Archive for category Ekklesia and church
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM: “Jesus the Prophet”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets, Theology on October 15, 2025
In a homily Father Richard Rohr, OFM, describes the tension between priestly and prophetic tasks—both necessary for healthy religion:
There are two great strains of spiritual teachers in Judaism, and I think, if the truth is told, in all religions. There’s the priestly strain that holds the system together by repeating the tradition. The one we’re less familiar with is the prophetic strain, because that one hasn’t been quite as accepted. Prophets are critical of the very system that the priests maintain.
If we have both, we have a certain kind of wholeness or integrity. If we just have priests, we keep repeating the party line and everything is about loyalty, conformity, and following the rules—and that looks like religion. But if we have the priest and the prophet, we have a system constantly refining itself and correcting itself from within. Those two strains very seldom come together. We see it in Moses, who both gathers Israel, and yet is the most critical of his own people. We see it again in Jesus, who loves his people and his Jewish religion, but is lethally critical of hypocrisy and illusion and deceit (see Matthew 23; Luke 11:37–12:3).
Choctaw elder and Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston considers how Jesus invited others to share in his prophetic vision:
Jesus … saw a vision that became an invitation for people to claim a new identity, to enter into a new sense of community.… Jesus offered the promise of justice, healing, and redemption.… Jesus became the prophetic teacher of a spiritual renewal for the poor and the oppressed…. Jesus was more than just the recipient of a vision or the messenger of a vision. What sets Jesus apart is that he brought the elements of his vision quest together in a way that no one else had ever done….
“This is my body,” he told them. “This is my blood.” For him, the culmination of his vision was not just the messiahship of believing in him as a prophet. Through the Eucharist, Jesus was not just offering people a chance to see his vision, but to become a part of it by becoming a part of him.
Richard honors the role of prophets in religious systems:
The only way evil can succeed is to disguise itself as good. And one of the best disguises for evil is religion. Someone can be racist, be against the poor, hate immigrants, and be totally concerned about making money and being a materialist but still go to church each Sunday and be “justified” in the eyes of religion.
Those are the things that prophets point out, so prophets aren’t nearly as popular as priests. Priests keep repeating the party line, but prophets do both: they put together the best of the conservative with the best of the liberal, to use contemporary language. They honor the tradition, and they also say what’s phony about the tradition. That’s what fully spiritually mature people can do.
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation – Monday, October 13, 2025
“Christianity is in a pretty poor mess…” ~ Fr. Richard Rohr
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church on October 6, 2025
Christianity continues decades of decline in the U.S., and the “Church” continues to splinter apart worldwide. Along with Fr. Richard, I think that qualifies as a “pretty poor mess”.
Some background for consideration:
The Christian Nicene Creed[1], the official Statement of Christian Beliefs, states:
[I believe] in one holy, catholic apostolic Church
This was indeed a reality until AD 451. It’s become a wistful faerie tale since then (I submit 1054 and 1517 as additional evidence).
The original language of the New Testament and Nicene Creed is Greek: catholic in Greek is καθολικὴν (katholikén), meaning universal (not “Roman Catholic”!); church in New Testament Greek is ἐκκλησία ((ekklēsía) and translates as “assembly” or “gathering.” In the New Testament context, ἐκκλησία referred to the assembly of Christ believers, not the worldly institution that we know as “Church”. Church is an invention developed by generations of post-apostolic institutional male clerics. It’s actually helpful, I think, that in English we use the word Church, because apostolic Ekklesía and Church are clearly not the same thing.
Many “Churches” claim to embody the New Testament Ekklesía, but in fact often operate with only one or two of the five ministries present in the apostolic Ekklesías (Eph. 4:11 refers). And “worship leader” is not one of them.
The facts speak for themselves:
- There are more than 45,000 different Christian denominations in the world today. That’s up from 33,000 in 2007.[2]
- In 2023, 62% of the U.S. adults self-identified as Christians. That’s down from 78% in 2007. Estimates for 2025 are as low as 57%.
- In 2023, approximately 33% of adults attended church at least once a month. That’s down from 2007, when it was 57%.
- The percentage of U.S. adult “nones”, those having no religious affiliation, has risen from 16% in 2007 to 29% in 2023[3].
