoughts on the broad concept of “mystery,” including the following: • We, in fact, take pains to express the preponderance of mystery, as evidenced by the over twenty times we refer to it in the Belgic Confession, especially with regard to the Trinity, the incarnation, the church, the Lord’s Supper, God’s will, 8 election, and regeneration.

• The Holy Spirit shapes faith by institution and ritual, as well as by intellectual explanation and assent. The church is important for faith, life, practice, and piety; indeed, outside of her there is no salvation. The sacraments (at least the two instituted by Christ) are far more than bare signs but effectual means of grace. Extraordinary things are happening through ordinary means.

• The ecumenical creeds and confessions of the church are not merely lists of things to which we subscribe, but lively words forming our liturgical lives in union with our Triune God and his people. We stand before God in awe, and he dwells within us. We are not just talking about God, but we are talking to him and with him and because of him—given that in him we live and move and have our being, and the Spirit of Christ dwells within us.

• Though there is much to be recognized as mystery, there is much that the Lord MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

has revealed. Certainly there are things beyond our comprehension as finite creatures, but that does not undermine the fact that there are things we know and can know as God has revealed himself in nature, in his word, and in his Son. Scripture itself makes this distinction between the revealed and hidden things (Deut. 29:29). The incarnation, the reality of which is inaccessible to us in great and many ways, is that the Eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We only know in part, yes, but we do know! And while knowledge for knowledge’s sake may be problematic, and speculation is idolatrous, the Lord never prizes ignorance.

To say that we cannot know something fully is not to say that we do not know it 9 meaningfully or sufficiently. What God has said to us, we must learn.

HISTORY nother major contributing factor in Protestant conversion to EO is the allure of antiquity. EO claims to be the original Christian church founded by Jesus, with liturgy, doctrine, and government that has remained unchanged since the days of the apostles.

In the first place, EO contends that its worship has not changed since the days of the apostles.

They claim that the Divine Liturgy “was in practice right after the descent of the Holy Spirit th on the Disciples of Christ on the 50 day after 10 His Resurrection.” While they admit that the Divine Liturgy saw subsequent development and did not take its final form until the fourth century, they maintain that the basic structure of their worship has not changed since the early church. As one Orthodox monk put it, “You have to understand, the words we are saying in today’s liturgy are the same words that Christ was saying, the same words that saints from the first century, the second century, the third cen11 tury, the fourth century [were saying].” Unlike American evangelicalism that undergoes constant updates and changes in its musical and

A

27

liturgical styles, the Divine Liturgy appears to remain untouched by the passing fads and whims of popular culture.

Second, while EO describes itself more as a way of life than a system of belief, it nevertheless claims to represent the unbroken succession of apostolic Christianity in its doctrine, which is summarized in the seven Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 431, Chalcedon in 451, Constantinople in 553, Constantinople II in 681, and Nicaea II in 787) 12 and their respective creeds and canons. For the Orthodox Church, these ecumenical councils constitute its confession. In addition to the seven ecumenical councils, EO recognizes as authoritative the writings of the early church fathers.

This is “for guidance in questions of faith, for the correct understanding of Sacred Scripture, and in order to distinguish the authentic Tradition of 13 the Church from false teachings.”

Finally, EO offers connectivity to the ancient church in its government through its claim of an unbroken succession from the apostles to the current bishops of the Orthodox Church.

EO has three tiers of church hierarchy in its government: bishops, presbyters, and deacons.

These offices, EO claims, have direct lineage to the apostles—that is, the men who serve in these offices today were ordained by men who were ordained by men (and so on), all the way back to the apostles. Without this apostolic succession, says Orthodoxy, a church is not a true church: “The succession from the Apostles and the uninterruptedness of the episcopacy comprise one of the essential sides of the Church. And, on the contrary: the absence of the succession of the episcopacy in one or another Christian denomination deprives it of an attribute of the true Church, even if in it there is present an 14 undistorted dogmatic teaching.”

A CRITIQUE OF ORTHODOXY’S HISTORICAL CLAIMS

I 28

s it true that EO represents the unbroken chain of apostolic Christianity in its worship, doctrine, and government? How should

we as Reformed Christians respond to these claims? The notion that the Divine Liturgy has been in place since the days of the apostles is misleading and grossly oversimplified. The nearest example in the New Testament of an apostolic liturgy is found in Acts 2.42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” But this, of course, is not a liturgy; rather, it describes the four main elements present in the weekly worship of the apostolic church: word, fellowship, sacraments, and the prayers (which include the singing of Psalms and hymns). Likewise, the most reliable documents from the post-apostolic early church, such as the Didache (c. second century) and Justin Martyr’s First Apology (c. 155–157), provide us with evidence that worship in the ancient church consisted of Scripture reading, preaching, singing, the Lord’s Prayer, and weekly Communion. These, however, show no signs of looking identical to the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church. In fact, the oldest surviving liturgy in use by EO today is the “Liturgy of St. James,” which dates no earlier than the fourth century. EO’s claim that its liturgy has remained unchanged since the days of the apostles is unsubstantiated and overstated.

Turning to EO’s claim to represent the unbroken chain of apostolic doctrine, we make two brief observations. First, EO’s claim works only if one accepts the Orthodox notion of the church’s infallibility and, specifically, that the canons and decrees of the ecumenical councils 15 are infallible. If the canons and decrees of the ecumenical councils are infallible, as EO claims, then they possess the same weight and authority as Scripture. On the other hand, if the church and its various councils are fallible, then it is possible that the church has erred in its rulings from time to time since the days of the apostles.

We believe, as the Westminster Confession of Faith states, that “all synods or councils, since the Apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or prac16 tice; but to be used as a help in both.”

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

The true apostolic succession is not one of men but of apostolic ministry— ministry of the word of God, which alone is the final authority for the Christian’s faith and life.

Second, we point out that essential Christian doctrine is not limited to the seven ecumenical councils of the ancient church. While we agree that there exists a “catholic consciousness” in the ancient creeds, confirming “a number of the fundamental truths” of Christianity, we also recognize that the history of the Christian church continued after the eighth century, giving rise to crucial questions and debates that required more clarity than the canons and decrees of the ecumenical councils provide.

Finally, we respond briefly to EO’s claim to apostolic succession in its government—that is, that their current bishops have a direct lineage to the apostles. While such a claim is in itself dubious, even if it could be proven, it is no ground for the believer’s confidence that EO has preserved the truth over the past two mil17 lennia. As Michael Horton states, Orthodoxy’s appeal to a direct line to the apostles is surely no greater ground for confidence than that which the Galatian churches could have claimed. Yet they were wrong. It is on the basis of the apostle’s own rebukes that we know they were wrong, and that their lofty place in the history of the church could not save them 18 from the apostle’s anathema.

In other words, if the apostolic church itself was fraught with problems and sometimes deviated from the truth, how does EO’s claim to apostolic succession of its bishops give us confidence that the truth has been preserved pristinely over the centuries? The true apostolic succession is not one of men but of apostolic ministry—ministry of the word of God, which alone is the final authority for the Christian’s faith and life.

The treasure that the church carries in earthen vessels is the gospel—the announcement that God has done for us in Christ that which we could never do for ourselves, even with his help. This is all we have at the end of the day, and without it our ancient pedigree and customs, liturgies

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

29

I L L U S T R AT I O N / P H O T O B Y N A M E H E R E

Beauty is therefore pursued not simply for subjective experiences of delight, but because to gaze upon beauty is to gaze upon God’s own beauty revealed in creation.

30

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

and rites, ecclesiastical offices and powers, are worthless.19 It is not upon an apostolic succession of men that Christ has built his church, but upon the gospel that the apostles proclaimed.

BEAUTY eauty is another category that has been a factor in people’s embrace of EO. Some conver ts to EO have become frustrated with the lack of beauty in many Protestant worship services. For example, note the following:

B

I never understood why Old Testament worship utilized all the senses, and then suddenly we get a new and better covenant (Heb. 8:6) and switch to plain white walls free of any symbolism. Orthodox people taste, touch, see, hear, and smell virtually everything! Orthodoxy is exceedingly beautiful. Worship is beautiful in Orthodoxy, as it should be. And every detail of worship is carefully designed for the honor and glory of God—from the way we sing to the images that adorn our walls to the vestments of the 20 clergy.

Since a hallmark of Reformed churches since the Reformation has been simplicity of worship, and since Reformed church décor is often designed to minimize distraction from the preached word, converts like the one just cited describe their transition as one from worship that is ugly and bland to worship that is beautiful and vibrant.

HOW EO APPEARS TO PROVIDE BEAUTY ne reason EO has such a sensory approach to worship is because it emphasizes both ontology and eschatology when describing beauty. First of all, ontology (i.e., being, existence) comes into play in the belief that the cosmos is designed to reflect God’s own beauty. EO theologian Andrew

O

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Louth explains: “We see a created order of beings both visible and invisible, a creation which, because created out of nothing, manifests nothing but God himself, for the whole created order is to be seen as a theophany, a manifestation of 21 God, indeed a manifestation of God’s beauty.”

Beauty is therefore pursued not simply for subjective experiences of delight, but because to gaze upon beauty is to gaze upon God’s own beauty revealed in creation. Indeed, the very layout of EO worship spaces is intended to be a model or 22 reflection of the entire cosmos.

Second, eschatology comes into play as the beauty of worship especially reflects God’s revelation of beauty as it exists in the eschaton.

