[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

This article does not ignore the Celtic Church: Thus ended the nearly five-hundred-year history of the Anglo-Saxon Orthodox Church, which was followed by the demise of the still older Celtic Orthodox Churches in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

Yes, it mentions the Celtic Orthodox churches (centered on the monastic college of Iona between Ireland and Scotland, i.e. "Scotia Major" and "Scotia Minor"); but in simply calling these churches "Orthodox" the article does not give a complete picture of these Churches. To wit:

• YES, their founding origin was Greek and Orthodox Eastern, not Latin Western;
• YES, their Ecclesiology was Orthodox and anti-Papist;
• YES, their liturgical forms and sacramental practice were derived from Asia Minor, their infant baptisms and so forth following the Greek Rite;
• YES, their married Clergy and their monastic tradition was similar to Greek Orthodoxy in character; and so forth...

All of this is entirely true. But to what does all this add up? Well, it certainly adds up to a Church which was very "Eastern Orthodox" in form and style, albeit with a Gaelic vernacular and national flavor. But it overlooks an important area of analysis -- while very Greek in form and style, what did this "Celtic Orthodox" Church believe??

When one reads, in their own words or descriptions thereof, the actual beliefs of the Celtic Orthodox Church -- a VERY interesting picture emerges!!

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BELIEFS of the Celtic Orthodox Church

• SOLA SCRIPTURA:
  While their brethren in the south were contending with one another for jurisdictions and precedence, the elders of Iona, gathered round the open Scriptures, were drawing water from the well, "holy and undefiled." This is, decisive as regards both the letter and the spirit of their theology. To the youth who crowded to their ocean rock in quest of instruction, we hear them say, "The Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith." In these words the presbyters of Iona in the sixth century, enunciate the great formal Principle of the Reformation, while the Reformation itself was still a thousand years distant.

  Even their enemies have borne them this testimony, that they made the Bible the fountain-head of their theology. "For dwelling far without the habitable globe," says Bede, "and consequently beyond the reach of the decrees of synods, . . . they could learn only those thing contained in the writings of the Prophets, the Evangelists, and the Apostles." And speaking of Aidan, who was sent to Lindisfarne from Iona, he says, "he took care to omit nothing of all the things in the evangelical, apostolical, and prophetical writings which he knew ought to be done." And yet the venerable man cannot refrain from mildly bewailing the lot of these benighted men who had only the light of the Bible to guide them, when he says again, "They had a zeal for God, but not altogether according to knowledge." Had Bede lived in our day he might have seen reason to acknowledge that, as with the man who attempts to serve two masters, so with him who thinks to walk by two lights: if he would keep in the straight path he must put out one of the two and guide himself by the other. It was the light of the Bible, not of the Church, that shone on the Rock of Iona; and by this light did the elders walk.

• JUSTIFICATION THROUGH FAITH ALONE:
  On the doctrine of Faith as the alone instrument of Justification, Sedulius thus expresses himself: — "Ye are saved by grace through faith, not through works — through faith, that is, not through works; and, lest any careless one should arrogate to himself salvation by his faith, the apostle has added, "and that not of yourselves, because faith is not from ourselves, but from Him who hath called us."

• FREE WILL UTTERLY DESTROYED BY THE FALL:
  The keenness with which the subject of free will was discussed at the period of the Reformation is well known. It is, perhaps, the deepest question in the science of supernatural theology, as both the fall and redemption hang upon it. For if the state of man's will be such that he is able to save himself, where is the need of One to redeem him? The utterances of the Columban missionaries from the sixth to the ninth century are in entire harmony with the opinions of the Reformers on this great question. Let us listen to Sedulius. "Man, by making an ill use of his Free-will, lost both himself and it. For, like a man who kills himself, is able, of course, to kill himself, because he lives, but by killing himself becomes unable to live, neither can raise himself again from the dead after he has killed himself; so when sin was committed by means of free-will, then, sin being the conqueror, free-will itself also was lost, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage. But to a man thus brought into bondage and sold, whence can there be the liberty of doing good, unless He shall redeem him whose voice this is, 'if the Son make you free ye shall be free indeed."

  And Claudius Scotus, in the ninth century, says: "God is the author of all that is good in man; that is to say, both of good-nature and goodwill, which, unless God do work in him, man cannot do, because this good-will is prepared by the Lord in man, that, by the gift of God he may do that which by himself he could not do of his own free-will."

• ABSOLUTE DOUBLE PREDESTINATION:
  Columba speaks through his successors. Let us listen to a few of the utterances of these men. It is Gallus who speaks, the fellow-labourer of Columbanus, and the founder of the monastery of St. Gall. "The apostle says, 'God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world," that is, by his eternal predestination, his free calling, and his grace which was due to none.'' They teach the sovereignty not less than the eternity of God's purposes. "God," says Sedulius, " Hath mercy with great goodness, and hardeneth without any iniquity; so that neither can he who is saved glory of his own merits, nor he that is lost complain but of his own merits. For grace only it is that makes a difference between the redeemed and the lost, both having been framed together into one mass of perdition by a cause derived from their common original. He (God) sees all mankind condemned with so just and divine a judgment in their apostatical root."

