House Moving Day

Before the move

The first house in our neighborhood went up in 1906, a 3-story late-Victorian pile that was home to our town's leading doctor. Our much more modest-sized house next door, came along in 1908, followed by 4 or 5 similar homes built within the next decade or so. At that time, our neighborhood was considered the new part of town, with each of these spaciously-located homes situated on a bit of acreage.

Ready to roll

Some spectators

About 1912 or so, the doctor built one of these homes as a wedding gift for his daughter and new son-in-law. The doctor died in the flu epidemic of 1919, and it wasn't long before all his family had moved on elsewhere. A second family lived in the daughter's house for over 25 years. Then in 1950, they built new and sold the house to its third owners. This couple raised 4 children in this house, one of whom I had the great privilege of marrying a number of years ago.























Across the street

Along the way, different owners bastardized the house in all the usual ways: wooden porch replaced with concrete porch and pillars, portions of the wrap-around porch enclosed, ceilings lowered, aluminum siding and windows, carpets covering the wood floors, etc. But despite all these improvements, the old house was solid as a rock, built like a battleship.























Into the garden

When my mother-in-law passed away in 1995, the home place went to my wife's youngest brother, who kept the place as rental property until recently. He and his wife are moving back to our town. Initially, they considered remodeling the old home place, but soon decided to build a new house on the site. This presented the family with a dilemma, as everyone was loath to see the old house torn down, and perhaps just a little apprehensive as to how my wife would react. I actually took it harder than she did. In my view, it would be a sin to tear down the home. To make a long story short, they gave the house to my wife and we are moving it 250 ft. to the vacant garden lot adjacent to our home. These old houses do not last forever (though this one may very well outlast the new home replacing it.) The things we build are every bit as corruptible as we are. So, this old house will indeed one day fall into ruin. Just not on my watch.




















In place

Blooming in the Desert

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I recently learned of an new Orthodox podcast & blog--Blooming in the Desert, which I have also linked in Of Interest.

From their Introduction:

Blooming in the Desert is an Orthodox Podcast & Blog out of Las Vegas, Nevada, under the blessings of his Grace Bishop Benjamin, Bishop of San Francisco and the West, and Fr. John Dresko of St. Paul’s Orthodox Church.

Blooming in the Desert is a new and unique Podcast & Blog, that does not just explore the Orthodox Church, Her Faith, and a journey to be closer to God through love and prayer, but creates an open atmosphere of conversation and discussion for Orthodox Christians and general inquirers. We hope you that you enjoy our website and please come back and visit and comment.


By all means, check them out.

Second Terrace Post--"Yet"

I know I had resolved not to post on anything politically-tinged for a while, but this is just too good not to tag. Every word of Fr. Jonathan's post should be read, then copied and saved. A sampling:

The right wing cannot abide being told that Church is not something you can invent out of marketing questionnaires; that virtue has little to do with value; that goodness and beauty have an inverse relationship with consumerism and comfort; that the virtue of protecting family and land should not be confused with the protecting of wealth and privilege – the protection of which is cowardice.

A Christian Ramadan?

Here in the South, some local newspapers still publish a Saturday religion section. I always find something either of interest, or of unintended humor. Two months ago, the newspaper sponsored a contemporary gospel music contest, a local evangelical "American Idol" type of thing. This was clearly a pet project of the religion editor, as he has gushed about it ever since. This week, he wrote at great length of the ministry Christian rock bands provide for the "pierced and tatooed" unchurched set. Well, okay. But once I got past that, I found this: Muslims Find Ramadan Fast Partners: Christians.


It seems some evangelicals have rediscovered fasting, but boy did they go around the world to do so.


Like Muslims worldwide, Ben Ries has refrained from food and drink from sunrise to sundown in an act of self-restraint during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ends this weekend....Only Ries is not a Muslim. He is pastor of 70-member Sterling Drive Church of Christ and a self-described committed Christian....Ries is among a small group of Christians who've joined well-known evangelical author and speaker Brian McLaren in observing a Ramadan fast, opening a new chapter in interfaith relations between two traditions often at odds. To McLaren and his Christian and Muslim fasting partners, it's a neighborly gesture of solidarity that deepens their respective faiths and sends a message about finding peace and common ground....McLaren, 53, is the godfather of the "emerging" or "emergent" church, a loose-knit movement that seeks to recover ancient Christian worship practices and, in some cases, question traditional evangelical theology.

I find it interesting that these evangelicals are fasting not as a Christian discipline, but rather to show respect and solidarity with Islam. I have several Muslim friends. Were I to announce I would be participating in Ramadan with them, they would see it as the obvious gimmick that it is. Others seem to agree.

Southern Baptist thinker Albert Mohler notes:

The logic of Islam is obedience and submission...It's by following these practices that a Muslim demonstrates his obedience to the rule of the law through the Quran. For a Christian to do the same automatically implies a submission to the same rule. And beyond that, it's an explicit affirmation that this is a good and holy thing. From a New Testament perspective, it is not a good and holy thing.

And, I find myself in rare agreement with Mark Driscoll, who writes:

Christians observing a Ramadan fast is "insane at best ... Sad, tragic, horrific, misguided, dangerous, wrong...If Christians want to pray during Ramadan, they should pray not with Muslims but for Muslims — that Muslims would come to know Jesus. To pray with Muslims absolutely dishonors Jesus.

I find it ironic that Bruce McLaren, the Emergent guru, the recoverer of "ancient Christian worship" would be taking his cues from Islam. Much could be said of this, but two main points come to mind. First, I am reminded again of the shallowness and the unstable, shifting nature of what passes for Emergent theology. Weak tea, indeed, as they say. Second, I continue to be amazed at those who think that they have rediscovered/reclaimed/restored that which was never lost in the first place.

The purpose of this post is not to engage in any triumphalist Orthodox one-upmanship when it comes to fasting. My record in this department is not one which would provide any worthy examples. With the ready availability of shrimp, bean burritos and well, beer, I often feel that while technically compliant, I am far from the spirit of the thing. But I try, and am mindful of the fasts.

I had lunch with a good friend last Monday. That was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and a fast day. My selection of bean burritos lead to a conversation about the number of fast days we observe. He is an Episcopalian and freely admitted to have not observed a fast since he was a teenager. But my friend was shocked to learn that we have about 180 fast days throughout the year. Again, I say this not in any self-laudatory way, but to point out that Christians fasted for 600 years before Islam, and continue to do. The Jews, obviously, were fasting even longer. Clearly, there are deeper, richer and older examples of fasting than one finds in the Ramadan imitation of Muhammad.

