Žižek, Tony Jones, and 'Christian Atheism'

A little over a week ago, Tony Jones hosted a piece that was meant to service as an introduction to Slavoj Žižek, particularly his 'Christian' or 'theological' thought. I took issue with the piece, primarily with the notion that it's acceptable for Christians to get their theology from atheists, or for atheists to do Christian theology in any legitimate sense. Such an idea is, of course, absurd. And this seemed to me like a fairly elementary and obvious point to make, eminently supported by scripture and orthodox Christian tradition. But I also know that one of the dogmas of this particular brand of progressive, postmodern, heretical Christianity is a kind of infinite openness to ideas and 'dialogue', regardless of the provenance of said ideas (blatantly ignoring scriptural warnings against such absolute openness i.e. Romans 12:2, 2 Cor. 6:14-18, Gal 5:1, 1 Tim. 4, 2 Tim. 2:16-17, 2 Tim 4:3-4, etc.). Wanting to disabuse anyone who might listen of such a dangerous openness in theology -- especially with regard to atheists, worldly speculators and conjecturalists -- I happily obliged when Tony offered to host a response by me.

To Tony's immense credit, and contrary to the actions of one of his brother's in arms, he published my response which he disagreed with, and in which I even take a pot-shot at him. This demonstrates a true openness to dialogue and opinions from all quarters, even the traditionalist-conservative quarter, and so consistency with his principles (although it also reveals a bit of a masochistic streak).

There was a fairly large dust-up in response to my piece (on Twitter, primarily), as many of Tony's readers -- quite understandably, given their vantage point -- took issue with the piece and with Tony's decision to run it. Tony replied here in defense of running the piece, and I agree with his defense.

However, while defending his running of the piece he also briefly noted why he disagrees with it. He writes:

The bottom line is that Nathan thinks that, while interesting, Christians should never look to Žižek for theological insight. In fact, he thinks that Christians should never take any theological insight from an atheist.

Well, I think that’s hogwash. (Nathan defends this as a teaching of the Orthodox Church, but I have not been able to substantiate that.) Theological insight comes from all sorts of places, atheists included. Indeed, if we’re reliant solely upon the church for theological truth, then two things are true: 1) God is bound exclusively to one human institution (a laughable idea), and 2) we’re pretty much screwed (because the church is so clearly fallible).

Before defending the idea that Christians ought not turn to atheists for theological insight, (it feels a bit odd typing that) let me first clarify a few things that I'm not saying. I'm not saying that God doesn't reveal himself in a general way through creation. I'm also not saying that God doesn't act in the lives of unbelievers at all. I'm also not saying that non-Christian philosophy is completely useless. None of this, however, means that atheists are capable of anything (truly) good apart from regeneration in the waters of baptism and a subsequent life in Christ, much less are they able to add or somehow contribute to the full revelation of God in Christ through their blasphemous speculations which deny Christ.

To the extent that worldly philosophy has value, it's that, in its venerable formulations, one can see what St. Justin Martyr -- writing in the 2nd century as a convert from Greek paganism -- referred to as the spermatikos logos. This is the seed of divinity in each human person which can be dimly apprehended through Greek philosophy, for example, which in turn acts as a preparation for the full revelation of God in Christ and his Church.

But this is only the case where Greek philosophy dimly apprehended the truth of divinity, not where it raged directly against it in utter folly (Psalm 14:1), or where it continued to do so even when confronted with Christ and his Church. And this is the crucial distinction. In the latter case, the Church (and the Bible) unequivocally rejects the notion that there can be any parity or fellowship between the Church which confesses Christ come in the flesh and risen from the dead, and those who deny it. Hear 1 John 4:3 :

And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist.

Žižek confesseth not. Game over.

Of course, one could multiply at will references to the New Testament's stark and undeniable dichotomy between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of the 'god' of this world (2 Cor. 4:4) i.e. Satan. See: James 4:4, John 16:33, 1 John 2:17, Rev. 3:15-17, etc. And if 'the world' (in this sense) does not include the spirit of antichrist which denies Christ is God in the flesh, then there is no such thing as 'the world' in this sense, and the Bible is speaking nonsense. This seems a high price to pay in order to defend an illicit and wicked desire to marry truth with error, darkness with light. Speaking of which, we could also turn to the most clear and unequivocal scriptural rebuke of Jones and co.'s modus operandi in 2 Cor. 6:14-18.

As for whether my position is that of the Orthodox Church, I would want to tread carefully in claiming to speak for the Church. Though I would say that, in the Church's vindication of the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas in the 14th century over the heresy of Barlaam, the purity of heart obtained through the healing graces of the Church was defended as essential for genuine theology. The impotence of philosophy to lead to true illumination was also confirmed by the Church, in the course of this controversy. Which would all be relevant here, both as a rebuke of Žižek and his 'Christian' defenders.

One could go on to note that the actual content of Žižek's 'theological' speculations (if he truly held to them), and not just the method used to arrive at them, are formally rejected heresies. One of the earliest and most significant heresies in Church history, propagated in the 4th century by the bishop Arius, was that Christ was divine, yes, but a created and subsidiary divinity, and not consubstantial with the Father. At Nicaea, his view was anathematized by the Church as incompatible with the apostolic deposit of faith, at which point it became impossible for Arian speculation to count as true Christian theology. If Arius confessed Christ's divinity (albeit as a created demigod), and was and is anathema, as are any who follow him, how much more of those who deny that God even exists?

Granted, with this last move I've made an argument that appeals to a particular biblical, apostolic, orthodox ecclesiology. And therefore I might be talking past those who hold to the anti-ecclesiology of protestantism, especially in its progressive-postmodern-evangelical variant. C'est la vie. One can only hope they turn from this error as swiftly as they ought to turn and flee from the error of mixing God's truth with a lie.

Christ and Nihil

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." - Matt. 6:24

"Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." - James 4:4

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." - Rev. 3:15-16

When it comes to God and his Kingdom, there is no halfway allegiance. There is allegiance and defiance; fidelity and apostasy; communion and exile. The verses above are just a small sampling of a consistent theme that runs throughout the New Testament: the Incarnation of the Word of God inaugurates the Kingdom of God on Earth, and this Kingdom stands victorious over and against the kingdom of the "god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4), i.e. Satan.

Because God alone -- and participation in His life, the life of the Holy Trinity -- constitutes true being, rejection of this life in favor of kingdom of this world that is passing away, constitutes a turning inward to the Self and self-will, and therefore toward nothingness and non-being. Toward the nihil.

In his short text Nihilism -- which was to be but one chapter in his unfinished magnum opus THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE KINGDOM OF MAN -- Fr. Seraphim Rose seizes on this fundamental truth and uses it as a matrix for analyzing the condition of the modern world. If rejection of Christ is ultimately a single phenomena, then that phenomena lies behind, underneath, and within every species of unbelief and idolatry. There should be a discernible continuity that unites all who stand opposed to God, whether they know it or not and despite any apparent differences.

If this is true, then the same force that gives life to Liberalism, Humanism, Scientism, Realism, New-Age spiritualisms, and compromised and worldly Christianities is the same force that gave us Nazism and Bolshevism. The differences between these various phenomena must be a quantitative rather than qualitative one; a difference of degree rather than of kind. And Fr. Serpahim traces the contours of this modern dialectic with acute precision.

