Posted on 01/12/2007 5:58:09 PM PST by sionnsar
I, an Orthodox-oriented Lutheran, have problems with those Orthodox converts who want to live like monks or nuns but outside a monastery, if you know what I mean.
I relate a lot better to cradle Orthodox, especially Serbs and Greeks. Ex-Lutheran converts are great, too!!!
"I, an Orthodox-oriented Lutheran, have problems with those Orthodox converts who want to live like monks or nuns but outside a monastery, if you know what I mean."
I know EXACTLY what you mean, HS! :)
"I relate a lot better to cradle Orthodox, especially Serbs and Greeks. Ex-Lutheran converts are great, too!!!"
The former Lutherans do seem more "balanced" in their Orthodoxy than converts from other confessions for some reason. I can't say as I know why. It may have to do with a large consumption of casseroles in their youth. :)
I have a question that has been annoying me, HS, and maybe you can answer it:
I am admittedly not very knowledgeable re Lutheranism, in spite of the fact my brother-in-law is a Lutheran minister. (Long story.) Do Lutherans believe that people are born into this world either "saved" or "damned"? This was something that that a Lutheran once told me, and I was sort of a deer-in-the-headlights with that one and it's bugged me ever since. Because wouldn't that remove the idea of "God-given free will"?
Great question. In short, we believe that we can not find God without God first finding us. We can't "save ourself", the Holy Spirit makes the first move. But, we can by our own free will, reject God. Since God does not exist in time, everything is to Him an eternal present, so He knows what is going to happen. Without the love of God, we can't just turn to Him.
Of course it gets deeper than that, but this is the Reader's Digest summary.
As in all Christianity, we are all born unsaved. Through the Sacrament of Baptism, we receive the Holy Spirit, and are born anew into God's Kingdom.
Over the course of our lives, God come to us in the external Word and the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, the true Body and Blood of Christ. We cannot save ourselves--only God can save us. And we are not saved alone, but always in the Church, the Body of Christ. We are free to reject God, however.
That is the orthodox Lutheran view, without going into the arguments with Calvinists over "single or double predestination". That is probably what you heard from whatever source you got that statement from. It's really a mystery, anyway. And this is also without going into the liberal ELCA distortions and deviations from theology of Baptism, the Eucharist, and salvation.
? So does that assume that God & the Holy Spirit "make the first move" with some people and not others? He "chooses us" and we can choose to reject Him or accept Him, but we don't get to choose Him without His permission? Did I get that right?
Of Orthodoxy, Bishop Kalistos (Timothy) Ware once said that, "it isn't just the answers that are different, the questions are different." I don't recall ever reading anything Orthodox that would even come close to asking a questions like whether "God finds us or we find Him?" in quite that way.
The thing about Orthodoxy that always strikes me is this anti-convert attitude. I have never spoken to an Orthodox person who respected, appreciated or even welcomed converts. Every board or forum online about Orthodoxy is filled to the brim with jokes, derision or just general grumping about these annoying converts. They are the wrong ethnicity, are too zealous, they don't bow just right, or they don't know how to kiss the icons just so. It seems to me that arrogance and ethnocentrism are staple beliefs of Orthodoxy. I simply cannot understand how a group can go around proclaiming that they are the True Church, and yet imply that nobody should join it as only Greeks can understand how to really believe.
In a manner of speaking, yes. Let me illustrate. If I was born on what is now the plains of Russia around 100 AD or so, there would be little chance I would ever come in to contact with a Christian. Maybe a chance, but not that good. Couldn't Christ have made Himself known every where instantly? Well, Jesus is God so yes He can, but that isn't what happened. People are even today born in places and situations where they will never know or hear about Christ.
However, I was born in a small farming town in Nebraska about 30 years ago. A place where my parents and grandparents knew Christ, and taught me the faith. Unlike the man born on the steppes of Russia 1900 years ago, I have been blessed to have been able to know the Gospel and God from early on. The thinking is this. Since there exists today people who, because of no fault of their own, will never hear the Gospel, they can not of their own will believe in Christ. Now they may through the Grace of God be saved (which would lead into a long discussion), they can't be through the normal ways. God could instantly give everyone a private revelation of His grace and power, but that isn't the way He typically works. Some are born in areas and families in which the Word will be proclaimed, and some where the Word is not known. So, ultimately, God decides.
Sorry to be long winded.
