Posts Tagged eastern orthodox tradition
The “Fall” as Disease
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts on March 22, 2013
The Orthodox see the “Fall” of man and resulting sin as fundamentally a disease of the will. With the arrival of death at the Fall, our will and drive to maintain and satisfy our physical bodies overwhelmed our natural human will to attain to the likeness of our Creator, in whose image we were created. Our natural will has, from that time, been so distorted and diseased by our deception and preoccupation with carnal needs and passions, that we have nearly lost sight of our true nature. Using this disease model, the incarnation, ministry, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can be thought of as a “therapeutic” mission of God to mankind. When I say “therapeutic”, I mean it in the Greek sense of the word θεραπεύω, therapeuo. The New Testament mentions healing by Jesus and his disciples 73 times. In 40 cases, the Greek word is therapeuo. It means “to serve as a therapon, and attendant;” then, “to care for the sick, to treat, cure, heal”. I think that this is an accurate, loving description of God’s intervention in the created world to provide personal care, curative treatment, healing, and salvation to his fallen and diseased creation through the incarnation, ministry, and voluntary, redemptive sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ.
Note how this view of the Fall, from God’s relationship to man, avoids the problems and pitfalls of Western Latin (Augustinian) theology which include, but are not limited to: Original Sin (Total Depravity), God’s Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement (Particular Redemption) , Irresistible grace (Effectual Calling), Predestination, Free Will, the Problem of Evil, Purgatory, and Heaven and Hell.
Why is Theology Important?
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on March 3, 2013
What is our theology? Is it based on a world-view that God is good and the universe is good? Is God ambivalent, aloof and un-involved in a neutral, Newtonian physics-driven universe? Is God angry and vengeful over our sin, waiting to throw us into the pit of hell in a threatening, violent universe?
Does our theology promote a search for spiritual understanding? Or does our theology seek security and certainty in dualistic yes/no, either/or, right/wrong answers to spiritual questions?
Is our theology based on a big God who is broad, expansive, and inclusive in dealing with man? Or is God small, exclusive, and tribal, belonging to this group (e.g., Jews) or that (e.g., Baptists), with everybody else on the outside looking in?
Is our theology built from a viewpoint of God’s relationship with man (as experienced and recorded in Scripture and Tradition)? Or is it based on man’s rational concepts of God based on Scripture and philosophical speculation?
These are the types of questions theology asks and this is why theology is important. It is the foundation of how we experience and relate to God and the universe. It is the reason that God gave each human being a fully functioning nous (mind, intuitive conscience, spiritual intellect) to discover and use.
Theology is important because it ain’t necessarily so just because grandpa or somebody behind a pulpit said it’s so.
Christian Traditions: Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts on March 2, 2013
I speak alot about the two different Christian Traditions: The Western Latin tradition and the Eastern Orthodox tradition. I thought I might devote a post to explaining what these are, so that I don’t confuse anybody into thinking that the former is some New Age philosophy or the latter is some Eastern Oriental religion (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism). The Western Latin tradition and Eastern Orthodox tradition come from the same root: Pentecost ca. AD 33. The early Christian Church was united and had five traditional centers or co-equal Patriarchies; Jerusalem, Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), Constantinople (Byzantium), and Rome (Rome laid claim as “first among equals”). So, there was really one Christian Church for more than 1,000 years, half of its history.
The Church split into two parts in the Great Schism of 1054; the Western Latin Church controlled by Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church loosely led by Constantinople (with Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria). Because the Western Church used Latin as its liturgical language and the Eastern Church used Greek, the two traditions are sometimes still referred to as the Latin and Greek churches, respectively.
A little on the Great Schism: The Western Latin Church started to develop its own theology under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa) at the beginning of the 5th century, just as the Western Roman Empire fell to the Visigoths (AD 410) and, later, to the Franks and Lombards. Remember, the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople, did not fall for another 1,000 years (1453). The Western Latin Church and its Roman Papacy were significantly influenced by the occupying Germanic tribes who enthusiastically embraced Augustinian theology. That drove a wedge in the Church, as the Eastern Orthodox never took Augustine’s theology very seriously. Turn the clock forward through 500 years of political and theological acrimony and disagreement and you have the Great Schism of 1054.
So, when I use the term Western Latin Christianity or tradition, I mean the Roman Catholic Church and later spin-off (1500’s) Protestantism (geographically roughly Western/Northern Europe and North America).
When I use the term Eastern Orthodox Christianity or tradition, I mean the Eastern Christian church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church (geographically roughly Eastern Europe/Russia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East). These are the churches of St. Paul.
It’s important to keep in mind that for more than half its history, the Christian Church was one and undivided. We in the Western Latin tradtion tend to forget or overlook this fact.
The Church: Structure and Authority vs. Freedom and Personal Experience
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church on February 6, 2013
People often speak of the tension between what some call the Priestly vs. Prophetic strains of religion. This is where the priestly class controls the “temple worship”; Scripture, material, structures, creeds, laws, liturgy, and ritual. This is opposed to the prophetic strain which, in the words of Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, “was working for social justice, making a difference, solving problems, fixing the world, and bringing about the Kingdom of God.” I understand this concept of Priestly vs. Prophetic on a broad intellectual level, but how does this apply to the Christian Church? And more specifically, to the Christian Church at the beginning of the 21st century?