The idea of the age to come breaking in on the present age is not a category wholly foreign to Reformed theology. After all, we regularly speak of the already/not-yet and recognize the in-breaking of the kingdom of God in Jesus’ 23 miracles. Orthodoxy, however, tends toward an over-realized eschatology, attempting to pull more and more of the age to come into the present in worship. Furthermore, this eschatological distinction is even conceived in terms of an ontological or metaphysical movement toward 24 “being.” For example, Leonid Ouspensky, a famous Russian Orthodox iconographer, speaks of those in glory (the saints) as more fully human than sinners because they have “put on the incorruptible beauty of the kingdom of God.” He continues: For this reason beauty, as it is understood by the Orthodox Church, is not the characteristic beauty of a creature. It is a part of the life to come, when God will be all in all.…

For the church…the value and beauty of the visible world lie not in the temporary splendor of its present state, but in its potential transformation, realized by humans. In other words, true beauty is the radiance of the Holy Spirit, the holiness of and partici25 pation in the life of the world to come.

Again, there is validity in speaking of the glory of the age to come breaking in on the present, but glorification is not the same as Plato’s pure

31

being. The beauty of the age to come is consummate beauty, to be sure, but EO’s handling of this beauty using the language of being and ontology ups the ante, as it were, concerning what happens in worship. If in worship the worshipper experiences nothing less than the age to come manifesting a beauty that is more real than the present, then it is no wonder that worship is so geared toward sensory experience.

BEAUTY IN SCRIPTURE AND THE REFORMATION cripture speaks regularly of beauty, although it does not do so in a philosophical and analytic direction.

“Instead the biblical writers are content with beauty as a general artistic quality denoting the positive response of a person 26 to nature, a person or an artifact.” It is true that God’s creation is beautiful; the fruit of the tree was “a delight to the eyes” (Gen 3:6) and the various results of God’s creative acts were declared “good” or “very good.” And the beauty of this world does seem to direct our attention to a “beauty that is more permanent and tran27 scendent than anything this life can give.” Yet beauty in Scripture is not only an aesthetic quality but also a spiritual response to the beauty of God. It is also true that Scripture does describe God himself as beautiful. David desires to enter God’s presence to “behold the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4). The psalmist notes that God made the heavens and that “splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary” (Ps. 96:6). But it is noteworthy that, in the Old Testament, beauty is frequently used as a synonym for glory, majesty, splendor, and 28 pleasantness. Yahweh in his glory and Jesus in his transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36; cf. 2 Pet. 1:16–17) and his appearance among the seven lamp stands (Rev. 1:12–16) equally depict the beauty of God’s 29 holy array. Thus, while beauty is predicated on God and while there is an appropriateness to speaking of his beauty in aesthetic terms, the ontological and eschatological language

S

32

used in EO descriptions of beauty seems to go beyond Scripture’s intent, reflecting ideas more Platonic than biblical. Nevertheless, the Bible assumes that beauty is praiseworthy and good, that beauty found in this world is a reflection of God’s perfect beauty, and the artisanship found throughout Scripture’s pages is even attributed to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (e.g., Exod.

31:1–11). The pursuit of and delight in beauty by humans should be seen as a natural outworking of this very truth.

Is the character of EO worship truly beautiful vis-à-vis Protestant worship? No. The only way converts can downplay the beauty of Protestant worship is by judging Protestant worship by one’s tastes for Byzantine artistic culture. Though some claim that the simplicity of Protestant worship is “boring” (i.e., lacking beauty/aesthetics and so on), Darryl Hart and John Muether offer an important response: “The real question…is… how did Reformed and Presbyterian churches come to a point where members sometimes perceive preaching, the sacraments, prayer, song, 30 Bible reading, and benedictions as boring?”

Indeed, how did they? We suggest that the problem is not with Protestant worship but with the overly narrow tastes that have been cultivated by converts to EO. A scenario, offered by John Witvliet, is illustrative: On a Sunday in Advent, the Kyrie and Gloria are sung by a choir of developmentally and physically disabled children. The Old Testament lectionary reading is from Isaiah 35. Their singing, by any standard measure, lacks aesthetic integrity—it is unrhythmic and out of tune. Yet here a powerful symbiosis of social factors (personal knowledge of individual choristers) and theological factors (the vivid and hopefilled eschatological theme of Isaiah 35) transform the aesthetic dimension of the choir’s contribution into a rich, kingdom31 oriented liturgical experience.

There are indeed times when Protestant worship is done sloppily and lazily. But it is crucial to remember that the broken and contrite heart VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

E X I T T O EAST E R N O RT H O D OX Y

I

grew up in a fundamentalist “Bible church” that loved God and had a clear desire to serve him, but I questioned why my church was so isolated from other Christians. By the time I graduated from high school, I found something in the more historical faith of Reformed Presbyterianism, but I still wondered what exactly transpired between the first century AD and 1517.

During my first year of college, I attended a Reformed Church on Sunday mornings and a Roman Catholic Church on Sunday evenings. My theology was still Reformed, but I longed for rich, liturgical worship saturated in Scripture. A year later, I encountered Eastern Orthodoxy and knew immediately that was where I belonged. General dissatisfaction with evangelicalism led me to search for the historic church of liturgy and sacraments.

And while Reformed Christianity sometimes has these elements, I found the

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

fullness of them only within the Orthodox Church.

Protestantism’s narrative of church history left me dissatisfied. In particular, what happened between the first-century church and the dawn of the Reformation? Evangelicals essentially told me that the Christian church fell into heresy right away and did not recover until years later when Martin Luther rescued the faith from the hands of Roman Catholicism. Although Reformed thinking is more generous to the early church, it still takes significant pause at what transpired between Jerusalem and Geneva.

Orthodoxy claims that the church has been here all along, unchanged, and still relevant. Orthodoxy is both “right belief” and “right worship” in the context of apostolic succession.

In other words, someone has to preserve the faith (duly ordained bishops), and the right faith must be preserved (Orthodoxy).

Christ promised to build

his church (singular), “and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Evangelical and Reformed Christianity left me dissatisfied by their liturgy.

All churches inescapably have a liturgy, but many evangelicals say that formal liturgical worship is “canned,” “dry,” or pharisaical. The Orthodox Church worships together in beauty and holiness, and I was drawn to it. Because liturgy is rooted in the incarnation, we worship God with our whole being: body, mind, and soul.

Anyone who has attended an Orthodox service can speak of the holistic worship: incense, icons, vestments, chants, and prostrations.

Finally, evangelicalism left me dissatisfied by its sacraments where there is little to no recognition of the elements as physical vehicles of grace, and Communion is celebrated more as a memorial service than as the life-giving bread and wine. Orthodoxy

BY ALISON SAILER

understands that all of life is a sacrament in Christ who fills life itself with the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy is centered on one sacrament, “the Eucharist,” which is the “sacrament of sacraments” and the heavenly banquet of the kingdom of God. In Holy Communion we partake of the body and blood of Christ, the Eternal Passover Lamb who makes us alive and holy with himself. This is why we worship, and this is why I transitioned from evangelicalism into the fullness of the faith of Christian Orthodoxy.

ALISON SAILER is a board certified music therapist practicing in South Florida.

She attends Saint Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church in Lake Worth.

This article originally appeared in the March/ April 2012 issue of Modern Reformation.

33

renders something to God in worship more beautiful than any external adornments that meet any number of cultural aesthetic norms.

A KINDER, GENTLER GOSPEL? rthodox converts regularly speak of a fuller, broader understanding of the gospel in Orthodoxy than is typically believed and taught in Protestant churches. Protestants are accused of “gospel reductionism”:

O

In the Holy Scripture and in the Holy Fathers salvation is a grand accomplishment with innumerable facets, a great and expansive deliverance of humanity from all of its enemies: sin, condemnation, the wrath of God, the devil and his demons, the world, and ultimately death. In Protestant teaching and practice, salvation is essen32 tially a deliverance from the wrath of God. Some Orthodox converts say that as a result of this broader understanding, they experience an increased joy in their salvation, draw greater encouragement from it, and find more gospel power for holy living. This better experience is a result, they may argue, of Orthodoxy subjugating the primary, dominant salvific image in Protestantism (i.e., the Divine Judge acquitting criminals in the courtroom) to the image of the divine doctor healing the sick in the hospital. This offers some degree of relief from the angst of what they would probably characterize as an errant or imbalanced understanding of God’s wrath.

We readily admit that the proclamation of these broader elements of redemption may be inappropriately neglected, not only in churches that indeed have a narrow view of gospel blessings, but even in churches that explicitly confess a rich and broad understanding of the gospel. Preaching and liturgy absent of communicating the Lord’s victory through Christ over all of humanity’s enemies is surely deficient, and we do well to be self-critical if we have lapsed into such an imbalance. Rounded preaching and worship includes the gospel

34

themes of restoration from ruin, repair of brokenness, victory over Satan, glorification, and the like. And certainly there can be too much law and not enough gospel in our liturgy and preaching, distorting our people’s understanding of God’s character.

It seems, however, that the substantive disagreement here is not over how broad a range of gospel blessings are believed and taught, but over the doctrine of justification itself, and most of all whether that doctrine’s basic “courtroom model” elements should have a primary role in the communication of the broad gospel blessings. We are compelled to answer this question by asking: In what framework and model, and in what balance or emphasis, do the Scriptures communicate the fullness of gospel blessings?

Not without other frameworks, yes, but the Scriptures in fact weigh heavily toward the image of the Divine Judge acquitting criminals in the courtroom. This is the image that permeates Scripture: sin as the cause of the wrathful curse, and of Christ who comes to die to atone for the debt of that sin. The Lord levies the horrific curse in the garden in direct response to man’s idolatry and straightaway announces the bruising of the Seed for the crushing of the Serpent; his law at Sinai even anticipates Israel’s unthinkable gross apostasy for which he will drive them into onerous exile, and institutes the sacrificial system where only smelly, bloody slaughter brings forgiveness; his prophets explain at great length the gross sin of the people as the cause of his severe judgments, and that their only hope for reconciliation will come through the unjust spurning, crushing of an obedient Son; Jesus himself speaks forcefully of the wrath to come, and in the gospels increasingly reveals the driving purpose of his death, to pay the ransom debt; and, of course, Paul directly systematizes the longstanding justification theme.

