Posts Tagged eastern orthodox tradition
What Does the ‘Ecclesía’ of ‘The Way’ Look Like?
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Theology, Women in Early Christianity on April 8, 2026
Words
A Word of Wisdom from my brilliant college roommate, dear friend, and Christian brother (and lawyer), John Holt:
“Words Matter. The World We Make With Words is always before us in both law and theology because words create worlds. Words matter because they have also created the theological world of every faith.”
Examples:
“The Way”, ἡ Ὁδός , (hē Hodós), was an early term used to describe the Christian movement, emphasizing the teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the path to transformation and salvation, and experience of God. Members of The Way formed assemblies or congregations called “ecclesía”.
“Ecclesía”, Ἐκκλησία (Ekklēsía) used exclusively for Christian assemblies or congregations of believers. In the first century, the ecclesía was primarily a gathering of early Christians who met in private homes or public spaces, functioning as a community rather than a formal institution. These assemblies were characterized by their adaptability to local cultures and their focus on communal worship, fellowship and service, and the mission of spreading the teachings of Jesus. Ecclesía was never used to refer to a physical building, and certainly not to any temporal hierarchical institution (read: Church).[1]
“Words are thus the records of things, and a change of a single term is a kind of signal to sceneshifters that we have closed one act and entered another in the five-act drama of Church history. During the whole of Act I., as we may call it, the keynote is always διδαχή [teaching]; it is a doctrine, and those who preach or teach it are followers of the “way” [ἡ ὁδός], witnesses of the “word” [λόγοσ], or stewards of the “mystery” [μυστήριο]. Such is the apostolic keynote …
But a change came over the Church, which explains all her later “afterthoughts” in theology, as soon as the note διδαχή was dropped, and δόξα [private opinion] at first, and finally hardening into δόγμα [dogma], took the place of διδαχή. It is dogmatic theology, in all its forms, early and later, which we identify with that departure from the faith which the apostle (1 Tim. iv. 1) distinctly refers to as an apostacy.
Faith [πίστις] in the New Testament church [ecclesía] meant trust or affiance in the living God. It did not mean, “the faith” of the later dogmatic Church. If πίστις retains its primitive simplicity of meaning as trust or affiance in the living God, and the term διδαχή the equivalent phrase for those teachings which make up the body of revealed truth, then we have what we need: “faith” in a person, and “teaching” concerning his work.”
“This fusing of morality and religion into one, is indeed that return to primitive New Testament Christianity which the age asks for, but does not see its way to.”[2]
The goal of the discussion below is to help the reader see what the age asks for: the return to primitive New Testament Christianity.
In the light of these circumstances, the total absence of any temporal institutional dogma in the following discussion is wholly intentional.
Ecclesía Structure
The earliest Christian communities were charismatically structured, not institutionally structured.
- Charisma Was the Organizing Principle of the New Testament Ecclesía
- The earliest ecclesías were held together by charismatic authority, meaning:
- Leadership emerged from spiritual gifting, not appointment.
- Apostles, prophets, and teachers were recognized because the Spirit was believed to speak through them.
- Communities were small, fluid, and dependent on Spirit‑empowered individuals.
- The early church didn’t have offices — it had gifts.
- The earliest ecclesías were held together by charismatic authority, meaning:
- Apostles and Prophets Were Central — Not Peripheral
- Apostles as foundational witnesses
- Prophets as Spirit‑filled interpreters
- Evangelists as itinerant emissaries
- In the New Testament Ecclesía:
- Charismatic gifts were common and expected.
- Leadership was fluid and Spirit‑driven.
- Prophecy, tongues, healing, and visions were normal parts of worship.
- Authority was personal and experiential.
- Beginning in the 2nd century, Charisma began to decline as Institutional Authority rose
- As charismatic eyewitnesses died, ecclesías needed stability.
- Bishops and presbyters emerged to provide continuity.
- Written texts (eventually the NT canon) replaced charismatic speech as the norm of authority.
- Prophets and itinerant charismatics became viewed as destabilizing.
Apostles and Prophets built the Ecclesía; Bishops and Presbyters later managed it into the Church.
