I’m not sure how many of these I’ll do, since they take a lot of time to put together, but I do enjoy the conversations a lot.  Hopefully you will as well.

Listen Now to Conversation – 5/31/2012

Listen Now to Conversation – 5/31/2012

Corinth Cathedral – Apostolic Succession of bishops (Photo credit: © Giorgio)

I recently sat down with my parish priest for another in a long series of discussions, which I’ve recently begun to record.  I wish I had been recording them all along, but better late than never.  We discussed the recent emailing I did with a protestant professor, and the issues of iconography and apostolic succession (among other things).

Listen Now to Conversation – 5/17/2012

Listen Now to Conversation – 5/17/2012

[To understand what this blog is, read this first.]

It seems that this is papacy week for me.  After the last post I made about a book I had read on the development of the papacy I came across a document called The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millenniumissued by the Joint Coordinating Committee for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.  I think the content of that document reflects the Orthodox view of the papacy very well, and while long, is much shorter than a book, so enjoy.

A picture of Pope Pius XII made after his election to the papacy in 1939. It was composed by a French nun, who donated it to the Pontiff. He upon looking at it, decided “this is not me” and gave to Madre Pascalina Lehnert, who gave to the copyholder. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This doesn’t have anything to do with current research I’m doing or a letter I’m writing, but it just came to mind so I thought I’d mention it before it escaped my tiny attention span.  When doing research on the papacy I ran across this old book, now out of copyright, and read it.  Even though the author does have a bit of an axe to grind as an ex-Catholic priest (he became Orthodox), he was an extremely informed man it appears and I found it very informative and thorough on the subject of the development of the papacy.  Don’t discount old books.  Just because a book wasn’t written in the last ten years doesn’t mean it’s out of date or irrelevant.  There’s a LOT in this book to consider.

Thanks to Google you can also get it in ebook form, which is super handy.  You can get the ebook by clicking the button on the top left that says Read Ebook.

The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations with the Eastern Churches by Abbe Guettee, D.D.

Get this book!

Today I just received a copy of Early Christian Attitudes toward Images by Fr. Dr. Steven Bigham, and man do I wish I would have had that in hand before writing my previous responses to the protestant professor.  That would’ve saved a lot of time.  I’m glad I did the research I did, but just from what I’ve read so far I can see that Dr. Bigham does a great job of taking this information and really going deep with it.  He does a very well rounded take on icons from all sides, archaeological, literary and theological that is way beyond anything I could do on a blog, even if I were qualified.  So, if you are interested in trying to understand icons as a non-Orthodox Christian, or to defend them (or even just to understand the issue better), you definitely need to get that book.  I have also had Imago Dei, by Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan recommended to me, but I haven’t read it personally.  I have many books by Dr. Pelikan and can recommend all the ones I have read, so I don’t doubt that he did a wonderful job on that subject as well, so you might check it out too.

This is part 2 of a letter I wrote.  For part 1 see here.]

Apostolic Succession, or Continuity

The much more important question you raised, and that really controls the issue of iconography from start to finish, is how do we deal with doctrinal development?  You asked this question in a couple different ways.  What is the true church, and how is it identified?  Didn’t the church suppress doctrines and writings?  Where did the “mark” of apostolic succession get its force?  Answering these satisfactorily answers the question of iconography as well, I believe.

Certainly history demonstrates that the Church was no stranger to disagreement, schism, and heresy.  Starting even in the time of Jesus you can find large breakaways.  A good example is in John 6, during the very hard teaching on the Eucharist, many (perhaps most) of his disciples left him.  You can see disagreement in Acts 15 over the gentiles.  You see it in the constant pastoral correction of Paul in his epistles.  You find it in the polemics against the gnostics, and the dating of easter, and on and on.  We know that writings that were out of favor were suppressed, and that could be interpreted as winners writing history.  The problems go on and on.

It seems to me that you have two ways of addressing this problem.  One is that you can distrust the development that occurred and hang on to only the most basic items that you determine are most essential, or you can trust the developments and invest them with authority as the standard of truth.  How does one decide which approach is correct?  Is there anything that is trustworthy?  I think it is possible to make that decision in favor of trust.  First, let me point out the problems with basic Protestant approach, which is to distrust the development of the church, or some portion of it.

One problem is that it puts the individual in the position of choosing which doctrines are acceptable and which aren’t.  While on some level each person is responsible for responding to the call of God and exercising faith in Him, there is no Biblical or even philosophical warrant for that sort of individualistic decision making.  Nowhere in the New Testament do we find this sort of determination of truth.  Not even the apostles (even Peter) exercised this sort of papal authority as an individual.  When issues arose needing determination they met in council (Acts 15).  So the Biblical model of determining truth is in consensus.  Protestantism makes everyone a pope.

The second problem is that there is no mechanism to determine what is essential or not.  Even the idea that there are some essential teachings and some teachings that can be ignored at will is absent in the New Testament.  Nowhere do we find a list of the essential points of orthodoxy in Scripture, so any attempt to formulate them relies on an individual’s discretion and reading of history to determine what they think is essential.  This raises problems galore.  I think Ireneaus is most helpful on this point.  When he dealt with the gnostics and they claimed competing standards of Christianity he told them to demonstrate the accuracy of their understanding by showing the succession of their leaders who delivered this truth.  I’d ask the same of any Protestant, and I wouldn’t expect a satisfactory answer.  At some point there will be a gap, where a person broke with their previous community and reformulated their ideal of Christianity based on their personal beliefs.

The third problem is that the position of distrust of development is internally inconsistent.  Those who put forward a determination of what is essential to Christianity rely on sources that are themselves non-authoritative.  The canon of Scripture is the most blatant example of this, but we also rely extensively on the early ecumenical councils of the Church to point out solid truths, and yet we have no means of proving the authority of either.  Anyone could argue that the New Testament is incorrectly formed or corrupted (Jehovah’s Witnesses), or incomplete (JW and Mormons), and there’s not a good and consistent answer to the charge for Protestants.  Relying on councils is equally problematic.  So holding this position puts one in the position of denying certain developments while simultaneously accepting others of the same time period and people for arbitrary reasons.  Any mechanism for explaining the accepting or rejecting itself relies on non-authoritative means for its authority.  Quite circular.  You could say that the position of distrust in developments is itself a development, and therefore untrustworthy.

One thing I found interesting was your use of the Vincentian Canon in your book and email.  Now, personally I agree with you that Vincent’s idea is both correct and binding, however I have to point out that nowhere can you prove authoritatively that Vincent’s ideas are either correct or binding on Christians.  He didn’t speak the words of Jesus, and nowhere that I’m aware of was he even suggesting that his idea derived from an apostle.  Right or wrong then, it was a development.  On what basis then do you derive any value from his ideas?  I’d also say that it is odd to hold so highly the one idea of Vincent in regard to determining what correct doctrine is, and yet disagree strongly with his actual practices.  Now I am making an assumption there, that you disagree with his practices, based on your identification with evangelical Protestantism.  If I mis-characterized you please forgive me, but certainly that would hold for most Protestants.

