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I am so incredibly tired of Protestant/Catholic debates. Who cares about Protestantism? Of those Protestant denominations who actually have some idea what the Reformation was about (what they think it was about) and still believe in it, they are tiny. Last I heard the OPC for example split yet again, from a vast multitude of 22,000 worldwide to 20,000. The believing reformation bodies are miniscule. The vast hordes of evangelicals, pentacostals, baptists and other assorted monstantists and manicheans are rapidly mutating into some other religion, either by pure quackadoxy or some new “movement” to “challenge” Christians yet again. The liberal denominations will probably be extinct by the end of this next century and they are pretty much just empty shells at this point. They are just as fad driven, moralistic and vaporous as their conservative counterparts.
So I say, who the hell cares about Protestantism? Why should we care about it? Sure, its loud and pervasive, but it is but a wiff of cloud. Bump it and it breaks.
Quite true, Orthodoxy doesn’t dominate the American religion scene, but neither do reformation bodies and thats the point. They did and they no longer do. While Orthodoxy has maintained ist ecclesial inegrity and identity, Protestantism while being dominant hasn’t. Princeton? Harvard? Yale? Where are the Protestant schools now? As a Christian, Catholic or not, I’d be spiritually be better off going to Notre Dame than any of those places. And Orthodoxy has a much deeper, older, richer and more stable theological and spiritual tradition than Protestantism. Protestantism had all the breaks and it is now all broken.
Orthodoxy is growing quite well in the US, among other places. More of our candidates for the priesthood now are converts than cradle. And about 1/3 of our membership are converts and growing. Sure Pentacostals gain lots of converts through the front door, but the OPC, PCA or LCMS aren’t bringing them in by the truckload. Pentacostals and other quackadox don’t count when we are talking about the Protestant estbalishment in the US.
I can easily agree also that average Orthodox aren’t as well informed as they should be (the same is true for most Protestants, classical or no who are professing Pelagians and Sabellians), particularly in the more ethnic nether regions, but the Orthodox Church as a body and as an institution isn’t floundering and constantly being redefined as Protestantism is. There simply isn’t a Protestant establishment in the English speaking world to worry about any more. There are pockets of resistence and thats about it.
As to the length of time and influence, it depends on what one means by “Protestant.” If you include Calvary Chapel and other homegrown megachurches I agree. But not longer than the presbyterians, baptists, methodists and lutherans-they are finished as insitutitions by and large. They used to own the cultural and theological lexicon but no longer. The other evangelical type homegrown bodies simply aren’t institutional and don’t have the theology to become so. Manicheanism and Montanaism don’t lend themselves to culture building.
Orthodoxy has had unique challenges. Political and military conflicts in the west over religion or that impacted religion directly were over and hence never seriously affected Protestantism in the US. Orthodoxy was for a long time the province of the Russians on the northern west coast for a very long time. For all kinds of interesting political and economic reasons when the support from that polis diminished and later outright collapsed, so did the mission. Moreover, Orthodoxy accomodated itself to the language of various cultures of the pacific northwest very well but didn’t do so with the English language at the time. That has been changing for the last 20-30 years. The institutional hegemony that Protestantism held in the US and the enculturated Protestant bias certainly didn’t help matters. And there is that little incident of supressing and exterminating Orthodox Christians by the Communists in Russia and Eastern countries from which many Orthodox communities are now emerging. I dare say, it isn’t obvious to me that give these kinds of challenges that Protestantism would have done any better.
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=1333#comments
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Such is Perry Robinson’s indictment of Protestantism in general, and Calvinism in particular. By way of reply:
1.Perry’s disdain for independent churches, parachurch ministry, “homegrown bodies” and the like is simply the reflex reaction of his ecclesiastical pride and prejudice.
The NT church was a loosely aligned affiliation of house-churches, with minimal government.
Why, I’ve even read about a 1C religious sect which consisted of 120 members total. The combined membership could be squeezed into one room (Acts 1:12-15). It was miniscule compared to the state religion or Judaism.
2.Traditionally, Catholicism and Orthodoxy rack up big numbers because they have national churches that practice infant baptism. So you’re really counting national populations. That adds up in a hurry. It also says nothing about the piety of the populace.
3.It’s true that Calvinism no longer wields the cultural clout it once did before the 20C. That’s not an internal weakness of Calvinism. Rather, that’s due to mass immigration from Catholic countries, which diluted the religious balance of power.
4.What about the state of Orthodoxy in, say, modern-day Greece?
5.Again, you can blame the state of Russian Orthodoxy on the commies, but that fails to explain why the pre-revolutionary church was so weak that it could pose no effective resistance to the communist takeover and its aftermath in the first place.
6.Perry can wax as rhapsodic as he likes about the “ecclesial inegrity and identity” of the Orthodox church as well as “a much deeper, older, richer and more stable theological and spiritual tradition than Protestantism.”
But what strikes me is the total lack of church discipline. The SBC went out of its way to distance itself from Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. When Joe Lieberman ran as Al Gore’s Veep, he was excommunicated by several orthodox rabbis for his liberal social policies.
Now, in this country we’ve had such high profile Orthodox American political players as Michael Dukakis, Arianna Huffington, George Stephanopolous, and the late Paul Tsongas. All of them are aggressive social l liberals.
Where is the Greek Orthodox Church of American in all of this? Why the resounding silence? I’ll choose moral integrity over ecclesial integrity any day of the week.