While Fr. Seraphim keenly analyzes the specific instances of the various manifestations of nihilism in the modern world -- in areas of philosophy, politics, religion, and art -- the basic argument is echoed with characteristic verve and brilliance by David Bentley Hart in his magnificent essay Christ and Nothing, which concludes this way:

But we Christians — while not ignoring how appalling such a condition is — should yet rejoice that modernity offers no religious comforts to those who would seek them. In this time of waiting, in this age marked only by the absence of faith in Christ, it is well that the modern soul should lack repose, piety, peace, or nobility, and should find the world outside the Church barren of spiritual rapture or mystery, and should discover no beautiful or terrible or merciful gods upon which to cast itself. With Christ came judgment into the world, a light of discrimination from which there is neither retreat nor sanctuary. And this means that, as a quite concrete historical condition, the only choice that remains for the children of post-Christian culture is not whom to serve, but whether to serve Him whom Christ has revealed or to serve nothing — the nothing. No third way lies open for us now, because — as all of us now know, whether we acknowledge it consciously or not — all things have been made subject to Him, all the thrones and dominions of the high places have been put beneath His feet, until the very end of the world, and — simply said — there is no other god.

Let us then cast ourselves upon the only God Who Is, Christ our true God, and pray that He would have mercy upon us.

The Elusive Outsider Vantage

How can we know which religion (if any) is true? Are there any objective tests we can devise to help answer the question? Do we need anything other than the standard tools and methods of inquiry that we use to assess any other sort of truth claim? John Loftus thinks such a test is possible and necessary, and he proposes that the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) is the best test available.

His central argument in the book goes something like this:

(1) the fact of vast global religious diversity.

(2) the fact of cultural, historical, and geographical dependence of religious belief.

(3) the mutually exclusive nature of many, or most, faiths.

Therefore

(4) there's a low probability that whatever your largely culturally determined faith happens to be is the correct one and

(5) a disposition of informed skepticism toward one's faith – the same sort of skepticism members of faiths typically have toward other faiths – should be adopted in order to best determine which, if any, faith is the true faith.

The actual test itself is not terribly controversial, it seems to me. Most believers who were raised in a particular religious tradition, as they grow older and are exposed to a wide world of conflicting opinions and claims, begin to question what they were taught, and go on to apply skeptical scrutiny to those beliefs and teachings to the best of their ability. Most are forced to face, to some degree, these facts and apply this test at some point, whether they realize they're doing so or not. And for those who don't, they should.

However, even this brand of natural skepticism is not enough for Loftus as he demands the skepticism be of a narrowly circumscribed, scientific bent. He does so, he claims, because science has proven a tool of unparalleled success and fecundity at establishing truths about the physical operations of the universe. But why ought we assume science is the appropriate tool for assessing a question that fundamentally is not a scientific one, namely which religion is the true religion? The tools of science can conceivably aid us in assessing specific claims of supernatural activity in the present-day, and so can, in some manner, contribute to the discussion. But it's a tool that's hardly all-sufficient for the task.

Further, he introduces a false dichotomy when he appeals to the problem of mutual-exclusivity. Namely: either you are a sectarian exclusivist (for whom the problem applies in full), or a syncrenistic liberal who alleviates the difficulty but only by defining God down to some milquetoast non-entity. But he neglects the fact that religions have ways to solve this problem without succumbing to this dichotomy. As an Orthodox Christian, for example, I believe my faith exclusively represents the fullness of the apostolic faith as bequeathed to us by Jesus Christ, but also believe that all other genuine religions possess various degrees of that truth. Roman Catholics possess a greater degree of it than Buddhists, and Buddhists more than atheists, but there is a continuum of truth. This schema – and I'm sure other religions address the problem in a similar way – obviates the problem of mutual-exclusivity and so reduces the need to adopt a stance of severe skepticism. He would no doubt object that these alternative schemes do nothing, in and of themselves, to help answer the question of which is the true faith given his preferred set of data. To which the answer, of course, is: so what? 

Another question that arises is why the facts of religious diversity, dependence, and mutual-exclusivity should be the starting point for inquiry as to which religion is true? If we accept that they ought to be, then Loftus' recommendation to adopt a mode of severe skepticism mostly (with some qualifications) follows. But in order for this to be one's starting point of inquiry, one must attempt to strip away everything else that he knows to be true in the arena of religion. If, for example, you have solid evidence that that none of the antique polytheistic gods or god-schemes are true, and you further have strong metaphysical arguments both for the existence of God and that God must be One (to take just a couple of things you could conceivably know), then you can rationally narrow the range of contenders for the one true religion considerably. This is an alternative beginning point of inquiry, in which case the probability that one of that remaining small pool of potential gods is the true God is substantially larger than it would otherwise be, and severe skepticism would not be warranted. Loftus demands we bracket out this sort of knowledge and begin with only the facts of religious diversity, dependence, and mutual-exclusivity, but why? Loftus insists that we attempt a Descartes-esque feat of discarding all our beliefs and knowledge in favor of a couple of his pet data points. But why? He doesn't make a case for this preference – for these particular facts over and against the vast array of other facts available to us – other than that they happen to better serve his agenda.

The answer to the question of "why the OTF?" he gives later in the book, and it's that "what we've been doing isn't working." By which he means people aren't becoming atheists, or aren't consolidating their view of God, or aren't all converting to the one true religion (whatever it may be) at a fast enough pace for his taste. Which, of course,  begs the question. Why would we expect to see any of these things happen if a particular faith was true? Why does their failing to happen constitute "not working"? According to what standard?

And even if we wanted to begin with Loftus' preferred set of data, is it even possible for an insider to apply the test? Late in the book Loftus reveals his hand: "Faith is not something Christians can have while seeking to examine the religion that was given to them, since that is not how they approach any of the other religions they reject." In other words, you must first become an atheist (since a Christian without faith is an oxymoron) before you can truly examine the truth of your own or other religions. You must actually become an outsider first, not merely do your best to examine the evidence as if you were one. But this is clearly absurd, for whatever epistemological ground one currently occupies, one is an insider to it. There's no escaping except to some other insider position.

Loftus has an unfortunate penchant for repetition and one of his most oft-repeated assertions is that "Possibility doesn't matter, probabilities do." After the 30th time (literally) he had declared this, or some close variation, I gave up counting. In any case, his point is that absolute certainty does not exist, and the scientific mindset only deals with probabilities. Things that are highly likely to be true and things that are highly likely to be untrue are where the most certain knowledge we can attain (about the physical world) is. Again, not terribly controversial, so I'm not sure why the incessant repetition. The cynic in me suspects some sort of insecurity, but I digress.

Loftus' blind spot, with regard to his probability point, is that, while low probability that a particular faith is true logically follows from his premises – given his arbitrarily selected set of data – this low probability applies to all opinions about the religious question, including the stance that all religions are likely to be false -- his stance. Given the diversity of opinions about religion, their cultural dependence, and mutual exclusivity (and only those facts) the likelihood that any opinion on the matter is correct is very low, including his own. He might then appeal to other facts and knowledge in order to justify his not adopting a stance of extreme skepticism toward his own view, but religious people can do the same thing. So he hasn't advanced the ball a step.

In the book he quotes Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga making a similar point: 

[T]here is no safe haven here, no way to avoid risk. In particular, you won’t reach safe haven by trying to take the same attitude towards all the historically available patterns of belief and withholding: for in so doing you adopt a particular pattern of belief and withholding, one incompatible with some adopted by others. You pays your money and you takes your choice, realizing that you, like anyone else, can be desperately wrong. But what else can you do? You don’t really have an alternative.

