It seems I am forced to blog whether I want to or not.
I have been in a sort of dialog with a Christian brother who has an excellent blog on the Greek New Testament, which I often read, both to check out his insights and to fill in the blanks in my own knowledge of the scriptures. This brother identifies himself very strongly as a Calvinist, but I do not identify myself as an Orthodox, but only as a Christian. I can't escape the stinging rebuke that holy apostle Paul throws at the Corinthians.
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?
…Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
…
Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile." So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.
1 Corinthians 3:1-4, 16-23
Our dialog has been about what I call wearing Christian brand names. I don't find these brand names in the Bible or in the undivided Church, so I prefer not to use them. My brother, on the other hand, sees them as indispensable. In my folly, I answered him thus…
I like the way you list your questions, "But what does Christ think of the nature of man? Totally depraved or not? What does Christ think about election? Unconditional or conditional? What does He think about the atonement? Was it universal or particular to the saints? What does He think about His saving grace? Is it resistible or irresistible? What does He think about His elect? Will He keep them to persevere to their death or can they lose their salvation?"
Why do I like your questions? Because they show me what you're thinking about, and they also show me how far above your thoughts and my thoughts are the thoughts of Jesus who, though we can put our questions into His mouth, will never ask them in reality. Our questions are bound up in our partiality, our mortality, our speculation and our fear. We ask them always out of self-interest, hoping to justify ourselves, even while we claim to be disinterestedly seeking the truth. The only certainty I have about our questionings, yours and mine, is that they are the product of our hopeless and self-unredeemable depravity, our rebellious willfulness. What I know for certain is that they are the fire that ignites the whole wheel of God's creation, desiring to pull it all down on top of ourselves in chaos and ruin. Face it, we are brats, and the depth of our utter blasphemy proves only one thing: That Christ who came to call sinners to repentance, the dead to life, and the damned to salvation, has performed an inconceivably mighty feat, and all without our help, without our even wanting it! All our questioning and travail of self-justification does nothing to add to what He has done for us, but instead, only delays our reconciliation.
"What does Christ think of..." is dragging Him down to the level of our partiality, mortality, speculation and fear. His humanity, though, is the new humanity of the New Adam, into which He is transforming those whom the Father has drawn to Him. His humanity is not ours as it is, but ours as it will be after He has transformed us into the image of Himself, the New Adam.Jesus Christ is Θεανθρωπος, the God-Man. Would you make Him a Calvinist, so you can include Him when you say "we..."?
Forgive me, brothers, but I cannot escape the holy apostle's words, "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple." Nor can I ignore what the same apostle says in closing his instructions on this topic…
I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.
Some of you have become arrogant, as if I were not coming to you. But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power…
1 Corinthians 4:14-20
4 comments:
I would respond here instead of on his blog, because I don't know him and have not read enough of him to speak to him.
But something he said reminded me of myself.
To paraphrase, he is in seminary and feels compelled to make some decisions. Ideological commitments, as it were. He has to do that because the people that are training him, hiring him and stewarded by him all expect that of him.
I have been so expected and I have put upon myself burdens that God had not tied to my yoke. I think this is one of the corrections your gentle insistence at being "Christian only" provides.
As a recent convert I have a hard time working out the details about what's different now and what would have been different if I would have been merely an observer/admirer of Orthodox teachings while remaining in my former tradition.
I worry far too much about such things and obsess over questions unanswered. For which I must ask myself, what God in Christ is reconciling me to? If I am not being reconciled to Him, then whatever it is, I'm not "on the Way".
Forgive me if this rambles. I've read the stories of several saints that would accept any charge against them except heresy. I don't know how to integrate that into my life while not becoming sectarian. Perhaps I'm simply not mature enough to.
I identify as being an Orthodox Christian insofar as identifying what I mean when I confess "I believe in one holy catholic apostolic church." I have, in order to help someone who thinks that going to an Orthodox parish means I must be of Russian or Greek or Serbian or Romanian extract, explained that I go to a "Greek Orthodox" parish by personal decision (actually I go to an Antiochian parish, but this is too difficult for many to even begin to figure out). I do this because in fact being of Dutch colonial extract and hence originally my people were Dutch Reformed, then Baptists, and some (my family) later started going to Church of Christ/Christian Church churches (Stone-Campbell movement, for those who don't know what that is see here - Restoration Movement), which is where I grew up, I have no particular ethnic relation to the various parishes which call themselves Orthodox.
I think sometimes this self-identification as Orthodox can be important, if done in the right spirit.
Where I think it becomes a problem is where we start calling ourselves "Orthodox" or "Baptist" or "Foursquare" and (1) using it as a club to bash our brother with; and (b) replacing Jesus Christ with it: (the "Church says" or "my minister says" instead of "Jesus Christ says"). As soon as the "church" starts placing itself and its teaching (or the teaching of some particular person) over and above and in conflict with the Head, that is, our Lord, then the infection is very bad.
Romanos, I think you do very well to say what you say here - I think in most conversations it is better and right to simply self-identify as a disciple of Jesus Christ. If someone wants to talk about worship and the nature of the Church, then perhaps, as we are given wisdom and words, we can explain why we go to an Orthodox parish. To start with triumphally with "well, I'm Greek Orthodox and the Church says . . ." is both wrong and probably counterproductive. Too often I have done this very thing.
When I think of these things I always think of St. Photini, the Samarian woman at the well - she asks Jesus who is right - the Samarians or the Jews. He pretty much tells her the Jews have it right, but that her question misses the mark anyway - and one is left seeing that the "non-orthodox" Samarian woman is the greater disciple than many of the Jews who have "right worship." It's a cautionary tale for me.
Bonhoeffer talks about some of this in his exegesis on the Rich Young Ruler - he notes that Jesus looks at him in love and realizes that he keeps putting up barriers to the One who is in front of him by asking his questions - so he gives him a very personal command to let go of his particular affliction - his wealth - and the man, stripped of all philosophical arguments about this or that, has to either obey the Christ and become a disciple, or (as he does) leave sorrowing.
Frankly, I think Bonhoeffer was dead on in his discussion about these points, and I think you are too. I also recognize that I all too often I use interesting questions to avoid the call to discipleship.
Nevertheless, having grown up around many who wanted to call themselves "Simply Christians" but who would turn around and call Catholics and Orthodox unbelievers because they believed certain things about communion or the role of bishops that have been believed by Christians for 2000 years without any real investigation into the history of the early church, one must be very careful in these days to have a discerning spirit that people use even simple terminology while unwittingly having a whole history stacked behind it.
Thanks again Romanos - you continue to have a good word to share.
Thanks, David, for commenting and for your further thoughts here and in our email exchanges.
Thanks, Hilarius, for your detailed comments and for getting my meaning right. Is it knowing the Arabic and Greek languages that somehow enables us to think through these things? Ultimately, misunderstanding, when not willful, is usually the result of semantic mismatch: the Latins don't understand the Greeks, and vice versa. Even speaking the same language, English (which has become the "mother of all languages") seems not to be of help any longer.
But I reiterate, you got my meaning right, and thanks for letting me know.
Grace and peace, sincerely, to both of you.
Hello, my friend, I hope that you are well.
As I read your post, I thought of Joshua. When the angel approached him, Joshua essentially said, "Are you on my side?"
And the angel rebuked Joshua for that question, for that same thing we do today... We think that the important thing is whether or not God is on our side, but of course, this is all folly; the real question is "Are we on God's side?"
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