Posted on 06/03/2006 6:01:26 PM PDT by sionnsar
But as I moved toward my chrismation I felt worried. I could see that Orthodoxy was preserving the faith just fine - for now. But it had no visible means of *enforcing* that faith. The Orthodox hierarchy doesn’t have the kind of power that high-ranking clergy do in other churches. There isn’t even a world-wide governing board to hold all the various Orthodox bodies together. On the ground it looked pretty ad hoc, especially in America, where waves of immigrants have set up parallel administrative bodies.Hm. No catechism? There must at least be a converts' class?And there didn’t even seem to be an Orthodox *catechism,* for goodness’ sake. It seemed like the faith was supposed to be learned almost by osmosis, by living it. How could that work? If a church with an infallible pope and a magisterium could have as much rioting in the pews as the Catholics did, what hope did the Orthodox have?
The following fifteen years have been devastating to the peace of most American churches. People who have lived through these battles are battered and worn. And yet - unbelievably enough — Orthodoxy has remained untouched. It’s as if the contemporary American furor is just a tiny blip in history, and not our concern. We still don’t have demands for gay marriage, or nuns agitating for women in the priesthood. We don’t see theological revision or liturgical innovation. The biggest controversy today would be the painful wrangle among Greek Orthodox about their charter - yet, when it comes to theological and moral issues, people on both sides there still believe the same things. That’s what being Orthodox means: holding a common faith. All the "big questions" were settled over a millennium ago, and no one is inclined to revise them.Very interesting. And there may be a lot to this -- my limited observation of ECUSA is that the innovations came primarily from well up the hierarchy, well out of view of the average parishioner.How can we resist the cultural tides this way? I have a theory. I think it’s because you can only change something if you have the authority to change it. You have to be in a position of power, enabled to explain and define the faith anew; or you can battle noisily against those in that position, and make it awkward for them to use their power. In any case, faith is understood as something eternally under construction, responding to the challenges of each new generation.
But in the Orthodox Church, nobody has that kind of power. The church is too decentralized for that. Even those who are our leaders are a different kind of leader. Orthodoxy is less of an institution (like, say, the Episcopal Church) and more of a spiritual path (like Buddhism). It’s a treasury of wisdom about how to grow in union with God — theosis.
And that wisdom works, so people don’t itch to change it. It doesn’t need to be adapted to a new generation, because God is still making the same basic model of human being he has from the beginning. Practictioners of the way don’t find it irksome or boring; they just want to get into it deeper. For us, authority is not located in a person or an organization, but in the faith itself - what other Orthodox before us have believed.
Every question is settled by asking, What did previous generations believe? And since previous generations asked the same thing, the snowball just keeps getting larger. Against that weight of accumulated witness, a notion that blew in on the cultural breeze doesn’t stand a chance.
Thank you!
K. has talked before about the self-enforcement mechanisms within Orthodoxy, with examples. It works -- but you need the essential underpinnings, which I think include (NOT in any order):
- Scripture
- the focus on/practice of theosis
- the study of the Fathers
- integrating the beliefs passed on down
- a study of the heresies ("there are no new heresies"...)
- fluency in Koinonia Greek
...
(I'm kidding about the last -- whatever the term really represents. K., I have been ill all weekend and my brain is quickly turning to mush, so please feel free to correct/add to my mis/understanding.)
Several of these elements were absent from (P)ECUSA, at least from its general membership, from at least the 1960s when (in my experience) "positive social change" entered the scene as ECUSA's developing prime directive.
"fluency in Koinonia Greek"
That would be "koine" Greek. Koinonia means community. Other than that you did good. You know, as Mathews-Greene found out, it does seem to work. Her comments about "issues" in Orthodoxy are on the money. There just isn't any way to really "change" things in Orthodoxy, except by a Gr4eat Council. One has been in the "planning stages" for the past 100 years or so and there's no date or agenda in sight yet. My suspicion is that if we see such a council in our lifetime it will be a Great Council with the Latin Church about reunion and I can assure you none of us will live long enough to see if any union which may come out of such a council will prove to be a true or false union.
For us, "positive social change" is what it has always been, advancement in theosis toward a unity with the uncreated energies of God, in other words, a fulfillment of our created purpose. To the extent that anyone, anyone, can attain this, creation around that person is itself transformed into its original state. All creation has been distorted by sin, but in the presence of one who has become luminous in theosis, the lion really does lie down with the lamb.
LOL -- I knew the latter, but figured I had the term wrong somehow. Thanks!
This is something new! And yet... it isn't, somehow...? (I am way too overtired.)
Well said.
" This is something new! And yet... it isn't, somehow...?"
Remember the wonderful story of +Gerasimos and his lion and the donkey? The wisdom of the Desert Fathers is full of examples of this.
"I had no problems with having my Southern Baptist baptism accepted when I was chrismated a few weeks ago."
Welcome to the fold!
One of the problems with the Protestant Reformation, in an attempt to reform a corrupt church hierarchy, is that it got rid of Christianity's monastic tradition. But by that time, the West had lost contact with the East, not realizing that in the East it was always the monks who, in some remote province, preserved Orthodox Christianity against the bishops and secular rulers at the imperial court. Thank you for reminding us of this luminous light of the East that shone so brightly in the desert and on Mount Athos.
There was certainly gross ignorance in this presentation to say that Baptists do not believe in the Trinity.
But probably the fact underneath this is that *some* Baptists and other evangelicals do not baptize thrice in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but rather baptize once in the name of Jesus.
There had probably been examples at that parish where some baptisms from Baptists had not been accepted for that reason, and the person doing the tour made the incorrect assumption that this meant there was not a belief in the Holy Trinity.
Really? You must have visited some very strange Baptist and "other evangelical" churches. I haven't been in or heard of any that didn't follow Matthew 28:19: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"
Regretfully, I would guess that you have the same problem that the Orthodox guide had. That is, you heard rumors from others and believed them without investigating. You really need to learn more about non-Orthodox Christianity before blindly believing what an ignorant person tells you.
Well, I would not have made the statement that the person doing the tour did, so I really don't have the same problem. If no Baptist church baptizes in the name of Jesus alone, then I stand corrected. I thought there were some small offshoots that did.
I do know that there are some churches that do this, but wouldn't for the life of me be able to identify exactly which denominations they would be, and thus wouldn't have said anything at all in that situation.
Regardless, in those cases, anyone entering the Orthodox Church from one of those bodies must always be received by baptism. My point was that the guy probably got his wires crossed because of being aware of a reception from one of those bodies, and it appears that he added insult to injury by wrongly identifying as "Baptist" the denomination from which the person came.
In general, I would put my knowledge about Baptist beliefs up against the average Baptist seminary professor's knowledge about Eastern Orthodoxy any day. Enlightenment and education are always a good thing, in both directions, and I'm always happy to learn more, as I just did. :-)
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