Precisely. It's this critique and some closely related objections that Loftus spends most of the second half of the book attempting to ameliorate the effects of, but without any success. In response to Plantinga, without so much as a hint of self-awareness, he avers that "Plantinga fails to understand the huge difference between assenting to a belief and doubting it or denying it. There is no epistemic parity at all between accepting a belief and doubting (or rejecting) it. Doubting (or rejecting) a belief is easy. We all do it all the time. The hard part is to set forth a positive case on behalf of any one particular truth out of the choices available." But Plantinga is obviously making the point that rejecting one belief – especially the particular species of belief that belief in God is – logically entails holding another belief (if not a whole array of other beliefs). In this case, rejecting belief in any religion entails the belief that all religions are very likely false. There exists no neutral epistemological vantage to occupy.

Numerous times throughout the book Loftus accuses believers (usually falsely) of special pleading on behalf of their religion. But in response to these sorts of critiques he special pleads on behalf of atheism or skepticism constantly. When speaking about the cultural dependence of religious belief he cites statistical global maps of religion that show high concentrations of religions by geographic area (as if this could alarm or surprise any informed believer). When responding to the objection that atheism is similarly geographically situated – heavily in places like Sweden and Denmark for example – Loftus gets to the special pleading. He does so by citing wide agreement between scientists on scientific matters, regardless of where they're from. But this would be akin to a Roman Catholic citing broad agreement on many central matters of faith, regardless of where the Catholic lives. It doesn't actually address the critique but moves the goal posts, and equivocates between atheism and science. The mechanical philosophy of the Enlightenment is not a neutral, necessary outcome of science and reason, rather it's just as much a culturally and historically contingent source of belief as being born into a Christian home in the 21st century. And, if you live in much of modern Europe, it's at least as big a culturally determining factor of your beliefs about religion as Christianity is.

Loftus responds to one of his interlocutors on a similar point by declaring that "If he thinks for one moment that, as an outsider, I must take an outsider stance to an informed skepticism based in science and reason, then he needs to show why the science I base my argument on is faulty." Must Loftus first exhaustively demonstrate why each believer's particular faith, or epistemology, is faulty before suggesting they submit to the OTF? Not according to him. He claims the facts of diversity, dependence, and mutual-exclusivity makes this incumbent on any rational believer, irrespective of whatever defenses they may have for their particular faith. Yet these same facts do not make the same thing incumbent on him: one must first knock down his position, then demand he take a stance of skepticism towards it, while the believer must avail himself of no defense before adopting the same stance. Again, he’s special pleading.

Another critical problem with this text is the explicit faith-reason false dichotomy that runs throughout, and comes to a head in the final section. He conceives of faith and reason as diametrically opposed and competing epistemologies. This is fine when preaching to the choir of atheists who share this understanding of ‘faith’, and while remaining incurious about what faith actually is in its essence. But since the stated purpose of the book is to propose a test for believers to apply to their religion and determine whether it's likely true, it would be of more significance if he examined what ‘faith’ has been considered to be throughout history, and across cultures, or at least what current believers – his main audience – understand it to be, and what its relationship to reason is. If he did so, he would see that he's attacking a straw man.

He would further have to acknowledge that, on this proper understanding of faith, it isn't optional. Every act of reason always-already entails an act of faith. When some of his interlocutors (mostly Christians who tenaciously comment on his blog, apparently) point out that there are many things we do not know by way of scientific or rational inquiry, such as that there is a material world, that we aren't currently in a virtual reality, that our senses are reliable etc. rather we must accept these things on faith, he replies:

Christians retort that I have faith in reason, in skepticism, in science, in my senses, and in the evidence, but what can they possibly mean? Could trusting them be conceivably wrong at times? Yes, of course. We even know this. But there simply is no alternative but to trust them.

Well, yes. Quite. That's precisely the point. Faith isn't optional.

He further objects to these sorts of objections by, once again, reiterating that we must go on probability, and the probability is extremely unlikely that, for example, the material world doesn't exist. But what tests can be devised to assess the probability that we do not currently reside in a virtual reality? Or that you didn't pop into existence 5 minutes ago with all of your memories intact? By the very nature of these sorts of problems, the probabilities can't even be assessed at all and so appealing to probability is a nonsensical move. He's right, of course, that we can do nothing but proceed as if our senses can be trusted and as if the material world exists. But to claim that this doesn't constitute a faith commitment requires justification, and he gives none.

Loftus attempts to make hay out of the fact that believers will use science and reason when objecting to the truth claims of other religions, but not their own. Yet he doesn’t demonstrate that science and reason contradict the claims of the Christian faith (his admitted chief target), so we’re left to take his word for it that they do. If these inputs don’t unequivocally disprove the Christian faith or make it very unlikely to be true (and they don’t), then there’s no reason to suspect that believers aren’t critically availing themselves of the tools of science and reason in examining the question of religion. Begging the question, Loftus assumes an answer to the very matter of contention without any justification.

It all gets a bit tedious after a while – the hectoring tone, the argument-by-assertion, the repetition, the special pleading and question-begging, the myopia. And quickly. Despite the book's massive flaws, the central contention – that it's a profitable endeavor to subject our culturally inherited beliefs and biases to critical scrutiny, availing ourselves of the tools of science and reason – is certainly true, and not particularly controversial. The OTF itself can be salvaged from the wreckage of the book if you broaden it to include all manner of beliefs, rather than only explicitly religious ones, and extricate the author's unsubstantiated foregone conclusions which permeate the text. But really, what's the point? In a culture as modern, pluralistic, and secular as our own, this amounts to preaching to the choir. Even if the sermon did happen to echo beyond the pulpit, reaching the apostate faithful out on the street corners and miraculously leading to some of their conversions, they still won't have become outsiders. They'll have done the only thing that's possible: traded one insider vantage for another.

Adaptation & Blue Like Jazz

Blue Like Jazz provides a compelling case study on the process of book-to-film adaptation, as it reveals how the conversion between mediums can result, not only in losing something in translation, but in positively inverting the meaning of a text. In the book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller unequivocally depicts the quasi-autobiographical character Don's experiences at a secular university -- having been raised Baptist -- as a process of maturation, of being exposed to a wider world of intellectual openness and breadth, of fruitful experiences with new types of people who influence him for the better, of growing in wisdom, of coming to view his religious roots as narrow-minded and hypocritical. Because we are privy to Don's inner monologue in the book, this understanding of his journey is forcefully impressed on the reader and unmistakable. One may have suspicions (as I did) that what's really going on -- as it does for so many new college students -- is the character is succumbing to the seduction of sinful worldliness, and nothing more. The text of the book is ambiguous enough to allow that this is perhaps some minor aspect of what is occuring, but it also makes abundantly clear that ultimately what is transpiring in Don's life is good.

The translation to film is fascinating because, without Don's inner monologue constantly available, it not only becomes possible to read Don's journey as a straightforward discarding of one's faith in favor of seductive worldliness, but it positively screams to be read in this fashion. There aren't any narrative clues that anything else is happening at all, save perhaps the final 'redemptive' moments that themselves contain decidedly mixed sentiments. The film could practically be used as a Scared Straight propaganda video, showing Christian parents the soul-corrupting dangers of secular University life in modern America. While the book emphatically rejects this narrative and depicts his journey as a process of enrichening, enlightening spiritual and personal growth.

The character of Penney in the film supplies the only counter to Don's descent into effective unbelief. Her faith fuels her political activism and world-saving pretensions, without her having to always, you know, talk about Jesus and be all religiousy. Don clearly admires Penney and sees her brand of faith as more genuine and mature, but if she were an unbelieving, secular do-gooder it's hard to see what -- if anything -- would be lost about his admiration. She says she read the Bible in an ancient literature class and fell in love with Jesus, exactly as if he were some inspiring literary character and nothing more.