I was reminded of an anecdote from my 2006 travels in Turkey. I was in Diyarbakir, perhaps the only dangerous city in the entire country. The area has long been a hotbed of Kurdish separatist activity, and harsh government crackdowns. Deep within the walled old city, a beleaguered Suriani Orthodox community holds on behind a walled compound. Three or four families remain and worship at the beautiful 4th-century Church of the Virgin Mary (with an incredible icon of St. Ephraim the Syrian). My guide and friend, Turan, our driver, Belial, and I arrived just before Saturday Vespers. We stayed for the service, and my two Turkish friends sat respectfully in the rear. The service was in Aramaic or Syriac, but I was able to follow along, roughly. On a number of occasions during the service prostrations were called for. I took my lead from the gentleman in front of me. After we left the church, Turan quizzed me about this. He had no idea that Christians did prostrations. We have a good-natured relationship, so I replied, "Sure we do. Where do you think y'all got the idea?" And the same would be true of fasting. While said partly in jest, there is truth to the statement. Islam is a mishmash of ideas taken from the surrounding faiths. For McLaren and other evangelicals to look to Islam for instruction in fasting is both silly and not a little insulting.

A Love Song for Bobby Long

I'm generally not in the habit of reviewing movies. But last night, my wife and I watched a feature on the Independent Film Network that kept me awake last night, and remained on my mind this morning. The movie in question is A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004), with John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson and Gabriel Macht. I had never heard of the film, and apparently few others had either. I checked on reviews from the time, and critics generally panned the work--a simplistic and predictable plot, overly sentimental, and too self-consciously Southern Gothic. Yes, yes, yes, it is all those things. The movie is also a small treasure, with important things to say.

Set in one of the seedier neighborhoods of pre-Katrina New Orleans, the story revolves around those the movie refers to as the "invisible people"--washed-up alcoholics, misfits and lost souls--refugees all from their ruinous pasts. Together they find comfort, companionship and support, and maybe a bit of Grace along the way. Like any well-told tale, this is a story all about redemption.

I think I recognize these people, whether among extended family members or past work associates. I was particularly reminded of a favorite aunt, who lost everything over the course of disastrous, self-destructive, train wreck of a life. For more years than I care to remember, first my parents, and later my wife and I attempted damage control. I remember many trips to Houston, to retrieve her from the latest crisis. Over the years, I became quite familiar with the habitues of Nick's Ice House on the north side of town, a neighborhood much akin to that portrayed in the movie. We like to convince ourselves that our own lives are so much different than theirs. The main difference, as I see it, is that they know their lives are ruinous, while we often pretend that ours are not.

Some people reach a place in time
where they've gone as far as they can...

the place where wives and jobs
collide with desire...

that which is unknowable,
and those who remain out of sight.

"See what is invisible,
and you will see what to write."

That's how Bobby used to put it.

It was the invisible people
he wanted to live with.

The ones that we walk past every day.

The ones we sometimes become.

The ones in books
who live only in some one's mind's eye.

He was a man who was destined
to go through life and not around it.

A man who was sure the shortest path
to heaven was straight through hell.

but the truth of his handicap...

lay only in a mind both exalted
and crippled by too many stories...

and the path he chose to become one.

Bobby Long's tragic flaw
was his romance with all that he saw.

And I guess if people want to believe
in some form of justice...

then Bobby Long got his for a song.

Saints Barsanuphius and John

One of the most profitable books I have read this year has been Guidance Toward Spiritual Life: Answers to the Questions of Disciples by Saints Barsanuphius and John (selected and translated by Fr. Seraphim Rose.)

"Fr. Seraphim found that many of the questions posed to Saints Barsanuphius and John in Guidance Toward Spiritual Life were not unlike those asked by Christian strugglers of today; and the answers of the Elders cut right through common fantasies and misconceptions. The elders expose the nature of the vices--feigned humility, cold-hearted calculation, judgment, idleness, lack of inward vigilance, carnal imaginings, vainglory--and show how to overcome them and acquire virtue." (from the Preface)

A few selections:

#59

...the will of God consists of abandoning not only what is demonic, but also what is natural...

#62

...one who is concerned for his salvation should by no means ask questions in order to obtain knowledge only, for for knowledge puffeth up (1 Cor. 8:1)....but to ask concerning the passions, and concerning how one should pass his life, that is, how to be saved, is most fitting; for this is necessary and leads one to humility. And humility is a shortened path to salvation...

#124

The will inspired by the demons consists of justifying oneself and believing oneself, and then a man is caught by them.

#152

...we who dwell outside of every concern and care do not even wish to consider that in actual fact we are earth and dust; and we have grown old, nourishing in ourselves vainglory. For to think that what we do is pleasing to God, that our dwelling in silence instructs others, and that we have been delivered form judgments and condemnations; all this is extreme vainglory and nothing else.

#153

If, according to the example of Abraham and Job, we think that we are earth and ashes (cf. Gen 18:27 and Job 42:6) then we shall never be robbed.

#161

In all cases let us hasten to humility; for the humble one lies on the ground, and where can one fall who lies on the ground?

#191

Humility consists of considering oneself earth and ashes--in deed, and not in words only--and in saying: "Who am I? And who considers me to be something?"

#223

...there is no need to write to you separately concerning every passion, for I have assigned you the treatment for them in one word: The Lord saith, "I will come to dwell int he humble" (cf. Isaiah 57:15).

#229

...if a man can cut off his own will in everything, and have a humble heard, and death always before his eyes--he can be saved, by God's grace; and wherever he might be, fear does not take possession of him...

#234

...what hinders you from entering into contrition is your own will; for if a man will not cut off his own will, he cannot acquire pain of heart. And what prevents you from cutting off your own will is unbelief, and unbelief proceeds from the fact that we desire human glory....Behold your previous transgressions are already forgiven; and yet you strengthen yourself by the wisdom of self-justification to enter into worse ones.

#241

Repentance for a sin demands that one do it no more, and withdrawal from evil consists in abandoning it. May your previous sins not cause you offense; and do not decline from the service of God with fear and trembling. Remember, that this (service) is the sanctification of your soul.

#253

When a man is tempted by his own lust, this may be known from the fact that he is careless about himself and allows his heart to reflect about what he has done before; and then a man himself draws passion unto himself through his own lust....If one allows thoughts to pay heed in this, warfare will increase until a fall, albeit not in body but in spirit, in agreement with thoughts; and it turns out that such a man lights the fire himself in his own substance....Tame your steed with the bridle of knowledge, lest, looking here and there, he become inflamed with lust toward women and men and throw you, the horseman, to the ground. Pray to God, that He may turn your eyes, lest they see vanity (Ps. 118:37). And when you acquire a manful heart, warfare will depart from you. Cleanse yourself, as wine cleanses wounds, and do not allow stench and filthiness to accumulate in you.