The Bible
We must understand that in the first century ecclesía, there was no Bible, as we know it. They had the Septuagint (Greek translation of Hebrew Scriptures), but there was then no settled canon of Scripture of the Hebrew Old Testament; and the New Testament would not be assembled and closed for another 250 years. Jesus himself quoted from some of the books which became part of the Hebrew canon, so we can assume that he considered them authoritative “Scripture”. Jesus’ followers considered his (Jesus’) own teachings to be authoritative. Near the end of the first century, Christians were citing Jesus’ words and calling them “Scripture” (e.g., 1 Tim 5:18). The book of 2 Peter includes Paul’s own contemporary letters among the “Scriptures” (2 Pet 3:16). Scripture was mainly oral (from Apostles. Prophets, and Teachers) in the “New Testament” ecclesía.
The Word of God was a Person, Jesus Christ, the Son, the Logos (λόγος). The Christ of history was the Eternal Logos, the light of all humanity. The later developed New Testament Bible canon contains the word of God and became the principal book of modern Christian devotion.
However, we should be reminded that in the ecclesía divine revelation was considered continuous and experiential. The idea that divine revelation would end at some point (e.g., with the closure of the Christian Canon in 367 AD, or at the end of the Apostolic era), would not have occurred to the ecclesía.
Creed
Examples from the New Testament Ecclesía:
From 1 Cor 15:
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.[3]
From Phil 2:
Though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied [ἐκένωσεν] himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.[4]
The current universal Nicene Creed would not be formulated until 325/381 AD.
Ministries within the New Testament Ecclesía
| Ephesians 4:11 |
| Apostle |
| Prophet |
| Evangelist |
| Pastor |
| Teacher |
Charismatic Gifts of the Holy Spirit within the New Testament Ecclesía
| Romans 12:6-8 | 1 Corinthians 12:1-14 |
| Prophecy | Word of Wisdom |
| Ministry | Word of Knowledge |
| Teaching | Discernment of Spirits |
| Exhortation | Speaking in Tongues |
| Giving | Interpretation of Tongues |
| Leadership | Prophecy |
| Mercy | Faith |
| Working of Miracles | |
| Gifts of Healing |
Women in the New Testament Ecclesía
In an interview, Christian theologian and philosopher David Bentley Hart stressed that Paul’s letters—setting aside later pseudo‑Pauline additions—have a “remarkable egalitarianism” that is “almost historically inconceivable” for the time.
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:28
Powerful Women in the New Testament Ecclesía
| Woman | Reference | Comment |
| Phoebe | Romans 16:1-2 | “a deacon [minister] of the ecclesía” |
| Priscilla (or Prisca) | Rom 16:3-5, 1 Cor 16:19 | Founded at least two house ecclesías with Aquila |
| Junia | Rom 16:7 | Named as “prominent among the apostles” |
| Nympha | Col 4:15 | Started ecclesía in her house |
| Lydia | Acts 16:14, 15, 40 | Started ecclesía in her house |
| Apphia | Philem 2 | Started ecclesía in her house |
| Mary, Mother of Jesus | Acts 1:14 | Present at first meetings of the ecclesía |
| Euodia, Syntyche | Phil 4:2-3 | Co-workers: “for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel” |
| Four daughters of Philip | Acts 21:8/9 | Prophetesses |
Worship Patterns of the New Testament Ecclesía
The Christian ecclesía usually met in private homes for worship and instruction (Acts 2:46; 16:40; 18:7; Philem. 1:2). It appears that, in commemoration of the resurrection, the congregation assembled on the “Lord’s Day,” Sunday, the first day of the week (Acts 20:7See Eucharist, below; 1 Cor. 16:2). Writing to the ecclesía in Corinth, Paul describes two types of Christian gathering. One is the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist)(1 Cor. 10:16-17; 11:20-29) or ceremonial community meal. Paul goes on to describe a second type of charismatic gathering, the prophetic assembly, which includes both singing and thanksgiving in unknown languages, with interpretation, and prophecy (14:1-33). These were likely two aspects of the same gathering.