The final moments do acknowledge Don's grief at his having been ashamed of Christ, but this is consistent with interpreting his college experience as utterly negative and corrupting up to that point. Again, the precise opposite of what the book portrays.

This disconnect between book and film makes me curious whether this was an intentional move. It probably makes the film more pallettable for a young evagelical audience (the only crowd they could even hope to be appealing to), but it seems to radically compromise on the message of the book to such a degree that one wouldn't think Miller would be OK with it. Yet he wrote the script and was intimately involved with making the film. The only other possibility is that it was unintentional, in which case I would hypothesize it's attributable to an over-familiarity with the source material to the point where the filmmakers assume the audience has (much) more information than they've actually been given. Either way, it's a potent testament to the precarious nature of film adaptation.

Louie Giglio and Preaching to the Culture

On this the day of Obama's 2nd inauguration, Mark Galli has a piece in Christianity Today on the Louie Giglio fiasco and its significance for Christians and their engagement with culture. The overall thrust of the piece -- that the Church needs to preach Christ crucified vigorously, and ditch the moralistic therapeutic deism -- is admirable, but Galli makes some crucial mistakes in his diagnosis of the problem. He says:

When the culture takes issue with the church today, it carps about our oppressive sexual ethics (especially our opposition to homosexual behavior) and our various prosperity gospels (from the most egregious health-and-wealth messages to the more subtle but equally dangerous sermons on how faith in Christ can improve your marriage, your business, and your self-esteem).

With regard to the first, I don't get the impression that Galli thinks this is a problem on the Church's end -- let's be charitable and assume he doesn't. Then this is a non-issue: the Church rightly stands up for its sexual ethics in the public square, and the culture rightly (given its values) tears at its garments and wails. This is as it should be. May it ever be so.

The real mistake is with the latter. The claim that our culture takes issue with self-help, life-management tactics is utterly false. Not only does the wider culture not take issue with this element of American Christianity, but this aberrant strain of the faith is a direct outworking of -- and sustained ally to -- our cultural values and ideology. Thus, when Galli declares:

The current state of our preaching is driven by an admirable desire to show our age the relevance of the gospel. But our recent attempts have inadvertently turned that gospel into mere good advice—about sex, about social ethics, about how to live successfully. This either offends or bores our culture.

One wonders which culture he could possibly be referring to. Again, with regard to preaching about sex, sin, and repentance, our culture does rage against us and we should welcome the fury with delight. With regard to preaching practical, self-help therapy, our culture has no issue at all and is in complete sync with the Church on this point.

Another small complaint about Galli's piece is the introduction, in which he echoes the unfortunately widespread downplaying of Christian persecution in this country -- such as that suffered by Giglio and Hobby Lobby -- by noting that other Christians, at other times and places, get killed and tortured for their faith. Expressed in syllogistic form this argument seems to go something like:

Premise 1: There are many levels of severity of persecution.
Premise 2: ?????
Conclusion: Relatively mild persecution is not persecution at all.

We are called to live faithfully and to suffer through the persecution that might result. And we should encourage our brothers and sisters who suffer persecution, no matter what form it comes in. This obsessive need to downplay legitimate persecution, just because it's not as bad as it could be, is abhorrent. Murdering Christians for their faith is wicked; chasing Christians from the public square because they refuse to submit to the anti-Christian secular hegemony is also wicked, not to mention anti-American. If we are going to serve as a prophetic witness to the culture, we have to call out persecution for what it is rather than shrug it off.

With all that said, Galli is still right about the prosperity gospels, subtle and blatant, which need to be rooted out from the garden of Christianity. What he doesn't seem to get is that, even if this purge were wholly successful, this is much more likely to make Christianity even less attractive to our culture. Thankfully, we're not called to market the faith effectively, but rather to repentance, faithfulness, and holiness.

A New Catechumen and the Saints - Journey to Orthodoxy (part 6)

St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom,
and St. Gregory the Theologian

Today marked a significant event in my journey to Orthodoxy as I was made into a catechumen during divine liturgy at St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside. The process of converting to Orthodoxy can be conceived of in 3 stages: courtship, engagement, and marriage. Today marked the end of the courtship stage (which previous installments in this series described certain elements of), and the beginning of the engagement phase. Here is an excerpt from something Father Josiah wrote called How to Become an Orthodox Christian, explaining what has just transpired for the newly enrolled catechumen.

At this point the inquirer has made a definitive decision to become an Orthodox Christian forever. He knows that this commitment is not a denominational switch, but an approach to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. It is a commitment to faithfully serve God as a member of the Orthodox Church no matter where one lives on this earth. The catechumen is engaged to the Church, and will complete this engagement with the spiritual marriage which is holy baptism. It is expected at this juncture that the new catechumen inform in writing any religious body in which he was previously a member his desire to be removed from the membership of said body. The catechumen is numbered amongst a class of catechumens that belongs to the particular parish, and will begin the formal process of catechesis. From this point the catechumen self-identifies to the outside world as an Orthodox Christian. Should the catechumen die before reception into the church, he will be buried as an Orthodox Christian.

So today begins my catechesis and I am now an Orthodox Christian (though not yet a full member). I'm elated and very grateful to Father Josiah and all the kind people at St. Andrew who have been so warm and welcoming to me, including my fellow catechumens. May the Lord Christ bless the catechumens of St. Andrew, through the intercessions of the Saints.

 Now, speaking of the intercessions of the Saints, let's pick up where the previous installment left off.

The primary Protestant objections to prayer to the Saints seem to be either that it's unnecessary -- there is one mediator between man and God, the God-man Christ Jesus, so why get anyone else involved? -- or about practical questions of whether the dead Saints can hear our prayers. Again, my reservations were of a similar character, though they weren't very strong. Nonetheless, I investigated the matter and the following are some things I took away from the Orthodox explanation of the practice.

Even if the Great Saints of the Church couldn't intercede on our behalf, it should still be obvious why Christians ought to want them to. James 5:16 says that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." All Christians know that it's good to pray for each other and to ask for the intercessory prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ (even when they aren't particularly Holy brothers and sisters, we often still ask). But why limit this practice to those who are alive in the flesh, rather than to all those who are alive in Christ? If we are made into new creatures in Christ (2. Cor 5:17), freed from enslavement to death in the water of Baptism (Romans 6:3-4), sharing in Christ's resurrection to new life here and now, and not at some undetermined time in the future, then a practical implication of this is that those who have fallen asleep in the Lord aren't actually dead in the fullest sense. The Church of Christ consists of all those who are in Christ, whether living or dead. And with the Church being a communal reality, this means we still commune with those who are not currently with us in tangible ways.

Further, the practice of invoking the Saints, asking for their intercessions, reading their words, praying their prayers, and venerating icons of them keeps concrete examples in our mind of the types of lives that are possible to live given the transformative power of the Holy Spirit at work in us. Christ remains our ultimate standard, of course, but without a constant awareness of our spiritual inheritance, and the lives of the best of our forebears in the Faith, our own spiritual lives will be much impoverished.

Also, as always with Orthodox doctrine and praxis, praying to the Saints is found early in Church history and has Apostolic provenance (though, of course, some non-Orthodox dispute this). As that is far from my area of expertise, I'll refrain from wading into those waters here.

This is a brief defense of the practice, but -- as should be apparent -- it opens up into the broader issue of how death is to be understood for Christians. Which is another topic I'm not especially qualified to comment on in any depth, but suffice it to say that there is a stark difference here between Orthodox and Protestant tradition as evidenced by the burial practices, praying for the reposed in a liturgical way, etc.