#256

...labor against thoughts so as not to fall into negligence and vainglory, not to do anything according to your own will, and not to accept the thoughts of self-justification which arise in you...do not think that you have done anything good,m and your reward will be preserved whole. Above this, remember that you will not remain long in the body, and strive so that you might be able to say with boldness in that hour: I prepared myself and was not disturbed (Ps. 118:60).

#275

Humility consists in this: Never, in any circumstance, to consider yourself to be something; to cut off your will in everything; to be subject to everyone; and to bear without disturbance everything that comes to you from outside. That is true humility in which there is no room for vainglory. One who has humility of wisdom should not strive to express his humility in word,s but it sufficient for him to say: "Forgive me, " or "Pray for me."

#342

If we suffer with Him, we will be glorified with Him (Rom. 8:17). Do not be deceived: there is no path to salvation apart from this.

#459

God gives us humility, and we refuse it and again say: Pray that God might grant me humility. Humility is the cutting off of one's will in everything and having cares over nothing. And to cut off the root of those passions, as you said, means to cut off your will, cause offense to yourself as much as possible, and compel the organs of the senses to keep their order, and not misuse them; through this the root not only of these, but also of other (passions) is cut off.

#497

As much as you can, wear yourself out, but according to your strength; and have hope not in this, but in love from God and in His protection, and do not give yourself over to despondency, for despondency serves as the beginning of every evil.

#540

The sign of the forgiveness of sins consists in hating them and not doing them anymore. But when a man reflects on them and his heart takes enjoyment in them, or he performs them in deed: this is a sign that his sins are not forgiven him, but that he is still accused of them.

While Peeling Pears

The other night, between peeling pears and evening prayers, I sat down in my wife's grandmother's old rocker and decided to watch some national news on television. This was a bad call on my part. In so doing, I witnessed much more coverage of the recent 9/12 Teabaggers March on Washington than I cared to see.

Mobs are never pretty, and this one was no exception--a bunch of pissed-off, overweight, middle-aged whiter-than-white folks in tee-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes. Their defenders will maintain that the media hones-in on only the wing-nuts in the crowd. There is undoubtedly some truth in this, but as the camera scanned the crowd, I saw no clumps of protesters that were not peppered with the crazy signs. By this I mean those signs comparing President Obama to Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Castro, the Anti-Christ and--this I don't get--Heath Ledger's Joker. [Yes, I know that Democrats drew horns on pictures of George W. Bush. The ones I remember the most were pictures of Bush as Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed poster-boy for Mad Magazine. But as AEN's by-line was "What, me worry?" as disaster unfolded all around him, I didn't find this characterization of GWB far-fetched at all.] But apparently these protesters believe our President is both Socialist and Fascist, which is a nice trick, much like being a Catholic Muslim. The tough guys in the crowd carried banners proclaiming "Unarmed--This Time." Some thought the "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" signs were particularly clever. Though there was plenty of sloganeering, the gathering was largely fact-free. Their complaints were all across the board, united by only the one thing that cannot be named.

I came across a short interview recently with Paul Gottfried, a leading American intellectual who posts periodically on the Chronicles and Taki sites. He is the author of a number of books, including Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, and Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers. I enjoyed the article, but had not planned on posting anything about it, considering that his plain-spoken words might be misinterpreted. I no longer hold those reservations after watching the Tea Party crowd in Washington, and believe Gottfried's thoughts are timely indeed.

On populism:

I’m not much impressed with the “traditionalism” of the American heartland or (to use that ridiculous neologism “red states”). That heartland, in which I’ve spent much of my life, has supplied the teeming footsoldiers for McCain, Karl Rove, the inexpressibly stupid “W,” and loudmouths like Sean Hannity. It is the American heartland that now identifies patriotism with launching wars of choice in the name of spreading “our democracy.” Its inhabitants, moreover, suffer from the vulgar eating habits and lack of cultural literacy that their critics often impute to them. However perverse in their political judgments these critics may be, they are right about the ignorance and gullibility of heartland Americans.

In answer to the question “Do the people have the government they deserve?”

The government is far better than the one that the masses actually merit.

On populist activism:

I think the populist Right in the US vastly overestimates the virtues of the “people,” which it identifies with whatever it likes, as opposed to what the people overwhelmingly vote for. Listening to populists, one gets the impression that it was not “the people” who voted for Obama and whom big-government Republicans, leaning leftward, have been able to manipulate. The “people” only exist for their rightist admirers when they please those who are praising them. Otherwise, we are not dealing with the “people” but with Martians or interlopers. Needless to say, I am not a populist because I understand the total compatibility of the “people” with the leftist managerial regime that now rules us.

The interview in full can be found, here.

At the Gates of Adrianople

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I cannot remember the last time I read a Wall Street Journal. The only reason to do so would be to read Peggy Noonan. One can easily find her columns elsewhere, however, or better yet, watch her over breakfast on Morning Joe. The WSJ ranks low in my estimation for two reasons. First, reading about stocks is every bit as boring as listening to someone drone on about their own stocks. (I am all for owning them, mind you, just not talking about them.) Second, the WSJ continues to peddle sophomoric dreck such as this, The Afghan Stakes, in which Bret Stephens expounds on our crisis in Afghanistan. In his very first paragraph, he states:


...a war that, if lost, would be to the United States roughly what the battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D. —you can look it up—was to the Roman Empire. Things did not go well for Western civilization for 1,100 or so years thereafter.





Perhaps neo-conservative writers should only use historical references that extend no further back in time than, say, the Reagan Administration. Whenever one interprets history simply by projecting their ideology upon the past, then you often end up with nonsensical pronouncements such as Stephens'. In the header, he states that withdrawing from Afghanistan would have terrible consequences in the "war on terror." While this is clearly a fairly standard, boilerplate neo-con talking point, it is not at all clear what possible connection this would have with the Battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D.

Adrianople is now the modern Turkish city of Edirne, located west of Istanbul near the Bulgarian border. It is home to a big-daddy of a mosque, the Selimiye, which is something of a tourist attraction. I have actually been through Edirne on 3 occasions. Coming from Sofia on the Balkan Express, we would arrive at Plovdiv around dusk, the Turkish border crossing about 2:00 A.M., and Edirne sometime between then and morning. Leaving from Istanbul, you pass through Edirne at about 2:00 in the morning. Needless to say, as the old train lumbered through the night, I slept through whatever charms Edirne had to offer.




I do not discount the importance of the Battle of Adrianople in 378 A.D. The discontented Goths, already living within the empire, made a march on Constantinople. Valens, the eastern emperor, awaited assistance from Gratian, the emperor in the West. Unwisely, he chose to attack before these reinforcements arrived. The Goths routed the Byzantine army, inflicting losses of perhaps 2/3 of the fighting force, including Valens himself. So, Adrianople was an ignominious defeat.