So if what attracts someone to Orthodoxy is that the chief biblical structure of the gospel’s communication is relegated to the back burner, such that the discomforts inevitably caused by the chief structure get muted, the existential relief may be delightful, but it is, to use the VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

metaphor from C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, Turkish delight. 33 Christians can and should learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable: It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust….For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. (Lam. 3:26–33)

Rounded preaching and worship includes the gospel themes of restoration from ruin, repair of brokenness, victory over Satan, glorification, and the like.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

As we ought regularly to struggle with and feel some angst about our violations of God’s law (“a sense of this corruption should make believers often to sigh, desiring to be delivered from this 34 body of death” ), we flee to the atoning suffering and death of Christ. This is a salve that is, let us admit, unsettling but also beautiful.

Practically, we are concerned that when professing Christians flee to EO for a kinder, gentler gospel, some take that path to evade accepting and confronting the horrific nature and extent of their sin, and thereby cultivating a godly sorrow for it that leads to repentance. This path was opened to them, and such a journey was encouraged in the Protestant churches they have left. They may try to quiet the law working on their conscience with EO religious exercises and a gospel easier on the ears. Ironically, then, this Orthodox critique of Protestantism’s supposed gospel reductionism is akin to the modern evangelical church’s pragmatism or its penchant to adapt theology and practice primarily for its value to fulfill people’s emotional, social, or other perceived needs.

It is also worth offering some counsel to those who (probably rooted intellectually in the problem of evil and/or emotionally in personal experience of abuse at the hands of sinful authority) are anxious about the biblical God of wrath. Let us remember that the Lord, given all we know about him, is worthy of our confidence in his justice. He gave us his own Son, and

35

so though we may have some questions about him and may at times be intimidated by him, we have beheld enough of his love, peace, and glory, to worship him, sense his love, and know that one day we will enjoy full, soulful, peaceful resonance with him.

HOW TO TALK TO THOSE CONSIDERING EASTERN ORTHODOXY irst, of paramount importance, while communicating with those in our care who are anywhere along a road considering EO, let us maintain intellectual honesty and humility. We should feel free to admit the foreignness of Orthodoxy to many of us rather than presuming (under pressure) to speak hastily to it.

Those promoting Orthodoxy pounce on obvious mischaracterizations of their faith made by their critics (e.g., when we conflate Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism), and we easily lose credibility if we also become guilty of mischaracterization. We expect that in the long term, the care we take in patiently responding to them may be every bit as important as the substance of our answers to EO claims. We should try to slow everyone down.

One man in our churches who left for EO was introduced to it, “studied the matter on the internet for three months,” and then left his Reformed church of over ten years (without any discussion or indication of such a move to any pastor or elder). Not only should this man be told that he moved hastily, but we ourselves should model for him and others a slow, careful, and thoughtful approach.

Second, let us be sensitive to the difficult life situations of those who are considering EO. It is quite possible that in someone’s home life or in their church life they have become restless for reasons technically unrelated to the differences between EO and confessional Protestantism. One man’s brash and offensive character traced to his tremendously traumatic life seems to have made him a religious vagabond (EO may prove only to be a comfortable stop along the road). In other cases, however,

F

36

peoples’ troubles rub up against the edges of Reformed doctrine. There was a man in one of our churches who was tormented by the Reformed conception of God’s sovereignty because of the suffering of a family member.

Somehow, he found relief on this point in EO. In either situation, our normal work of loving counseling and discipline, rebuking and comforting must be renewed so that, as much as depends on us, the sheep do not compound their sins with false religion or wander elsewhere for false comforts.

Third, put together a short list of talking points or questions about the core differences between the Reformed faith and EO that can structure otherwise open conversations with our members about Orthodoxy. It is more important to discuss sola scriptura versus conciliar infallibility, or iconoclasm versus the mandatory use of icons, than it is to get lost in discussions about every jot and tittle of EO tradition. And through these discussions, we do well to be patient and understanding (though also firm), as opposed to being primarily adversarial.

Finally, while the person remains a member of one of our local churches—if they are exploring EO, reading, even attending an occasional service—patience on our part is an excellent virtue to exercise. As long as a person is not given over to promoting beliefs and practices inconsistent with their Reformed profession, let us seek to extend as much latitude as possible. There is a difference between someone who is genuinely curious and needs to think through new challenges to their profession without us standing over them and inquiring at every turn, and someone who is spreading newfound Orthodox convictions on their social media page. In the latter case, admonition and discipline must be considered.

MICHAEL BROWN is pastor of Christ United Reformed Church in Santee, California.

This is an abridged adaptation of Rev. Brown’s report to the United Reformed Church of North America’s Study Committee on Eastern Orthodoxy and is reprinted here by kind permission of the author.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

1 Peter Gillquist writes of his conversion in Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith, rev. ed. (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 2010), and shares the conversion stories of eighteen Protestant pastors in Coming Home: Why Protestant Clergy are Becoming Orthodox, 2nd ed. (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 1995).

2 Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 1.

3 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 8–9.

4 For a useful discussion the breadth of the human person, a breadth that goes beyond “cognitivist approaches” that reduce man to merely a thinking being, see James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009). In places, Smith sounds as if he is minimizing the importance of knowledge and cognition, but this is not his intent.

5 Those who believe the Reformation to be exclusively cerebral seem to have paid insufficient attention to the Puritans whose writings evidence a thorough and careful theology wedded to a deep and passionate piety and experience of faith. For a useful introduction to Puritan writers, see Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006). Also, Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012).

6 Daily household devotional reading and prayer, the regular exercise of hospitality, and the development of local/regional household prayer and fellowship gatherings would be ways to serve these purposes.

7 Wilhelmus à Brakel’s words on humility, meekness, and peaceableness are commendable as we seek to avoid the pride and arrogance that is often more true of us than we wish to admit. Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans.

Bartel Elshout (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1995), 4:67–101.

8 There is particular (and catholic) reflection on our experience of that mystery, as represented by John Owen’s Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Works 2:1–274), and applied in Sinclair B. Ferguson’s The Trinitarian Devotion of John Owen (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2014).

9 See Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003). As this unknowable/knowable discussion applies to the essence/energies distinction, consider Michael Horton’s adaptations in The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 129–31, 159– 60, 612–13, and critical interactions with them; for example, Ryan M. McGraw, “Shifting Paradigms in Reformed Systematic Theology: A Review Article of Michael Horton’s The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way,” Puritan Reformed Journal 5:2 (July 2013): 250–54.

10 This is according to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. See George Mastrantonis, “Introduction to the Divine Liturgy,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, accessed March 10, 2016, http:// www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7117.

11 Harry Radliffe and Michael Karzis, “Mt. Athos: A Visit to the Holy Mountain,” 60 Minutes, May 22, 2011, accessed March 10, 2016, http:// www.cbsnews.com/news/mt-athos-a-visit-to-the-holy-mountain.

12 “Many misunderstandings and prejudices concerning the Orthodox Church thus go back to a wrong approach as students try to form, merely with the help of sources and scholarship, a picture of Orthodoxy, which is not really doctrine but a way of life, with its own system-related criteria and thought forms.” Anastasios Kallis, “Orthodox Church,” in Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 3:866–68.

13 Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983), 43. See also Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1969), 22, who states that the Orthodox Church possesses a “Patristic mind” that considers “the Fathers . . . as living witnesses and contemporaries.”

14 Pomazansky, Dogmatic Theology, 257–58. Pomazansky adds, “The Apostles established in the Church the Grace-given succession of the episcopate, and through it the succession of the whole Grace-given ministry of the Church hierarchy, which is called to be stewards of the Mysteries of God, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 4:1,” in Pomazansky, Dogmatic Theology, 247.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

15 For more on EO’s claim that the canons and decrees of the ecumenical councils are infallible, see Pomazansky, Dogmatic Theology, 29­–49, and The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895.

16 Westminster Confession of Faith, 31.4.

17 The claim itself is dubious, given both the history of Orthodoxy and its ecclesiastical structure. As Robert Letham observes, “The Eastern church in the Byzantine Empire had no systematic ecclesiology. Unlike the West, there was no coherent body of canon law, due to the fact that the Byzantines never considered the church in a juridical manner.” See Robert Letham, Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2007), 121. Throughout much of the Byzantine Empire (c. 330–1453), the Orthodox Church was not held together by a magisterium and final authority, as was the Western Church with its College of Cardinals and Papacy in Rome. Not only did its center shift to Moscow from Constantinople, which fell to the Turks in 1453, but under the pressure and persecution of Islam since the seventh century, the Orthodox Church gradually dispersed into a monastic movement of ascetics, mystics, hermits, and recluses. While this does not disprove EO’s claim to apostolic succession, it does seem to make the claim more difficult to prove than the similar claim of Rome, which has, for the most part, remained seated in one place for two thousand years and developed a highly structured ecclesiology.

18 Michael Horton, “Are Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism Compatible? No: An Evangelical Perspective,” in Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism, ed. James Stamoolis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 142.

19 Horton, “Are Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism Compatible?,” 142–43.

20 Jamey Bennett, “Liturgy, Sacraments, and All That Jazz: Ten Reasons I Joined the Orthodox Church,” Journey to Orthodoxy (blog), September 30, 2013, http://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2013/09/ liturgy-sacraments-all-that-jazz-ten-reasons-i-joined-the-orthodox-church.

21 Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 66.

22 Louth, Eastern Orthodox Theology, 133–34.

23 See Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, ed. Raymond O. Zorn, trans. H. de Jongste (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), 65–70; Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (1948; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975), 386.

24 These are metaphysical matters that can get complicated, but for a description of the details, see Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 20–45. This is a chapter titled “Eschatology after Nietzsche.”

25 Leonid Ouspensky, “The Meaning and Content of the Icon,” in Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Daniel Clendenin, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 42.