New and returning Christians are often encouraged to “Find a Bible-believing Church” and all will be well. “Bible-believing” now has such a plethora of divergent definitions and applications that, today, the term is virtually meaningless. In most cases, it simply implies, “Be like us”! Not helpful, I submit.
I will offer a word of knowledge for the Sunday crowds triumphantly proclaiming belief in “one holy, catholic apostolic Church”. Consider the following simple working definition of insanity:
“Continuing to do what you have been doing and expecting a different outcome.”
[1] Excerpt from the Christian Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of AD 325/381
[2] Gina A. Zurlo, ed. World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025)
[3] Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study, 2023-24.
When was the Roman Catholic Pope Declared “Infallible”?
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, Theology on May 7, 2025
Papal infallibility was dogmatically defined by the First Vatican Council in 1870. This doctrine states that the Pope is preserved from error when he solemnly defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals.
“Ex cathedra” is a Latin term that means “from the chair.” In the context of the Roman Catholic Church, it refers to the Pope’s authority to make infallible declarations on matters of faith and morals when he speaks in his official capacity as the Bishop of Rome. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, it is believed that he is guided by the Holy Spirit and is free from error in his teachings.
No such dogma exists in any form in Orthodox Christianity. Clearly a modern Afterthought of the Western Latin Church.
The Greek East – …sunk…in a sleep of traditionalism… and ethno-phyletism
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church on May 2, 2025
This is the bad news:
Hyper-Traditionalism
“It is probable enough that this widespread ascendancy of Augustinianism would not have maintained itself so long but for the utter decay of the Greek Church, under that debasing servility of the Church to palace intrigue, which is known as Byzantinism. It has been truly said that, just as the rise of scholasticism in the West was an attempt of the Latins to Hellenize, and so let a breath of philosophic thought pass over the stagnant morass of dead dogmatism; so, on the other hand, Greek theology in the age of its decline showed a tendency to Latinise, and to fall away from the high intuitional view of spiritual realities, by mixing its gold with the clay of legal conceptions. The result of this falling away of Greek theology into Byzantinism, by the adoption of a magical external type of ceremonial religion, has been that Reformers have ceased to look any longer for new light from the East, and have steadily set their faces to the far West. We have ceased to think of the church of the future as a revised orthodox Church… This is only what we may expect as long as the East continues sunk, as at present, in a sleep of traditionalism.”
J.B. Heard, 1893.
Ethno-phyletism
The above entry was written in 1893 and is as true today as it was then. Coincidentally, 21 years before Heard wrote this, the Council of Constantinople of 1872 dealt with the growing problem within Orthodoxy of phyletism, specifically ethno-phyletism, which comes from the Greek: “Ethno-Phyle-Tismos“, and can be accurately translated as “national tribalism”.
Phyletism relates to the problem of separating the unity of the one Orthodox Church into any number of competitive national, linguistic, racial or ethnic Churches. The problem arises both in the countries where Orthodoxy is the dominant religion (e.g. Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, Greece), but also in countries where Orthodoxy is represented by different countries that have immigrants (diaspora) there (e.g. UK, France, Canada, US). The term ethno-phyletism promotes the idea that a local autocephalous (self-governing) church should not be based on a local criterion, but on a national, ethnic, racial, or linguistic one. The 1872 Council condemned “phyletist nationalism” as a modern ecclesial heresy: the church was not to be confused with the destiny of a single nation or a single race.
In the United States, most Eastern Orthodox parishes as well as jurisdictions are ethnocentric, that is, focused on serving an ethnic community that has immigrated from overseas (e.g., the Greeks, Russians, Romanians, Finns, Serbs, Arabs, etc.).
In June 2008, Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) delivered a talk on “Episcopacy, Primacy, and the Mother Churches: A Monastic Perspective” at the Conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary.
He said:
“The problem is not so much the multiple overlapping jurisdictions, each ministering to diverse elements of the population. This could be adapted as a means of dealing with the legitimate diversity of ministries within a local or national Church. The problem is that there is no common expression of unity that supersedes ethnic, linguistic and cultural divisions: there is no synod of bishops responsible for all the churches in America, and no primacy or point of accountability in the Orthodox world with the authority to correct such a situation.”
Metropolitan Jonah was forced to resign in 2012.