This post somewhat chronologically catches us up to where my journey is at present. I plan to continue the series throughout my catechesis and perhaps beyond. If you have questions, comments, or things you'd like me to address, please comment below.

Mary, and Icons, and Saints -- Oh my! (Journey to Orthodoxy, part 5)

Icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa

Some common stumbling blocks for Protestants examining or approaching Orthodoxy are the high mariology, the presence and veneration of icons in worship, and the practice of praying to and asking for the intercessions of the saints -- all three of these having certain points of intersection with each other. From a Protestant perspective, certain aspects of these practices and doctrines are usually outright objectionable, while other aspects are seen as tolerable, but simply unnecessary or superfluous. From an Orthodox perspective -- as I've come to understand it -- these are not simply matters of optional worship preferences which the Orthodox happen to have adopted, but are vital elements of the life and mind of the Orthodox Church and are consistent with the fullness of the Faith as it was once delivered to the Saints.

For Protestants -- and for myself, when beginning to explore Orthodoxy -- the question immediately would be what the Scriptural basis for the beliefs and practices are. As earlier entries in the series attempted to explain, given how the Orthodox understanding of Scripture, its relationship with tradition, and how authority is derived within the Church, it's unsurprising that there would be areas of significant divergence between traditions. Which is not to say that there is no Scriptural basis for the practices and beliefs. Orthodox would just say that the scriptural basis are all the verses that are not regularly underlined, or exhaustively cross-referenced, or are poorly understood due to a divergent hermeneutic. For example, some Orthodox note that Mary takes up approximately 10% of both Matthew and Luke's gospel, and that the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) declares that all generations will call Mary blessed. This, admittedly, seems less of a prescription and more of a description, but nevertheless, why not regularly -- rather than once a year -- call Mary blessed given her amazing role in bringing Salvation to the world? This is just one example of how Scripture accords with and provides a basis for the practices. For other examples check out series on the Ancient Faith Radio program Our Life in Christ, which has series on all these topics. That's a good starting point, anyway.

In addition to this, Orthodox would appeal to the Apostolic tradition and the Faith as it was handed down -- some of which by word and not epistle -- all of which accords with scripture, but which can't necessarily be plucked from it absent the proper hermeneutic within the life of the Church.

Icon of Christ's Baptism

At the council of Nicaea, before a canon of the New Testament existed, it was established that, for example, Christ is homooúsios with the Father, or "of one substance". The language of homooúsios isn't Biblical language, but it is still confessed by all Christians and deviations from this belief are considered heretical by virtually all of historic Christianity. There is, of course, a rich and bountiful Scriptural basis for this doctrine, but the doctrine was established before an authoritative canon of Scripture was. So just as the persons of the Trinity are homooúsios with one another, and just as this doctrine was established and settled by the conciliar model of ecclesial authority, via Apostolic tradition, so too with the veneration of icons, intercessions of the Saints, and a high mariology.

Just as the First and Second Ecumenical councils, at Nicaea and Constantinople, gave us the Creed, which is the standard ecumenical confession of the faith of Christians, the Seventh Ecumenical Council declared iconoclasm to be heresy. Just as the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon established the canon of Scripture -- which all Christians adhere to -- the Third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus established that Mary is theotokos -- the birth-giver of God. That is, not merely the mother of Jesus's human nature and not the divine Logos -- as Nestorius was teaching -- but of God the Son.

Protestants take issue with these beliefs and practices on various levels. They might not object to calling Mary theotokos, for example, but they will object to praying to her or the Saints. They might not have a problem with making icons, or adorning churches with them (though they don't do it), but they do have a problem with their veneration because it seems like idol worship to them. This is approximately where I was when I began attending orthodox services, though by that time I had adopted the stance of a learner and was open to the possibility that I was ignorant. With this in mind, I sought answers on these issues.

Icon of Mary, the Theotokos, with Christ.

A very brief theological defense of a high mariology and of the place of iconography in worship is this: the Incarnation. Both of these elements of doctrine and praxis are consequences of an affirmation of the Incarnation. If Christ is fully man and fully God, then Mary can properly be called the mother of God, or theotokos. If Christ is, as St. Paul says, the "image [or icon] of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), then the invisible God -- who can not be pictured -- now can be in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

Also, where the iconography and the mariology merge -- in icons of Mary -- Christ is virtually always depicted with Mary. She is significant because of Christ's significance, and Orthodox veneration of her always points to Christ. She was an obedient and pure servant of God's, but it's ultimately about what God has done through her and which she cooperated with. She was the first believer; She was the culmination of Israel's lineage and was chosen to bear God the Word; Christ took his human nature from her flesh; the uncircumscribable and uncontainable God was circumscribed and contained in her womb. These are magnificent, holy mysteries and it is a disservice to Christ and the reality of his Incarnation to diminish or downplay them in any way.

Of course, many evangelicals might say "well yeah, I affirm most of those things about Mary", which points to a broader issue with evangelicalism. If you affirm that, then why is it omitted from your prayers and worship? This is a separate issue, one that is somewhat touched on in earlier posts, but in my experience it is unhelpful to officially affirm doctrines on your doctrinal statement -- "Christ was born of the Virgin Mary", perhaps -- which then have no consequence in the language or shape of liturgical worship and life. If it is a truth and it's something you affirm, then let it loose, don't keep it quietly locked away on the Church website.

As for Protestants who wouldn't affirm Mary as theotokos or -- to bring up another issue -- her ever-virginity, one wonders why they don't seeing as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Wesley all did.

Returning to the issue of icons and their veneration, the chief issue here is that the 2nd commandment says not to make a graven image and worship it. Orthodox venerate icons but don't worship them, as worship belongs to God alone.

If God's truth can be contained and transmitted through Scripture, which of course it can, then why can it not be contained and transmitted by image? Orthodox see both scripture and iconography as different vessels of the same truth, the truth of the Gospel. One are words written by human hands, hands belonging to members of Christ's church who have the Holy Spirit; the other are images written by human hands, hands belonging to members of Christ's Church who have the Holy Spirit. Both bearing witness to the same truth(s).

As for veneration of icons, I found this illustration helpful: when a World War II fighter pilot kissed a photograph of his wife, was he committing adultery? Was he confused? Did he love the photograph more than his wife? Was he unaware that the image is an icon of a living reality that is not contained by the image? Of course not. The same is true of Orthodox veneration of icons. Icons transmit the Gospel, they are a window to the spiritual realm, they are a testament to the fact that the saints are alive in Christ and not dead, they affirm the reality of the Incarnation, and they are a monument to the beauty of God. Thus when Orthodox venerate them they are affirming these truths and simultaneously ascribing honor and veneration to the living truth which the icon images forth.

As this post is getting lengthy, I will cut it off here and address prayers to the Saints, intercessions of the Saints, and the Orthodox understanding of death in the next post (all of which ties in to the issue of icons, since much iconography in the Orthodox Church depicts saints and martyrs of the Church). I may also touch on an issue I said I would address but neglected, that of the Great Schism and the filioque.

Journey to Orthodoxy (part 4)

The previous post in this series highlighted some areas where foundational shifts of perspective took place as I approached Orthodoxy from an evangelical background. The main ones were: (1) how authority in the church is derived, established and passed down (2) understanding of the sacraments, (3) the way the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity intensely shape the focus and the form of the worship of the Orthodox church, and (4) that worship and communion is what human beings were created for.

These realizations fueled others (and each other), which led to a deeper, more full appreciation of other issues, and then ultimately fed back into the primary, fundamental convictions -- who God is, what and who humanity and the Church are, and how they all relate -- again. I discovered the Orthodox faith to be a rich, intricate, and beautiful tapestry woven from these threads.