26 “Beauty,” in Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1998), 82.

27 “Beauty,” 85.

28 See Edmund Clowney, “Living Art: Christian Experience and the Arts,” in God and Culture: Essays in Honor of Carl F. H. Henry, ed.

D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 240.

29 Clowney, “Living Art,” 246.

30 D. G. Hart and John R. Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 115.

31 John D. Witvliet, “Toward a Liturgical Aesthetic: An Interdisciplinary Review of Aesthetic Theory,” Liturgy Digest 3, no. 1 (1996): 76.

32 Josiah Trenham, Rock and Sand: An Orthodox Appraisal of the Protestant Reformers and Their Teachings (Columbia, MO: New Rome Press, 2015), 288. As an aside, Father Trenham is a convert from the Reformation to EO; he is a former PCA minister and alumnus of Westminster Seminary California.

33 C. S. Lewis used the confection Turkish delight as a metaphor for sin and temptation in The Chronicles of Narnia. See C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

34 Belgic Confession of Faith, art. 15 (regarding original sin).

37

CYRIL LUCARIS

R E F O R M E R F O R G O T T E N T H E 38

T

The medieval historian Steven Runciman once quipped, “Of all the roads that a historian may tread none passes through more difficult country than that of a religious historian.” If he’s correct, then the controversial terrain of Greek reformer, writer, and eventual patriarch Cyril Lucaris (1570–1638) is a most treacherous bog for us to enter. Yet enter we must, for the life and times of Lucaris deliver all the intrigue of a le Carré novel and the passion of a Kennedy speech—moreover, this saint’s life offers a salutary reminder of the costs of the gospel and the travails of Christ’s bride.

Lucaris was born to Greek parents on the Mediterranean isle of Crete, which was under the auspices of the mercantile republic of Venice yet always aware that on the horizon loomed a grave threat: the Ottoman Turks. With the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the rise of the Ottoman Empire heralded the emergence of an Islamic power in a former hub of Christianity.

Combined with the sixteenth-century tumult of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Lucaris’s lifetime was a hubbub of theological and political strife—in which he stood squarely in the middle.

by

illustration by

JOHN STOVALL

MLC

From an early age, he was rescued from a life of poverty via the benefits of patronage and connection and given access to wealth and education in the entrepôt of Venice. Here, he learned Greek, Latin, Italian, and theology.

More significant than expert tutelage and guides, however, were the prestige, presence, and patronage of his uncle, Meletios Pegas (1549–1601). Pegas, who would eventually rise to the patriarchate of Alexandria, did not simply provide support for Lucaris as a blood relative; he molded the precocious young man into his protégé. Pegas was a critical contact in the formation of young Lucaris, responsible for his rise through the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Church. The training Lucaris received at the university, combined with his family connections, made him an ideal candidate to move within Greek, Catholic, and Protestant circles.

As a preacher, his sermons were filled with biblical quotations, classical allusions, and humanist references. In short, Lucaris was able to bridge the gap between the Greek and Latin streams of Christianity—quoting from the Cappadocian fathers, while dripping sweet words from Augustine, all wrapped in burnished rhetoric and impervious logic.

Beginning in 1590 with his establishment to the Alexandrine see, Pegas asked for his nephew to come from Italy to work in Egypt. By the age of twenty-three, Lucaris was ordained as a priest and subsequently sent to Poland, where we find our man joined in the heat of confessional battle for the existence of the Orthodox community.

While he is most known in Western circles for his later anti-Catholic animus, Lucaris first encountered the assiduous energy of Jesuit educators and papal power as a liaison between the Greek faithful in the Ottoman Empire and Orthodox bishops in Poland and Lithuania. In Poland and the Ukraine, Lucaris was forced to watch as a (slight) majority of bishops committed the Orthodox Church to a merger with Rome—concluding the Union of Brest in 1596.

Lucaris then became one of the allies of those Orthodox believers who refused to submit to the authority of this council, teaching and educating across Eastern Europe while under threat of

40

Lucaris was able to bridge the gap between the Greek and Latin streams of Christianity—quoting from the Cappadocian fathers, while dripping sweet words from Augustine, all wrapped in burnished rhetoric and impervious logic.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

41

expulsion. It was here that he first encountered Lutheran divines, who began to plant the idea in him of a union between the Lutheran and Greek churches—a long-sought dream of the Lutherans.

Yet, after his time in Poland, Lucaris had to rush back to Alexandria. His uncle Pegas was dying and wanted his nephew to replace him in the high office of patriarch of Alexandria. Soon, Lucaris was within the inner circles of Orthodox ecclesiastics, where he would stay until elevated to the first rank of patriarch of Constantinople in 1620. While in Egypt, Lucaris cemented his second key relationship (after his uncle) when he met Cornelius Haga—the Dutch ambassador to the Ottomans—who would become a close friend. Haga spawned in the belletristic Lucaris a European-wide network of contacts that would endure until Lucaris’s death in 1638. For the intellectual Lucaris, Haga encouraged connections with Dutch theologians (Jan Uytenbogaert and David le Leu de Wilhelm) and gave the patriarch his first taste of the writings of John Calvin.

Haga also supplied the financial means to Lucaris’s desires for reform of the Greek

POLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (a land united by marriage since 1386 and enduring until 1795) was a polyglot land and the largest nation in sixteenthcentury Europe.

Economically powerful yet politically divided among landed magnates and home to Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Muslim subjects, the Commonwealth was the playground for inspired Reformers (such as Jan á Lasco), avaricious merchants, and jumped-up warlords alike. For a superb treatment of life and religion in the pluralistic society of the Commonwealth, see David Frick’s Kith, Kin, and Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in SeventeenthCentury Wilno (Cornell University Press, 2013).

42

Church—and reform was needed, on a host of levels, ranging from dilapidated churches to illiterate priests. The only problem was that the Greek Church was not its own master. Since the fall of the Byzantine commonwealth in 1453, it had been governed by Islamic jurisprudence of the Ottoman Turks. While the branch of Islamic law used by the Ottomans was the more tolerant Hanafi School, the status of the Greek Christians was precarious at best. We might hear this and tremble for the welfare of Christians living under Islam, but ironically, the minority position of the Greek Orthodox made them an irresistible commodity for all foreign powers. For if the English or the French could capture the allegiance of Lucaris and this fifth column within the Ottoman lands, then perhaps they could instigate an uprising against Islamic overlords; failing that, at least they could gain a religious triumph to show the progress of Rome or Canterbury.

Recent work on the reliability of Lucaris’s writings has enriched our grasp of his mindset. He was not solely focused on high matters of Reformed theology. Rather, his life’s work was more mundane and penultimate: crushing the threat of a Catholic Poland through an ambitious plan to forge an alliance between Russia, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire for a common offensive against Poland. For a small taste of his vitriol against the Catholic Church, we note how he labeled himself in one letter to Dutch politicians, “the horror of your adversaries.” He detested “the dogmas of the Roman church because they are false.” This grand plan, if accomplished, would have completely changed the religion and politics of Europe, which was one of the major reasons Lucaris became a political persona and a household name in all European courts.

The hurricane of activity that Lucaris brought to all he did—whether penning missives to Moscow or outmaneuvering the Jesuits— displayed a mind and a man committed to his work and sure of its success. Beyond the political machinations, Lucaris is most known to us as a theological and educational reformer, aghast at the dilapidated state of the Greek Church, who attempted immediate renovation. Taking his VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

UNION OF BREST Since the eleventh-century schism between the Latin and Greek wings of Christianity, attempts to reunite the two branches have sparked—briefly flaming brilliantly but invariably burning out after a time.

In the last decades of the sixteenth century, the religious cauldron in the Ukraine gave rise to yet another call for reunion. While individual Orthodox nobles (such as Konstantin Ostrogsky) wanted to maintain traditional links to Byzantine and Greek rites, most of the Ukrainian and Ruthenian bishops nursed grievances over their treatment by fellow Orthodox believers—notably at the rapacious visits from Greek lands, which seemed to always demand money and never offered to rebuild churches or fight against the heresy of Protestantism.

The only solution appeared to be the nuclear one: create a united church with Rome. On December 23, 1595, after bitter debate, the Greek Catholic (or Uniate) Church was born via papal decree. Significantly, the papal legates included the filioque clause in the documents of union but did not require its recitation in Uniate churches, and bishops retained the right to appoint their own clergy.

While the majority of bishops in Ukraine wanted union, the common folk generally split along geographical lines; those in western Ukraine tended toward a pro-Rome stance and those in the east against union.

cues from Genevan pastors (such as Antoine Leger) and Dutch ambassadors (Cornelis Haga), Lucaris set about translating the New Testament from its first-century koinê Greek into seventeenth-century Greek vernacular.

His plan to reform the Greek Church was conjoined with politics. Not only did he move to install the first Modern Greek printing press in Istanbul (which was subsequently destroyed after a French spy warned the Ottoman authorities), but he also drew up the fateful document that would endear him to history: a confession of faith filled with robust statements on the nature of justification by faith alone, a solid predestinarian streak, and a constant stress on the need to return to the word of God as the only norming MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

norm for faith and practice. Indeed, such was Lucaris’s commitment to Reformation teaching that he was willing to “die as an Orthodox Catholic, faithful to Evangelical doctrine and to the Belgic Confession.”

Ever since its Latin publication in 1629, Lucaris’s Confession has sparked debate over its legitimacy, intent, and purpose. Did he actually write it? Some doubts were spawned by its late appearance in Greek (1633), for if he penned it, wouldn’t he have written in Greek first?

Instead, the timing of the confession’s publication worked in the favor of Lucaris’s Dutch and English allies, who were able to use this blast from the East in their unceasing conflict with the Habsburgs in Germany.