Now I think that the problems I’ve pointed out demonstrate the circularity of the Protestant position on what truth we can know, but you suggested that the Orthodox Church rests its claims on a circular argument of apostolic succession, or perhaps multiple circular arguments of which one primary one is apostolic succession.  The thought would continue that if an identifying characteristic of the Church can’t be definitively sourced in Scripture it cannot be trusted to uniquely demonstrate anything.  I find a few problems with this.

1) Succession is something that is sourced very early in Christianity, as you underscore in your comments and your book.  It is found in the New Testament, and in the early writings of Clement and Irenaeus, where the succession of bishops is shown to be quite important from the very beginning.  You make a distinction between apostolic succession, which you reject, and episcopal succession, which you accept.  I take it from that statement that you associate “apostolic succession” with the idea that bishops all share in an equal authority with the early apostles in the sense of delivering revelation, but that is not the way that Orthodox use the term.  Otherwise I’d have to say this is an early concern for the church, and not a later development.

2) This rejection relies on overly Roman Catholic understandings of succession.  The Orthodox understanding of the succession in the church isn’t the same as it has become in Rome.  Rome overly emphasizes the bishop and locates succession as a peculiarity of the office of bishop.  Orthodoxy puts the locus of succession squarely in the community, and uses its central identifying member, the bishop, as the marker for that succession.  The consequence of that is that “apostolic succession” in Orthodox terms means that the community, not the bishop, is the continuous embodiment of the Church founded by the apostles, holding fast the deposit of truth from the apostles.  It’s an apostolic church, in the Nicene creed, not an apostolic bishop.

3) This same criteria being applied to other doctrinal positions would lead to the rejection of all central teachings.  If one could only source doctrinal positions from what is unassailable in Scripture and/or the earliest Christian writings one would have to reject the canon of Scripture itself, since it cannot be demonstrated from Scripture or the earliest writings.  One would have to reject the findings of the ecumenical councils.  One would have to say that it was acceptable to see Jesus as a created being, as the Arians did and successfully argued from Scripture.  One would have to reject the deity of the Holy Spirit as a necessary mark of Christianity.  One would also have to accept the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic meal, which is about as clearly delineated a doctrine as you could hope for from Scripture and early writings and church practice.

4) This ignores the organic nature of the church and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Taking the position that anything a person, in their own judgment, can’t find proved to their own satisfaction from the Scriptures and early writings can be freely rejected is a misunderstanding of the nature of the church and the work of the Holy Spirit.  The church is a temple being built up by the Holy Spirit, over time, by the various gifts and the promise that it would be led into all truth.  Therefore we must accede to the clear evidence of that work, that building up, in the history of the church by accepting the things that have been accepted. We do good to maintain the accepted canon, and the ecumenical councils.  We should also hold to the practices of the church that have been accepted and approved in that God pleasing way as the work of the Holy Spirit.  This would certainly hold for all 7 ecumenical councils, whether we agree with them or not.  It would also hold for the icons.

If one is approaching this question as a believing Christian then we have a better way to rest our convictions than mere philosophical or historical contentions.  We have Scripture!

“Christ promised that he would never leave us, even to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20).  He also promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church (Matt. 16:18).  We know that he is ever-present with the church by means of the person of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-18).  Also, through the Holy Spirit the ascended Christ has gifted the church with not only first-generation apostles and prophets, but also enduring leaders called evangelists, pastors and teachers (Eph. 4:11).  The implication is that the truth-telling and life-giving ministry of the Holy Spirit will prevail in the church against the hellish attacks of Satan.”

I think this is key in understanding the development of doctrine.  The Holy Spirit will be working to produce ever more clarity in the Body of Christ on all truth, and I think that is guaranteed by the words of Jesus.  (John 16:13)  Let’s not forget also that the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. (1 Tim. 3:15)  Taking all of the Scripture together paints a picture of a Church triumphant and pure, that is protected and guided by the Holy Spirit.

I think the implications of this is that you wouldn’t expect there to be any significant and long term apostasy in the Church.  Certainly there have been heresies that have affected the Church, but you would have to believe that the Holy Spirit will actively correct those.  That is in fact the contention you make in your book on page [XX].  Therefore you can (and do) have correction of the Church, but never re-formation.

In this light I think it’s good to recognize that the Nicene Creed, when it makes the statement on the church, shouldn’t be seen as a set of beliefs about the church, but rather a statement of belief in the Church.  I believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.  They did, and I do too.

The common Protestant understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the Church is much more limited than what I outlined.  The Holy Spirit will keep the central things intact, but all else is fair game.  Protestants have really been maneuvered onto the horns of a dilemma in order to accept this teaching, which is far from the understanding of the early Church and the Scriptures.  The Reformers needed to be able to justify breaking communion with Rome, but they also needed to feel that they were maintaining continuity with the early Church.  They declared that the Church is an invisible union of people who believe (…like me), and ceased to recognize any authority outside themselves short of God.  This allowed them to break communion with the church as they knew it, and reorganize themselves in new ways.  However, in avoiding one horn, they dropped all Protestants squarely on the other, which is a self-authoritative individualism that has nothing to do with Christianity.

(Of course all of this was avoidable.  There was another option available to the reformers, which would be to rejoin the Orthodox.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to read the correspondence between the theologian successors to Luther at Wittenburg, and the patriarch of Constantinople.  It’s interesting.)

Protestants still seek unity, but because they are stuck with the individuality they don’t have the means that have always been effective for the Orthodox, clarity through consensus and communion.  All they are left with is a smaller and smaller set of “core” doctrines which they can hold to as agreeable.  The core beliefs then become Christianity because no other course seems possible.  The ecumenical movement has solidified this thought ever more strongly as the only path to unity.

However, this minimization of Christianity isn’t the Biblical model, and it’s not the model of the early Church.  In the Bible and early Christian history we can see time and again that when differences arose the Church met in council to achieve consensus and return to a state of unity.  Over time you see a sense of what it means to be Christian with increasing clarity.  But post-Reformation the trajectory is the opposite, with less and less to agree on.  This leads me to have no hope in the future of unity in Protestantism.  Recent history agrees with me.  I fear for the future of evangelicals.  If things keep up on their current trajectory I expect to see more and more people fleeing the relativity of Protestantism for the solidity of Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

What seems unsupportable about Protestantism is that by severing the community they’ve destroyed their ability to recognize what Christianity is.  They accept the Bible, but not the way we got it.  They accept the content, but not the way it was historically understood.  They accept only what interpretations seem right to them.  They accept the conclusions of (some) councils while simultaneously rejecting the Christianity of the men at those councils.  This picking and choosing makes their doctrine arbitrary, and thus ultimately meaningless.  This has never been the way that Christians arrived at truth.  Looking at the disunity that has resulted it appears that it still isn’t.

Unity requires continuity.  As Vincent told us, “everywhere, always, and by all.”  You cannot have unity by forgetting or disowning the work of God in prior generations.  Since you just wrote an entire book on this I know you’ll agree with that.  You also can’t have unity by rejecting the remaining continuing presence of the first millennium catholic church (by that I mean the Orthodox Church, not the Roman Catholic Church) here through the second and now into the third millennium.  Given that the work of the Holy Spirit is to guide the church into truth and protect it from being overcome one must conclude that the organized community of believers has been progressively becoming more attuned to the will of God, and that has dramatic consequences for how one views issues like iconography.  It is simply unthinkable to assume that the Holy Spirit left the Church in a state of idolatry for 1,300 years until the Reformation.  Rather one must conclude that it is the Protestants that have rejected the work of the Holy Spirit as it built the church into the magnificent temple it has become.