In 1872, the problem was Bulgaria. In 2019, the problem was Ukraine. In 2025, the problem is the US, UK, France, and others.
Same problems, 150+ years later; the Church’s behavior is virtually identical to most any established worldly institution.
The good news is: It’s temporary!
Yes, it’s temporary. All the problems discussed are typical of worldly cultural institutions. They will pass away in time.
I know the orthodox church has had challenges building a suitable institutional infrastructure since the mid-fourth century; it’s had challenges being partnered with powerful worldly empire; it had internal struggles with Western Patriarchal obsession with hierarchical administrative control; it dealt with numerous violent Muslim crises; and resisted Western cultural and political pressures… the list could go on and on.
And yes, myopic focus on tradition and insular, triumphalist ethno-phyletism needs to be dealt with.
But, the Orthodox church is still the church of Justin, Clement, Origen, Athanasius, and the Cappadocians; it is the source, repository and guardian of inspired universal Logos theology, applicable to all of mankind as The Way to union with God. And remember, church, “evangelism” is not a Protestant word or idea; they just borrowed it (from you!). εὐαγγέλιον (euaggelion), The Good News. You remember, right? Goes right along with κήρυγμα (kerygma), the apostolic proclamation; accompanied by signs and wonders (σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα). All of this is part of the Orthodox Tradition. It’s right there, hidden under your pillow!
Wake up, church!
J.B. Heard: Theology Proper
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, The Logos Doctrine (series), Theology on April 27, 2025
Rev. John Bickford Heard (28 Oct 1828 – 29 Feb 1908) was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was a British clergyman and graduate/lecturer at Cambridge University (M.A. 1864). His series of lectures at the Cambridge Hulsean Lectures of 1892-93 served as the basis of his book, Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted, published by T&T Clark, Edinburgh, in 1893. Excerpts below are from this work:
“Nor need we be at a loss for a definition of theology, since the Master has himself deigned to define it. At the crowning stage of His ministry, in summing up all He had been given to teach, He sums it up: “And this is life eternal: that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” [John 17:3]
Theology, rightly considered, is the knowledge of God in His relation to us, the cardinal point of which lies in the truth which the old Greek poet [Acts 17:28] had glanced at. “For we are also His offspring” – this is the true keynote; and theology, setting out from this kinship between us and God, we at once soar, as on wings of a spiritual intuition, across the abyss between creature and Creator.”
Op. cit. pp. 31, 32. Brackets [ ] mine.
The Didaché: The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles (1st century)
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, Theology on April 18, 2025
The Didaché (Greek: Διδαχή, romanized: Didakhé, lit. ’Teaching’), also known as The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles is a brief anonymous early Christian treatise written in Koine Greek. Only relatively recently discovered in 1873, “few manuscript discoveries in modern times have created the stir caused by the discovery and publication of the Didache in the late nineteenth century. ” (Bart Ehrman). Many scholars once dated the text to the early second century, but most scholars now assign the Didaché to the first century. The community that produced the Didaché could have been based in Syria, as it addressed the gentiles but from a Judaic perspective, at some remove from Jerusalem, and shows no evidence of Pauline influence. The text, parts of which constitute the oldest extant written catechism, has three main sections dealing with Christian ethics, rituals such as baptism and Eucharist, and organization.
Author J.B. Heard tells us: “The “teaching of the twelve” clearly marks a state of transition in which the importance of a sacramental system and sacerdotal order is beginning to dawn on the Christian consciousness; but as yet the new theology, as it was then considered, had not taken dogmatic form. It nestled behind the phrase διδαχή; it has not as yet been formulated. It is only a δόξα [doxa], or private opinion, which in the end, as a δόγμα [dogma] would put on the air of authority, and enforce itself under the threat of an Anathema.”
The Ekklesía of the first-century Didaché was still very much one of First Thoughts.
Didaché Notes: Translations of the Didaché are readily available online. It is very short (under 10 pages) and is really worth the read. Below are my notes and highlights.