Therefore, while Lucaris’s authorship of his confession is now a consensus view (since he never denied it), it is likely that the original publication was planned for foreign political benefit—not for his own domestic plans or even for a Greek Reformation. As sometimes occurs in this present age, the intersection of politics and theology does not always benefit the ordinary church-goer, and we have little indication that Lucaris’s confession of faith was ever used beyond some schools in Crete. The initial response from Rome was to label it a forgery, with repudiation and counter confession following in 1631. However, the most deadly result of his continued polemics was not ink but blood. In July 1638, backed by a secret deal with the Ottoman Vizier and supplied by gold from the Jesuit mission fund, the governor of Constantinople arrested Lucaris, sent him on a boat into exile, and watched as soldiers strangled him and threw his body overboard. Thus ended a most intriguing life.

The intrigue, however, continues, for Lucaris still represents a tantalizing path not taken.

It should not surprise us that his reputation in Rome was dismal, yet in the lands of the Orthodox he received an array of judgments.

Within a decade of his death, Lucaris stood condemned by at least two pan-Orthodox synods; yet in 2009, the Greek Orthodox patriarchate canonized him. What prompted such a divergence?

Likely, his pastoral zeal (expressed through the commitment for the reform of morality and

43

HE WAS PASSIONATE ABOUT THE PROPAGATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN THE FACE OF ISLAM, SUPPORTED THE COMMON GOOD OF THE GREEK PEOPLE IN EDUCATIONAL REFORM, AND ATTEMPTED TO TURN THE SHIP OF ORTHODOXY TOWARD THE SCRIPTURES AND THE CHRIST THEY PROCLAIM.

44

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

for the intellectual and spiritual growth of the clergy), his defense of Orthodoxy, and his violent death at the hands of the Turks combine to make him appealing to the Orthodox Church.

If we Protestants are not in a rush to canonize Lucaris, why learn of him at all? I suggest that several pertinent details from his life offer crucial guidance to twenty-first-century wouldbe Reformers. Lucaris points us to the privilege and difficulty of living in a contested religious environment, not unlike our own. The network of contacts he maintained across Europe, from the Russian tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov and George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, to the Swedish prime minister, Axel Oxenstierna, and the Remonstrant, Jan Uytenbogaert, indicate the influence and cachet Lucaris presented to all of Europe’s elite.

What endured when tsar and archbishopric faded was not political succor but personal friendships based on a shared commitment to Christ and his church. The willingness of the Dutch ambassador van Haga and the Swiss pastor Leger to support and shield Lucaris, even to buy him safe passage from Jesuit schemes, should remind us of the love and friendship shown by the Christians in Ephesus, who walked to the shore with Paul and wept when he left.

Furthermore, the advance of a Reformed confession and the inroads into the Orthodox community were only possible through the multicultural associations of Dutch, English, and German pastors, companies, and state dignitaries. While we may value the heroic missionary trope of Victorian-era writers, it is important to avoid placing Lucaris in the genus of top man—even his industry and gifts did not provide a sterling legacy; his devotees scattered and his allies departed. Within twenty years, the status quo of Turkokratia returned to the Greek Orthodox community.

For Lucaris, the status of a Christian minority in a Muslim-dominated society was a challenging prospect, and the offers of financial support and personal acclaim from his Protestant colaborers served a vital role in sustaining Lucaris through multiple periods of exile and imprisonment in the 1620s and 1630s. The impact MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

THE HABSBURGS One of Europe’s leading families and longest-reigning dynasties, the Habsburgs represented the apex of European prestige and Catholic vitality.

Ruling initially a small duchy of the Holy Roman Empire, they expanded rapidly through fortunate betrothals.

Thus the proverb Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (“Let others make war; you, lucky Austria, marry”). At the height of their prestige, during the middle and late 1500s, the Habsburgs controlled the entirety of Spain and her colonies, the Holy Roman Empire (including much of modern-day Germany), and the Netherlands. Such power was not to last, as the abdication of Charles V in 1556 split his combined hegemony into Spanish and Austrian parts. By the time of Lucaris, however, the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs was still a potent reminder of Catholic interest in European affairs.

on such “foreign missions” supplies a salutary reminder to American Christians today who may wonder at the value of supporting believers across the globe.

As we look back on his life, what stands out most is his energy. The patriarch mastered multiple languages, possessed a remarkable library, and could choose his references. He was as comfortable with political philosophy as with theology—able to sprinkle quotations from Augustine, Ficino, and Calvin in seventeenthcentury Greek. He was passionate about the propagation of the Christian faith in the face of Islam, supported the common good of the Greek people in educational reform, and attempted to turn the ship of Orthodoxy toward the Scriptures and the Christ they proclaim. Yet for all this, he failed. Likewise, we too must take our stand not on what-ifs or might-haves, nor on the strength of chariots or princes, but on the gospel itself as the power of God unto salvation for the Greek.

JOHN STOVALL is pastor of the Rock Presbyterian Church in Stockbridge, Georgia, and is a doctoral candidate in history at the State University of New York, Albany.

45

by

PERRY C. ROBINSON

illustration by MLC

Beware THE

Convert You could say that I have been around the theological block a few times. I’ve converted to and from a number of things.

Baptized Catholic and raised Episcopalian, I ran through nondenominational groups in my teen years and then was off to the Reformation. I went through some philosophy degree programs and left the Reformation to toy with Scotism, Thomism, and parts of Ockhamism. I eventually landed in the Orthodox Church, where I have been for the last seventeen years. I’ve done a fair amount of on-the-street and classroom apologetics. While I may not have seen everything, as I said, this is not my first time around the block.

47

I have a pretty good idea of what it means, what it takes, and what happens when someone converts to another theological model and community, particularly Orthodoxy. Friends are gained and lost; families are happy or not happy.

There are complications with work or derailed life plans, including marriages. Most important of all, children can be affected, for good or ill. A conversion usually brings some type of sword.

Every so often, a notable figure converts to this or that position. Of late, the popular Hank Hanegraaff has left his religious home, apparently somewhere in popular evangelicalism, for the Orthodox Church. This struck me as odd. I worked for Hanegraaff’s organization, Christian Research Institute (CRI), in the early 1990s, so my perspective is informed by firsthand experience. Second, I am Orthodox and a former Calvinist. I have a good grasp of Reformation theology and understand what classical Protestants mean when they talk about sola fide, sola scriptura, and so on. Given all of the above, Hanegraaff’s shift to the Orthodox Church, while not unprecedented, seemed strange and likely fraught with difficulty. In what follows, I will sketch some prudential “do’s and don’ts” for converts, but particularly high-profile converts, and I will try to bring to light the demarcating lines between Orthodoxy and the Reformation traditions that Hanegraaff appears to have missed or is unclear about.

Prudence is a useful virtue to acquire, but it is difficult to get people excited about it.

Prudence can prevent unnecessary suffering for ourselves and others around us and can be beneficial for our long term spiritual welfare.

When converting, one wishes to make a clean start. In Orthodoxy this includes forgiveness, both in granting and seeking it from others.

Any priest worth his salt will likely impress upon someone seeking to enter the Orthodox Church that they should spend some time reflecting on whom they may have wronged or from whom they may have suffered wrong, prior to making a “life confession” that covers their whole life outside the church. It is wise to make an effort, suck up your pride, and make a phone call. Go that extra mile of admitting

48

wrong-doing, even when it may not be entirely or even mostly your fault. It might not have been your fault at all. Parceling out blame is not the point. At the very least for public figures, setting one’s inner house in order would entail a public statement of repentance for any past wrongs, real or perceived, prior to reception. That way, nothing from your past besmirches your new convictions and doesn’t bring the body of your new allegiance into disrepute. This is especially true for public figures whose livelihood depends on promoting themselves as teachers of the faith and who consequently bear a stricter judgment, as St. James indicates (James 3:1).

Probably, the most commonly required bit of prudence for converts to Orthodoxy is to be quiet—for a few years, to be precise. This is not only to protect yourself, but also to protect the church. There is a lot you don’t know, and the paradigm shift takes a long time to complete, if ever. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, then certainly Constantinople wasn’t either. Don’t set yourself up as an expert in Orthodoxy, attempting to speak publically as a teacher of the faith. Whatever Hanegraaff was prior to reception, he is still a (newly minted) layman. Whatever his ordination was in the world of Protestantism (which was dubious even by Reformation standards), or how many books bear his name as a Protestant, none of that is recognized by the Orthodox Church.

So being quiet is prudent, even for converts with relevant education and degrees.

But this is a significant challenge for Hanegraaff, since it is his job to talk about theology and church history five days a week across the airwaves of the nation. In this way, he is unlike other high-profile converts—he has to be ready from day one to discuss complicated Orthodox teachings, such as the doctrine of the divine energies, deification, and the role that Dyothelitism plays in structuring Orthodox soteriology. These may seem obscure teachings, but to really explicate Orthodox teaching, even at a basic level, one has to have a substantial grasp of them. There is no time for on-thejob training. While it is possible to explain Orthodox teaching succinctly and precisely, this takes academic work, which takes time.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

IF HIS VIEWS HAVE NOT CHANGED, THEN HE WAS NEVER PROTESTANT OR IS NOT NOW ORTHODOX. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

It is wise to anticipate a cost to be paid for conversion. A conversion as substantial as from Protestantism to Orthodoxy will have repercussions, especially if you are a high-profile figure like Hanegraaff. It seems to me that Hanegraaff interpreted his being dropped by Protestant radio networks as a kind of religious persecution, which is strange since Protestant radio stations largely exist to promote, well, Protestantism. Being dropped from Protestant venues was highly probable; even a small amount of foresight should have prepared him for this.

If Hanegraaff crossed the Tiber tomorrow, the Orthodox venues would behave in exactly the same way and for the same reasons.