I think Protestants should strongly consider the possibility that the Reformation replaced one distortion of Christianity with another distortion, and the new one may be much worse.

Given the nature of the Church you can never say that it develops in ways contrary to prior revelation due to the activity of the Holy Spirit.  It can implement revelation in new ways, though.  This may be the case with iconographic use.  It’s possible that the earliest church did not have art in their house churches, and it’s certain that the early church didn’t have the developed sense of iconography that the Orthodox do today, but there’s nothing inherently contradictory between the two states.  And there’s nothing wrong with the Church stating that iconography is necessarily true Christianity, as a valid understanding of revelation, just as it has every right to insist on the Chalcedonian formulation of Christology, the canon, and the Nicene creed, all of which the earliest church did not have and were developments.  One can’t accept the development in some cases and reject it in others.  They are parallel cases and equally valid.

So, to sum up:

1. The Holy Spirit leads the church into all truth, and protects it from failure.
2. Therefore the Body of Christ can never fall permanently into error or cease to exist.
3. Finally, any long term and accepted development must be considered the work of the Holy Spirit, and therefore essential to what it means to be Christian.

Over time I have looked through all the problem doctrines in Orthodoxy (including iconography, infant baptism, real presence in the Eucharist, saints, etc.) and have yet to find anything that I could say was clearly anti-Scriptural or anti-historic.  I know this is my own estimation only, but so far as I can see it is true.  I really appreciated your thoughts and your candor.  It’s been a helpful exercise to reconsider iconography, and to put down some thoughts on “paper”.

I know this has become a very long email, and you are under no obligation to read it or respond.  If you find the thoughts here useful, or care to respond in any fashion I welcome it.  If you have additional reading you think would be valuable on any of these topics I’m always willing to delve into new books.  Otherwise you can always just say a prayer for me and my family, and I’ll be grateful for that.

In Christ,
Mark

Today I just received a copy of Early Christian Attitudes toward Images by Fr. Dr. Steven Bigham, and man do I wish I would have had that in hand before writing.  I'm glad I did the research I did, but just from what I've read so far I can see that Dr. Bigham does a great job of taking this information and really going deep with it.  He does a very well rounded take on icons from all sides, archaeological, literary and theological.  So, if you are interested in trying to understand icons as a non-Orthodox, or to defend them, you definitely need to get that book.  I have also had Imago Dei, by Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan recommended to me, but I haven't read it personally.  I have many books by Dr. Pelikan and can recommend all the ones I have read, so I don't doubt that he did a wonderful job on that as well, so you might check it out.]

This letter (again, long long long) is in response to some correspondence from a protestant professor of patristics.  I asked him about his thoughts on Orthodoxy, and he actually responded in some detail, which was a bit of a surprise.  After reading his response, which focused on the use of icons as an example of deviations from historic Christian doctrine, and on apostolic succession as the foundation of Orthodoxy’s claim to fame I went back to the drawing board and rethought my understanding on these issues.  As I re-examined early Christian art I found the book The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art to be very helpful.  The book Ante Pacem has really good material as well.  I also discussed the issues with some Orthodox Ph.D.s.  I received some excellent thoughts from them.  The response below is my own writing and thoughts.  Any mistakes are mine, not the excellent people who shared their thoughts with me.

Dr. [Patristics Ph.D.],

I’m back.  :)  It’s been a few weeks since you last wrote back to me, and I’ve been reading and considering your emails, doing additional research and such, and now I’d like to share some thoughts.  You said it would be ok to email back, so you brought this on yourself.  :)

I thought it was funny that you started working through these issues after reading through the Ante-Nicene Fathers.  That’s how I got started down the rabbit hole as well.  Since beginning to experience the early church writings and digging more into history I’ve found myself less and less happy with what I see in Protestant doctrine and practice, and that has led me to consider Orthodoxy.  I really appreciate your help in thinking this through, and maybe in some way this response will help with your book idea.  Certainly it helps me, and I need it.  Since you let me impose a bit already, I’m going to take additional liberty and impose again.  I’d like to lay out my thinking on what you’ve said so far and ask you to use your expertise to point out any problems you see.  I understand that your time is valuable, and I wouldn’t ask except that this is a crucial juncture for my family and I’m driven to seek out the best advice I can get, and to make the absolute best choice in serving God.  So, forgive me for asking for your attention again, and I’ll understand if you can’t respond in any depth.

How We’ve Viewed the Early Church (and Iconography)
Let me lay out my case for the icons for you first, and then segue into my thoughts on apostolic succession.  I have examined these issue in the past, but your comments made me want to start over and dig deeper and make sure that I had given ear to all sides, considering latest scholarship as best I was able.

As I was reading over the questions you brought up in your last email I was struck with how appropriate they were on the subject of the standard interpretative matrix that has dominated historic views of early Christianity and images.  The “orthodox” view of early Christianity has been a very schizophrenic one, dominated in recent memory by the views of Adolf von Harnack, as reinterpreted by Theodore Klauser.  The basic story told has been that:

1. Christianity was the natural continuation of Judaism, and so was opposed to imagery both in doctrine as well as in practice.
2. This opposition was maintained by clergy into the fourth century, but this opposition was quickly eroded in the laity and they disdained the correct views of their leaders, demanded images and got them.
3. The introduction of images was a contradiction of the views and practices of the early Christians.

This idea of how images were introduced into the church (“the standard interpretation”) has held sway for quite a while, but is now being quickly challenged with new views that owe less to the heritage of John Calvin’s interpretative matrix and bad archaeological knowledge, and more to a contextual understanding of the evidence we have now.  Back in 1977 Sister Charles Murray published an article that began to challenge the standard interpretation, and she has since been followed by other historians, such as Margaret Miles, Justo Gonzalez, Graydon Snyder, Robin Jensen, and Paul Finney (that I know of) in rejecting the earlier held view.  The viewpoints of these historians intentionally tries to see past the post-reformation interpretations and review the data itself again in light of current knowledge of the ancient context.  Doing so has caused them to arrive at very different conclusions than Harnack/Klauser and followers.