Chap. 1.2 The path of life consists of three Commandments: Love God, Love your neighbor as yourself, and the Golden Rule. (First Thoughts)
Chap. 1.3 Further exhortations from the Sermon on the Mount. (First Thoughts)
Chaps. 2 – 4 Ethical Injunctions (First Thoughts)
Chaps 7-10 Rituals of the Ekklesía:
—– Chap. 7. How to Baptize (First Thought)
—– Chap. 8.1 How to fast (First Thought)
—– Chap. 8.2 How to pray (Πάτερ ἡμῶν. Our Father- (First Thought))
—– Chaps. 9 – 10 How to celebrate the communal thanksgiving meal or Eucharist (First Thoughts)
Chap. 11 How to deal with itinerant Christian teachers, apostles, and, especially, prophets indicating their special status before God (First Thoughts). Note the alignment with Paul’s list of ministries in 1Cor.12:28.
Chaps. 14 – 15 Further instructions for communal worship, including election of bishops and deacons… “for these also conduct the ministry of the prophets and teachers among you.” (the rationalization of an After Thought?!) The nascent arrival of earthly institutional organization, administration, and control can be sensed.
Chap. 16 an apocalyptic scenario as the 1st century Ekklesía realized that the Parousia may not be as imminent as they had previously believed.
Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology: An Issue of Emphasis and Balance
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Contemplative Prayer (series), Ekklesia and church, Essence and Energies (series), First Thoughts, Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, The Cappadocians, Theology on April 6, 2025
Overview
Apophatic and Cataphatic are two terms used in theology to describe different approaches to understanding God. The Eastern Orthodox and Latin West each use both types. The issue comes down to one of emphasis and balance: The Orthodox East is overwhelmingly Apophatic in approach, while the Latin West is predominantly Cataphatic.
Definitions
Apophatic theology (from Greek: ἀπόφημι apophēmi, meaning “to deny”) uses “negative” terminology to indicate what it is believed the divine is not. It means emptying the mind of words and ideas and simply resting in the presence of God. Apophatic prayer is prayer that occurs without words, images, or concepts. This approach to prayer regards silence, stillness, unknowing and even darkness as doorways, rather than obstacles, to communication with God. Apophatic theology relies primarily on experience and revelation.
Cataphatic theology (from the Greek word κατάφασις kataphasis meaning “affirmation”) uses “positive” terminology to describe or refer to the divine, i.e. terminology that describes or refers to what the divine is believed to be. Cataphatic prayer is prayer that speaks thoroughly, intensively, or positively of God: prayer that uses words, images, ideas, concepts, and the imagination to relate to God. Cataphatic theology relies heavily on logic and reason.
Background
Apophatic theology—also known as negative theology or via negativa—is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation. In Orthodox Christianity, Apophatic theology is based on the assumption that God’s essence is unknowable or ineffable and on the recognition of the inadequacy of human language to describe God. The Apophatic tradition in Orthodoxy is balanced with Cataphatic theology (positive theology) via belief in the Incarnation and the self-revealed energies of God, through which God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. However, Apophatic theology is the dominant traditional Eastern paradigm of an experiential, revealed theology, intimately linking doctrine with contemplation through purgation (catharsis), illumination (theoria), and union (theosis).
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 215) was an early proponent of Apophatic theology with elements of Cataphatic. Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God’s unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers. According to Clement’s writings, the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual “seeing” toward a spiritual form of contemplation. Clement’s Apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the “mystic vision of the soul.” For Clement, God is both transcendent in essence and immanent in self-revelation.
The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century)) were early exemplars of this Apophatic theology. They stated that mankind can acquire an incomplete knowledge of God in his attributes, positive and negative, by reflecting upon and participating in his self-revelatory operations (energeia). But, the essence of God is completely unknowable.
A century later Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th century) in his short work Mystical Theology, first introduced and explained what came to be known as Apophatic or negative theology.
Maximus the Confessor (7th century) maintained that the combination of Apophatic theology and hesychasm—the practice of silence and stillness—made theosis or union with God possible.
John of Damascus (8th century) employed Apophatic theology when he wrote that positive (cataphatic) statements about God reveal “not the nature, but the things around the nature.”
All in all, Apophatic theology remains crucial to much of the theology in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The opposite tends to be true in Western Latin Christianity, with a few notable exceptions to this rule.