The order of worship in the Didache[5] [ca. 100 AD] allows Jewish forms for “grace” before and after meals. The leader’s prayer does not refer to the body and blood of Jesus; instead, the emphasis is on the gathering of the ecclesía body (see 1 Cor. 10:17). It is noteworthy that the prayer and thanksgiving are interlaced with doxologies; the event is a praise-celebration of the congregation of God’s people. The role of prophets is significant; the Didache calls them the ecclesía’s “high priests,” and gives instructions on how to welcome prophets and discern true from false teaching. The document does not specify what sort of ecclesía official is to preside over the Eucharist.
Worship patterns varied widely by location. Paul’s Gentile ecclesías were not as structured as those of the Jewish Christian ecclesías who came from a background of Synagogue/Temple worship (e.g., as described in the Didache). Diversity was the hallmark of New Testament Christianity.
Sacraments (Mysteries)
Jesus himself instituted the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist) as part of his last Passover celebration with his disciples (Matt. 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-22.) His words on that occasion (“This is my body . . . ,” “this is my blood . . . ,” “do this in remembrance of me”) suggest a close identification between the elements of bread and wine and the continuing presence of Jesus with his Ecclesía.
Two other sacramental actions established by Jesus were Baptism and Foot Washing. The Gospel of John records that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the night of his arrest, as a symbol of the loving servanthood they were to show toward one another (John 13:1-15). However, the rite is not specifically mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament.
Regarding Baptism, Jesus himself had been baptized by John the Baptizer as a sign of his role as the Messiah or Son of God (Mark 1:9-11). The Didache tells us: “But with regard to baptism, baptize as follows. Having said all these things in advance, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in [cold] running water.”
Prayer
“pray without ceasing” 1 Thess 5:17 (this is the foundational direction of hesychasm)
“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you [openly].” Matt 6:6
The Didache specifically quotes the text of the Lord’s Prayer (akin to Matt 6) and directs us to “Pray like this three times a day”.
Giving
Early Christian communities practiced notable acts of mutual aid and pooled collections, and giving was encouraged and commended by Paul. But Paul did not prescribe a universal rule that all goods and money be held in common. Early Christian fellowship and service was fundamental and sometimes expressed in radical generosity, but giving was practical, voluntary, and contextual rather than a uniform economic communalism.
Fasting
Again, from the Didache: “And do not keep your fasts with the hypocrites [i.e., Jews]. For they fast on Monday and Thursday; but you should fast on Wednesday and Friday”.
I quoted Rev. John B. Heard at the beginning of this post when he said, “This fusing of morality and religion into one, is indeed that return to primitive New Testament Christianity which the age asks for, but does not see its way to.” I hope we have clearly pointed out “The Way”.
[1] Theodore Beza, a Presbyterian follower of reformer John Calvin, was the first person to translate Greek “Ekklesía” with the modern English word “Church” in his 1556 translation of the New Testament canon. To equate the first century Ecclesía with the 16th century context of “Church” may be the worst Bible mistranslation ever made in English. Worse yet, the translators of the 1611 King James Bible copied Beza’s mistranslation; and so it goes with most subsequent English translations. With translation alternatives of “assembly” or “congregation” readily available and historically used, I hardly think the mistranslation was innocent. Words matter.
[2] Heard, John B. Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted. T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1893. (pp. 229-230)
[3] 1 Cor 15, Harper Bibles. NRSV–New Testament.
[4] Ibid., Phil: 2.
[5] The Apostolic Fathers. “Didache: The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” (Bilingual English-Greek Edition). Translated and edited by Bart D. Ehrman. Vol. 1 of two volumes. Harvard University Press. 2003. The Didache was likely written in the first century by Jewish Christians living in the Egyptian, Palestinian, or Syrian region.
Note: All comments in brackets [] mine.
How did the meaning of the Greek word δόξα (dóxa) shift from “private opinion” to “glory”?
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ancient Christian Manuscripts, First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls on April 1, 2026
The Greek word dóxa shifted from “opinion” to “glory” through a historical semantic expansion driven largely by the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. In classical Greek it meant “what seems,” “appearance,” or “belief,” but in Jewish and early Christian Greek it came to express the radiant, weighty presence of God.