7.I never knew that clouds were breakable. Or do Protestant clouds have a different chemical composition than Orthodox clouds?
It has become pretty evident that Paul McCain does not possess the ability to 1) understand what he reads, 2) retain what he reads, and 3) represent fairly what he reads. Furthermore, his lack of ability to receive the slightest amount of criticism on his own blog without deleting it shows that he is not to be taken seriously. We have one particular example, where McCain chose to further his efforts of ad hominem attacks upon James White. When a few commenters criticize him for posting such empty rhetoric, he simply deletes their comments. “Double standard” is the word that should be used, for he keeps those comments that are far more lacking than those which he deleted. The only difference is that the ones which are kept are in his favor. So when your tactic in debate is to plug your ears and chant, “Nanny, Nanny, Boo-Boo; I can’t hear you,” it is quite evident that truth is not one of your main objectives. Having this perspective, let’s look at something McCain has posted recently. Steve Hays has already commented about the first half, but since this quote was about me in particular I would like to respond to it in full:
I’m enjoying my ongoing/running debates with Calvinist bloggers. They’ve illustrated classic Calvinist errors in Christology quite well. I had a conversation about Christ’s post-Resurrection appearances. A Calvinist has tried to argue these were in fact Theophanies. They really just have no use for the Personal Union, and can’t deal with the human nature of Christ after his death. Here is how one Calvinist explains the “appearance” of Jesus among his disciples on that first Easter…one possibility? Why, Jesus had a key to the room! So desperate are they to avoid the possibility that the human nature of Christ has communicated attributes from the divine nature they really seriously suggest such a thing. It would be rather funny, were it not such serious Christological error.
The amount of assertions in this one paragraph is simply amazing. Before I respond to the thing as I whole, I’d like us to stand back and count.
1. They’ve illustrated classic Calvinist errors in Christology quite well. No matter how many times McCain makes this assertion, it doesn’t justify itself. What error? Why? McCain has yet, in his many times asserting this argument ad nauseam to 1) give a definition of the particular error, and 2) show that Calvinism affirms such an error. McCain’s method of a “response” is to quote a piece of a post and then stand back and say something like, “See! They illustrate classic errors!” and then that is it. Assertions do not justify themselves, Mr. McCain.
2. A Calvinist has tried to argue these were in fact Theophanies. No where was such a thing argued. Rather, what was argued was that McCain’s usage of these examples did not prove his position. Retention is the key, Mr. McCain.
3. They really just have no use for the Personal Union, and can’t deal with the human nature of Christ after his death. How so?
4. Why, Jesus had a key to the room! So desperate are they to avoid the possibility that the human nature of Christ has communicated attributes from the divine nature they really seriously suggest such a thing. What’s wrong, exegetically, with suggesting such a thing? Better yet, justify your particular assertions about the passage. In addition, justify your assumption that a communication of attributes leads to a divination of the human nature, to the extent that it can be either illocal or omnipresent.
5. It would be rather funny, were it not such serious Christological error. How is this a Christological error? Define the error and show that it indeed represents our position.
Now that we have noted the assumptions and assertions that McCain has yet to justify, we can respond to his comment as a whole. First of all, McCain has not even attempted to make an exegetical case for his position. He simply alludes to these appearances, but he doesn’t even give us a Scriptural reference! Furthermore, he gives these examples and assumes that the reader agrees that they naturally lead to his position, but he fails to make such a connection.
In any case, it is obvious that McCain completely missed the point of my last response to him. That, or he read it while wearing his normal “Nanny, Nanny, Boo-B00; I can’t hear you” blinders. Let’s read my statement in context:
The term appear in these texts (e.g. Mark 16:9) does not necessitate that Jesus was, before the appearance, invisible, and it especially does not necessitate that his human nature was either illocal or omnipresent. Consider the possibilities. For instance, there is the example of Jesus meeting with the disciples behind a locked door: “Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” (John 20:26). But let’s not put things into the text that can’t be derived from the text. Jesus could have simply opened the door after performing a miracle that caused the door to be unlocked. Or he could have created a key. There are many possibilities. But let’s assume that Jesus actually “appeared” before them, in the sense that he was once invisible and then visible. Does this argue for an illocal or omnipresent human nature? Could not Jesus have simply caused their eyes to not be able to see him, and then “opened their eyes”? To make the silent argument that Mr. McCain makes from these appearances simply exceeds the actual texts.
Suffice to say, I did not assert that Jesus “had a key.” My point was that for me to assert such a thing would be equally plausible, and there is no difference than my asserting such a thing and the assumptions that McCain is eisegeting into this passage. McCain has not offered the slightest exegesis concerning the matter, and if he chooses to continue to make assertions based upon these texts, I could just as easily (using the same standard) respond with, “Jesus had a key.”
But where McCain takes this is hilarious. He states, “It would be rather funny, were it not such serious Christological error.” But what is so wrong with saying that Jesus had a key? How is this a Christological error? If I stated that Jesus ate turkey sandwiches, would this be a Christological error? If I stated that Jesus didn’t particularly like chocolate, would this be a Christological error? Obviously, the fact that Jesus would have a key would destroy McCain’s wishful thinking concerning these examples. And to him, it would be a Christological error. To us, it would simply be another person’s assumptions being labeled as unjustified. Let’s be honest.