It is also unwise to downplay one’s conversion—moving from Protestantism to Orthodoxy is not akin to switching from Oreos to Hydroxbrand cookies. Hanegraaff has given the impression that his change was not theological but rather a change of churches or denomination. On his April 10, 2017, Bible Answer Man (BAM) show he remarked, “I am now a member of an Orthodox Church, but nothing has changed in my faith….I believe what I have always believed, as codified in the Nicene Creed, and as championed by mere Christianity.” And on April 11, “Look, my views have been codified in twenty books, and my views have not changed.” In these and other comments since his conversion, he appears to be communicating the idea that his conversion is not a big deal or a life-altering decision. He has just changed churches and not theology, or if he did, he just changed out “secondary” or “nonessential” doctrines. He maintains “mere Christianity” along the lines of C. S. Lewis.

None of this is intellectually honest. All of the books that bear his name were written when he was Protestant. It is not possible on Protestant or Orthodox grounds that his views haven’t changed. Many of the areas that had to change are at the core of the respective theological systems including the Trinity, Christology, and most obviously soteriology. If his views have not changed, then he was never Protestant or is not now Orthodox. What is more, the Orthodox Church generally requires a public renunciation

49

of theological error and affiliations from either Protestant or Catholic bodies prior to chrismation, which is most warranted in the case of high-profile converts such as Hanegraaff.

Besides, if his views haven’t changed, then why convert?

The Orthodox Church does not consider itself to be a denomination. The Orthodox Church takes itself to be the Church of Jesus Christ and his apostles, full stop. As far as they are concerned, Hanegraaff went from being outside the Church, in at least material heresy and schism, to being inside it.

What is more, “mere Christianity” (as C. S. Lewis glossed it) is an abstraction with not a few fairly arbitrary lines. There is no church you can join that is the “mere Christianity” church. It is a pragmatic construct. Does “mere Christianity” include the filioque or sola fide? Does it include that the Father alone is autotheos? Baptismal regeneration? You get the point. It dies the death of a thousand qualifications. Christian theology isn’t compartmentalistic, but rather anatomic—that is, every part is intrinsically and constitutively connected to every other part.

Such a compartmentalistic gloss by Hanegraaff would imply that what is distinctive about Orthodox theology, to which he is obligated to adhere down to the last iota, is of secondary importance, which is something the Orthodox Church flatly denies. Conversion is a big deal that shouldn’t be entered into lightly or downplayed as insignificant.

Hanegraaff does provide two doctrinal changes that he views as integral to his conversion: a change in adherence to the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the doctrine of theosis or deification. With respect to the Eucharist, Hanegraaff makes legitimate criticism of the popular nondenominational practices and beliefs on which both classical Protestants and the Orthodox agree.

Popular evangelicals tend to treat the Eucharist with a familiarity and casualness I am sure is quite familiar to reformational Christians. Of course, those could be avoided by reception into a Reformation tradition. Adherence to the real presence could be had by becoming Lutheran.

50

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY ISN’T COMPARTMENTALISTIC, BUT RATHER ANATOMIC— THAT IS, EVERY PART IS INTRINSICALLY AND CONSTITUTIVELY CONNECTED TO EVERY OTHER PART. VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

The only way the real presence could be singled out as a sufficient theological reason for conversion to Orthodoxy is if it was coupled with a commitment to apostolic succession and sacerdotalism. So far, Hanegraaff has yet to indicate as much.

As to theosis, it is difficult to discern what Hanegraaff thinks that doctrine is exactly, or what it is about the Orthodox view that would be sufficient for conversion. He describes it in the most basic terms—namely, the biblical terms every Christian tradition already adheres to. Every Christian tradition has to have some doctrine of deification or glorification, because that language is in the biblical text. In some academic circles, theosis has reached a somewhat faddish state, with various Protestant and Catholic writers being afflicted with “theosis envy.” (A priest I know once remarked, “Orthodoxy is the new black.”)

Everyone has some doctrine of theosis; this is hardly news. What we need from Hanegraaff is some explanation of what it is about the Orthodox view that was sufficient motivation for him to convert.

With respect to the twin principles of the Reformation, Hanegraaff seems either confused or unwilling to disavow them directly.

This is problematic, since the CRI doctrinal statement still lists them both as “essential” Christian doctrines (Article 6), and all CRI employees are required to adhere to it by personal signature. For sola fide, when repeatedly queried about it, he consistently reads from a prepared CRI factsheet, giving the standard Reformation commentary on James 2—namely, that works are the evidence of a saving faith, rather than forming saving faith. Given that the Orthodox Church condemned the former position (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672, Decree 13), this option is not open to him. Instead of saying, “This is what sola fide is, these are the reasons I previously believed it, and I no longer think those are good arguments for the following reasons,” he seems to consistently avoid denying sola fide. It isn’t appropriate to cloak one’s conversion behind equivocal or ambiguous statements.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Much the same problem apparently exists for Hanegraaff with respect to sola scriptura.

On the April 10, 2017, Bible Answer Man show, he said, “In terms of sola scriptura, I’ve always been committed to the Bible as the infallible guide for faith and practice. And I think that’s what it means—it means that the Bible is infallible and is inspired by the Holy Spirit.” Either Hanegraaff is redefining sola scriptura, or after thirty years as a Protestant he doesn’t know what it means. The measure of that conceptual content is not what Hanegraaff thinks sola scriptura means but what it has historically meant. There is also that shibboleth of “only”/”alone” that is conspicuously missing. A clear articulation— and substantiated denial—from Hanegraaff is what his theological position requires and what his callers and audiences have a right to expect from someone self-designated as the “Bible Answer Man.” The pertinent question is not whether those doctrines are true, but rather how they are defined—whether or not Hanegraaff believes they are true, and whether or not he can profess them as a member of the Orthodox Church. For the Orthodox, the answer to the latter is clearly no.

There are many other areas besides soteriology that require mastering in the respective theological systems, such as Trinitarianism, Christology, and anthropology—each of which play a critical role in informing and structuring each system’s soteriology. For example, the Orthodox have a different soteriology because they have a different Christology. This is why mastering these other core areas is necessary, and why it takes a good amount of academic work and time to be able to speak accurately about them. Suffice it to say that a person in Hanegraaff’s position should have a deep grasp of these areas before speaking publically. Many converts to various positions have sacrificed as much or more for their newfound faith. A clear articulation would only increase the credibility of his conversion.

PERRY C. ROBINSON teaches high school history and

resides in Southern California with his wife and three children. He blogs at Energetic Procession.

51

HELP EACH GENERATION REDISCOVER AND APPLY THE GOSPEL N U M E R O U S S U RV E Y S , polls, and sociological studies have conclusively shown that evangelical Christians—that is, those who profess to take Scripture, Christ, and the gospel seriously—are increasingly unaware of or unclear about some of the most basic issues of Christian faith and practice. While many pastors and elders are faithfully devoted to their ministry, it must be concluded with a grave sense of duty as well as soberness and humility that this is the exception rather than the rule.

In a time when the “nones” (or those claiming no religious adherence) are, according to pollsters, growing and when our own churches are stagnant or shrinking, it is more important than ever to identify and celebrate the gospel: the glory of God manifested in the grace he shows to those who deserve the very opposite. This is Christ-centered Christianity at its best and we want to partner with you to help inform the next generation of Reformers. Will you join us?

BECOME A PARTNER TODAY. Partners are the heart of White Horse Inn. With the support of our partners we produce radio shows, magazines, Bible studies, international teaching trips, and more. Through a variety of media, we start, change, and shape conversations that help transform churches, prisons, families, and individuals.

WHITE HORSE INN RADIO & PODCAST

MODERN REFORMATION

THE CAMPAIGN FOR CORE CHRISTIANITY

A theological talk show

A bimonthly magazine

A multimedia

featuring roundtable

applying timeless

initiative dedicated to

discussions on faith,

Christian doctrine to

broadcasting the core

culture, and apologetics

the questions of today.

message of Christianity

to equip Christians to

and answering the most

“know what they believe

fundamental questions

and why they believe it.”

of the Christian faith.

SIGN UP TODAY AT WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/PARTNER

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION Join the conversation for a modern reformation online.

FIND US ON TWITTER @MODREF AND ON FACEBOOK AT FACEBOOK.COM/MODREFSOCIAL

03

BOOK REVIEWS

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

Book Reviews 56

57

59

Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken

Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture

Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and its ScriptureCentered Proclamation

by D. G. Hart

by Adam S. McHugh

by Robert Kolb

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

Simonetta Carr

Anna Smith

Silverio Gonzalez

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

55

BOOK REVIEWS

Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken

by D. G. Hart Eerdmans, 2016 279 pages (hardcover), $26.00 he enduring influence of Christianity on many of its greatest critics is one of modern history’s paradoxes. In Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken, D. G. Hart highlights this apparent incongruity in the life of the legendary American agnostic—from his childhood in the last decade of the nineteenth century to his death in 1956. But Hart does much more than that. He brings us close to a man who has been considered one of the most fearless iconoclasts of American society, and leads us to reflect on uncomfortable subjects with the same honesty and candor that made Mencken famous.

I approached this book with the basic ignorance I suspect affects many Americans. At a popular level, Mencken seems to be remembered simply for his memorable quotes that fit any of our most caustic moods. In fact, his quotes are often remembered more than the man. In my case, this ignorance was aggravated by the fact that I was born and raised in Italy, far from the American sociopolitical scene and only vaguely puzzled and amused by some of its excesses in dramatic fervor over issues most Europeans viewed with skepticism or indifference. History does shape culture.

I read this book for a reason I suspect has motivated many readers: I had come to appreciate D. G. Hart’s writings and scholarship, and I was curious to see how he approached a

T

56

biography of a man such as Mencken. I wasn’t disappointed. I learned much about both Mencken and his times, which are introduced with ease by a biographer who has devoted much attention to this period.