Here’s how that transformation happened:
1. The Original Meaning: “What Seems / Opinion”
In early and classical Greek, δόξα comes from the verb δοκεῖν (“to seem, to appear, to think”). It referred to: personal opinion, common belief, reputation (good or bad). Philosophers like Plato used dóxa to contrast mere belief with true knowledge (epistēmē).
2. The Septuagint Shift: Translating Hebrew kavod
The decisive change occurred between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE, when Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint).
Hebrew כָּבוֹד (kavod) means: “weight,” “substance,” and metaphorically “glory,” “honor,” “radiance,” especially of God.”
The translators chose δόξα as the Greek equivalent.
This was a semantic leap: kavod had no connection to “opinion.” But dóxa was the closest Greek term that could express public esteem or reputation, which overlaps with “glory.” As a result, dóxa absorbed the theological weight of kavod.
3. Early Christian Usage: “Glory” Becomes Primary
Because the Septuagint was the Old Testament Bible of the early Church, the new meaning spread rapidly. In the New Testament and Christian liturgy: dóxa overwhelmingly means glory, especially divine glory. It becomes associated with: radiance, majesty, honor, praise.
This usage became so dominant that the older sense (“opinion”) nearly disappeared from religious Greek.
Philological sources note that dóxa came to mean “glory” especially in Hellenistic and Christian Greek, while still retaining its older philosophical sense in some contexts.
Bart Ehrman: “Textual Criticism 101”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ancient Christian Manuscripts, New Nuggets on March 12, 2026
Bart D. Ehrman (born October 5, 1955) is an American New Testament scholar whose research focuses on the textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books, including six New York Times bestsellers, and has created nine lecture series with The Great Courses. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, HarperCollins, 2005, is his most popular New York Times bestseller mass-market book on Christian textual criticism.
The following excerpt is from his The New Testament – A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 3rd Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 485-488.
Criteria for Establishing the Original Text of the New Testament
There is a subdiscipline within New Testament scholarship called “textual criticism,” which seeks to establish the original text of the New Testament based on the surviving manuscript evidence. It is a complex task but one that can be extremely intriguing – something like reading a detective story in which a few clues have to be pieced together in order to decide “whodunit.” When there are different forms of the text, that is, when a verse is worded in different ways in the surviving manuscripts, the question has to be asked, which manuscripts represent the text of the autograph and which ones represent changes of the text? Inevitably, a choice has to be made between one form of wording and another, and the choice can sometimes make a significant difference in how a document is interpreted. Since it is better to make an intelligent choice based on evidence than simply to guess, critics have developed certain principles for deciding which form of a text is more likely to be original.
- The Number of Witnesses That Support a Reading. In addition to the approximately 5,400 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, we have tens of thousands of New Testament manuscripts in other languages into which it was eventually translated (especially Latin but also Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and others). Moreover, there are dozens of ancient Christian authors from different times and places who quoted the New Testament. By collecting their quotations, we can reconstruct what their own manuscripts probably looked like.
Given the abundance of evidence, one might suppose that a fairly obvious criterion for deciding which reading is original is to count the witnesses in support of each (different) reading and to accept the one that is most abundantly attested. Suppose, for example, that for a given verse there were 500 witnesses that have one form of wording and only six that have a variant form. All other things being equal, one might suspect that the six represent a mistake.
The problem, however, is that all other things are rarely equal. If the six witnesses, for example, all derive from the third and fourth centuries, whereas the 500 are all later, from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, then the six may preserve an earlier form of the text that came to be changed to the satisfaction of later scribes. Thus, simply counting the witnesses that support a certain form of the text is generally recognized as a rather unreliable method for reconstructing the original text. - The Age of the Witnesses. The form of the text that is supported by the oldest witness is more likely to be original than a different form found only in later manuscripts, even if these are more numerous. Most scholars recognize that this principle is better than simply counting the manuscripts, but it too can be problematic. For example, it is possible for a sixth-century manuscript to preserve an older form of the text than, say, a fourth-century one. This would happen if the sixth-century manuscript had been produced from a copy that was made in the second century, whereas the fourth-century manuscript derived from one made in the third.