What exactly, were the long-term consequences of the battle--for this is the connection Stephens is attempting to make? Very little changed, actually. The Goths were already within the Empire, and they remained. Adrianople itself was not captured. The Gothic army marched to the gates of Constantinople, but the city held firm. The eastern Roman Empire actually was just building steam, and would endure (and often flourish) for another 1,075 years. The deterioration in the West was well underway already, and it is hard to see how the outcome of this battle materially changed things one way or the other. But Stephens contends that because of this battle "things did not go very well for Western civilization for the next 1,100 years." Really, now. The author is basically saying that things were pretty dismal in Europe until the Renaissance, and all because of Adrianople. Even if you do not consider Byzantine civilization as "Western," such a claim remains patently false, and a bit silly. While certainly those times could be fraught with peril, this was also the age of Augustine, Charlemagne, St. Benedict, Alfred the Great, Chaucer, William the Conquerer, Chartes, Frederick Barbarossa, Dante, Gothic architecture, the Magna Charta, etc. In point of fact, Western civilization emerged from this very crucible, the fusion of classical Roman culture with barbarian vitality. Whether you believe medieval Western civilization to be a good thing or not, it was little affected by the outcome of the Battle of Adrianople. If Stephens were grasping for a battle with horrendous repercussions, he should have used the Battle of Manzikurt (1071) instead. But here again, neither battle has any discernible parallels with our situation in Afghanistan.

From this opening salvo, Stephens goes on to make a number of points. He contends that Afghanistan matters because that is where 9/11 was "imagined." Also, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan has played into the hands of Islamist mythology, for as he says "if one superpower could be brought down, why not the other?" Stephens believes that from this misconception flow a number of conclusions on the part of the terrorists:

1. Since attacks such as 9/11 are not fatal to radical Islam, then future attacks on the U.S. "homeland" could yield similar results.

2. The U.S. has no stomach for long-term counterinsurgency.

3. "The U.S. is not prepared to stand by its clients in the Third World if it believes those clients are morally tainted....Ergo, other shaky or dubious U.S. allies in the Muslim world—Algeria, for instance, or, yes, Saudi Arabia—are prime targets for renewed assault."

4. A U.S. that doesn't have the stomach for a relatively easy fight like Afghanistan...will have even less stomach for much tougher fights.

5. Withdrawal would force Islamabad to abandon its war on terror

6. Withdrawal would invite the al Qaeda remnant in Iraq—already on an upswing—to redouble its efforts, and do so with the confidence that the U.S. has permanently soured on Middle Eastern interventions.

Stephens concludes:

This is not the noblest fight, and no sane nation would wage it by choice. But we did not choose it and, if we keep our nerve, we can win it. Otherwise, the consequence will be ashes flying again in our own streets, something to remember on the eve of another 9/11 anniversary.

Mr. Stephens is currently a foreign-affairs columnist for the WSJ, and prior to that was the youngest editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post. From his writings, it seems that he could have also served a term as speechwriter for President Bush circa 2004.

As to his first point, were we to occupy every square mile of Afghanistan, and empty its borders of every suspected terrorist, it would not destroy al Qaeda, but would in fact, embolden them. As I recall, the 9/11 terrorists were not Afghans at all, but rather, our good friends the Saudis. And while we are at it, let's drop the "homeland" business, shall we?

As to his second point, that is, I believe, already common knowledge. And exactly how many American lives should we lose just to prove to the Islamists that we don't like long counterinsurgencies?

Stephens' third point is particularly loathsome. The point is interesting, however, in that I believe this is the first time I have ever seen the words "U.S. ally" and "Algeria" in the same sentence without a "not" in between. But to tie our continued presence in Afghanistan, and the ongoing loss of American lives, to support for the House of Saud is simply despicable. When the Saudi royals finally fall, I am sure we will be even less pleased with what initially replaces them. But the fact remains that there is no more malignant regime in power today. The death of even one American soldier lost even tangentially in support of the Saudis is a crime.

As to his fourth point, Stephens believes this is the "easy" fight. He might want to do a little research in the British Archives, or even arrange to interview some surviving Soviet soldiers.

Fifthly, Stephens believes that our leaving Afghanistan will cause Pakistan to abandon its own "war on terror." Good Lord. Until very recently, it was hard to even detect a Pakistani effort in this direction.

Sixthly, in a bit of convoluted logic, Stephens believes that if we leave Afghanistan, it will encourage al Qaeda to stay in Iraq. As I recall, they only came to Iraq because we where there.

As to his conclusion, I am still waiting to hear what "winning" would look like, exactly? His last line, an alarmist tactic promising another 9/11 if we don't stay in Afghanistan is equally loathsome. But then, he is a neo-con. What is completely lacking in his article is any realization of a great truth, one that Osama bin Laden has stated time and again. That truth, briefly stated is this: they oppose us not for who we are, but for what we do. Unless we have grown fond of constant war (and I am not sure we have not), the wise course, it would seem to me, is to stop doing it.

I apologize to my regular visitors here, for the strident tone of this post. I usually try to keep things as mellow as possible. But the sort of mendacity being dished out by Stephens here--the kind that affects policy and costs lives--always gets my goat.

For a more professional savaging of Stephens' article, see Daniel Larison, here.

Some Thoughts on Missing a Tea Party

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+Fr. Jonathan's observations, here, on the temper of our time--a must-read, in my book.

Hugo Chavez's Rainbow Tour

BARVIKHA, Russia (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave Moscow a boost Thursday by recognizing the independence of two Russian-supported Georgian separatist regions, and President Dmitry Medvedev promised to sell Chavez whatever weapons he wants.

So, Venezuela's dictator joins Nicaragua and Russia in recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Now, THAT'S legitimacy.

The rest of the sham, here.

Theophano's Fork

I have not bought any books in some time now. With the new economic realities of this past year, I thought it best to use a little discipline with this particular passion. Obviously, I haven't stopped reading, but have made a conscious decision to first read those books I already own. I was beginning to feel guilty about the teetering stacks on the book table next to my reading chair. I do not put a book on the shelf until I have read it, or at last as much of it as I am going to read. So, I have been whittling on the stacks, and now have them down to a more manageable level.

In so doing, I finally finished Judith Herrin's Byzantium: the Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. I highly recommend the work. The book is arranged topically, and is accessible to the general reader, as well as containing enough meat for the more advanced Byzantinist.

