Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy
Come, and See!
An essay summarizing this collection of Orthodox essays
April 16, 2007
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A few weeks ago Brenda and I were visiting relatives we hadn’t seen since my mother’s funeral. They asked why we were in town and we said vaguely that we would be going to church with friends on Sunday. Finally, they asked, “Which church?” I answered “St. John the Evangelist Orthodox Church.” It led to questions about our being Orthodox and I tried my best to explain it to them. I think they were glad I was no longer one of those liberal Presbyterians, but then again, they had nothing to say (other than a polite silence) about our Orthodoxy. In the end it felt like I did all the talking and that I was talking at them and not with them. I sensed that I was coercive (and probably offensive) rather than conversational. It was a very unsatisfactory visit that I have regretted ever since.
Several months ago I had the opportunity to be together with all my siblings and their spouses for the first time since becoming Orthodox. The Nelsons hold their religious views pretty fiercely, but we’re of the same stock as Garrison Keillor’s neighbors in Lake Wobegon, so we tend to be polite to a fault with each other when together. We talked a lot about the Bible and I carefully tried to explain new insights I had as a result of my Orthodox framework. We also spoke some about my Orthodoxy, but thankfully the conversation didn't take a deeply theological turn.
Theological conversations with my extended family have always been uncomfortable. In terms of religion, I’ve always been on the fringe compared to, and by the standards of, most of my relatives. We were and mostly are Baptists of the conservative and independent varieties on both my mother’s and father’s side. For many years I was the lone Presbyterian in the family, and that branded me as a flaming liberal, if not with my immediate family, at least with a number of the relatives.
“Liberals” (and I put the term in quotes, because I don’t think the term has much content beyond its emotional value as a derogatory term) have a reputation for drifting pretty much wherever the cultural winds blew. My perception of the situation is quite different. Beginning with my Bible College experience, I discovered that the Fundamentalists were blown about hither and yon. Because of it’s suspicion of higher learning, Fundamentalism, and especially its publishing houses, were blissfully unaware of their capitulation to various philosophic and historical trends. I left the Fundamentalist Church, not so much because of its narrow-mindedness, but rather because of its lack of theological center which resulted in them pretty much drifting wherever the cultural winds blew, although they were a “trailing indicator” (to use a commodity trading term). They were about a decade behind the trend, but following it closely. I’ve written about this lack of theological center extensively elsewhere, so I won’t pursue it further in this essay.
But back to the Presbyterians: In spite of their reputation for hair-brained liberalism, and the heretical silliness of the fringe (something that could equally be said of the Fundamentalist fringe, but at the opposite end of the spectrum), the fact was that the mainline Presbyterians—the Presbyterian Church (USA) or PC(USA)—had ancient (by American Independent Church standards) traditions and canons that stretched back 500 years. It gave them remarkable theological stability in an increasingly unstable theological world. Although people assumed I was some sort of goofy liberal, I settled for a time in the PC(USA) because my Christian faith was more conservative than either the hip or the reactionary styles of Fundamentalism would allow.
In retrospect, I view my time in the Presbyterian Church as a wayside stop on a bigger journey. My ordination as a Presbyterian minister was more an accident of timing than anything else. When it was time to be ordained, it was the place I happened to be. Within a year of my ordination I discovered the Antiochian Orthodox Church and quickly realized that they had more satisfactory answers to the questions that I had first formed in Bible College than anyone else I’d run into. It took twenty years to get chrismated, but I’d converted back in the late 80s and had been a prayer-closet Orthodox for many years prior to my chrismation.
There have, for the whole history of Protestantism, been three distinct trends in the Western church. One trend is toward the ancient tradition; it is an attempt to recover that which was lost in the Great Schism at the turn of the first millennium. One trend is toward culture; it is an attempt to be relevant and communicate with non-believers and cultural critics. The third trend is toward scripture; it is rooted in an assumption that both tradition and culture are negative influences and that the only hope of hearing the truth is to hear it directly from God and not from other people. (And this third trend, by the way, assumes that scripture comes directly from God and was not mediated by people in any significant manner.)
The struggle between scripture and relevance has received the most attention in the last couple of centuries and the struggle for the tradition has been the quiet and mostly ignored undercurrent. Since my biggest criticism of Fundamentalism seemed to be answered with a stronger anchor in tradition, most of my decisions related to church were rooted in my search for and commitment to authentic tradition. It came down to this: Whom did I trust more? A heartfelt Christian who had read the Bible, but nothing else of significance, for twenty years (my perception of the typical Fundamentalist preacher), or centuries of Bible readers who were in conversation with each other (that is, the long tradition of the church)? But since no one talked about tradition, my motives were largely incomprehensible to most Fundamentalists and many mainline Protestants. But only when one appreciates the difference between these three trends (cultural relevance, scriptural faithfulness, and historical awareness of tradition) does my own history make sense.