- The Quality of the Witnesses. In a court of law, the testimony of some witnesses carries more weight than that of others. If there are two witnesses with contradictory testimony, and one is known to be a habitual liar, drunkard, and thief, whereas the other is an upstanding member of the community, most juries will have little difficulty deciding whom to believe. A similar situation occurs with manuscripts. Some are obviously full of errors, for instance, when their scribe was routinely inattentive or inept, and others appear to be on the whole trustworthy. The best manuscripts are those that do not regularly preserve forms of the text that are obviously in error.
- The Geographical Spread of the Witnesses. An even more useful criterion involves the geographical distribution of the different forms of the text, especially among the earliest manuscripts. Suppose our manuscripts support two different forms of a passage, one found only among manuscripts produced in a specific geographical area (say, southern Italy), the other found in witnesses spread throughout the Mediterranean (say, Northern Africa, Alexandria, Syria, Asia Minor, Gaul, and Spain). In this case, the former is more likely to be a local variation reproduced by scribes of the region, whereas the other is more likely to be older since it was more widely known.
The foregoing criteria often have a cumulative effect in helping scholars decide what the original text was. If one form of reading, for example, is found in geographically diverse witnesses that are early and of generally high quality, then there is a good chance that it is original. This judgment has to be borne out, however, by two other factors. - The Difficulty of the Reading. Scholars have found this criterion to be extraordinarily useful. We have seen that scribes sometimes eliminated possible contradictions and discrepancies, harmonized stories, and changed doctrinally questionable statements. Therefore, when we have two forms of a text, one that would have been troubling to scribes – for example, one that is possibly contradictory to another passage or grammatically inelegant or theologically problematic – and one that would not have been as troubling, it is the former form of the text, the one that is more “difficult,” that is more likely to be original. That is, since scribes were far more likely to have corrected problems than to have created them, the comparatively smooth, consistent, harmonious, and orthodox readings are more likely, on balance, to have been created by scribes. Our earliest manuscripts, interestingly enough, are the ones that tend to preserve the more difficult readings.
- Conformity with the Author’s Own Language, Style, and Theology. With the preceding criterion we were interested in determining which form of a passage could be most easily attributed to scribes who copied the text. With our sixth and final criterion we are interested in seeing which form of a passage would be easiest to ascribe to the author who originally produced the text in light of its vocabulary, writing style, and theology. If two forms of a passage are preserved among the New Testament manuscripts and one of them contains words, grammatical constructions, and theological ideas that never occur in the author’s writings elsewhere (or that conflict with his other writings), then that form of the text is less likely to be original than the other.
All of these criteria need to be applied to any particular passage in order to decide which reading among the manuscripts is likely to be original. In many instances, the arguments coalesce, so that the earliest and best manuscripts also support the reading that is most difficult and that conforms most closely with the author’s own language and style. When this happens, we can be relatively certain that we have uncovered the earliest available form of the text.
Codex Sinaiticus: “God is love”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ancient Christian Manuscripts, First Thoughts, Theology on March 9, 2026
Modern Greek: Ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν
English: God is love (from 1 John 4:8)
Codex Sinaiticus ca. AD 350
British Museum, London
The “God is love” graphic, above, is copied from the Codex Sinaiticus. Codex Sinaiticus is a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century and contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The name ‘Codex Sinaiticus’ literally means ‘the Sinai Book’. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version known as the Septuagint (LXX, ca. 130 B.C.), that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. Codex Sinaiticus is one of only four great codices that have survived to the present day. They are written in a certain uncial (broad single-stroke letters using simple round forms) style of calligraphy using only majuscule (capital) letters, written in scriptio continua (meaning without regular gaps or spaces between words). Words do not necessarily end on the same line on which they start. All four of these manuscripts were made at great expense in material and labor, written on parchment or velum (animal skins) by professional scribes. All four of the Great Codices are Alexandrian text-type manuscripts.