The area of Byzantine studies has made great strides since the middle part of the 20th-century. The old stereotypes are falling away, and the civilization is increasingly seen in a new light, both among the general public and academics alike. The author seeks to counter any lingering misconceptions about the Empire among her peers. In her concluding chapter, Herrin chronicles the growth of prejudice against Constantinople in medieval Europe, and how this led to the prejudicial views of Gibbon and other 18th and 19th-century historians.

The initial animosity grew, it would seem, out of simple envy and jealousy. Theophano, a 10th-century Byzantine princess, was married off to the German Otto II. Her arrival on the Rhine created quite a stir. Dressed in silks, she insisted on bathing daily, was quite literate, and most upsetting of all, she used a fork. Outside of the particular dogmatic differences between Constantinople and Rome, the Byzantines soon became stereotyped as decadent, effete, cowardly and sly. Herrin rebuts each of these charges. While certainly a city of unimaginable wealth, the metropolis was just as well known for its piety and charity, with safeguards in place for the poor. Rather, than being effete, Constantinopolitans were simply the most educated populace before modern times. Herrin shows that the charges of military cowardice and diplomatic connivance nothing more than a deep-seated aversion to warfare, based on the spiritual underpinnings of the Empire. Wars were to be defensive, and only after diplomatic efforts were exhausted. These attributes--their aversion to war, their charity and their educational system--are those that set the East Romans apart from their neighbors, and the ones that provide the greatest examples for our age.

A few excerpts:

This is one of the most surprising things I discovered in writing this book. I fully expected that Constantinople itself would play a central role, as a fabulous and exceptional city with its buildings and its trade. What I had not expected was how often I would be recording the compelling inventiveness and novelty of the broader aspects of Byzantine civilisation, from its government and religion to its military and intellectual skills. It had the ability to develop a secret, sea-borne explosive artillery and keep the secret for centuries. It could generate and survive a profoundly divisive argument over the role of icons, identity and religious belief. When Latin Christendom and the Muslim East insisted on keeping the Holy Book in its sacred languages of Latin and Arabic, Byzantium had the audacity to translate the Greek Bible into a written language which its own scholars had invented in order to facilitate the conversion of the Slavs. It had the discipline to mint and maintain a stable coinage for over seven hundred years. It had the ingenuity to develop royal forms of power while maintaining Roman administration. Time and again, the extraordinary combination of Roman, pagan, Christian and Greek inheritances gave it the capacity to recover from adversities rather than to disappear, leaving only a trace of its achievements. The Byzantium that gainsays the generally accepted stereotype is this lively, inventive society, passionately believing in itself.

And,

...we should be aware of Byzantium's exceptionally persistent, skilled fusion of traditions and inheritance, and how it created a varied and self-confident civilisation that grew as often as it lost ground and fought to the end to survive. It is astounding that Byzantium continued after 1204, when the West captured and occupied its capital for fifty-seven years, even if the mini-empires which sprang to life in its place were not truly imperial states. Something of that same combination of resources--classical, pagan, Christian, eastern and western--was in the founding DNA of Byzantium, and provided a reliably constant life force across the centuries....My aim is to expand, however, slightly, our knowledge and experience of others, and to glimpse how people of a cosmopolitan, city-based society, with a consciously historical belief in who they were, as well as a pious belief in the hereafter, could be so different from ourselves and yet so recognizably like us.

A picture in the book shows a 12th-century fresco depicting the Last Supper, found on the wall of the Kanakli Kilise, one of the Cappadocian cave churches. Herrin included the photo, at least in part, to illustrate her use of the fork as a symbol of Byzantine cultural distinctiveness against the West. In the upper left hand side of the table--sure enough--lay a two-pronged fork. I visited this church in 2007, but overlooked this detail. I went back and checked my photos, but apparently I had not taken one. While in the area, however, I did stay in a cave hotel. The upper level contained the ruins of an old church. A couple of frescoes had been repainted, no doubt as a draw for the hotel. One of the frescoes was an exact copy of the one shown in Herrin's book, and indeed, there was fork on the upper left hand side of the table (shown below).

The Reformation and Apostolic Succession

'

And it has been shown that if Episcopacy prevailed then it must have prevailed from the beginning, for no such stupendous revolution could have taken place within fifty years of St. John’s death.

Perry Robinson, on Episcopacy and the Reformation, here.

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon on Kosovo

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon writes on Kosovo Lost and Found in the current Touchstone . He recently visited the area in the company of Nathan and Gabrielle Hoppe, well-known Orthodox Christian missionaries in Albania. Taken as a whole, the article offers a unique perspective on the contemporary situation there.

I do have a few quibbles with his account, however. I do not want to push them too far, for the fact remains that his observations are based on his personal experience on the ground in Kosovo, while my opinions come from following events from afar. That said, I submit the following reservations:

• The imposition of an "independent" Kosovo is a diplomatic and foreign policy disaster in the making, the full implications of which are only just beginning to play out.
• The tone of the article is decidedly pro-Albanian in tone. There is nothing wrong with that, but the first section of the story could have been just as easily put out by the Kosovo Chamber of Commerce.
• I would posit that there is no such thing as "Albanian Kosovars." There are Albanians who live in Kosovo.
• How do you write a lengthy article about Kosovo and not mention 1389? This would be like writing a comparable piece on Constantinople and not mentioning 1453.
• In general, short-shrift is given to the historical claims of Serbia, while emphasizing the present reality of Albanian rule there.

Again, I am not really criticizing Fr. Patrick. This is an important subject, and one that is seldom discussed dispassionately. So, I appreciate his calm and measured contribution.

Fr. Patrick ends on a strong note, emphasizing two major considerations. First, he brings the subject of abortion to the forefront of the discussion. Secular Serbs under communism had a very high abortion rate, a tragedy that continues even today. Albanians have traditionally rejected birth control and abortion helping flip the region from majority Serbian to majority Albanian in the last half of the 20th century (that of course, and massive immigration from Albania proper.) Fr. Patrick contends that this weakens the moral high ground that the Serbians might assume in their arguments for the region. As he states, it is a spiritual and moral failure of the culture, insufficiently addressed from the pulpit and in pastoral pedagogy.

Second, Fr. Patrick finds hope in the approach of the monks at the beleaguered Decani Monastery, and their concern for the evangelization of Kosovo.

There is another part of the Church in Kosovo, however, which has already started preparing for the spread of the gospel to the rest of the region. These people are less concerned that Kosovo should become Serbian than that Kosovo as a whole should become Christian.

It seemed to me that the monks of Decani, some of whom have learned to speak Albanian, form something of a vanguard in this forward-looking movement. Although they insisted on the legitimacy of Serbia’s political claims in the region and showed not the slightest enthusiasm for Kosovo independence, the Decani monks manifested a greater interest in the salvation of souls—including Albanian souls.