Initially I was going to explore this infinite inexhaustibility of Orthodoxy in writing, but as a lot of it is too much for words, or certainly beyond anything that I have to contribute, I have decided to defer some of that for now. Instead I would like to take a brief look at my first concrete experiences with the Orthodox Church.

With my interest in the Orthodox Faith piqued, and undergoing a sort of intellectual transformation, I knew attending Orthodox services was the next step. Many of the Church Fathers stress the centrality of the liturgy as a defining witness of what the Church believes and how she lives. St. John Chrysostom says that the best catechism is faithful, mindful attendance of divine services. Having listened to many episodes of Ancient Faith radio programming, one notices how often Orthodox will answer questions or address issues by saying, "Well, at such-and-such part of the liturgy we pray these words.." or "This hymn is sung during such-and-such a period the liturgical calendar for this reason.." And it is a common aphorism, accepted by the Orthodox Church that "we believe what we pray and we pray what we believe". With all this in mind, I set out to attend divine liturgy at an Orthodox parish.

The first I attended was the closest Orthodox parish to my home, St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Upland, California. On their website it said that 'Matins' began at 9 AM and liturgy at 10 AM. Not being sure exactly what Matins was, I figured I'd attend both. It was a small, ethnic parish and arriving at 9 AM, there was only the priest, the chanters (two of them) and one member of the laity (though many other parishioners arrived later in the hour). Immediately I realized (I'm a very attentive sort) that the liturgy was almost entirely in some form of Arabic. There were candles, an iconostasis, incense, much crossing of one's self, and other elements of worship foreign to my experience, but the service was beautiful and ancient and I felt strongly compelled to find an Orthodox church with (at least predominantly) English services.

A kind family at St. George recommended St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside, which they said performed services in English. It was a bit of a drive, but I figured it was worth it. St. Andrew's temple (I later learned) is only about a year old, and is a magnificent, beautiful building, built in traditional Byzantine style of architecture.

While I had been among the first to arrive at St. George (and so saw no one else as they entered), this wasn't the case at St. Andrew. As I was entering the narthex of the church (the Western portion which is where the main entrance is), the first thing that struck me were the presence of icons and candles, and parishioners venerating the icons, lighting candles and praying. Looking beyond the narthex into the nave of the Church, there were icons in many places -- on the iconostasis, on the pillars, on the walls, inside the central dome, and on the walls and ceiling of the sanctuary. There seemed to be an open-air area of confession off to the side where parishioners were confessing before the priest. At St. George there was just the one priest and some altar boys, while at St. Andrew there was a priest and many deacons or assistant priests performing the liturgy. There was also full choir that sang hymns and prayers, in concert with the presbyters and deacons. Something else that caught my attention was a relative dearth of chairs and that during most of the service -- practically all of it -- the parishioners stand.

Having my senses overwhelmed in such a manner, with such unfamiliar sites, sounds and smells, it was difficult to process everything that occurred. But the beauty -- and therefore truth -- of it all struck me as unmistakable.

Something I kind of passed over without comment in the previous posts was that in my reading I had, in an intellectual way, come to a greater understanding of beauty and its theological significance. Largely -- but not solely -- due to David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Here was a Church that seemed to take what was -- for me, at the time -- mere ideas and manifest them in a living reality.

But venerating icons? The intercessions of the Saints? Mary, the Theotokos? All of these things -- though I was aware of some of the history behind them -- are not just doctrines that the Orthodox Church affirms, but are actual significant elements of their liturgical worship, and elements that were utterly foreign to me, coming from the background that I had. These were stumbling blocks for myself and -- as many programs on Ancient Faith radio attest to -- for most Protestant converts to Orthodoxy. However, as I had already become somewhat inclined to accept the Orthodox Church as the true New Testament church, persisting throughout history and with us still today, I endeavored to approach these matters with a humble heart and the spirit of a learner, operating on the assumption that there must be much that I did not understand. Part of me instinctively recoiled at some of this, but I was eager to learn more. In the next installment we will look at these matters more closely, from the perspective of the Orthodox Church, and we'll examine the scriptural basis for these doctrines and practices as well as their theological significance.

Journey to Orthodoxy (part 3)

In the previous post I listed some of the issues that were the impetus to my exploring Orthodoxy seriously. The first thing this meant was securing a better understanding of the Early Church and its own self-understanding, which in turn meant reading the Early Church Fathers. The first place I turned was the Cappadocian Fathers (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and especially St. Gregory of Nyssa, given his influence on David Bentley Hart). I also read some of the earlier fathers like St. Irenaeus of Lyons and Justin Martyr, as well as re-visited Augustine.

While I was reading more of the Church Fathers, I also began listening to podcasts at Ancient Faith Radio. Many of the programs there -- such as Our Life in Christ, At the Intersection of East and West, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, and Faith and Philosophy -- focus on issues of the Orthodox church in America, and often the sorts of things that Protestants looking to better understand Orthodoxy would be concerned about. While the content at AFR was (and is) stellar -- addressing issues such as Church history, ecclesiology, the sacraments, and the differences between Orthodoxy and other Christian denominations -- just as importantly, it introduced me to a variety of voices within the tradition, which I found to be extremely favorable not only on matters of the Church, but how the shared tradition seems to shape their convictions in positive ways.

Listening to some of these podcasts dovetailed nicely with reading the Fathers because the programs revealed high esteem for the Fathers and a deep congruence with their thought on many levels. The theology and ecclesiology that I was being exposed to had a very venerable provenance, but also happened to address many of the issues I had felt as deficiencies in the non-denominational evangelical tradition.

One of the central, large differences the Orthodox church has with Protestantism is its understanding of the Church, authority, tradition, and scripture and the relationship between them. Orthodoxy sees a very organic, mutually enforcing relationship between these things and no contradictions. The Orthodox Church sees authority as flowing from  Christ of course, but also from the Church itself, which is in-dwelt with the Holy Spirit, and who not only wrote, but decided upon the canon of scripture. And the scripture inherits its authority from the Church, the body of Christ. While the evangelical tradition sees the Bible itself as the ultimate authority for Christian life and practice, as distinct from the Church, with the Holy Spirit having worked to create the Bible through human beings, but not necessarily through the Church as a single, concrete, visible, distinguishable historical entity. While the Orthodox Church also sees the Bible as authoritative and divinely inspired, it believes that the way the Church reads Scripture, and Scripture's place in the whole life of the Church is similarly authoritative. This is a large difference, though it may seem like a fine one to some. The Orthodox understanding is crucially at odds with the foundational Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura.

Now, I had not ever had a problem with sola scriptura, but then I never gave much countenance to alternative views before and so I started to question the position. Or really, to think through it for the first time, since in the tradition I grew up in, even though sola scriptura was tacitly affirmed, it was not something that was ever much preached about or taught explicitly but rather assumed.

Is sola scriptura an absolute doctrine or just a local, temporal principle? After all, if it was a doctrine that all Christians throughout the ages should have held to, what were the scriptures that the Church held to from Pentecost to the year 397 AD, when the New Testament canon of scripture was established at the council of Chalcedon?  Almost 400 years is a long time for Christians to go without any authority to turn to. Did God abandon the Church during those 400 years (or at least the years from the time the last apostle died)? Further, given the evangelical emphasis on individual scripture reading and interpretation, in light of your conscience, what about the next 1000 years of lay Christians, before the printing press was invented? Also, isn't sola scriptura somewhat self-contradictory since that principle isn't itself found in scripture?