"However, I was born in a small farming town in Nebraska about 30 years ago. A place where my parents and grandparents knew Christ, and taught me the faith. Unlike the man born on the steppes of Russia 1900 years ago, I have been blessed to have been able to know the Gospel and God from early on. The thinking is this. Since there exists today people who, because of no fault of their own, will never hear the Gospel, they can not of their own will believe in Christ. Now they may through the Grace of God be saved (which would lead into a long discussion), they can't be through the normal ways. God could instantly give everyone a private revelation of His grace and power, but that isn't the way He typically works. Some are born in areas and families in which the Word will be proclaimed, and some where the Word is not known. So, ultimately, God decides."
There are two schools of thought on this in Orthodoxy. The one I think is sublimely Orthodox and completely in tune with our apophatic theology, the other to my mind influenced by the Rome Church.
The latter holds that there is no salvation outside the Orthodox Church, or maybe The (visible) Church. The former holds that while we know that theosis happens within The Church, we can't say what happens outside The Church because God hasn't revealed that to us and the Spirit goes whither He will. Guess which school I'm in! :)
The same one that I am in -- the one that doesn't tell God what to do!
"I simply cannot understand how a group can go around proclaiming that they are the True Church, and yet imply that nobody should join it as only Greeks can understand how to really believe."
Well, you haven't met enough Orthodox people, that's apparent. But what you say is not an uncommon, or false, observation. Many cradle Orthodox, especially those from the Orthodox Old Countries, but also those born here, are truly surprised that anyone wants to convert to Orthodoxy. To that extent, the heresy of phyletism is alive and well in Orthodox Churches. But running right alongside of that is the notion that personal, ethnic identity is all tied up with religion and that it simply stands to reason that Irishmen are Catholic, Germans are Lutherans, Englsihmen are Anglicans, etc. and that's the way God wanted it to be. Its only among rather well read orthodox lay people and theologians that you will find anyone ready to debate theological points. "What you believe is what you believe and thats fine with us. Please also leave us alone with our beliefs. Would you like another piece of baklava?" is the attitude. Aside from the imperial Russians, Orthodoxy hasn't been a missionary faith since ++Cyril and Methodios and aside again from Russia, Orthodox countries haven't been colonizers so there has been no flag for the faith to follow. At any rate, when a "Xenos", a foreigner, shows up and wants to know about Orthodoxy, people think that's strange. Its simply not something we commonly do and we wonder why someone else would so there's a degree of suspcion. Once they do get involved, they find that we are very, very serious about some things and very, very reserved about others. Making a big show of fasting, or going to confession, or even more so of some of the outward manifestations of The Faith, especially a compulsion to teach Sunday School three weeks after chrismation, don't sit well with us, no matter where they come from. Generally people get over that first blush of excessive piety and spiritual arrogance that they know more than the 90 year old yiayia in the back pew (truth be told, when it comes to scripture and canon law they probably do, but yiayia's best friend is the Mother of God).
My parish isn't so bad about the ethnic stuff anymore as it is now rather less than 50% Greek and likely more than 33% convert. But that has taken 20 years and truth be told, people like me still miss the old ways and frankly, most of the converts of more than 10 years miss it too, maybe even more than I do.
"The same one that I am in -- the one that doesn't tell God what to do!"
Good girl! You are now officially the first female member of the Balkan Mountain Bandit Club, made up of Kosta the Serb, Alex the Russian and yours truly, the Greek! (Alex is a, dare I say the word, Catholic, but his phronema is thoroughly Orthodox, he spent years in our beloved mountains and his Greek is better than mine! He's also a GREAT artist!)
So this theology refers specifically to people who have never heard of Christ, not to people who have heard, wish to believe but haven't been specifically called/chosen by the Holy Spirit.
That makes more sense. Because what I heard from that Lutheran, made God sound kind of capricious and His choices sound arbitrary -- as in He likes this person and not that person. He designed this one for Salvation and not that one, and I kept thinking why would God deliberately design a "throw-away" human being? And if you were "a throw away", how could you be responsible for your actions with God if God didn't care about you?
I think that the "Lutheran" who told me this stuff may not have been as Lutheran as he thought he was and was just making it up as he went along -- as in "sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous"!
Wow, thanks! Does that come with a hat or badge or secret handshake or something? ;)
We've forgotten how to be missionaries, not that we have ever really known how. We know how to live it but not how to teach it. And truth be told, we are a little jealous of converts.