Indeed, even during the war, the monastery of Decani was a beacon of hope and renewal. When hostile Albanians launched a mortar attack against the monastery, and bombs from American planes (evidently misdirected on purpose!) fell on the monastery’s apple orchard, the monks of Decani went on with their traditional routine: chanting the Psalms and hymnody in church, painting icons, studying the Bible, tilling fields, gathering honey, making cheese and butter, and so on.

And especially these monks loved their neighbors, regardless of race or religion. When the army sent from Yugoslavia was killing and pillaging all through the region, the monks of Decani received the fleeing Muslims and other Albanians into their cloister to protect them. These monks—never more than thirty in number, I think—fed the hungry and housed the homeless. When cursed, they blessed. Slapped on one cheek, they turned the other. That is to say, they did what Christians are supposed to do in the hour of the gospel’s testing. They placed the gospel first. If the spirit of the Decani monastery prevails in the Orthodox Church in Kosovo, I believe nothing is to be feared about the region’s future.

Fr. Patrick notes that the salvation of souls in Kosovo--Albanian and Serbian alike--is the proper concern of the Church, not the restoration of Serbian sovereignty there.

The missionary interests of the church are not co-terminal with the national aims of Serbia, nor is the political future of Kosovo as important—to God, the Lord of history—as the eternal salvation of those who live there.

And I tend to agree that this should be our guiding sentiment in this troubled region.

The News from Greater Abkhazia

Every day, my friend Milton dutifully forwards me the Der Spiegel Online Newsletter. The scope and depth of their reporting is now rarely found on this side of the Atlantic. Yesterday's lead article, Abkhazia Attempts to Invent Itself, is a good case in point. The newspaper chronicles the invention of a nation, if not entirely out of whole cloth, then nearly so. As an adherent of localism, it might seem I would favor their struggle. But let there be no doubt, my sympathies lie not with what the Abkhazians are attempting, nor with their Russian enablers, but with the Republic of Georgia, from which they have separated themselves. This story contains no clear heroes, for even the Georgians have acted rashly. But the real culpability, it seems to me, lies with Russia, who has fomented the dissatisfaction and faciliated the rebellion all along. The fact that all three peoples are Orthodox is lamentable and yet another troubling and disconcerting layer to the tragedy.



















I watched with dismay last year as America's man in Tbilisi, Michael Saaskashvili blundered into an unwinnable confrontation with Russia, ending in much destruction and loss of life, occupation of even more Georgian territory and Russian recognition of South Ossetian and Abkhazian "independence." To date the Republic of Abkhazia is recognized by Russia, Nicarauga and, I'm told, the Gaza Strip. The only one that matters, of course, is the first. While the "nation" of Abkhazia is certainly less of a fiction than that of South Ossetia, it is not without its own comic- opera elements, in the Grand Fenwickian tradition.

Abkhazia is obviously not a member of the UN, but is a member of UNPO, the "Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, along with Balochistan, Buryatia, the Buffalo River Dene Nation, the Crimean Tatars and of course, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic.

The Prime Minister maintains that within 10 years the country could become "a sort of Monaco."

The country diplomatic abbreviation is ABC, which is marginally better than South Ossetia's, which is SOS.

The entire country contains less than 200,000 population, down 350,000 or so from the figure 16 years ago. That population drop is accounted for by the ethnic cleansing of the majority Georgians.

The Abkhazians have removed all "i's" from the end of words, that being considered too Georgian. The capital, formerly Sukhumi is now simply, Sukhum.

Abkhazia even has a national Olympic Committee, though there is no possibility of them being allowed to compete. The minister of athletics (while lighting a Parliament cigarette) explained that they did particpate succesfully, however, in the World Championship Domino Tournament, and their ongoing negotiatons with the International Sambo Federation (explained as a "sort of Soviet-Russian judo") were progressing nicely.

The country's parliament, presidential office, and office of the prime minister are clumped together in downtown Sukhum. The assembly meets in a room that "resembles the lobby of a small-town bank." There are already 12 political parties.

There is, of course, a Miss Abkhazia Pagent, though currently unrecognized by the international beauty pageant community.

In an effort to highlight differences between Abkhazian culture and that of Georgia, and even Russia, much is made of the fact that they have 7 distinct sounds for the letter "k."

While some of these facts are not without humor, the reality is that Abkhazian nation-building is being played-out in the one of the most volatie regions of the world, where large powers, whether they be Russian, Turk, Persian, British or American have historically used pawns in the area to advance their own agendas. This is clearly evident in the case of Abkhazia, where the successful secession from Georgia was accomplished almost totally with Russian troops. And anyone who thinks that the current boundaries of those countries bordering the Black Sea are set in stone, has not been paying attention.

I was slow to learn of Abkhazia. In Ottoman histories, and in some 19th-century Russian literature (such as Lemontov's, A Hero of our Time), one reads of the Circassians, who are loosely associated with this region. In reading-up on Georgia prior to my first visit there, I became aware of the hundreds of thousands of Georgian refugees who had fled Abkhazia during the war and were camped in Tbilisi and Zugdidi.

To reach the province of Svaneti, the road (not the main road, but the road) snakes along a narrow ridge above the rushing Inguri River. The impressive hydroelectric dam along the river supplies power to both Georgia and Abkhazia and is something of a landmark in the region. But along the way--well within Georgia proper--we had to pass through a Russian checkpoint, manned by a couple of sleepy soldiers and of course, a tank. Clearly Russian control included not only Abkhazia, but extended well into undisputed Georgian territory as well.

On a later visit, I attended Vespers at the ancient Anchiskhati Church in Tbilisi. Before long, the nave was packed with people, and being susceptible to claustrophobia, I stepped outside for some air. A sudden thunderstorm unleashed a torrent of rain and I sought cover under the covered portico leading into the churchyard. I shared this small space with a middle-aged beggar lady. We smiled at each other, and she made no attempt to ask me for money (though I gladly gave her some as the storm cleared and I was ready to move on.) At one point, she shrugged her shoulders and simply said "Abkhazia," as if to explain her plight. And I understood.