‘Codex’ means ‘book’. By the time Codex Sinaiticus was written, works of literature were increasingly written on sheets that were folded and bound together in the form that we still use today. This book format was steadily replacing the roll format which was more widespread just a century before. These rolls were made of animal skin (like most of the Dead Sea Scrolls) or the papyrus plant (commonly used for Greek and Latin literature). Using the papyrus codex was a distinctive feature of early Christian culture. The pages of Codex Sinaiticus, however, are made of animal skin parchment. This marks it out as standing at an important transition in book history. Before it we see many examples of Greek and Latin texts on papyrus roll or papyrus codex, but almost no traces of parchment codices. After it, the parchment codex becomes the norm.
In Christian scribal practice, nomina sacra is the abbreviation of frequently used divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts of the Bible. A nomen sacrum consists of two or more letters from the original word spanned by an overline; in the case of the Sinaiticus graphic, above, the theta and sigma are the first and last letters in the Greek word Theos, or God.
David Bentley Hart: “Traditio Deformis – The long history of defective Christian scriptural exegesis occasioned by problematic translations”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ancient Christian Manuscripts, New Nuggets, Theology on March 8, 2026
David Bentley Hart (born 1965) is an American Orthodox Christian philosophical theologian, cultural commentator and polemicist. Here, in one short essay published in “First Things” in May 2015, Prof. Hart addresses, “The long history of defective Christian scriptural exegesis occasioned by problematic translations”.
The long history of defective Christian scriptural exegesis occasioned by problematic translations is a luxuriant one, and its riches are too numerous and exquisitely various adequately to classify. But I think one can arrange most of them along a single continuum in four broad divisions: some misreadings are caused by a translator’s error, others by merely questionable renderings of certain words, others by the unfamiliarity of the original author’s (historically specific) idiom, and still others by the “untranslatable” remoteness of the author’s own (culturally specific) theological concerns. And each kind comes with its own special perils and consequences.
But let me illustrate. Take, for example, Augustine’s magisterial reading of the Letter to the Romans, as unfolded in reams of his writings, and ever thereafter by his theological heirs: perhaps the most sublime “strong misreading” in the history of Christian thought, and one that comprises specimens of all four classes of misprision. Of the first, for instance: the notoriously misleading Latin rendering of Romans 5:12 that deceived Augustine into imagining Paul believed all human beings to have, in some mysterious manner, sinned “in” Adam, which obliged Augustine to think of original sin—bondage to death, mental and moral debility, estrangement from God—ever more insistently in terms of an inherited guilt (a concept as logically coherent as that of a square circle), and which prompted him to assert with such sinewy vigor the justly eternal torment of babes who died unbaptized. And of the second: the way, for instance, Augustine’s misunderstanding of Paul’s theology of election was abetted by the simple contingency of a verb as weak as the Greek proorizein (“sketching out beforehand,” “planning,” etc.) being rendered as praedestinare—etymologically defensible, but connotatively impossible. And of the third: Augustine’s frequent failure to appreciate the degree to which, for Paul, the “works” (erga, opera) he contradistinguishes from faith are works of the Mosaic law, “observances” (circumcision, kosher regulations, and so on). And of the fourth—well, the evidences abound: Augustine’s attempt to reverse the first two terms in the order of election laid out in Romans 8:29–30 (“Whom he foreknew he also marked out beforehand”); or his eagerness, when citing Romans 5:18, to quote the protasis (“Just as one man’s offence led to condemnation for all men”), but his reluctance to quote the (strictly isomorphic) apodosis (“so also one man’s righteousness led to justification unto life for all men”); or, of course, his entire reading of Romans 9–11 . . .
Ah—thereby hangs a tale.
Not that Paul’s argument there is difficult to follow. What preoccupies him is the agonizing mystery that the Messiah has come, yet so few of the house of Israel have accepted him, while so many Gentiles—outside the covenant—have. What then of God’s faithfulness to his promises? It is not an abstract question regarding who is “saved” and who “damned”: By the end of chapter 11, the former category proves to be vastly larger than that of the “elect,” or the “called,” while the latter category makes no appearance at all. It is a concrete question concerning Israel and the Church. And ultimately Paul arrives at an answer drawn, ingeniously, from the logic of election in Hebrew Scripture.