Of course, defenders of sola scriptura have thought about these issues and can offer their defenses, but in my case the way Orthodox ecclesiology addresses these issues, and the way it feeds into so many others, made it a very attractive solution. And a Biblical one! In 1st Timothy 3:15 St. Paul writes that "the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth." While this mostly does away with sola scriptura, it resolves so many other issues, and is such an elegant solution that does justice to the majestic claims of the New Testament that the Church is Christ's beautiful bride; that she is Christ's body. If the Church is such a highly exalted reality, then why should not the life of the church -- her oral and written traditions, liturgical life -- be authoritative? And was this not the understanding of the nature of the Church as professed by the Fathers, who were directly taught by the Apostles? In 2 Thessalonians 2:15 Paul writes to "stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle." Paul doesn't say to hold fast only to that which is written down, excluding the oral tradition of the Faith of the Apostles.

This understanding of the Church addresses many problems, such as the one that was raised in part 2 of this series of blogs regarding unity. It doesn't resolve that problem entirely without remainder, but it does significantly narrow the scope of the problem. The Orthodox Church conceives of itself as uniquely the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The primary question therefore becomes how to maintain the unity of the Orthodox church, rather than ecumenical efforts with heretical and schismatic sects, which aren't the Church divided as much as simply not-the-Church (or, at least, are not in the fullness of the Orthodox faith). This is a much more realistically manageable goal, while the ever proliferating division of the Protestant church offers little hope on this count. Of course, the non-denominational tradition offers an alternative solution to unity, but one that requires theological imprecision and a lowest-common-denominator approach to unity, which is extremely unsatisfying by my lights.

Another question that arises is, if Christians recognize the Christology and Trinitarianism of Nicaea as authoritative, and properly see Arianism as heretical, why do Protestants only acknowledge the authority of the first two Ecumenical Councils and their production of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed, and the canonization of Scripture established by the synod of Carthage in 397 (in concert with the mind of the Church on the matter), but disregard the Ecumenical Councils on many other matters? The Apostles established the normative practice of calling councils to settle disputes within the church in Acts 15, so why pick and choose in this way? Well, the Orthodox don't.

When approaching Orthodoxy I was aware that the Orthodox had a high sacramentology, which in my readings I had found to be consonant with venerable, historical Christianity. However, while what I thought was absent was a proper recognition of the centrality of the Eucharist to the worship of the church, as well as a full comprehension of the Eucharist itself, I was not aware just how integral it is not only to Orthodox worship, but to the entire life of the Church. For the Orthodox, it isn't simply a matter of celebrating the Eucharist rightly, but of developing a sacramental worldview, which is intimately tied with the Church's view of creation and the human being and how they relate to God. Some of which I dimly intimated before becoming acquainted with Orthodoxy, and which I began to gain a more robust understanding of by listening to some Ancient Faith programs, but which I really grasped (to the extent the Holy mysteries can be grasped) when I read Fr. Alexander Schmemmann's book For the Life of the World, on the Orthodox view of the sacraments.

Yet another fundamental difference that I recognized in Orthodoxy, and which I truly began to see when I started attending an Orthodox parish and observing the liturgy (which I will describe more of anon), is the manner in which the core Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity intimately shape the form of Orthodox worship and piety. Which is a large change from the tradition I was raised in where, for example, the Trinity is rarely even invoked (though it is affirmed). Along with this, and along with my greater appreciation of the nature of the sacraments, I began to understand 'worship' itself anew. Of course, scripture speaks of offering your body as a sacrifice of worship in Romans 12:1, and gives a picture of what true worship is, and teaches that we are creatures who were made for worship. This was head knowledge I've always had, but the Orthodox Church presented this as a living reality in a way I had never experienced. It's frankly something that is difficult to really put into words, and certainly impossible to encompass in a series of blog posts, so for now I will leave it at that.

These are just some of the real fundamental shifts in comprehension that started to reform my understanding of everything else. In the next post we will look at some more specific implications of these convictions, and touch upon my experience of going from a church of no formal liturgical tradition, to experiencing the highly liturgical Orthodox tradition. And perhaps briefly look at early medieval Church history and why I never gave Catholicism much consideration (partly unfairly). Ultimately this series will bring us up to the present, where I'm currently worshiping, studying, desiring to enter the catechumenate, and seeking the spiritual guidance of Fr. Josiah at St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside.

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P.S. I hasten to add as a disclaimer that I haven't even officially begun my catechesis yet, and so I may be mistaken or imprecise about many of these points and my understanding of them. Indeed, Orthodoxy teaches that true understanding doesn't even really begin until one is participating in the life of the church fully, which I'm not. Lord have mercy.

Journey to Orthodoxy (part 2)

While I didn't mention it in my last post, I hope it is clear that the first stage in my journey to Orthodoxy was initiated due to a level of discontent with the tradition I grew up in. Here are some specific examples of  what seemed to be absent, under-emphasized, or over-emphasized in the non-denominational, evangelical tradition, given the general convictions regarding ecclesiology and pneumatology I had begun to arrive at.

• Lack of authority and consequential divisions in the church 
• Low sacramentology and view of creation
• Low ecclesiology
• Low view of tradition
• Inadequate recognition of the implications of the Incarnation
• A strain of Gnosticism in the church
• A strain of 'moralistic therapeutic deism' in the church (with Christ's name pegged on)

There are probably other things, and if it's requested of me, I would elaborate on any of these (in the comments or elsewhere), but I'd rather not belabor the point of the catalyst to explore other denominations and traditions, and instead transition into that exploration itself, which will in turn illuminate some of these matters.

Given my general dissatisfaction with non-denominational evangelicalism, my inherited, inchoate Romophobia, and my admiration of the Reformers, I initially believed that some form of Lutheranism or the Reformed tradition would best address these issues for me. Around this time I also stumbled upon the work of David Bentley Hart -- specifically his writings for First Things magazine, a predominantly Catholic publication -- an Eastern Orthodox theologian who I found to be utterly brilliant. While I quickly read everything of Hart's I could find, not much of his material was on the subject of Orthodoxy as such, but his Orthodox sensibility while addressing particular topics exposed me to aspects of that tradition. Which put another option on the table for me to explore, though I didn't seriously consider it an option at first because of its remote and 'exotic'-seeming nature, which was so far afield of my own experience.

My investigation of Lutheranism and the Reformed tradition never went very deep, I should confess. I read a lot of Luther and some Calvin, as well as theologians from later centuries within those traditions, and I felt I had a fairly firm grasp on the main features of their thought and the traditions. But when it came to actually investigating the churches in existence today, the plethora of strains of Lutheranism and Reformed churches was a bit dizzying -- where do I start? I could quickly discard the liberal strains of Lutheranism, of course, but where to go after that? It was a bit overwhelming, and so I sort of stalled out in my exploration (to my discredit).

While the issue of 'church unity' essentially never even came up when I was growing up in the church, even when I became aware of it, it didn't interest me much. 'Church unity' is guaranteed because there's a mystical, invisible Church which consists of all those who belong to Christ. Why fret about it? It can't be thwarted, ultimately, after all. But eventually this very process, and the proliferation of divisions in the Protestant church it brought to my attention, did cause some consternation for me, especially in light of Christ's high priestly prayer in John 17.

