What motivates people to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy—especially from an Evangelical background? What is it that, especially of late, has drawn Catholics and Evangelicals to embrace Byzantine theology? And are they making the right move?
i) Tradition. For many converts, the timeless character of Byzantine theology provides a refreshing contrast to the trendy liberalism that infects the mainline denominations. It doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis. There’s a sense of assurance that comes from believing what Christians everywhere have always believed.
ii) Ecumenism. Related to (ii), theologians like Oden, Bloesch and Webber find in this consensual core a Christian lingua franca for promoting profitable dialogue and unity. If we can just get back to the creed of undivided Christendom, to the headwaters from which these later tributaries derive, we will then have a common basis for ecumenical progress.
iii) Aesthetics. For many converts, the splendor of Orthodox worship provides a contrast to the minimalist, mundane or kitschy forms of worship in Catholic and Protestant services.
A. Tradition:
i) Some sense of continuity with the past is well worth fostering. The church calendar is a good test case. Especially in a country where all public traces of our Christian heritage are being systematically effaced, the contrast between the Christian year and the secular year is all the more striking. The idea of regulating our life by the life of Christ, so that every year reviews the major events in the mission of our Lord is, to my mind, one of the finer achievements of the pre-Reformation Church.
Let’s take another example. In the public prayer of the church, it is not out of place to sometimes read a beautifully worded petition from a Christian writer of the past. Some men are more naturally eloquent than others, and can express their faith in an apt image or graceful turn of phrase that stays in the mind.
Both examples also illustrate the pitfalls of tradition. The church calendar came to be littered with the cult of the saints and other idolatrous detritus. Indeed, it came to be too cluttered even for the ample attack of the Roman Church. The New Roman Calendar (1969) cut back on the number of saints’ days. For centuries, devout Catholics had been faithfully praying to traditional "saints" who were suddenly dropped from the rolls for lack of evidence that they were either very saintly or ever existed. What a waste of candles and incense!
Likewise, it's one thing to be exposed to fine prayers, quite another to only pray another man's prayers, and address God in a fancy speech, as though the believer were an actor who plays the role of a worshipper on stage.
ii) Orthodoxy is not as conservative as advertised, and so it does not constitute a bulwark against the inroads of modernism. Let’s take a couple of examples. John Meyendorff was this century’s leading apologist and popularizer of Orthodoxy. Yet in one of his books he twice makes mention of "deutero-Isaiah," Living Tradition: Orthodox Witness in the Contemporary World (St. Vladimir’s Press, 1978), 29-30. And he's not alone in this. "A consensus exists among scholars that the 6C BC, and more especially the time and place of the Babylonian Exile, was the matrix from which the Hebrew Pentateuch and most of the prophetic books emerged in their final written form," Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, M. Prokurat et al., eds. (Scarecrow, 1996), 293.
Later in the same book he says that the Western Church is largely to blame for the historic conflict with science. He assures us that "today science and Christianity are no longer real enemies," ibid., 95, and goes on to say,
"Here is where the Church must manifest its catholicity, i.e. through overcoming all parochialism! Some of our contemporaries have shown the way: Paul Florensky in Russia, Teilhard de Chardin in the West. They may have made some intellectual mistakes, but shouldn’t we forgive them when we think how tragically alone they were among theologians of their time in their endeavor to show that theology and science are actually looking for the same and unique truth?" ibid. 96.
A few pages later he refers to the way in which the imago Dei "has been distorted through a mysterious tragedy which happened in creation and which is described through the story in Genesis 3," ibid. 135. In another book he disposes of the self-designations of Scripture as merely "conventional," and commends the Greek Fathers for "understanding the creation accounts of Genesis in the light of the scientific knowledge of their time," Doing Theology in Today’s World, J. Woodbridge & T. McComiskey, eds. (Zondervan 1991), 343.
Now what are we to make of all this? Teilard’s doctrine of evolutionary apotheosis (e.g. "Christification," "the Omega point") is extravagantly heretical, while Florensky was guilty of a major Trinitarian heresy: "Florensky’s metaphysics centers on sophilology—to the extent that he speaks of Sophia (Wisdom) as a fourth divine hypostasis (person), and it appears to function as a mediating principle between God and creation," Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, 131.
I guess what makes Meyendorff so sympathetic is the way it dovetails with the Orthodox doctrine of divinization. Again, his treatment of Genesis is utterly frivolous. When Basil interprets the creation narrative in light of 4C science, and Teilard interprets it in light of 20C science, isn’t it obvious that the text cannot be consistent with each paradigm? Indeed, this reduces Scripture to silly-putty in the sweaty hand of the theologian. That is a mocking attitude towards the word of God. Genesis can only mean what it meant when it was first written. And observe the distancing formula regarding the Fall: Genesis doesn’t describe an event, but rather, the event is described "through" the "story" of an event. But if we don’t have a direct record of the event, we don’t know what happened, when or where, to whom, by whom, or to what effect.