In 1931, Stalin did away with the Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia and made it an autonomous territory of his native Georgia. This marked the beginning of Abkhazia's complaint. During the Soviet period, the Abkhazians, or the Apsua, were never very numerous. More Georgians moved into the territory, as did Armenians and Russians. Population breakdowns over the years tell the story:

1979---486,000

44% Georgian

17% Abkhazian

17% Russian

15% Armenians

1992---535,000

46% Georgian

18% Abkhazian

15% Armenian

14% Russian

1997---146,000

37% Abkhazian

30% Georgian

12% Armenian

12% Russian

Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Abkhazia thought it would receive independence, rather than remaining an autonomous region of Georgia. By this time, ethnic Georgians comprised almost half of the total population and so they remained as they were. But the Russians used the nationalistic impulses of the Apsua minority to maintain their considerable influence in the area, and to stage the 1992-1993 Abkhazian War. Even so, Russian was content with the unsettled status-quo, making no move to recognize an "independent" Abkhazia. That is, of course, until the Bush Administration pushed forward with the dismemberment of Serbia in their recognition of an "independent" Kosovo. Russia repeated warned of the consequences of this action, but to no avail. To the Russians, what was good for the Kosovar goose was good for the Abkhazian gander. And in the summer of 2008, the U.S. was left with no grounds to oppose the move that did not smack of hypocrisy. Obviously, the State Department does not see it this way. And while cool sophistication has replaced bluster and ineptitude in the White House, there is no indication of any substantive change in the assumptions which underly the disastrous course of our post-Cold War foreign policy.

Daniel Larison, as usual, sums it up well, here. He writes:

Self-determination along ethnolinguistic lines has been one of the great curses of the modern era, and it is responsible for a large part of the bloodshed of the last two centuries in Europe and around the world. Separating the concept of a nation from a polity representing or somehow embodying that nation is quite difficult. There has long been a flawed idea that every nation that lacks its own political independence is necessarily unfree or oppressed or denied its “natural” rights. This falsehood was used to good effect as a justification for dismantling the Austro-Hungarian empire, which arguably had the most elaborate system then in existence for respecting traditional legal rights and languages of its various subject peoples, and the bloodshed among these various peoples in the decades that followed was the result of destroying the so-called “prison of nations.”

Great powers have promoted or opposed specific cases of self-determination based largely on whether it would aid or harm their rivals or otherwise advance or threaten their goals in the region....As I said repeatedly before last February and many times after that, one of the reasons why recognition of Kosovo was so dangerous and foolish is that it would provide a precedent and a provocation for Russia to promote separatists inside allied countries, and it would also generally contribute to international instability. Until then, Russia was still mostly willing to respect status quo borders and was formally opposed to interference in the internal affairs of other states....Russia had no interest in endorsing ethnic self-determination and independence movements. The partition of Serbia changed this in a significant way. The blatant and willful disregard for Serbia’s sovereignty that recognizing Kosovo entailed made clear that the West as a whole had contempt for international law whenever it suited us....Now that Moscow has turned the rhetoric and posturing of self-determination against a “pro-Western” government, Westerners are rediscovering their wariness of political fragmentation and their distaste for non-viable, criminal statelets. Suddenly there is great concern over “Russia’s fictional sovereignties,” as if the sovereignties that the West propped up in the Balkans were any more real.

UPDATE: Metin Sonmez has graciously provided a link that provides more information from the Abkhazian/Circassian side of the argument, here.

End of Summer Doldrums

I have been suffering through a bit of the summer doldrums of late, without much to say of any great interest. That is certainly reflected on this blog, where my last 2 posts have dealt with our own radical cleric/presidential huckster (Mike Huckabee) and a football player, of all things. Luckily, others have written of more substantial fare. A sampling of recent items of interest by bloggers I consistently enjoy are linked following.


Wendell Berry


Owen continues to post the poetry of Wendell Berry, which I find to be simply amazing. I particularly enjoyed the one from from 21 August, ending with these lines:

Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away








Father Stephen on "The Agents of Change"


from Glory to God, here.


We see ourselves as the agents of change – or responsible for the disasters that litter our lives. Those who “succeed” imagine that they are the masters of their fate, or, perhaps the ones who responsibly “chose” God.


For the weak, the addict, the genetically impaired, the myth of choice and the power of freedom are often experienced as a merciless taunt. We not only fail – it is judged that we fail because we have not willed to succeed. Our weakness becomes a curse, while the blessed enjoy their prosperity and their health. Choice is a myth believed best by the young. Old age almost invariably makes a mockery of its boasts.




Father Stephen on "What's the Point?"


from Glory to God, here.


This, I believe, is the great witness of Christianity in the modern world. The challenge will not likely be between Christianity and atheism – but between Christianity-as-true-belief-in-God and Christianity-as-a-religious-option-for-secularists. The latter makes no difference for it is little more than a lifestyle option. It has no point.




Europe vs. America


Rod Dreher raises some interesting questions in his comparison of western Europe with the U.S., here. He links to several recent articles addressing misconceptions Americans and Europeans have of the other, mainly in terms of quality of life issues. Rod highlights one reader who takes him to task a bit:

But speaking...as an American who thinks continental Western Europeans live better than Americans...I have to say that beautiful architecture and well-kept center cities have little or nothing to do with it. What impresses me about social democratic Europe are 1) universal and effective virtually cost-free health care, 2) the belief that business has social duties (and not, as here in the US, the option of philanthropy) and that the maximization of shareholder value is not something that can be pursued at any price, 3) the right to a month's paid vacation, the absence of which, I would argue, has been profoundly destructive in the US and created the frenetic consumerism that 'stands in' for leisure for people who do not enjoy what they do --- as most people do not and for good reason!, 4) much superior and much cheaper child care, and, lastly, 5) efficient, clean public rail and light rail transport within and in between cities.

Rod responds, and raises a crucial consideration:


Even so, I think the Europeans...have a better quality of life than we do, though we have a better "quantity" of life....In most respects, I think I'd feel more at home in Europe...but nothing matters more to me as a father than to raise children to be faithful to our religion, and I worry that living in Europe would make that substantially more difficult than here in my part of the US. What does it profit a man if his children gain baguettes, but lose their souls? (I'm exaggerating, but you see my point).


Patrick Deneen, in "What I Saw in Europe," here, writes favorable of his recent stay in Bavaria. He finds much resilience in western European to counter their cultural doomsayers:


It is a way of life, an art of living, that I think will be here recognizable still many hundreds of years yet, long after our reckless American "lifestyle" has passed from existence.


The comments are particularly insightful, as well. A Finnish commentor makes this observation of we Americans, finding us long on flag-waving, but with little real depth to our "National Feeling":


Comparing to what I perceive in the U.S. there's however much more of feeling of active responsibility for one's neighborhood, one's town, one's village or region - and for its inhabitants. My conclusion about America is that the National Feeling seems to start with the flag and the constitution and the outer borders of the United States, but doesn't have enough power to reach to the neighborhood one lives in.


And concerning European doomsaying, one of the better recent works of that genre is reviewed here. With a nod to Burke, Christopher Caldwell entitles his recent book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. Obviously, the author references the burgeoning demographic time bomb of Western Europe's Muslim immigrant community. He sees significant differences between this development, and say, immigration issues in this country.