In his chronological approach to Mencken’s life, Hart manages to be both objective and personal. I sympathized with some of Mencken’s childhood impressions of Sunday-school Christianity, and admired his dedication to his work and his prowess with words that earned him Joseph Krutch’s accolade of “best prose writer in twentieth-century America” (2). At the end of his life, Menken’s bleak view of human existence as a pointless and “endless standing in line” reminded me of the words of the Preacher of Ecclesiastes— minus the uplifting hope of the biblical conclusion.

Hart is up-front about his emphasis on Mencken’s religious life, a task he considers necessary as “few who have studied Mencken attach much significance to his writing about faith.” Besides, he hopes that Mencken’s “attitude as an unbelieving minority in a majority C h r i s t i a n s o c i e t y … m i g ht show a way to demilitarize the combat” in today’s society (9).

According to Hart, Mencken can teach both Christians and the “so-called new atheists” some healthy humor and the ability to take themselves less seriously. He can also communicate a measure of respect for the powerful effect religion has exercised on human history and a realistic and “Augustinian” view of human nature.

In fact, it was this view that brought Mencken to find common ground with and sincere admiration for the Presbyterian J. Gresham Machen, whose “one and only purpose was,” in Mencken’s words, “to hold it [the Church] resolutely to what he conceived to be the true faith. When that enterprise met with opposition he fought VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

vigorously, and though he lost in the end and was forced out of Princeton it must be manifest that he marched off to Philadelphia with all the honors of war.”

While I disagreed with many of Mencken’s views (especially about Nazi Germany, the Jews, and blacks), I had to stop and listen to what he had to say and appreciate his honesty and perception in many instances that are usually treated with superficial generalizations. Even the lack of references, which can be a flaw for footnote-lovers like me, was strangely unnoticeable in this book—maybe because the narrative flows easily and Hart managed to answer all my questions within the main text. The omission is remedied by a final section in essay form titled “Notes on the Sources,” which include additional insights and a final paragraph on Mencken’s relevance on the American intellectual landscape.

In the end, Hart persuaded me that we need more biographies of critics of Christianity, written to discover and reflect rather than to demonstrate, oppose, or defend. And more of these should be written by biographers who, like Hart, are familiar with the basic concerns and tenets of the Christian faith and can transcend the all-too-frequent shallow, assumed, and predictable accounts.

SIMONETTA CARR has translated several books from English

into Italian and has written for newspapers and magazines around the world.

Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture

by Adam S. McHugh IVP Books, 2017 240 pages (paperback), $18.00

I

f you hate church fellowship hour, evangelizing strangers, and youth group lock-ins, you might be a terrible Christian. Or maybe you’re

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

just an introvert. Adam S. McHugh, a pastor and introvert, has written Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture to help churches figure out the difference.

Many books have been written about how American culture prizes extroverts and needs to learn to value introverts, defined as people who (generally) are energized by solitude, process internally, and prefer depth over breadth (35– 43). McHugh realizes that this process needs to happen just as much, if not more, in the church, where broader cultural preferences have been adopted and transformed into measures of righteousness. In many churches, ideal Christians are friendly, outgoing, energetic, and engaging.

Introverted Christians are left with two dark options: either accept their role as inferior Christians, or utterly exhaust themselves in an attempt to be something they aren’t. Depression and dark nights of the soul can follow, as introverts struggle to be faithful but cannot meet the church’s expectations, which are easily mistaken for God’s expectations.

As an introvert who has endured this struggle himself, McHugh wants to encourage and support others. He points out that making extroversion the hallmark of Christian maturity isn’t biblical. God is pleased to work through all the personality types he has created, so it’s important for introverts to understand their personality and work with it, not against it.

McHugh outlines common introverted tendencies and shows how they benefit believers and the church.

For example, introverts can be more attuned to the workings of their hearts. Evangelicals can be suspicious of the heart, which of course is deceitfully wicked and no one can know it (Jer. 17:9). But introverts are naturally internal processors, so they spend a lot of time digging around in there, examining their motivations and desires. They find lots of gunk, but they also find evidence that God is at work, and they learn to tell the difference. This knowledge of their inner workings is beneficial in their own lives and in understanding the motivations of others,

57

BOOK REVIEWS

who might not have spent so much time doing internal excavation.

Introverts also have the potential to be more comfortable with contemplative and quiet forms of spirituality. The Reformation put a great emphasis on the word of God, which is certainly appropriate. But Christians often confuse the importance of God’s word with the importance of their own. McHugh writes, “Our verbal effusiveness can devolve into breezy clichés, hollow sound bites, and repetitive song lyrics” (25). This breeziness can be devastating when it’s applied to difficult situations that demand sensitivity and carefully chosen words.

Introverts are equipped to help the evangelical church relearn the importance of silence and the fact that human words will only take you so far.

I’m a shy introver t who has been driven to Xanax by Sunday morning coffee hour, so it was remarkably refreshing to read whole sections encouraging me to see my introversion as a gift instead of a burden. I didn’t realize how many extroverted expectations I was placing on myself, and realistically, I’m never going to be good at some of those things (such as unstructured chit-chat).

I’m also able to better appreciate my strengths, such as my love for studying the Bible, a passion my introversion complements well.

McHugh wants to remove burdensome expectations from introverts, but he isn’t distributing get-out-of-evangelism-free cards. All Christians are called to do things that make them uncomfortable. But we don’t need to make ourselves more uncomfortable by assuming the task can be done only in an extroverted way, such as believing evangelism is best done by accosting strangers on airplanes. (Why is it always airplanes?)

Instead, McHugh reframes evangelism in a way that introverts can appreciate, focusing

58

more on listening in the context of relationships than engaging in quick-witted debates with strangers. He helps introverts tackle other common areas of struggle by suggesting concrete goals for fellowship time, strategies for engaging in conflict, and spiritual practices that align with introverted sensibilities.

He recognizes that not every introvert will identify with every issue he raises. Sometimes it’s hard to disentangle the threads of introversion, quietness, scholarliness, shyness, and social anxiety.

One could be a bona fide introvert and love church fellowship hour or evangelizing strangers.

One could be an extrovert and hate those activities. But by interviewing many introverts, McHugh identifies frequent patterns that should connect with most introverts on some level.

Since McHugh is a pastor, he spends a lot of time focusing on introverts in leadership.

If Christians are expected to be extroverts, then that goes double for pastors and quintuple for youth pastors. McHugh gives practical tips for introverts in leadership to embrace their good qualities, shift the expectations of their congregations, and manage their limited social energy well.

This is a book well wor th reading for introverts or extroverts, especially pastors.

Introverted pastors will learn about themselves, and extroverted pastors will learn how to better minister to their introverted sheep. Churches should be places where all personality types are welcomed, appreciated, and challenged. This book helps us get there.

ANNA SMITH (MA, biblical studies, Westminster Seminary California) teaches high school English, edits for The Gospel Coalition, and blogs at www.thebeautifulplaceblog.com.

She lives in South Florida with her husband, Andy.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and its Scripture-Centered Proclamation

by Robert Kolb Baker Academic, 2016 528 pages (hardcover), $49.99 n Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God, Robert Kolb places his readers in contact with a world where the interpretation and application of Scripture was more than a matter of personal religious conviction. The sixteenth-century Reformers sought to recover God’s speech in Scripture—speech that had been crowded out by opinions, traditions, and superstitions, speech that addressed human beings in all areas of life: society, family, church, and the depth of human hearts where fear, pride, despair, or indifference fought to maintain its grasp over the souls of men and women who sought to earn God’s love and saving grace through a system of cooperation and merit. As Kolb describes, Martin Luther believed that God spoke to all these matters through Scripture:

I

The Bible served as the center of his entire enterprise, combining elements in these several components of life to forge plausible answers to the questions of daily life. Without the Bible, there could be no preaching and therefore no evangelical church life. Permeating the whole of life for the Wittenberg theologians was the presence of God, particularly of God in conversation with his people in, through, and by means of Holy Scripture. (8) Yet Luther was not alone in his wrestling with God’s word; he was part of a community that sought to recover Scripture’s message of grace, which hinged on the two little words faith alone.

Kolb explains that this band of reformers was essential to the Reformation: MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

Without the team around Luther, there would have been no Wittenberg Reformation. The cross-fertilization that arose from conversations has long since disappeared into thin air, but it can be sensed in the writings of all of them as well as in their personal recollections. (7) This conversation around Scripture—its message, form, and doctrine; proper methods of its interpretation and application; its proclamation; and even the practice of textual criticism—is a conversation Kolb introduces to pastors and students. It is his hope that his lengthy overview on the Wittenberg school of scriptural interpretation and proclamation will inspire and “stimulate new research,” even as “it attempts to provide biographical orientation for such new studies of many of the subjects discussed” (14–15).

Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God accomplishes this goal in a readable, engaging study that did more than stimulate my inner nerd. Kolb’s work inspired, challenged, and informed my reading of the Bible, and for this reason I recommend this book to anyone interested in Martin Luther, the Reformation, hermeneutics, or even the Bible.

In chapters 1 through 4, Kolb presents Luther’s theology of Scripture in historical context. He tells the story of Luther’s development into a teacher of Scripture within the late medieval world, a world that “had been anything but a world without a Bible” (34).

The world Luther inherited was filled with Scripture, but it “lacked an understanding of God as the God of conversation and community, engaged personally with his people, and an understanding of the human creature centered on trust in God’s goodness and mercy, as well as love and service to other human beings” (18).

Kolb shows Luther immersed in the patterns of monastic life, with its daily hours of prayer and Scripture reading. He inherited a method of scriptural interpretation with renewed

59

BOOK REVIEWS

interest in the text’s literal sense, which had been chosen by his superior, Johannes von Staupitz, for university training. Luther became a “teacher of the Bible” and a latemedieval theologian well equipped beyond many of his peers (23–28, 31).