“In the early church, there seems to have been no objection to the use of images, for the catacombs and other early places of worship were decorated with paintings depicting communion, baptism, and various biblical episodes.  Later, when the Empire embraced Christianity, several leading bishops expressed concern that the masses now flocking to the church would be led to idolatry, and therefore they preached, not against the images themselves, but against their misuse as objects of worship.” (pg 259, The Story of Christianity, Dr. Justo Gonzalez)

“Having supposed the [patristic] literature was fairly accurate in its perception, church historians have for centuries described an early church that first was pure and then, by a gradual erosion of faith and practice, fell into heretical schisms.  Walter Bauer, in his classic study of orthodoxy and heresy in the pre-Constantinian church, shattered this naive presupposition.” (pg 15, Ante Pacem, Dr. Graydon Snyder)

“This picture of an essentially aniconic early Christianity, strongly advanced by such eminent art historians as Theodore Klauser in the 1950s and 1960s, came to be widely accepted.  Klauser and others portrayed the earliest Christians as proto-Protestants — puritanical, anti-wordly, and opposed to visual art, particularly in worship settings, and cited the writings of the early Christian theologians who were critical of Roman idol worship as evidence of this original iconophobia.  Many historians of Christianity accepted this explanation rather uncritically, and readily incorporated it into their studies of early Christianity and Roman society.  Such a position accords well with a view that Christianity became increasingly decadent or Hellenized in the third and fourth centuries as the church became assimilated to culture.  This view, however, relies on far too literalistic a reading of the ancient literature, rather than presenting a picture of early Christianity that accords with the actual archaeological or textual evidence.” (pg 14, Understanding Early Christian Art, Dr. Robin Jensen)

“…Klauser introduces archaeological materials into the discussion of attitudes toward art, and on principle this is a real step forward, but due to his interpretative framework, much of what he has to say about these materials is either problematic or demonstrably false.” (pg 10, The Invisible God, Dr. Paul Finney)

I particularly found Dr. Finney’s (professor of Ancient History at University of Missouri) book The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art to be instructive (as well as Dr. Jensen’s Understanding Early Christian Art).  He presents the issues of the standard interpretation with clarity and demonstrates how a synthesis of the literary and archaeological evidence can be found that respects the early Christian context.

You cautioned in your email that it is easy to mis-read early literature.  Without paying attention to the social context and literary genre one can easily devolve into seeing what one wants to see, or proof-texting the fathers.  Dr. Finney points out that the bulk of early literary evidence on the subject of images is found in apologies on Roman idolatry, and not on treatises dealing with art.  Art was secondary to their purpose of dealing with Roman idolatry.  This must be considered in understanding the aims of the literature, and what it applies to.  Too often the literature is anachronistically dragged into an iconographic debate that wouldn’t occur for many centuries, when in reality it was dealing with a different topic altogether, pagan idolatry.

In my survey of the passages from the Fathers this became strongly confirmed.  Over and over the later apologetic writings against icons misused and abused earlier writings that were not intended to speak to the subject.  I read over passages from Polycarp, Marcianus Aristides, Melito, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Minucius, Hippolytus, Arnobius, and others that were referenced as iconoclastic.  In all cases the quotations were dealing with idolatry, and not the Christian practice of iconography, and of course most of those were not even from the early Christian time period and so don’t speak to early Christian attitudes on art in any case.  Much hay was made from some quotations by Origen from his Contra Celsus, but again when read in context it was clear that the subject matter was not iconography.  I appreciated the concerns you raised about anachronism, and it seems that apologetics against iconography are clearly suffering from that malady in spades.

Many arguments against icons drew strongly from texts by Epiphanius, but I think the argumentation against the authenticity of those texts is reasonable, and so I place no trust in them.  Anyways, Epiphanius seems to oppose the use of icons on curtains and walls, but it is clear from his writings that he was opposing the common practice, and so his work shouldn’t be used as a proof that the early church uniformly opposed icons. Also it is interesting that his descriptions of the pictures of the different Apostles seem to confirm the existence of an iconographic tradition.

There is a Gnostic work ascribed to the early called the Acts of John that criticizes icons. This is interesting because this would seem to imply that Christians used icons at this time, and its criticism of icons probably comes from the gnostic rejection of the importance of matter, which Christianity rejected.

I probably don’t have to mention Eusebius of Caesarea to you, but just so that you know I’ve dealt with it I’ll note that quotations are taken from a letter of his to Constantia, sister to Emperor Constantine, to demonstrate his iconoclastic doctrine, but the quotes are in doubt by many historians as to their authenticity, and the quotes don’t even truly demonstrate iconoclasm.  I don’t find them very illuminating.

Finney says that the reading of the apologies as “faithfully reproducing the real-life conditions that obtained both for themselves and their enemies in the second and third centuries” is “naive and misleading” (pg 16).  Certainly this is the case for almost all apologetic writings, ancient and modern, and should be accounted for.  There is a huge gap, a definitive difference, in the quality of what can be gleaned from apologies against non-Christian practices verses doctrinal instruction from theologians to their flock.  We have much of the former, but not much of the latter, in the literature regarding images.  In the end it is crucial to remember that the early Christian apologists created an attack against Greek religious art, which is not consonant in subject matter or use with Christian religious art.

So, the first problem with the standard interpretation is a misleading reading of the apologetic literature. The second is due to misleading assumptions about the character of early Christians that would lead them to be anti-art, stemming from the archaeological evidence of the first two centuries.  Or rather, the lack of such.  Finney points out this issue of interpreting the lack of evidence, quite correctly, I think.

“To repeat, the point of departure is the fundamental claim (No Christian art before 200), and we can extend the scope of this generalization indefinitely to include the entire universe of material culture in the first and second centuries: nothing in any material category (papyri excepted) that is distinctively Christian and predates the third century.  The inference that flows from this absence of evidence is compelling: before 200 Christians produced nothing that was materially distinct, no art and no separate material culture in any form [meaning things like houses, tools, weapons, money, etc. that are distinctively Christian].

“But this too is an archaeological argument from silence, and arguments in this genre are notoriously slippery.  This one is no exception.  The major pitfall is the tendency to confuse absence of evidence with negative evidence: as any undergraduate history major can tell you, they are not the same.  Not knowing if a thing exists is different from knowing it does not.  Before 1932, for example, the complete absence of figural art from pre-Byzantine Judaism was taken as a sign that the so-called normative form of (a la George Foote Moore) this ancient religion was strictly aniconic.  Then came Dura[-Europos].  The discovery of the synagogue with its rich complement of biblically inspired wall paintings forced a reevaluation–indeed, a dramatic and rather far-reaching one.  Sixty years later, the historical assessment of Judaism in later antiquity is still in progress, including an ongoing evaluation of the putative role that aniconism played in the life of this community.  A similar discovery in the Christian realm could have equally dramatic consequences.” (pg. 100, The Invisible God)

Certainly the study of Christian archaeology is a very old discipline, and the lack of early, found evidence must be taken into account, and yet in the last century we’ve had very striking discoveries that have changed the field and caused people to reevaluate their ideas.  Dura-Europos is certainly enough to give one pause.  There you have the oldest surviving, positively identified Christian church.  In it, surprisingly, we find iconography dating from the early third century.  So, the oldest church we know of had icons, and this at the time period where much apologetic material against images (pagan idols) was being produced.  Much more surprisingly the Jewish synagogue at Dura-Europos also had very detailed iconography.  This sheds enormous light on the oft-repeated contention that Jews were strongly anti-image.  Apparently, not so much.  Since this is used as common justification for why early Christians would’ve been anti-image I find this to be very important.

For a survey of the earliest Christian art I turned to Ante Pacem, by Dr. Graydon Snyder, one time dean and professor of New Testament at Bethany Theological Seminary and Chicago Theological Seminary.  In this excellent book Dr. Snyder discusses all of the types of art that we can definitively date to pre-Constantinian periods.  I found it very helpful.  His discussion of early veneration of the dead was extremely interesting, and while it bears on iconography and clearly points at veneration of saints at the beginning of Christianity, that is a side topic for another time.  Dr. Snyder notes 31 separate types of pictorial representations all to be found in sepulchral art, fresco, mosaics, etc.  Of those 31 at least 12 types would’ve included depictions of Jesus.  The earliest age of the surviving art work would date back to the late 2nd century. Within a century of the last living apostles we have evidence of imagery being used.  Based on that alone it would be reasonable to say that early Christianity was not opposed to images.