B. Ecumenism:
Ecumenical schemes always come to grief due to the dual character of the truth, for truth both unites and divides. This internal tension means that you can never get everybody on board. The usual strategy is to settle for the least God that both sides can scrape by with. While this may win over the moderate members of each party, it will never succeed with the liberals and conservatives. If our theology is driven by an ecumenical agenda, then we have reduced theology to sociology.
The picturesque and rudimentary character of Greek Patristic theology is more adaptable to an ecumenical agenda than the battle-hardened formulations of post-Reformation theology. So it is only natural that an ecumenist would wish to start here. Like discerning faces and shapes in a bank of clouds, it allows greater play to the imagination, and is lacking in any clear center or circumference.
C. Aesthetics:
One might say that Byzantine theology is a theology of beauty: theology and beauty are one and the same thing. This accounts for Urs von Balthasar's moth-like attraction to the Greek Fathers, and his own theology of beauty. This accounts for much of the centripetal power of Dante, and the grace of Botticelli. It goes back to Plato's union of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The appeal of Platonic philosophy has always been a mainly aesthetic appeal, and that appeal is reproduced in the Neoplatonic core of Byzantine theology.
This also accounts, in no small part, for the apophatic pull of Byzantine theology, for the effect of beauty is primarily sensuous and affective rather than rational. Beauty is notoriously resistant of formal definition.
But one of the dangers in all of this is to confound divine mystery with man-made mystification, the presence of God with human artifice.
An orthodox service is a ritual play. The sanctuary is laid out like a Greek stage-set. The priest wears a costume. Every words and gesture is scripted.
One often reads about the mystical qualities of Byzantine worship, but it’s an ersatz mysticism. You can induce a trance by two means—sensory deprivation or sensory overload. Both methods are represented in Orthodox spirituality. On the one hand, its monastic tradition employs such techniques as the mind-numbing repetition ("The Jesus Prayer") and breathing exercises that inhibit oxygen intake (cf. J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: [Fordham 1976], 70-71).
In its worship service, on the other hand, everything is in a state of roving motion. The combined effect of candlelight flickering against the gold-backed mosaics and diffused into a soft glowing haze by the mild intoxicant of incense as meandering strains of plainsong undulate in a reverberant sanctuary, can be mesmerizing. But Byzantine worship is open to a number of objections:
i) It tries to manipulate a spiritual experience, as if we could compel God to meet with us or force our way into his presence. Whipping yourself into an ecstatic frenzy is a trademark of pagan "spirituality" (cf. 1 Kgs 18:26ff.). Orthodox worship is much more refined, of course, but the principle is the same.
ii) It tries to by-pass the mind. But Paul insisted that intellectual engagement was a necessary condition of true worship (1 Cor 14). The Psalms and songs of Revelation are strong on cognitive content as they celebrate God for his acts and attributes.
iii) It offers an instamatic spirituality, short-circuiting the ordinary means of sanctification. This is something it shares in common with the drug culture and the mystical tradition, whether Christian, Tibetan, Sufi, Yogin, or American Indian.
iv) It fosters a compartmentalized spirituality by cultivating an altered state of consciousness which is supposed to be more pious than our normal waking state of mind. But it isn’t possible to sustain a state of cognitive suppression. Thus the worshiper immediately "reverts" to his worldly mindset when he exits the sanctuary.
v) It is retrograde, by turning its back on the dawn of fulfillment and retreating into the shadow land of types and figures.
Poulenc was once asked why he had never composed an oratorio. His telling answer was that Catholics set prayer to music while Protestants set history to music. (F. Poulenc, My Friends and Myself [London, 1978], 111.)
The point of contrast is not that Evangelical music has no place for prayer. But Protestant piety has less appetite for liturgical set-pieces, for our biblicism fosters a linear and dynamic piety, rather than a cyclical and static piety. We pray and praise with an eye on promise and fulfillment, progressive revelation and the history of redemption.
By contrast, Orthodox worship moves at a more subliminal and impressionistic level. What matters is the existential moment—the mood and emotional climax. What really counts is not what you take away from the service—the lasting impression—but the immediate impression, the living experience. And that goes to the paradox of Orthodox worship, for it tries to standardize spontaneity, making it repeatable and predictable, by the application of a liturgical formula. Piety reduces to a spiritual technology.