Growing up we had to behave like we represented all Greeks, all Serbs, all Orthodox everywhere and every mis-step we might make was going to reflect badly on all of us. As Serbs, once a year from time we were three years old, we had to get up on stage in front of a couple hundred people on St. Sava's Day and recite a poem -- often in Serbian-- about the life of this saint -- your feelings about being scared or shy were irrelevant. (I am sure that Greeks and Russians have something equivalent to this, too.) As kids and adults, we were always out of step with the other Americans when it came to fasting & feasting days (Thanksgiving & July 4th often fall on "fasting from meat" days -- no turkey on Thanksgiving, no burgers on the fourth of July). In short, however popular we might have been in school, we were always the "odd kid out" in some ways based on the fact we were ethnic Orthodox.
Now, along come these converts who have never gone through any of this growing up, but they are sure that they "know more than we do" -- and they sometimes do, intellectually, but they don't know other things -- like you can refuse to loan your brother money, but you never ever say no to Kum/Kumbaro (spiritual relative) or even ask what the money is for or when it's is coming back to you -- you just trust, period. They don't know that warmth, kindness and hospitality toward others supercedes Scripture-quoting or that the same lady who gossiping about you because you are not Serb/Greek or otherwise one of us, is also the same woman who would feed you if you were hungry or nurse your wounds if you were hurt and offer you her shoulder to cry on. They don't know what a tough hide you must have to be one of us, because no one in American society really knows who we are or what we are about. They haven't faced being asked, "Are you Roman Catholic or Protestant?", yet, and have to answer, "Neither".
In short, many of the converts are as yet "untested" and "unseasoned" and we are often afraid to get too close to them because they may bolt for the door soon. To us, bolting for the door was never really an option because our Faith is so much a part of "who we are", not just "what we believe" -- and that's something that's hard to teach an adult.
Does that answer your question?
Did you grow up in my parish? I don't remember any Serbs until quite recently?
Boy do I remember those poems on March 25th. I can still recite them 45 years later! You forgot to add, three afternoons a week after "American School" to walk a mile or two to the church and spend 2 hours with the priest in Greek/Serbian/Arabic/Russian school.
The ONLY kids who understood were the Jewish kids because they had the exact same experience!
I suppose its better for the kids these days, but you know, about 65 miles south of here there is a new (five years old) Serbian Orthodox Church with about 250 members, all immigrants. I bet those kids are growing up exactly the way we did, BB.
He sounds more like a conservative Calvinist. But there are many Lutherans with a Calvinist streak. Read the classic Norwegian-American novel "Giants in the Earth", and you'll know what I mean. And America is historically a Calvinist country, so Calvinism can rub off on any of us, even Roman Catholics and Orthodox. Although the kind that "rubs off" is usually of the mild Methodist variety.
Now the ELCA mis-leaders have made "full communion" agreements with several Reformed/Calvinist churches. NOT GOOD!!!!
As for me, I'm of the school that it's God's business who gets saved, but salvation is through Christ, not through the Qu'ran, etc. (The Qu'ran does a lot of damning, and doesn't even claim to save anyone.) That puts me at odds with the "many paths to salvation" liberals in the ELCA and the Episcopal church.
And I am told that I "look Orthodox" or even "look Serbian" when I worship in an Orthodox church. Maybe I even "look Orthodox" when I worship in a Lutheran church these days. Who knows--there's usually no Orthodox there to tell me that. What a Lutheran with no experience of Orthodoxy says doesn't count. The liberal ones think that every evangelical catholic Lutheran looks and sounds "too Catholic" or "too Orthodox".
He sounds more like a conservative Calvinist
Spot on. I had to write an STM paper on Election in the Formula of Concord and this "double predestination" is one of the fracture points between the various reformers. Lutherans asset an election to salvation, drawing on Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1; but reject the Calvanist position that some are elected to damnation. HS, you are being overly charitable to characterize America as Calvanist. I would label most of American Christianity Zwinglian.
Yep, that's part of the the reason why we feel a real kinship with Jews, whether or not they feel a kinship with us. (The other one is having also been the subject of Muslim/Nazi genocides, but we'll ignore that for the moment.)
"Yep, that's part of the the reason why we feel a real kinship with Jews, whether or not they feel a kinship with us. (The other one is having also been the subject of Muslim/Nazi genocides, but we'll ignore that for the moment.)"
That kinship around here goes back to the early 1900s. Sadly, most of the Jews have moved away, but we are as tight as ever with those who are left. I remember years ago seeing a panel discussion among a group of religious heavy hitters in NY, a Catholic bishop, an Anglican bishop, a high up Protestant minister of some sort, a high rabbi and one of our Greek Orthodox bishops. At the end of the discussion, the moderator asked the rabbi who he felt the closest too. With a smile he pointed to the Greek bishop and said, "We understand each other and are like brothers."
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