And yet, again, the study of early Christian archaeology, which dates back to the 1600s, has failed to find anything of Christian culture except for some writings, that can be dated back before 200.  Finney spends time filling in the big question that his reinterpretation leads to, which is where is the art in the first two centuries.  Here I will note a few points.

1. The assumptions that early Christians were anti-art are just that, assumptions.  A reinterpretation needs to be logical and fill in the gaps, but in combating a (widely held) set of assumptions sans evidence the bar of proof is necessarily lower.
2. Early Christians weren’t the only groups in the time period to leave no material cultural evidence.  For parallels you could also look to Roman neo-Pythagoreans from the first century, or the gnostics.  The gnostics had a similar strongly documented belief system in literature, but no material cultural remains to demonstrate their existence.  ”Material culture” encompasses not just art, but buildings, goods, tools, weapons, domestic utensils, etc.  Christians left nothing in the first few centuries.  Contrast this with the Jewish people of this time period, who certainly left traces of themselves in many ways that are identifiable as a separate culture.  Absence of these things commonly denotes the absence of a distinct culture.
3. The standard interpretation which posits a strongly anti-image early Christianity gives no convincing reason for an abrupt about-face in the 200s.  Klauser’s interpretation is very unsatisfying, and fails to adequately explain not only the attitude shift, but the complete disregard of this attitude shift from Christian leaders in the remaining literature.
4. Given that a pre-supposition of the standard view is an anti-image Judaism, which is being re-evaluated by historians due to recent finds, we don’t have a convincing reason to presuppose that early Christianity was necessarily anti-image.  (I’d also posit that that view of Judaism on a theological level doesn’t match the Biblical injunctions against idols, but requiring imagery in worship, from the Old Testament)

Finney goes on to posit an explanation for the lack of art work from the early centuries.  I’ll leave it to his book to lay out the ideas in a more full and convincing argument, but you could sum it up by saying that Christians lacked a definitive culture.  They did not have their own land, or economy or ethnicity.  The surrounding culture was their culture.  This might be illustrated by the anonymous Christian writing in 200 to the procurator of Egypt:

“Christians distinguish themselves from other people not by nationality or by language or by dress.  They do not inhabit their own cities or use a special language or practice a life that makes them distinctive or conspicuous. …  They live in Greek and barbarian cities, following the lot that each has chosen, and they conform to the indigenous customs in matters of clothing and food and the rest of life” (Epistle to Diognetus)

“A.D. 180 was the date at which the Christian subculture was willing to say to the majority culture that it existed and had a right to exist.  Because of that courage, we now may see how the early Christians assimilated symbols and practices from the Roman world to create its own discreet cultural characteristics.” (pg 297, Ante Pacem)

Taking a step back I know that what I’ve argued for is an early Christianity that isn’t anti-image, but I haven’t demonstrated an early Christianity that uses images in worship and prayer.  Unfortunately at this stage of archaeological knowledge this seems un-provable.  I think we have a consistent and convincing interpretation of early Christianity’s views on art, but we can’t say that they used art in worship unless we start getting more data from before 200.  At that time we have evidence of the use of art in worship and Christian specific practices.  Prior to that we are just speculating.  That being said…

A benefit to this reinterpretation of early Christian attitudes about art is that it gets rid of a very discontinuous view of early Christianity, where clergy and laity are pitted against one another and you have some parts of the Church strongly anti-image, while others are merrily creating them, followed by a resounding silence in the 4th century and beyond from the church leadership about this widespread idolatrous practice.  This interpretation really makes no sense.

In his second book of five on the development of doctrine the historian Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan (a Lutheran who late in life became Orthodox) makes a very interesting point when he quotes another historian and then comments:

” ‘In view of the sharpness with which Christianity originally directed itself agains the idols, it always remains surprising that later, without being blocked and almost without being observed, the pagan practice was able to establish itself even within the church.‘ Such a comment begs many of the questions at stake in the controversy, above all the question of whether the Christian worship of images was indeed ‘the pagan practice’ that had originally been attacked by Christians and that had now crept back into the church, but also the question of how much ‘later’ this had happened.” (pg 97, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700))

There doesn’t seem to be a good explanation for this in the standard interpretation.  Apparently the church practice just spontaneously devolved.  Or did it?  Really there are two interpretations, two stories being told about what happened with iconography.  One story would have me believe that within 100-150 years after the death of Jesus the church became strongly divided with the laity largely falling into idolatry, eventually dragging the clergy with them, and staying in idolatry pretty much until the Protestant Reformation giving the lie to the promises of Jesus to maintain His Church.  The other story would have me believe that the early Christians developed their own culture around 200 where they began to incorporate their own particular use of art in their spiritual life, while protesting the idolatrous use of the culture around them, that the clergy and laity were united in their activities, and that they remained united in accord with the promises of Jesus.

There are many other things that could be discussed about iconography.  We could work through the practice after Constantine.  We could work through the theology.  We could consider my own personal experience with them as I’ve engaged with the Orthodox, but I’ll just confine myself to answering the objection you raised.  Now I’d like to shift the issue slightly and look at it from another angle.

[For the second part of the letter see the next post.]

For more reading on this subject see:
http://orthodoxbridge.com/?p=119
http://orthodoxbridge.com/?p=358
http://www.piousfabrications.com/2010/12/defense-of-holy-icons.html
http://onbehalfofall.org/2012/05/04/sanctioning-idolatry/

And if you just want to listen:
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/ourlife/history_of_icons
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/ourlife/icons_and_veneration
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/allsaints/both_sides_of_the_icons
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/rlminute/what_icons_do
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/features/iconography_iconoclasm_and_the_theology_of_personhood
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/bishops_part_24_8th_century_iconoclasm

I recently read a new book by a Protestant professor at a well known seminary (not naming names as usual) on the subject of Evangelicals reconnecting with history.  For reasons that should be obvious to anyone reading this blog this is a topic that is very interesting to me.  I want to know more about the subject of history for Protestant sources as a double check on what I’ve been thinking, and I’m also interested in resources that might be helpful for my family.

(I didn’t find this professor’s book particularly helpful, but I’m not going to name names.  One book that I thought was very good from a Protestant perspective is Retrieving the Tradition, by Dr. D. H. Williams (not the author I’m talking to).  I can recommend that book for anyone who wants to spur on Protestant family or friends to engage with early church history.)

While I was reading this professor’s book I noticed many references to Orthodoxy in a negative light, but since the book wasn’t directed at Orthodoxy the author never developed his reasoning for dismissing it.  I emailed him and asked why he never became Orthodox, and this is what he said.  Since the professor didn’t write with the intent to do public debate I’ve withheld his name and edited the letter down to just a few relevant bits:

Mark:

[...]