II. The Basis of the Orthodox rule of faith:
So far I’ve tried to explore the popular motives for conversion to the Orthodox Church. But now it's time to shift from an outsider to an insider perspective. And this raises a preliminary question: Who speaks for Eastern Orthodoxy? In the estimation of the Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church, John Meyendorff was, along "with Georges Florovsky…one of the greatest Orthodox theologians…of the 20C," ibid., 223. That being the case, let us subpoena these two men as our lead witnesses for the defense.
A. Epistemology:
Byzantine theology rejects the Protestant principle of sola scriptura. This is does on two different grounds: (i) the Church is the source of Scripture and (ii) the expositor of Scripture.
1. Ecclesiology:
Regarding the former claim, Florovsky says that,
"Whatever the origin of particular documents included in the book may have been, it is obvious that the book, as a whole, was a creation of the community, both in the old dispensation and in the Christian Church. The Bible is by no means a complete collection of all historical, legislative and devotional writings available, but a selection of some, authorized and authenticated by the use (first of all liturgical) in the community, and finally by the formal authority of the Church… Certain writings have been selected, edited and compiled, and brought together…The Bible, as a book, has been composed in the community…the book and the Church cannot be separated…The canon of the Bible is obviously established and authorized by the Church," Bible, Church, Tradition (Norland 1972), 17-18.
"The New Testament itself came into existence, as a 'Scripture,' in the Worshipping Church," ibid. 85.
Before proceeding to the next point, it is necessary to comment on this claim:
i) It equivocates over the meaning of "composition." Inspiration acts on individuals. David, Solomon and Jeremiah were inspired individuals. Although they belonged to the covenant community and wrote for the covenant community, it was not the community as a whole that authored the Psalms of David, Proverbs of Solomon or oracles of Jeremiah. The same applies to the NT.
ii) Apropos (i), there is a fundamental difference between a creative process of authorship and an editorial process of selection and compilation. Baruch may well have edited an anthology of Jeremiah’s prophecies, but the prophecies are original to Jeremiah.
iii) There is also a difference between an editorial process and a canonical process. The collection of various books to form the canon presupposes an editorial process. After Baruch compiled the oracles of Jeremiah, this subset of oracles could be grouped with other subsets (e.g. Isaiah) to form a larger set (the Prophets). And that, in turn, could be grouped with other inspired writings (e.g. the Pentateuch, Hagiographa).
iv) The fact of the matter is that the Orthodox Church has never had an official canon of Scripture inasmuch as no ecumenical council ever formalized the canon.
v) The way in which Florovsky has cast the issue leaves the impression that canonization was by ecclesial fiat. But this is a highly artificial description:
a) The ancient church didn’t have the kind of centralized command-and-control, distribution mechanism and enforcement apparatus to even make this possible.
b) To speak of a process of "collection" conjures up the mental picture of widely scattered literary remains. But in the case of the OT, we’re dealing with a geographically self-contained community.
c) In the case of the NT, the documents were, indeed, widely scattered; but by that same token, there would be no effort to collect them for the benefit of the posterity unless they were already held in high esteem. The original recipients of a given book would be its natural sponsors. As Roger Beckwith remarks, "Probably all these books were accepted as Scripture from an early period in some quarter of the church, even those whose acceptance is not recorded. Otherwise we would have to suppose that, at the end of the 4C, some of them sprang suddenly from being canonical nowhere to being canonical everywhere, an implausible supposition," New Dictionary of Theology (IVP 2000), 31.
vi) No one is suggesting that we separate Scripture from the Church—least of all the Protestants. The question is how we relate them. Do we subordinate Scripture to the Church, or vice versa?
Building on his former point, Florovsky goes on to say that,
"Revelation is preserved in the Church. Therefore, the Church is the proper and primary interpreter of revelation…Human words are no more than signs. The testimony of the Spirit revives the written words. We do not mean now the occasional illumination of individuals by the Holy Ghost, but primarily the permanent assistance of the Spirit given to the Church, that is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15). The Scriptures need interpretation…And the church is the divinely appointed and permanent witness to the very truth and the full meaning of this message, simply because the church belongs itself to the revelation, as the Body of the Incarnate Lord. The proclamation of the Gospel, the preaching of the Word of God, obviously belongs to the esse of the Church" ibid. 25-26.
"The Church had the authority to interpret the Scripture, since she was the only authentic depository of Apostolic kergyma…Apart from the Church and her regular ministry, "in succession" to the Apostles, there was no true proclamation of the Gospel, no sound preaching, no real understanding of the world of God. And therefore it would be vain to look for truth elsewhere, outside the Church, Catholic and Apostolic… Scripture, that is—its true understanding, was only in the Church, as she was guided by the Spirit," ibid. 89-90.