• BAPTISM DOES NOT REGENERATE:
  On the subject of the new birth, the following exposition, among others, of Sedulius, is not a little striking. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death," quoting first the words of the apostle, and then proceeding, " Observe carefully the order and sequence of these words; for the apostle having compared the death that was by Adam, to the life which is by Christ, here answers an objection, and says, "How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein, teaching us hereby, that if any one has first died to sin, he has necessarily been buried together with Christ. But if one first (i.e., before baptism), dies not to sin, he cannot be buried with Christ, for no one is ever buried while yet living. Die thou first to sin that thou mayest be able to be buried with Christ, seeing that it is to the dead only we give sepulture.'' In this teaching, which is that of a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, we can discover no trace of the opus operatum of a sacrament.

• THE BREAD AND WINE ARE SYMBOLIC ONLY:
  We adduce the testimony of Claudius Scotus in the ninth century. "Our Savior’s pleasure," says he, "was first to deliver to His disciples the sacrament of His body and blood, and afterwards to offer up the body itself on the altar of the cross. For as bread strengthens the body, and wine works blood in the flesh, so the one is emblematically referred to Christ’s body, the other to his blood." There is here a plain distinction between the sacrament and the body. The one is the sacrament of the body, that is, the sacred sign or instituted symbol of the body, the other is the body itself. Nor does the commentator leave us to mere inference: he tells us in express words that the one is the emblem of the other; even as Augustine had defined a sacrament to be "the sign of a sacred thing." Not less Protestant is the verse of Sedulius the poet. Celebrating the Supper in song, he asks, Who else is "present in it but its great Institutor, the true Melchizedeck, to whom are given gifts that are his own, the fruit of the corn, and the joys of the vine"?… About two hundred years after, when the doctrine of transubstantiation, strengthening as the darkness deepened, began to make way in Germany and France, Berengarius stood forth as its uncompromising opponent. To maintain himself in the storm of persecution which is bold defence of the truth drew upon him, he appealed to the work of Scotus, as showing that his own views of the sacrament were those of the Church of the ninth century. This drew the tempest upon the book of Scotus without diverting it from Berengarius. The work of our countryman had the honour of being committed to the flames by order of Pope Leo IX., A.D. 1050. But this title has been preserved in the records of the age, and remains to this day to witness to the orthodoxy of the Scoto-Irish Church, and of the Church universal, on the head of the sacrament, till towards the opening of the tenth century. That title runs thus: "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."

  The Reformation was in Iona before it was in Wittenberg and Geneva. The Scottish theology is not of recent times. Its sons have no reason to be ashamed of it as a novelty. It is older than the days of Knox. It flourished on the Rock of Iona a thousand years before the Reformer was born. It was waxing dim at Rome, but in proportion as the doctrine of justification by faith was being forgotten in the city where Paul had preached it in the first age, it was rising in our poor barbarous country, and after illuminating our northern land and the surrounding regions of Europe during some centuries, it lingered here all through the darkness that succeeded, and broke forth with fresh splendour in the morning of the sixteenth century.

  Their views lacked neither depth nor breadth. The Christianity preached in the Scotland of that day was the same full-orbed system, the same galaxy of glorious truths, plain yet profound, simple yet surpassingly sublime, which constitutes the Christianity of this hour. Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years. ~~ HISTORY OF THE SCOTTISH NATION, J.A. Wylie, as quoted in The Covenant Line: From Eden to Independence Hall

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So what have we here?! A Church founded by Greek Orthodox, with a Greek Orthodox ecclesiology and liturgy, a Greek Orthodox-styled clergy and monastic tradition.... but their Theological Beliefs -- Sola Scriptura, Justification through Faith Alone, The Death of Free Will in the Fall, Absolute Double Predestination, Symbolic Baptism, Symbolic Eucharist -- these are not the sort of Theological Beliefs one generally associates with Greek Orthodoxy. Why, if one had to put a denominational label on them -- you could scarcely do better than "Calvinist Presbyterian".

So we have these Gaelic Churches... Greek Orthodox in their founding origin, ecclesiology, liturgy, clerical orders -- but Calvinist Presbyterian in their Theology of the Bible, of Salvation, of the Sacraments...

A Church which is at once ORTHODOX in heart...
And yet at the same time PRESBYTERIAN in mind...

Orthodox... and yet Presbyterian also....

What would we possibly call such a Church? I'm wracking my brain to think of a fitting label... but I just can't seem to think of one!!

(Grin)

Best Regards, Orthodox Presbyterian

[FormerLib]

I see, so postings on a Calvinist website that attempt to break the Celtic Orthodox onto the Calvinist wheel is supposed to be convincing in some way?

We've been broken on harsher wheels without denying the Faith.

I doubt that this will convince anyone...on our side, at least. ;-)

[Destro]

With all due respect, the Protestants are known to twist history to justify their new found creed. For example, many Protestants like historian Gibbon's praise of the heretical Paulicians because they saw in then an ealry Protestantisim.

[Destro]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/davies/chapter3/

Were the Celtic churches ‘Protestant’?

When the Protestants break with Rome in the sixteenth century, they consider the Celtic churches to be early examples of Protestantism, free of the errors of the ‘Romish’ Church. That view is a mistaken one. All the central doctrines of the Celtic churches, above the role of the mass in worship, are those of Catholicism. If the Pope's presence does not loom large, it is not because the Celts feel themselves separated from the universal Church. It is rather because of geographical distance and the fact that papal claims to sovereignty are not yet fully developed.