I think Fr. John Meyendorff, Orthodox theologian, captures the essence of the problem in the Christian Church both historically and currently. In discussing the Orthodox theology of the Holy Spirit, he observes:
“Thus, the theology of the Holy Spirit implies a crucial polarity, which concerns the nature of the Christian faith itself. Pentecost saw the birth of the Church – a community, which will acquire structures, and will pre-suppose continuity and authority – and was an outpouring of spiritual gifts, liberating man from servitude, giving him freedom and personal experience of God. Byzantine Christianity will remain aware of an unavoidable tension between these two aspects of faith: faith as doctrinal continuity and authority, and faith as the personal experience of saints. It will generally understand that an exaggersted emphasis on one aspect or the other destroys the very meaning of the Christian Gospel.”
“The life of the Church, because it is created by the Spirit, cannot be reduced to either the “institution” or the “event”, to either authority or freedom. It is a “new” community created by the Spirit in Christ, where true freedom is recovered in the spiritual communion of the Body of Christ.”
So, I object to the use of the Priestly vs. Prophetic model for understanding the Christian Church on the grounds that it tends to obscure the real issue. The real issue is “Structure and Authority vs. Freedom and Personal Experience”.
So, what is the state of the contemporary American Christian Church? I think that it can pretty well be summed up with a 2009 Barna Group poll of self-proclaimed American Christians. This poll disclosed that most American Christians do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a living force. Overall, 38% strongly agreed and 20% agreed somewhat that the Holy Spirit is “a symbol of God’s power or presence but is not a living entity.” The mere fact that nearly 60% of avowed American Christians do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a living force speaks volumes about the state of the contemporary institutional Christian Church, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. Clearly, the “Structure and Authority” people “own” the contemporary American Christian Church, as they have convinced 60% of Christians that the Holy Spirit doesn’t exist as a living force. This precludes the possibility of exercising the personal freedom to experience a close personal relationship with the Holy Spirit! You can’t experience a relationship with a dead person. This is tantamount to the Church teaching its members that “God is dead”! Long live the Church…
God as a Remote Roman Magistrate Dispensing ‘Iustitia’ to Mankind
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on September 7, 2012
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The real defect in Anselm’s doctrine of atonement is that he built upon the action or the fears of a diseased and guilty conscience in its sense of alienation from God, instead of the pure and free consciousness of Him who is the type of the normal man… Alexander V.G. Allen, 1884 |
By building their theology backwards, with man in relation to God, the Western church also developed, not surprisingly, an anthropomorphized concept of God (i.e., attributed human characteristics to God). God becomes a distant (read “transcendent”) Imperial Roman Magistrate administering iustitia, the secular Roman idea of jurisprudence, on his subjects (man). Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220 AD) was, among other things, a Carthaginian lawyer. He set in motion this hierarchical, magisterial, forensic, Roman view of religion. This concept was further refined later by his fellow Carthaginians Cyprian, and St. Augustine, whom we just met. Ultimately, St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) pushed this idea to its absurd limits in the Middle Ages. Anselm’s vision of God resembled a kind of remote, magisterial medieval lord (God) whose offended dignity could only be satisfied by the substitutionary death of his own son (Jesus) in atonement for his subjects’ (man’s) disobedience. This doctrine even has a Latin church name: satisfactio activa vicaria.[1]
Given the above discussion, it is clear that many of our Western Christian doctrines such as “election” and “exclusivism” (‘extra ecclesiam nulla salus’)[2] are Afterthoughts of man and neither inspired nor helpful theology.
Excerpt from the book “First Thoughts“.
Augustine’s Mistake: Backward Theology
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on September 4, 2012
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“Jewish thinkers concur with Pelagius’s position that no human being is tainted by the sins of Adam—but only by his own sinful deeds.” Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel |
Either God is all-goodness, but not all-mighty, or He is all-mighty, but not all-goodness.
Starting with Man and working backward in relation to God is exactly what happened in Western theology in the 3rd to 5th centuries. In his defensive apologetic zeal to discredit the optimistic British monk Pelagius for claiming that man maintained moral free will after the Fall and for rejection of the doctrine of Original Sin, St. Augustine walked right down the misguided path described in the preceding post. And the Western church, which includes Roman Catholics and Evangelical and Reformed Protestants, has been flailing around with this unsolvable problem, in italics above, for over 1,500 years and are no closer to an answer today than they were when they first made the mistake. Rather than re-think their theology, the Western church hardened its position into dogma and so it continues to struggle with the problem to this day. To discuss these Afterthoughts of man with some related additions including sin, heaven and hell, purgatory, faith and sacraments, would be to survey the history of Augustinianism through its various historical phases.
Excerpt from the book “First Thoughts“.
First Thoughts 