This calls for a number of comments as well:
i) Insofar as his second point builds on the first, and the first point is false, so is the second. I've already found the underlying contention to be fallacious.
ii) There is no necessary connection between custodial care and didactic competence. The Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom 3:2; 9:4). Did that spare them from grave error? As Florovsky himself admits,
"Israel was a divinely constituted community of believers, united by the Law of God, the true faith, sacred rites and hierarchy—we find here all elements of the traditional definition of the Church…[yet] she missed the day of her visitation…the OT no longer belonged to the Jews, as they had not believed in Christ Jesus," ibid. 33.
The whole of the OT was leading up to Christ. Failure to embrace her promised Messiah was no small oversight. If the OT Church could maunder so, why assume that the NT Church is infallible?
iii) It is amusing to see Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy vie with each other for the exclusive rights to 1 Tim 3:15. Perhaps they'd like to appoint a neutral executor to distribute the estate. Who gets the china? Who gets the silverware?
iv) Florovsky doesn’t offer any exegetical or historical defense of apostolic succession. Moreover, this claim is even more vexed in relation to the Orthodox Church than the Roman See, for the Orthodox Church is more decentralized than the Roman Church, consisting of numerous national bodies (e.g. Greek, Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, &c.), each with its own checkered history of internal intrigue and backbiting.
v) The fact is that some unbelievers have a more correct command of exegetical and systematic theology than do many believers. They know exactly what the Bible says, but they don’t like what it says, so they reject the message. If we took Florovsky’s statement at full force, then no one could possibly disbelieve the Bible. Unless you grasp what a proposition means, you cannot disbelieve it.
vi) Apropos (vi), Florovsky sets up a false antithesis between letter and Spirit. It is true that words are signs. That is no less true of uninspired words than of inspired words. It doesn’t demand a special unction to grasp the meaning of words, whether inspired or uninspired. The Spirit doesn’t turn nonsense into sense. Rather, the Spirit supplies a receptive heart and mind.
vii) It is true that the Bible demands a degree of interpretation. Again, though, that doesn’t have anything to do with divine illumination. There is no anointing that confers a grasp of Greek and Hebrew, ANE and Hellenistic history, or a logical mind.
viii) The right of private judgment has been an inestimable blessing to countless Christians. Ever so many churchgoers who would be damned for sure had they relied entirely on what they heard from the pulpit. But because the basic message of the Gospel is accessible even to the simple-minded Bible reader, they were saved.
ix) Why do we need the secondary witness of the Church in addition to the primary witness of the Apostles? If, for some reason, the primary witness were not self-explanatory, why would the secondary witness any more perspicuous? Shouldn’t the same principle apply to both? Florovsky's contention invites a vicious regress, in which every criterion needs a prior criterion, ad infinitum.
2. Tradition:
In his opposition to sola Scripture, Meyendorff takes a different line of attack:
"Jesus’ logia on the Bread of Heaven, the Vine, or water "springing up unto eternal life" (even if the sacramental interpretation of these passages is not the only possible one) cannot be fully understood if one ignores the fact that Christians of the first century practiced Baptism and performed the Eucharist. This makes it quite clear that Scripture, while complete in itself, presupposes Tradition, not as an addition, but as a milieu in which it becomes understandable and meaningful...St. Basil of Caesarea...states the interdependence and essential unity of Scripture and tradition...Among the doctrines and teachings preserved by the Church, we hold some from written sources, and we have collected others transmitted in an inexplicit form...He continues by referring specifically to the rites of Christian initiation and the Eucharist...Tradition is the sacramental continuity in history of the communion of the saints; in a way, it is the Church it-self," Living Tradition, 15-16.
The flaw in this line of argument is twofold:
i) Overstatement. While it’s preferable to interpret a book of the Bible with its original occasion and setting in mind, we are often not in a position to reconstruct this in detail or with any certainty. Yet it doesn’t follow that we can’t extract any meaning from the Book of Job just because it’s hard for us to locate its precise milieu.
ii) Equivocation. Note all the little twists and turns in his argument:
a) Meyendorff at first identifies tradition with the 1C milieu of the Fourth Gospel.
b) Then it shifts to the time of Basil.
c) Then it switches to a principle of historical or sacramental continuity which he equates with the Church throughout the ages and down to modern times.
d) And if that were not enough, he combines equivocation with anachronism: 4C Caesarea does not supply the situational context for a document about 1C Palestine written in 1C Ephesus.
e) Again, is historical continuity the same thing as sacramental continuity? And is continuity the same thing as identity? The difference between continuity and identity is that continuity includes discontinuity. And if tradition isn’t already overextended, how does the Greek Orthodox Church in 20C France—which represents Meyendorff’s milieu— supply the life-situation for the Fourth Gospel?— not to mention the Table of Nations (Gen 11) or the fine points of real estate law in patriarchal times (Gen 22)?
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