The ways that various traditions have claimed to be the “One True Church” actually amount to circular (or self-authentication) arguments. Apostolic succession is one such claim, as the concept of apostolic succession itself as the mark of the One True Church is itself a development. It is not something that had been believed everywhere, always, and by all. Which means at some point it began to be affirmed as the mark of authentic apostolicity…. So, for any tradition to point to their succession from apostles as a mark of their authenticity, they must assume that the development of this doctrine as the mark of authenticity is itself an authentic development….

I do believe in “episcopal and presbyteral succession,” as did the earliest church. That is, the apostles pretty clearly established the presbyters in each local church, with the intention that those offices continue on. But as I treat this in chapter X, the hierarchical developments that occurred when the church grew in the Imperial period do not reflect what was established by the apostles. So the development itself cannot be authenticated with apostolic authority….

Also, it can be demonstrated through a study of the earliest fathers and reading chronologically, that a number of doctrines that are central to the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions are developments (and even deviations) from what had been held in earlier centuries. We can actually see when these doctrines and practices enter the Christian tradition; they usually enter with protest from the earlier doctrines or practices; then they eventually take over, claiming to have been the original practice from the beginning. The devotional use of icons is one such practice…. The Fathers of the first few centuries actually use the LACK OF IMAGES among Christians as a point of marked difference between Christian and pagan worship…

So, to any objective reader of the history, images were not only not used in the first few centuries of catholic Christianity, but their liturgical use were explicitly rejected. Yet the seventh “ecumenical council” (Nicaea II) condemns iconoclasts and claims that the liturgical use of images is THE (not just “a”) Orthodox, Catholic Faith. This is obviously an error, especially from the standard of St. Vincent of Lerins’ mark of catholicity: “that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”

…

So, because all claims to being the One True Faith are circular, I had to conclude that either 1) ALL orthodox Christian traditions [as I describe them in the book] all make up the One True Faith in its historical and contemporary diversity [including the Eastern and Western catholic traditions, Protestantism, etc.] OR 2) there is no One True Church. What Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox want me to believe is that they are, in fact, the One True Church even if it takes a circular argument to authenticate their claims.

…

—[The author]

I wrote him back and thanked him for his comments, and asked if he wouldn’t mind a clarification at a later point.  He followed up with this email, again edited:

…I am always astounded when a student spends a few months or a year or so reading just a fraction of sources and concluding that the Anglican, Orthodox, or Roman Catholic church is the One True Church. The few that do come to me for advice can’t answer the simplest critical questions, in fact, don’t even know the questions that need to be asked: 1) how does one avoid anachronism in reading the primary sources? 2) What is the nature of doctrinal development? 3) What constituted the authentic church in apostolic times? 4) Does evidence of episcopal succession imply apostolic succession? 5) How do we deal with the fact that later church authorities picked which early church Fathers to keep copying and preserving? Etc., etc.

…

–[The author]

I was really surprised that the author wrote back in such detail, and that gave me a lot to think about.  I’ve worked through the issue of icons and apostolic succession, and I’ve written a bit to my family on the subject of iconography, but having a Ph.D. in patristics make such strong assertions gives you pause and makes you want to re-evaluate your previous conclusions.  I’ll follow up on this in my next blog post.

Christ is Risen!

[Oldest sister],

I’ve been whittling down my to-do list.  It seems to have grown up a bit, and that slowed me down in responding.  It seems like I’m saying that a lot.  Maybe my next New Years resolution will be not to keep apologizing for being a slow emailer.  This also got long, which slowed me down too.  I just can’t do small emails.

You brought up a lot of different points in a short space, so I’ll work down them and try to unpack my thoughts as I go…

When others are first experiencing worship with this denomination, it would not be easy to integrate without great effort…for a long while. I understand the Orthodox view of liturgy and the corporate gathering as service to God, but there’s a real need to people to feel a part quickly. I wonder how much of your (and my) church background allows us to make that jump more readily to the “what’s next?” in our worship experience. A deepening. But, if someone was coming from an irreligious background, I’m not sure they’d connect. Especially with the sound of the music and the feel of the worship facility and experience which are strongly nationalistic. Which makes me wonder why Orthodox churches in America don’t make some cultural adaptations to remove potential barriers to a Western audience. Thoughts on that?

I don’t really think that much in my background prepared me for the jump to high church, liturgical worship.  Low-church charismatic to high-church liturgy lover!  I had to work at it, but it has been worth it!  :)

Here’s a couple thoughts…

First, connection comes from receptivity not similarity.  I’ve read (and listened) to quite a bit on both sides of the conversion process, from those that made it to those who dropped it, or have no interest or are active opponents.  The pattern I’ve seen is that what makes a person connect or not connect to Orthodoxy seems to have little to do with how similar Orthodoxy is to the culture around it (assuming more similarity equals a lower barrier to entry).  The thing that makes a person persist in pursuing Orthodoxy is having a mental state of receptivity.  A receptive person will look past the obstacles, or even embrace the differences, and continue pursuing understanding, whereas a non-receptive person will walk away no matter how closely a church matches their culture and conventions.

It seems to me that it is actually an advantage to have the Church be quite obviously different than the surrounding culture (a perceived high barrier) while being very welcoming (actually a low barrier).  This puts a person immediately on notice that this is something different, perhaps even something not of this world, and yet open to outsiders.  While it does require more effort to assimilate a different culture it helps a person to see the church as something peculiar, and sacred.  Being a peculiar people may just be what this society needs.

So I’d say the key is that a receptive person needs to meet a receptive group of people who welcome outsiders.  The culture in that group may be very dissimilar from the seeker but connection is still very possible.  This has been our experience here.  The culture differences are formidable, but the people are so welcoming that it has made little difference.

Now certainly you are dead on right that there are adjustments that continue to need to be made to lower the barrier, removing artificial differences.  Orthodoxy has historically been a church of the people.  It has always been very good about bringing worship to the language of the people.  This may seem odd since what you see of Orthodoxy seems very ethnic, but historically it has been the norm that the Church takes on local characteristics aggressively (in a good way).  The Orthodox in America have been in a bit of a non-standard situation, but things are changing rapidly.  Sermons are almost universally in English.  The liturgy is about 70% in English in the average parish.  The music is about halfsies English/whatever.  That’s good, but there’s room for improvement.  I’d like to see the sermon and liturgy be all in English everywhere, and the music be mostly in English.  This would remove an artificial barrier that you sensed in your visit, and significantly aid in comprehension by the members of the church.

The OCA church we went to is a metro cathedral, which is at the end of the spectrum most likely to continue incorporating more ethnic elements.  Smaller parishes are the least likely to have strongly ethnic worship experiences (which might seem counter intuitive).  Most of the people in them are converts or descendants of immigrants, rather than immigrants themselves.  This is the case in my Greek parish, where the number of people who actually speak Greek natively is very low, and apparently most of those people strongly support moving even more of the service into English according to the priest.

The other thing that could be changed for sure is the music.  There are a variety of musical styles in use in Orthodox churches, but many people strongly identify with the byzantine chant.  These are the oldies but goodies, and in Orthodoxy old = good.  :)  However, there is nothing stopping Americans from developing a liturgical musical style that is both informed by tradition and yet with a modern sensibility.  I know that certain American Orthodox composers are doing this sort of work already, to good effect.  I would enjoy seeing that music tradition develop, but I have found that I’ve come to very much enjoy byzantine chant done well too.  I’ll send you some good music that I think you will enjoy soon that demonstrates what Americans are already doing.