This brought to the forefront the idea of a 'pre-denominational' church, which essentially both the Catholic and Orthodox claim to be, and seem to be the only ones who could possibly make such a claim. I was already somewhat familiar with the bare basics of the history of the Church, and so with the character of the Early Church, also in a very limited way. I knew that the Great Schism occurred in 1054. But if there was a pre-denominational Church, which was it? How did schism come about, exactly? Being familiar with much of the anti-Catholic polemic of the Reformation, as well as with having my own objections to the Catholic Church today, my first inclination was to suspect that Orthodoxy might uniquely, legitimately make this claim to being the original church. This suspicion was somewhat bolstered by my admiration for the Orthodox thought of David Bentley Hart. In my next post we will (finally) begin to look at Orthodoxy itself and see what drew me to it, as well as shine light back on what bothered me about my own tradition, but which I couldn't see except in the light of Orthodoxy.

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P.S. It should be noted that this process I'm describing is more clean and simplified than it actually was, as there were many subtle factors, events, and ideas that contributed to me heading in this direction. I'm streamlining and simplifying to some degree to make the story manageable and coherent.

On Symbolism and Sacrament

I recently listened to an episode of Our Life in Christ -- a podcast at Ancient Faith Radio -- which discussed the sacraments of the Orthodox Church and referenced the book I'm currently reading on the same subject, For The Life of The World by Alexander Schmemmann.

The hosts mention that in some evangelical Protestant polemic they cite writings of the early Church Fathers (one example is given in the podcast, but I forget who it was) which refer to the Eucharist and baptism (or one or the other) as 'symbols', in a defense of a lower sacramentology. The hosts of the podcast -- Steve Robinson and Bill Gould -- point out that 'symbol' as used in contemporary English doesn't mean what the Greek word from which it is derived meant.

The Greek word translated as 'symbol' is Σύμβολο (sýmvolo), and it meant 'to throw together' or 'the joining of two things into one.' One supposes that 'symbol' is a cognate of 'symbiosis', but obviously the meaning of these two words are currently different from one another. It seems that 'symbiosis' retained a meaning closer to its etymological origin, while 'symbol' has drifted. Today we understand 'symbol' to roughly mean 'one thing that stands for or represents or images forth another thing.' Not two things coming together in a living, interacting unity, a la symbiosis. The latter understanding seems to describe the nature of a high sacramentology -- the bread and wine becoming the body of Christ, thereby transforming the Church into the actual body of Christ; baptism as an actual death to our old self and actual resurrection to new life joined to Christ and his Church etc. -- more accurately than it does a 'symbolic' (in today's meaning) representation of a decision for Christ, or a mental recollection of the cross.

And it's not as if the Church Fathers didn't have a Greek word at their disposal that could express this idea of two different things beside each other, one standing for the other. They had that word and it was παραβολή (paràbola), which defined exactly that concept. 'Paràbola' meant (roughly) 'two things alongside one another' and is the word from which we derive -- among other words -- the English word 'parable'. A parable being one story that stands for another story or reality, while remaining separate. This is closer to what we mean today when we use the words 'symbol' and 'symbolism', but the Fathers didn't use this word because it wasn't what they meant.

That is the argument that is made in the podcast, at any rate, and one that seemed persuasive to me.

Opposing Gay Marriage is Loving

Having been inspired by Leroy Huizenga's recent piece at First Things, titled Opposing Gay Marriage is Rational, Not Religious, I want to contribute something along that same trajectory.

Proponents of gay marriage (or, more accurately, opponents of traditional marriage) often claim that there can be no rational argument against gay "marriage". Hence, Huizenga's volley (as well as those of others such as Francis Beckwith and Robert P. George) is significant and relevant. Opponents of traditional marriage also very often lay claim to a monopoly on love and compassion on this issue. Even though they themselves may not be gay, they so deeply and intensely care for the "rights" of others that they take a stand for gay "marriage". So, not only do they have a monopoly on moral reasoning, they also have a monopoly on compassion and empathy.

But just as opponents of traditional marriage don't actually have a monopoly on reason, despite their claims, neither do they have a monopoly on loving, compassionate other-centeredness. Indeed, the group who stands to be most directly, adversely affected by gay "marriage" is gay people themselves and so it is an act of Christian charity and love to oppose gay "marriage". And, conversely, those who are adamant about their moral support of their gay brethren are actually showing flagrant disregard for their well-being.

Before I defend the claim that gays stand to lose the most in legalizing gay "marriage", and that it's an act of love toward the LGBT community to oppose it, let me first clarify that just because this is at bottom a loving act, that doesn't mean it will always be undertaken in a loving way. Sacrificially serving others is also fundamentally an act of love, but if it's done begrudgingly or with a spiteful heart then the love is lost. Similarly, if the act of opposing gay marriage is done with a haughty or selfish heart, then the loving character of the act disappears. I have no intention of defending Christians who speak the ostensible truth but fail to do so in love, because Jesus says that they are anathema (essentially). My argument is against those who say that it's not possible to speak the truth in love -- that is, those actively supporting gay marriage in the public square, while denouncing the opposition as necessarily bigoted or hateful or irrational -- because that is also an affront to God.

Those who object to my argument would undoubtedly throw anecdotes my way of un-Christian non-love that have taken place in this battle (some real and most fiction), but I'm preemptively halting any such objections because the topic at hand is the nature of the act itself, at root, which is distinct from the question of how the act is being carried out. Though I will also say that, while there are obviously many ways Christians can go about their defense of traditional marriage wrongly and unlovingly, the vast majority of wrongs that are attributed to Christians on this issue aren't actually wrongs at all. Such as standing up for their beliefs by eating at Chick Fil-A and taking pictures of it, which is a perfectly legitimate, loving action. Beckwith makes that last point most clearly and strongly, arguing that it is absolutely an act of love between brothers in Christ and completely Christ-like. But my argument (which shall now commence) goes a step further and claims that it's also an act of love toward the LGBT community itself.

It's a simple observation, but the only proper telos for human sexuality, as created by God, is within the covenant of marriage, which appears throughout the Bible as a heterosexual union at all junctures, without exception. The verses that specifically condemn homosexuality -- which many, on both sides, curiously seem to haggle over quite a bit -- are actually mostly superfluous to the debate as the positive Biblical vision of marriage -- what it is, represents, entails and means -- necessarily precludes gay "marriage" from ever being a good thing.

Of course, even among Christians -- who should all affirm the preceding paragraph without hesitation -- some will object that they only think it should be a legal right in a free society, not that they are affirming gay marriages as good. It is only the right to do whatever we want that is good! While this is a highly dubious move -- dependent as it is on a vision of The Good which Christians are under no obligation to acknowledge or recognize, and which is actually heretical -- even if we grant it for sake of argument, it still doesn't address whether the act of legalizing something which affirms someone in their sin is helpful or harmful to that person. The Christian who cleaves to this position -- who holds that gay "marriage" is an affront to God's vision of marriage, but that it should still be legal -- is in favor of society not only tolerating sin, but affirming it positively. That Christian is helping the sinner to sin, shepherding them toward death, coaxing them along the path to damnation, and claiming that it is worth the trade because, hey, at least they can affirm the secular, liberal state's understanding of "freedom" along the way. This is obviously an untenable position.

Conversely, when we use the instrument of the modern state to reflect God's Law, the law becomes a signpost to the Law, and it performs the same function as signpost. Namely: it shows us our radical fallenness and need for radical Grace. While Grace has arrived, Law is still a perpetual movement in the story of God's love, and it's our duty as expositors of that story to not leave it out in the name of some bland "tolerance". Hence, when we refuse to leave it out -- such as when we oppose gay marriage -- we are loving our neighbors to the utmost.

What about those Christians who don't believe that gay "marriage" is an affront to God's vision of marriage? They speak manifest nonsense, rubbish, and gibberish, and in so doing slander the divine. Anathematize accordingly.