When Kolb writes about Luther’s theology of Scripture, he explains Luther’s understanding of God’s word as it relates to God’s character, Christ as the Word from the Father, the gospel, and the controversies of Luther’s own day: justification, the nature of faith, human nature, and church authority. For Luther, God effects what he declares in Scripture and governs what it affects: “God’s word governs the course of human history.…

God’s Word creates faith, reestablishing the relationship of parent and child with his chosen people” (48). “God’s Word creates the Church and governs it” (62).

As an interpreter of Scripture, Luther is revealed as one who both maintained a supernatural understanding of Scripture’s origin, content, and effects together with a human understanding of language, able to embrace the humanist practices of textual criticism of his day: Despite the perception that the utterly reliable, faithful God had been present in the composition of Scripture and remained present, confronting its contemporary readers, Luther was not oblivious to seeming discrepancies….

Luther’s linguistic sensitivities prevented him from insisting on a strictly literalistic interpretation of every passage. (85) Kolb shows Luther’s understanding of God’s presence in Scripture’s formation, content,

60

and effects, and how this influenced the interpretive practices he inherited from medieval Christianity, along with the rhetorical and hermeneutical advancements made by humanist scholars, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Chapters 5 through 9 place Luther as a professor, preacher, and translator in context with the rest of the Wittenberg faculty.

Here, Kolb shows how much of Luther’s insights and development were the outworking of a team of scholars committed to the cause of reformation.

Philipp Melanchthon was one such scholar and friend, whose humanistic learning greatly contributed to Luther’s thought and the development of t he Wittenb er g Scho ol (241–42).

Chapters 10 through 14 e x p l a i n t h e l a tt e r d e v e l opments and concerns of Lutheran thinkers to follow the original faculty. Here, Kolb provides a helpful resource for new scholars seeking to research Lutheran thoughts on Scripture and exegetical practices. In chapter 11, Kolb notes the concerns over challenges from the Romans Catholic Church, preaching, catechesis, and the abundance of exegesis done to forward the work of reformation begun by Luther with the Wittenberg faculty.

In the wake of the five-hundred-year anniversary of the Reformation, Kolb reminds us of the confidence the Wittenberg Reformers had in God and his word. This book is well worth the time it takes to read and digest its many pages.

SILVERIO GONZALEZ is an associate editor at the White Horse Inn and a member of Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Escondido, California. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of California Santa Barbara and an MDiv from Westminster Seminary California.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE AND WHY YOU BELIEVE IT B R I N G I N G T H E R I C H R E S O U R C E S O F T H E R E F O R M AT I O N T O T H E H A L LWAY O F M E R E C H R I S T I A N I T Y C. S. Lewis famously remarked that “mere Christianity” is like a hallway where real conversations between Christians of different convictions can begin and develop over time, as we emerge from our various rooms to speak of Christ and his gospel to one another. For over twenty years, White Horse Inn has hosted this conversation both on our radio show, White Horse Inn, and in our magazine, Modern Reformation.

VISIT WHITEHORSEINN.ORG TO LEARN MORE

04

GEEK SQUAD

Differences between the Reformed and Eastern Orthodox Churches

by Tim Massaro

REFORMED

EASTERN ORTHODOXY

TRADITION IN THE CHURCH

TRADITION IN THE CHURCH

Inheriting the theological arguments of the Conciliar Movements of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Reformation brought something unique to the table. Reformation churches developed a nuanced vision of tradition and authority.

Tradition and the church’s authority took a ministerial (i.e., dependent and secondary) role to Scripture. They made a qualitative distinction between Scripture and tradition. Scripture cannot err, while tradition, councils, and bishops have done so and continue to do so.

This does not mean the Reformation dismissed tradition.

In fact, many Reformed doctrines and practices evolved from fruitful interaction with the past. Nevertheless, Scripture is clear on matters of salvation. Reformational churches believe that justification by faith alone is the most radiant aspect of God’s self-revelation. God’s word alone is without error. Church tradition, which is helpful and should not be discarded lightly, is less clear and, more importantly, is fallible.

Eastern churches place Scripture above tradition but not in a qualitative way. Scripture “is one of the purest manifestations of tradition. It is constitutively within sacred tradition, not apart from it.”1 For Eastern churches, the worship of God and the liturgy handed down in the traditions is clear.

Tradition takes on an authoritative role in relation to the church and its practices. Tradition is handed down as a gift that cannot be “owned.” It is not something a church possesses, either as a rigorous set of documents or as relative to culture. The true church has had a vision of the path to God from the beginning. Liturgical life determines what beliefs have authority. Creeds and conciliar decrees take effect when they shape the church’s liturgy, which brings people into vital communion with God. The authority of a tradition is dependent on the universality, antiquity, and conciliarity of the belief or practice.

62

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

REFORMED

EASTERN ORTHODOXY

L I T U R GY A N D T H E P E W

L I T U R GY A N D T H E P E W

Protestant reforms sought a healthy use of the church’s medieval and ancient practices. The material principle of solus Christus and the formal principle of sola scriptura shape Reformation worship in distinct ways. By centering everything on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, Christians are formed in his image.

The regulative principle of worship (RPW) guards the church against idolatry, which is defined as whatever hides the pure preaching of the gospel. Sadly, this principle can be applied too rigorously at the expense of beauty.

Worship and vocation flow from gratitude for God’s free grace. A Christian’s justification in Christ frees him to serve God without fear and to live for his glory.

Eastern churches view the liturgy as a predominately mystical reality. The eschatological, cosmic reality of heaven becomes transparent through the icons and liturgy. This heavenly worship is the gospel. By the Spirit’s abiding presence with the bishop, who holds to tradition and the Eucharist, heaven comes down to us. Icons are not idols but transparent doors into the heavenly temple. Through the divine liturgy, the soul ascends back into the life of the Triune God. The spiritual work of God in the Eucharist brings reconciliation to the world. While expressing many helpful aspects of the Christian faith, the East tends to emphasize beauty and images over the clarifying necessity of the preached word.

T H E O S I S A N D J U S T I F I CAT I O N

T H E O S I S A N D J U S T I F I CAT I O N

Adopting the Augustinian strain of medieval thought, the ascent of man into God’s life is inverted into the descent of Christ and his Spirit. While this language is not foreign to the East, the discussion evolved with the law/gospel distinction, which results in a refined doctrine of justification. To safeguard God’s unconditional promise, justification can no longer include the conversion of the soul or the infusion of some virtue.

Regeneration and virtue are the results of this free gift, not its cause. Yet, the Reformation tradition never dismissed repentance, conversion, virtue, or participation in the life of God. It found a new, clearer mode of expressing this truth. Justification by faith alone in Christ alone means that we are given the life of God in Christ by the Spirit simply by promise. God’s descent to us reorients life around the joy of promise, one that radically alters a sinner’s heart. The Christian life now participates in that very promise by which we have communion with the Triune God. Reformation churches believe that without this correct ordering, the gospel can never be cosmic, transformative, or good news.

Central to the Eastern theological vision is the doctrine of deification, or theosis. God’s infinite essence is incapable of penetration by the finite creature. The question then becomes how finite, sinful creatures can enter that infinite life. The incarnation of the Son is God’s reply. The church participates in the divine life of the Trinity by the grace found in Jesus. Through the liturgy and tradition of the church, salvation is receiving by grace what God has by nature. The incarnation of the Son has purified the world by the working of the Holy Spirit.2 Life is an ascent into God as he enters into the world by Christ’s incarnation. Within the East, differences exist between the general modes of this ascent. Some lean more toward a Semi-Pelagian view of the human will, while others have adopted a more Augustinian vision of grace and perfection in God. TIMOTHY W. MASSARO (MDiv, from Westminster Seminary California) is social media manager at White Horse Inn and associate editor for Core Christianity.

1 John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Chichester, UK: WileyBlackwell, 2010), 101.

2 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 65–70.

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

63

05

B AC K PAG E

The Communion of Saints

by Eric Landry

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen

hen we Christians profess our belief in “the communion of saints,” we’re acknowledging that our relationships in the kingdom of God transcend other forms of human connection. Although it’s hard to imagine, in Christ we have stronger connections with other Christians—even those we don’t know— than we do with our natural family, fellow citizens, or ethnic group. We sometimes overlook, however, how the phrase reminds us that our connection with one another stretches across time as well. The author of the sermonletter to the Hebrews tells his congregation that during worship we commune not only with “God, the judge of all,” but also with “the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven” and “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Heb. 12:23). Our worship transcends the time and space in which we worship. We have true fellowship not only with God but also with those men and women who died in faith before us, and who are surrounded by innumerable angels in festal gathering.

W

64

There is great comfort in this truth for those who are facing death, either their own or someone they love. All of us will, sooner or later, go the way of all the earth, but our communion with one another will never end. In 1 Corinthians 10:17, Paul tells us that our participation in the Lord’s Supper ensures that we are participants in Christ’s own body and blood: every time we partake of the bread and wine, we participate with the risen Lord and his body, here on earth and in heaven. This was why Paul exhorted the immature Christians of Corinth to flee from sexual immorality and to pursue peace and unity within the church. A real bond existed between them and the risen Lord, and he didn’t want them to pollute that bond by their sin and strife. For those of us who are staring down that last enemy, there should be great comfort in the fact that our union with one another is secure even after the ravages of death have done their worst.

Pop culture encourages us to speak of loved ones who have died as still being present with us in some sense: their spirit is present or they’re looking down from heaven. The Bible gives us an even greater comfort and measure of union with our friends and family who have died: We still worship with one another! And our worship, even though it is now separated by the vale of tears, unites us to one another just as it unites us to God. ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation

magazine.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

STAY CONNECTED BETWEEN ISSUES Sign up for our e-newsletter and receive monthly MR extras.

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/MODREFNEWS