Second, attraction is much less important than maturity.  There is a group of people who, regarding how church worship should be properly formed, have come to the conclusion that assimilation of others is paramount and most easily accomplished by making for a painless entry into the life of the church.

I have come to view this thinking with some hesitation, and disagreement.  It seems to me that this seeker-sensitive model assumes that the most important function of the Sunday service is in how it attracts others to the church.  I can understand the drive to get people in and worry about the rest later.  I believe though that this merely attracts those who are marginally interested, presents them with a Christianity that looks like the culture around it and requires little to nothing from them, and removes the “heavy theology” from Sunday morning.  To me this seems like it misses the point of what Jesus asked us to do.  How do we produce disciples in this environment?   I believe this approach is counter-productive.

I’ve watched with some interest as Willow Creek has been coming to terms with the results of this in their church.  You probably heard about their Reveal study.  Finding that being seeker-sensitive has led to a lack of depth and maturity in their attenders has caused them no shortage of problems.  To fix the problem they are reversing course and moving back to providing weekend services that are geared to mature believers, or rather to maturing their believers.  I think this is a good thing.  Will their attraction rates diminish?  I don’t know.

Considering that the Church is a separate Kingdom, or the Body of Christ, or the Vine/Tree, or (fill in the blank with the appropriate metaphor) a necessary function of the Kingdom is to impart a culture.  The necessary function of the Body is to share DNA.  The necessary function of the Tree is to produce fruit.  So the Church imparts its culture, copies its DNA, and produces fruit.  I’d say that function of the Church is more important than its means of attraction.  To accomplish those functions the Church doesn’t need to adjust itself for the purpose of attraction, but rather call people to enter in to the life that is already present.  That requires a person to submit themselves to a different culture, true, but don’t think of that culture as Russian or Greek.  That is merely the external trappings.  The core of Orthodox culture is the 2,000 year old Church, that has some peripheral expression in a local ethnicity, and adjusting to that historic culture is the much more daunting task than adjusting to some Greek or Russian.  BUT, ultimately that is MUCH more intriguing. I’d still be attracted whether the local parish was Greek or Russian or Romanian or European or African or American, as long as the core culture was the historic faith.

That being said, I do think it’s an important question to ask how people will be attracted to the Orthodox Church here in North America.  I don’t know those answers, but I’m interested in finding out how I can be a part of that attraction with the skills I have available.

I do know that the growth rate of Orthodoxy is very high.  And they are the second largest group of Christians on the planet.  It must be working for many.  :)

The other question I had is how the Orthodox address the working gifts of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. I don’t just mean tongues, but rather the spiritual gifts which are to be in operation for the edification of the Body. These were corporate gifts given to the Body as outlined in the New Testament. With the high structure and lack of participation from the congregation, I see that this could potentially be overlooked.

I’m not sure there’s really a lack of participation, but I suppose it depends on what you mean.  If you mean people engaging with the worship of the Church then I’d say the Orthodox are highly participant in many ways.  The liturgy provides many different ways to engage in worship, more so than Protestant worship I’d say.  From discussion with you, and similar questions from mom, I believe that what you mean by participation is for individual members to use gifts from the Holy Spirit to edify the Body.  I think your issue here stems from a perception that the worship of the Church is “locked down and top down”.  Members don’t get input into it, and they are expected to just do what they are told by the leadership.  You see a lack of creativity and a consequent lack of engagement by the laity.  I hope to demonstrate why this is an incorrect perception of what’s going on, and that rather than being a non-creative and non-engaging worship that it is creative in the best ways and very beneficial for members.  I’ll also show how and where the gifts of the Holy Spirit are present in the Church and how they edify the Body.

What is Orthodox worship?
I’m really inadequate to even begin to lay out the theology and reality of Orthodox worship in the divine liturgy.  As you might imagine after 2,000 years of history the understanding of worship is very developed.  Any attempt on my part to explain it would be futile and misleading.  I’ll limit myself as much as I can in the hopes that I’ll stay on sure footing.

Instead of trying to write out an exhaustive explanation of what the liturgy is, let me just mention of few important characteristics.  The liturgy is a time of intense prayer and worship, but primarily it’s a vehicle for the Eucharist, if you will.  I think I’m ok in saying that.  The central aspect of the liturgy is the Eucharist, and all that prayer and worship is part of the process leading up to the Eucharist and preparing for it.  For a service that typically lasts around an hour and a half I’d say it has a very strong focus, and that focus is the corporate act of becoming the Body by ingesting the Body, if you get what I mean.

It would also be true to say that there’s a strong educational component.  Besides the sermon, the music, Scripture reading, and prayers are just dripping with theology.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.  Surrounded by the icons you see the sweep of God’s plan through history and are in the presence of the great cloud of witnesses, praying with them.  He who has eyes to see, let him see.

It engages the senses and gives plenty of opportunity to act out your faith, and learn the faith you are acting out.  It’s very complex in many ways, but not in the sense that it is impenetrable.  I find it more complex in the sense that there’s always more to learn, and another level that you can engage it at.


I’ve grown to love the liturgy for what it is.  There are still difficulties in it, but it engages me in worship that doesn’t focus on my thoughts and feelings.  My kids connect with many parts of it too.  The more you do it, the better you like it and the more you get from it!

Where did it come from?
So, that’s a bit of what it is.  Now some history of it.  The liturgy done on a typical day is that of John Chrysostom, who was a bishop in the major Christian and Roman center of Constantinople in the 4th century.  He wrote it and it remains pretty much the same today, minor modifications not-withstanding.  It’s an awesome thought to recognize that when you go through the liturgy you are praying prayers that have been said for 1,600 years.

Importantly though the liturgy of the Church didn’t start with Chrysostom.  It didn’t even start with the apostles.  A highly structured liturgy started with the Jews; a system given them by God.  Judaism was highly structured in its worship practices, and that didn’t stop when the temple was destroyed and Judaism shifted into the synagogue form in use at the time of Jesus and the apostles.

It’s common for Protestants to look back at the primitive church with the idea that it was started as a clean slate in terms of its worship practices.  I thought that way.  However, that’s not the case.  Jesus and the apostles were Jews whose worship was highly structured, and that didn’t change with the advent of Christianity.  Many of those practices bled across into Christianity and are still maintained in the Orthodox church.  The early Christians didn’t do the liturgy the same way the Orthodox do it today, for sure, but you can certainly say that it had structure.  In the writings of Paul and in early extra-Biblical writings like the Didache you can see that they had specific ways of handling the Eucharist and baptism, and you can find early creedal statements and prayers that were likely part of the earliest form of the liturgy, in common use.  By the mid 2nd century you can see in the writings of Justin the Martyr the same skeleton format of the liturgy in use at that time that Chrysostom used in his liturgy two centuries later.  The history of the liturgy has been a building of what was there previously into something more mature, something Paul would find very natural given his metaphors of the church being a temple built on a foundation.