There is a profound and surprising (to me, anyway) sense that theologically I haven’t changed much since my mid-twenties. At the same time, my theology, or more accurately, my approach to God has changed radically in the last few years. I now openly say that the Holy Spirit is the author of Tradition, and that Scripture is a part of that Tradition. I now openly do “idolatrous” things like light candles, cross myself, and offer a holy kiss to a variety of things (people, Gospels, chalices, icons). I now repetitiously pray essentially the same worship service every week (although the scripture readings and most of the hymns change every service). Even though not all of these things make complete sense to me, I do them because this is the way the great body of Christians have done things for two millenia. Furthermore, this is the way the people of God have worshiped for several millennia prior to that (albeit, without icons until heaven and earth were fully united in Jesus Christ).
In every case I can trace my acceptance of these things back to Presbyterians. Philip J. Lee, in his book Against the Protestant Gnostics, taught me about the unchristian nature of the radical de-physicalization (yeah, I made that word up), of the faith. The Office of Theology and Worship of the PC(USA) taught me the surpassing value of using liturgies that have stood the test of time and the dangerous silliness we often get into when we try to offer public prayer and worship off the cuff. (Private prayer is another matter altogether where creativity is a rich blessing.) It was Presbyterian denominational leaders (and not the Orthodox) who first introduced me to and made me comfortable with icons, incense, candles (that is, the power of light and darkness in worship), as well as physical prayer, such as prostrations and crossing oneself. It was Thomas Oden (a Methodist) who instilled in me the fact that our theology must absolutely be rooted in the Nicene consensus, or it is likely a small step away from heresy. Granted, none of these things were the main stream of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), but these sensibilities were certainly far more common among Presbyterian clergy than the radical feminism and political ideologies that get all the media attention.
Not that many years ago I even attended a Protestant convocation on Mary. There were prayers to Mary (which, at the time, I was terribly uncomfortable with), papers which extolled her blessedness (and all the things that might mean), and attempts to ask forgiveness on behalf of our forebears, for the sins which we committed. (How ridiculously Liberal American feel-good-y-ness can you get!?) It took my becoming Orthodox before I began to get comfortable with Mary. (It turns out they approach the subject of Mary in a very different way than the West does.) But on all these other counts, it was the Presbyterians (and a lone Methodist) who convinced me that the Protestant Church was barking up the wrong tree.
But as long as I didn’t come out of the prayer closet, as long as I was still an almost respectable Presbyterian, everything was copacetic. We could all imagine that we pretty much believed the same thing, that the differences were mostly window dressing. Since I was fluent in the languages of Fundamentalism and Presbyterianism, I was able to couch my embrace of the Great Tradition (as Oden calls it) in terms that made everyone else feel good about me. And even though my theological sensibilities had changed very little, now I was out of the closet, now I was Orthodox. This was the first time the offspring of Vince and Elaine had been together since my entrance into the Orthodox Church.
As I observed above, when my family was together we talked a lot about the Bible. There were occasions when specific issues of Orthodoxy came up and we talked about them, but we never got into a “compare and contrast” discussion (or argument) of who’s right and who’s wrong. And I’m glad. By and large I would rather not talk about my Orthodoxy to Protestants because I’m really quite bad at making the case for Orthodoxy.
The problem isn’t that I don’t know the facts. I’m a trained Protestant pastor-theologian, after all, with several years study of Orthodoxy under my belt as well. The problem is that I know the facts too well. I can out-argue most people on the subject of Orthodoxy, but no one was ever argued into the kingdom of heaven. Unfortunately I’m not far enough along on my Christian walk to love them into the kingdom. I still have far too much anger and intellectual arrogance to fully express Christ’s love in my conversation. I have far too much intellectual expertise to simply accept in quiet humility the full expression of the Gospel as it is revealed in Orthodoxy. I’ve had extensive conversations about this very thing with our deacon. How do I talk about these things without alienating people? His answers were very good and very wise. I even had the opportunity to ask Bp. THOMAS the same thing at Antiochian Village. He too told me to stop arguing. Sadly, I must confess that I’m not mature enough to do what they tell me yet.
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