Before reaching that point, however, in a completely and explicitly conditional voice, he limns the problem in the starkest chiaroscuro. We know, he says, that divine election is God’s work alone, not earned but given; it is not by their merit that Gentile believers have been chosen. “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (9:13)—here quoting Malachi, for whom Jacob is the type of Israel and Esau the type of Edom. For his own ends, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. He has mercy on whom he will, hardens whom he will (9:15–18). If you think this unjust, who are you, O man, to reproach God who made you? May not the potter cast his clay for purposes both high and low, as he chooses (9:19–21)? And, so, what if (ei de, quod si) God should show his power by preparing vessels of wrath, solely for destruction, to provide an instructive counterpoint to the riches of the glory he lavishes on vessels prepared for mercy, whom he has called from among the Jews and the Gentiles alike (9:22–24)? Perhaps that is simply how it is: The elect alone are to be saved, and the rest left reprobate, as a display of divine might; God’s faithfulness is his own affair.
Well, so far, so Augustinian. But so also, again, purely conditional: “What if . . . ?” Rather than offering a solution to the quandary that torments him, Paul is simply restating it in its bleakest possible form, at the very brink of despair. But then, instead of stopping here, he continues to question God’s justice after all, and spends the next two chapters unambiguously rejecting this provisional answer altogether, in order to reach a completely different—and far more glorious—conclusion.
Throughout the book of Genesis, the pattern of God’s election is persistently, even perversely antinomian: Ever and again the elder to whom the birthright properly belongs is supplanted by the younger, whom God has chosen in defiance of all natural “justice.” This is practically the running motif uniting the whole text, from Cain and Abel to Manasseh and Ephraim. But—this is crucial—it is a pattern not of exclusion and inclusion, but of a delay and divagation that immensely widens the scope of election, taking in the brother “justly” left out in such a way as to redound to the good of the brother “unjustly” pretermitted. This is clearest in the stories of Jacob and of Joseph, and it is why Esau and Jacob provide so apt a typology for Paul’s argument. For Esau is not finally rejected; the brothers are reconciled, to the increase of both precisely because of their temporary estrangement. And Jacob says to Esau (not the reverse), “Seeing your face is like seeing God’s.”
And so Paul proceeds. In the case of Israel and the Church, election has become even more literally “antinomian”: Christ is the end of the law so that all may attain righteousness, leaving no difference between Jew and Gentile; thus God blesses everyone (10:11–12). As for the believing “remnant” of Israel (11:5), they are elected not as the number of the “saved,” but as the earnest through which all of Israel will be saved (11:26), the part that makes the totality holy (11:16). And, again, the providential ellipticality of election’s course vastly widens its embrace: For now, part of Israel is hardened, but only until the “full entirety” (pleroma) of the Gentiles enter in; they have not been allowed to stumble only to fall, however, and if their failure now enriches the world, how much more so will their own “full entirety” (pleroma); temporarily rejected for “the world’s reconciliation,” they will undergo a restoration that will be a “resurrection from the dead” (11:11–12, 15).
This, then, is the radiant answer dispelling the shadows of Paul’s grim “what if,” the clarion negative: There is no final “illustrative” division between vessels of wrath and of mercy; God has bound everyone in disobedience so as to show mercy to everyone (11:32); all are vessels of wrath so that all may be made vessels of mercy.