Cataphatic theology
In the Latin West a heavily Cataphatic theology, or via positiva, developed, which remains today in most forms of Western Christianity. This type of Cataphatic theology is based on using human reason to make positive statements about the nature of God. It slowly developed from the 5th to the 11th century, emerging as Scholasticism in the Medieval Period (11th-17th centuries). (see entries for Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, below)
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) significantly influenced scholasticism, emphasizing the integration of faith and reason. His ideas laid the groundwork for later Scholastic thinkers who sought to reconcile Christian theology with classical philosophy, particularly through dialectic reasoning. Augustine’s doctrines of the filioque, original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination found little support outside of the Western Roman Church. Within the Western Latin church, ‘Augustinianism’ dominated early theology.
Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 1109) is widely considered the father of Scholasticism, endeavoring to render Christian tenets of faith, traditionally taken as a revealed truth, as a rational system. Scholasticism prescribed that Aristotelian dialectic reason be used in the elucidation of spiritual truth and in defense of the dogmas of Faith.
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 7 March 1274) reflects the mature emergence of this new medieval Scholastic paradigm, which promoted the use of formal intellectual reason, putting it at odds with the predominantly Eastern revealed tradition of hesychastic contemplation. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1265–1274), is considered to be the pinnacle of Medieval Scholastic Christian philosophy and theology. The resulting ‘Thomism’ remains the foundation of contemporary Western Latin theology.
The Seven Sacraments, or Mysteries of the Christian Church
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets, Theology on April 2, 2025
The inward life of the Christian Church is mystical (or sacramental). The word “mysteries” (Greek mysteria) is the term used in the Orthodox East; “sacraments” (Latin sacramenta), the term used in the Latin West. So, how and when did Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox come to identify and accept the seven sacraments, or mysteries of the Christian Church?
One might reasonably assume that the seven Sacraments (Mysteries) were determined early in the period of the united Church (AD 33 – 1054). That assumption would be false.
One of the renowned teachers of the united Church, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (6th Century) listed six sacraments in his work The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (ca. AD 500): baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, priesthood, the consecration of monks, and rites for the dead.
Two centuries later, another early teacher revered East and West, John of Damascus (675-749), mentions only two sacraments: Baptism together with the corresponding chrismation and the Eucharist (Communion), the only two mysteries identified in the New Testament and instituted by Jesus.
Clearly, there was no unanimity on the identity or number of sacraments/mysteries in the first 1,000 years of the unified Christian Church, nor at the time of the Great East-West Schism of 1054.
In the post-Schism Latin West, Peter Lombard (1100-1164), in his fourth Book of Sentences (d.ii, n.1), enumerated the seven sacraments. This list of sacraments was accepted by the Western Latin Roman Church at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
49 years later, during the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons in 1274, Eastern Greek theologians, under Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (in his Profession of Faith), accepted the seven Latin Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation (Chrismation), Eucharist, Penance, Priesthood, Marriage, and Anointing of the Sick.
So, clearly, neither the Seven Holy Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church nor the Seven Holy Mysteries of the Eastern Orthodox Church are First Thoughts of God, but mostly, save two, distant Afterthoughts of Man, codified a thousand years after Jesus and the Apostolic age.
Human Institutions
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on March 31, 2025
Nothing on earth has a stronger amoral drive for survival than a human institution.
Woman Wisdom: Chokmah, Sophia, Wisdom in the Old Testament
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Theology, Women in Early Christianity on March 29, 2025
“Woman Wisdom” was well established in the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament long before the New Testament era. The patriarchal (some might say misogynistic) leaders of the post-Apostolic Christian Church, especially after the 2nd century, so completely suppressed this idea of the feminine personification of God, that they had to invent the cult of Mary in the 5th and 6th centuries to redress the obvious, embarrassing imbalance!
If you want to explore the beautiful ancient Hebrew tradition of the Feminine emanation of the Godhead (called Chokmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek, and Wisdom in English), try the following:
- Proverbs 1-9
- Wisdom of Solomon 7-9
- Sirach (AKA Ecclestiasticus) 24
In the interest of full disclosure, my male noetic intuition has always experienced both Wisdom (Chokmah) and the Holy Spirit (Ruach) as female. In case you think that’s in error or heretical, let me point out that in Hebrew both Chokmah and Ruach are feminine nouns.
First Thoughts 