This continuity of practice from the earliest times has served the Church well in many ways, but to give just one example, the uniformity across all the world has served to guide us to true doctrine.  This is extremely important.  Keeping a right worship is key to keeping a right (ortho) belief (doxa).  You can see this in the history of the development of doctrine in the early church as the Fathers fought against heresy.  Often the differentiator between the right belief and the wrong was the common practice of the church that everyone could point to.  Your worship is your belief, and your belief is your worship.  The two are deeply connected.  Athanasius used that very effectively against the Arians by pointing at their worship when it was disconnected from their theology in regards to the divinity of Christ.  St Basil did the same later in regards to the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

All of that preceding to say that the structure of the liturgy is something that grew naturally in the early Church, and far from being constricting it is something that served to protect the faith from doctrinal error and maintained unity for a very long time.  That’s not insignificant.  I particularly contrast that with the current state of Christian worship, where there are so many different ideas of what worship is and how to do it, and the state of unity and doctrinal consistency that is poor at best.  The two seem to go hand in hand.


Do members have creative input?  
Certainly members have creative input.  In worship they have creative input in all the same ways you’ll find in the Protestant church.  They bring their talents to the table in the singing, chanting, preaching, and ministries of the church.  There are as many if not more ways to engage creatively in the Orthodox church as there is in any other group of Christians.


How does that work with “high structure?”
The structure provides a framework for everything else that goes on.  Structure is not the enemy of creativity, and doesn’t hinder the work of God.  Without structure how can anything be done decently and in order?  God insists on structure, and the church has been using this structure for 2,000 years.  It’s been working this long.  If it ain’t broke…


What about the gifts of the Holy Spirit for edification?
Well, you can find Paul discussing how the Holy Spirit provides for the edification of the Body in a few spots in his letters.  Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, and 1 Corinthians 14 are all spots where he gives lists of various gifts, and of course there’s more discussion in 1 Corinthians on how best to use those gifts.  Allow me to cheat and combine the lists into a single one for easier discussion.

1. Apostles
2. Prophets
3. Evangelists
4. Pastors
5. Teachers
6. Gift of Wisdom
7. Gift of Faith
8. Gift of Healing
9. Miracles
10. Discernment of Spirits
11. Tongues
12. Interpretation of Tongues

I read through that list and I see every one of those gifts actively used in the Orthodox church (the exception being apostles, depending on your understanding of what that means)!  Gifts of healing, prophecy and miraculous powers are an integral part of the Orthodox life.  In that fashion I’d say the Orthodox church is very engaged and open (and expecting) the Holy Spirit to be active.  There are so many stories in the Orthodox church of God performing the miraculous that you wouldn’t believe it.  Well, maybe you would.  You remember Fr James the monk that we talked to in DC?  I can’t remember how many times in that single short conversation he talked about miraculous events happening.  That’s awesome!

Even though those gifts are active, what you won’t see is all of them in the context of the liturgy.  Certainly it’s not fair to expect that in a service that has a clearly defined purpose centered on partaking of the Eucharist that it should be required to accommodate every other edifying event in the Body.  Many of them do occur in the course of the liturgy, but many of them don’t, and that’s fine.  There’s 168 hours in the week.  Only 1.5 are used up on a Sunday morning liturgy.  That leaves plenty of room for edification during other times.  :)

So, when it comes to the Holy Spirit providing gifts for the edification of the Body I can say that all of the ones that I listed above are in use in the Orthodox Church.  You won’t typically find tongues used in public worship, but I find this to be quite in line with Paul’s admonitions in 1 Corinthians 14.  To my knowledge it’s not commonly emphasized in parish life like it would be as a distinctive of charismatic worship, but I don’t want to focus in on tongues as if that’s the only way the Spirit works.  The Orthodox church is highly engaged with the Holy Spirit.  They don’t equate that so strongly with tongues, though.  Those who have the gift are free to use it, in order and for edification.

Now, let’s look at 1 Corinthians 14.  The first part of the chapter Paul spends time demonstrating the proper way of using gifts to edify the Body of Christ.  That aside I want to look down at verses 26-40:

26 When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three, and each in turn, and one must interpret; 28 but if there is no interpreter, he must keep silent in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God. 29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. 30 But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted; 32 and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; 33 for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. 34 The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says. 35 If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church. 36 Was it from you that the word of God first went forth? Or has it come to you only? 37 If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment. 38 But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. 39 Therefore, my brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid to speak in tongues. 40 But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.

What strikes me repeatedly in this discussion of how people should be acting in worship is how often Paul repeats that things must be done in order.  There’s a way to do things, and that denotes a certain structure.  However, a very common and very BIG mistake that is made over and over again when reading this passage is to equate “when you assemble” with “Sunday morning service.”  We know clearly that the early church assembled a LOT, and for very long periods of time.  Some of that was given to the Eucharistic meal, and we know that there was a structure to that.  The rest of the time was given to other things, such as singing psalms and hymns, reading Scripture, sermons, and prayer (according to Justin Martyr).  This would be the natural place for people to bring their edifying gifts to bear on the Body.

It would not be proper to have people exercising those gifts during the Eucharistic observance, any more than you would expect tongues and interpretation during a sermon today.  A time and a place for everything.  Those who have something to bring for edification, again, are free to do so, but properly and in order.  That time is normally not during the Eucharistic gathering, but there’s plenty of other opportunities for that.

I don’t see that this is a misstep for you; I can readily see why you would be attracted to considering this faith. But, admittedly (and understandably) this might be harder for someone else to grab onto…whether [your wife], or your children someday, or your neighbor, or an unsaved friend.

Like I said up above, the important thing is being open to it.  The rest follows in due course.  One nice thing about Orthodoxy is that it has a patience to it.  No one is rushing and pressuring you to join up.  They encourage you to take your time and work through the issues.  I can appreciate that.

I’ve had my issues with it, my doubts, my struggles, and emotional burn out.  [My wife] certainly has as well.  I don’t know if my kids will someday struggle with it, but that’s certainly not unique to Orthodoxy.  You can’t miss noticing the sense of panic in Christian headlines now days when they see the stats on kids leaving the church when they leave home.  I’ve read studies on the phenomenon, and I think the key for that is in the home.  If your kids truly believe the fundamentals of the faith, and especially that salvation is found in Jesus alone, they will remain Christians.  If you make God real and important in your life, your kids will too I believe.  Orthodoxy affords me wonderful opportunities to engage with a very obvious Christianity, and that’s really helpful.  I feel that the best thing I can do for my kids is to engage with Christianity as openly and honestly as I’m able to.  Orthodoxy helps with that.

In the end I think that Orthodoxy being different helps people connect with it.  If a person is seeking then Orthodoxy, once you become aware of it, really sticks out and just begs to be explored.  That’s a great thing.  Now it just needs to be more visible…

Love you,
Mark

I love a good conversion story!  I regularly read Journey to Orthodoxy, and listen to converts talk about their journey.  It resonates with me, and gives me food for thought.  Recently I listened to this convert story and I wanted to feature it as an excellent specimen of the species!  Highly recommended.  This convert priest runs down almost the entire spectrum of issues that converts normally face.

Part 1: http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/illuminedheart/baptist_missionary_confronts_long-held_evangelical_tenets

Part 2: http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/illuminedheart/baptist_missionary_confronts_long-held_evangelical_tenets_-_part_2

I haven’t decided yet whether to mention these to my family yet, just FYI…