Not that one can ever, apparently, be explicit enough. One classic Augustinian construal of Romans 11, particularly in the Reformed tradition, is to claim that Paul’s seemingly extravagant language—“all,” “full entirety,” “the world,” and so on—really still means just that all peoples are saved only in the “exemplary” or “representative” form of the elect. This is, of course, absurd. Paul is clear that it is those not called forth, those allowed to stumble, who will still never be allowed to fall. Such a reading would simply leave Paul in the darkness where he began, reduce his glorious discovery to a dreary tautology, convert his magnificent vision of the vast reach of divine love into a ludicrous cartoon of its squalid narrowness. Yet, on the whole, the Augustinian tradition on these texts has been so broad and mighty that it has, for millions of Christians, effectively evacuated Paul’s argument of all its real content. It ultimately made possible those spasms of theological and moral nihilism that prompted John Calvin to claim (in book 3 of The Institutes) that God predestined even the Fall, and (in his commentary on 1 John) that love belongs not to God’s essence, but only to how the elect experience him. Sic transit gloria Evangelii. I have to say that, as an Orthodox scholar, I have made many efforts over the years to defend Augustine against what I take to be defective and purely polemical Eastern interpretations of his thought, in the realms of metaphysics, Trinitarian theology, and the soul’s knowledge of God (often to the annoyance of some of my fellow Orthodox). But regarding that part of his intellectual patrimony that has had the widest effect—his understanding of sin, grace, and election—not only do I share the Eastern distaste for (or, frankly, horror at) his conclusions; I am even something of an extremist in that respect. In the whole long, rich history of Christian misreadings of Scripture, none I think has ever been more consequential, more invincibly perennial, or more disastrous.
“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 New Testament Ekklesía and institutional 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.
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.
Christian Theology: Greek East and Latin West Contrasted *
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, Theology on April 8, 2025
Theology is at its best and purest stage when it is intuitive [noetic]; it is based on our spiritual instincts [nous]; its only logic is that best of all logic, when there is one single step, as it has been well said, from the premise to the conclusion.
Eastern Greek theology set out with the doctrine of God in His relation to man. Conversely, Western Latin theology adopted the opposite doctrine of man in his relation to God.
The difference is more than verbal, whether we make man or God the starting-point of our inquiries on this subject. Setting out with man [the Latin model], we have to take him as we find him, blind and insensible to spiritual things. We have to find an explanation for this strange fact – we have to begin with a theory of original sin, a tradition of the fall, and the problem of evil in general. We get out of our depth all at once in a kind of theodicee [theodicy], which lands us at last in a dilemma which no thinker has yet to overcome, and which J.S. Mill admitted to be logically insoluable. Either God is all-goodness, but not all-mighty, or He is all-mighty, but not all-goodness. Pelagians and Augustinians, Arminians and Calvinists, have beaten their wings against the bars of this cage ever since Latin theology replaced Greek [in the Latin West], as it did soon after Augustine’s day, and we are no nearer a solution than ever.
On the other hand, setting out, as the Greeks did, at the other end of the problem, all unfolds itself in a simple and natural order, and there is no room for these gloomy afterthoughts which have made earth a prison-house, and evil a kind of Manichaean partner with good in the government of the universe. Let us notice the order in which the early Fathers of the Alexandrian school [Greek] approached the problem. Their point of departure was the general Fatherhood of God, – of a God, let us add, who was not so much transcendent as immanent in the world [e.g., the Incarnation and His energaeia]. The opening verses of the Gospel of St. John is the key to all that is distinctively Hellenistic in contrast with the Latin or magisterial conception of God. The Logos is σπερματικόσ, or germ-like, in the world: that Logos in man becomes reason or thought in its two-fold manifestation of speech and action. At a loss for a Latin equivalent for the Greek Logos, the Latin mind lost hold of the primitive and deep significance of the thought that there was a Wisdom which was one with God, and yet had its habitation with the children of men.
The Latins, lacking the Logos doctrine, never could see the true grounds of the incarnation which were laid deep in the original and unchangeable relations of God to men… In this point of view Latin theology never has been “rational” in the sense that the early and best type of Greek theology harmonized reason and revelation. To the Hellenistic mind there was no strained reconciliation between reason and faith… The contrast between the two theologies, for which we have to thank Aquinas, the one known as natural and the other as revealed, never so much as occurred to Greek thought when at its best and earliest stage.
History may be said to contain two chapters, and only two – one in which man seeks after God and loses himself in the search; and a second, in which God seeks after man, and seeks, as the shepherd after the lost sheep, until He finds it.
* Excerpted from Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted, John B. Heard. T&T Clark, Edinburgh 1893. Brackets [ ] mine.
First Thoughts 