Though he's at pains to point out that most Americans oppose continued large-scale immigration into this country, Caldwell also argues that the issues raised by the mass movement of Muslims into Europe are nothing like those connected to mostly Latino migration into the United States. Latinos, he writes, simply speak another European language and bring with them a culture "that is like the American working-class white culture of 40 years ago. It is perfectly intelligible to any American who has ever had a conversation about the past with their parents. . . . [I]t requires no fundamental reform of American cultural practices or institutions. On balance, it may strengthen them."


And like most who immerse themselves in these demographic statistics that point to an increasingly child-free Western Europe, Caldwell finds that the battle is already lost.


As a good Burkean, Caldwell believes in what the great man called "prejudices," which is to say the unspoken authority of tradition, habit, family and shared cultural predilections. In that sense, he believes the clash of civilizations already has been lost in Europe. He also believes that its native peoples must now choose between what Powell called "the tragedy" of American-style cultural pluralism or a kind of quasi-Ottoman order in which religious communities essentially are self-governing within national borders.


The reviewer closes, however, with a caveat in which I'm inclined to agree:


History, though, has a way of confounding both Western historical determinism and its not-so-distant intellectual cousin, the resignation of Islamic fatalism.

Father Jonathan on real liberalism

from Second Terrace, here.

Yes, I am biased toward the Byzantine society. It has had no equal, not even the "high Middle Ages," about which Belloc and GK rhapsodize. And what we hold as the great achievements of that society – let alone its military and artistic skill – is its humane-ness … even what we sloppily and inaccurately call its "liberalism."

Father Jonathan on LaHayean silliness

from Second Terrace, here.

Just to be clear, I will say outright that there is no such thing as the Rapture. The sudden disappearance of Christians from the world is an escapist fantasy that itself is a product of pride, fear, and a loutish rejection of Tradition. The Rapture mare's nest has more to do with the gnostic romanticism of the mid-1800's than with Scriptural exegesis: a 14-year-old pubescent female invented the "doctrine of the secret rapture" in an 1830 enthusiasm-spectacle in England presided over by Rev. Edward Irving (read about it here if you want).

Orthodox Christianity never shies away from entering into Tribulation – and there have been many of those throughout time. At the beginning of today's Gospel (Matthew 24.13-28), our Lord says "But he who endures to the end shall be saved." No one who puts his faith in escape-hatch Rapture theory has a faith that will enable him to endure to the end. A Christianity that does not produce Saints and Saints who can become Martyrs at any moment in history is not Christianity.

Daniel Larison

Why is our Russia Policy so Foolish?, here.

For some time, I have assumed that our Russia policy is so insane because we remain mired in Cold War-era suspicions and hostilities, but I am seeing now that this was not right. To a great degree, our Russia policy is so maddeningly foolish and misguided because our policymakers remain stuck in the immediate post-Cold War period. This is very similar to the way many Iraq war advocates were so certain (or so naive) in their conviction that democratization in the Near East would succeed just as it had in central and eastern Europe in the late ’80s and early ’90s. These represent two colossal errors that a large part of our political and policy establishment have made in the last decade, and both stem from incorrectly applying the lessons of the collapse of communism to entirely new and different situations.

One reason Southern Baptist preachers should not run for President

Huckabee in way over his head, here.

Not a Football Post

I am not a football fan. I suppose if I had to, I could sit through a game. That is something I couldn't say for the game of baseball. Or golf. Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, I exhibit a marginal interest when my alma mater, the University of Texas, has their annual grudge match with the little school down in College Station. If I think to do so, I will turn on the television during that game, and if I walk through that room, I may pause momentarily and glance at the score. Some years I know who is playing in the Superbowl. Most years I don't. My animosity is less directed at the game itself as it is at our football and sports-obsessed culture.

Last Superbowl, our priest and his family hosted a get-together over at their house. All are Pittsburgh natives, and while they are technically American citizens, I suppose you could say that their first allegiance lies with the Steeler Nation. So for once, I sat down and watched a Superbowl game. Really, in the company of good friends and food and drink...it wasn't so bad. Anyway, that is where I became acquainted with this guy--Troy Polamalu. He is, perhaps, the best-known Orthodox Christian among the American general public. I do not know if you could exactly say he is the public face of Orthodoxy in America, but I do know we could do far worse. Somehow Polamalu kind of fits--no saccharine-sweet-bible-study-group poster boy he.

The last thing I would wish on any Orthodox Christian (or anyone else for that matter) is fame or renown. That said, Polamalu seems to be taking it all in stride. I am linking an interview, here, that is certainly worth a read. The article touches only tangentially on football. Rather, Polamalu much prefers to talk about the Faith, his family (wife Theodora and son, Paisios) and monks and monasteries.

As a parent, I don't want to talk out of both sides of my mouth; I don't want to act a certain way and be another way. Not everybody has a material struggle, but everyone has a spiritual struggle. So with my son, it's important for him to first understand the spiritual struggle and, as a result of that, know how to [deal with] the physical struggles that he has in his life - whether it's dealing with not enough or too much of something.

I think talking is overrated. Anybody in the world can talk about doing anything. The hardest thing is to do it. It's important for my son to understand, for example, why we pray, why we go to church. It's important for him to grow up in an atmosphere of watching us do it, to understand that nothing is given to you in life. Everything must be worked at in order to be obtained - whether it's something material or it's salvation.

Without a question, my greatest wish would be for him to understand the spiritual struggle and to be a pious Orthodox Christian. That's what I want for myself, as well. Sometimes parents want their children to be what they never were. And that's one thing that I am gracious for Paisios to have: that he's able to grow up in the Orthodox church around monastics and priests that I was never able to experience as a kid - to grasp that, not take it for granted and really culture that.

...you cannot have an experience of God without humility.

Orthodoxy up against the "New Testament Church"

If I am not blogging about travel or foreign policy, chances are I am writing something to do with the Orthodox faith. By and large, I confine my comments to particular events, observations on Orthodoxy in the U.S., or some story about the plight of Orthodoxy overseas. I generally avoid doctrinal discursions or anything that is of a polemic nature. The reason for this has been-- and remains--that I am supremely unqualified to engage in such discussions. So far, this approach has served me well, and I am sticking with it.

That said, I venture to at least link to an ongoing Orthodox-Protestant dialogue that touches on the questions of sola scriptura, authority in religion and Tradition, as well as the strange notion of "restoring the New Testament church." This particular discussion is of great interest to me, as it involves the writings of Fr. Stephen Freeman, perhaps the most articulate and insightful Orthodox writer among us today (certainly within Orthodox blogdom), and on the other side, a defender of the Church of Christ, the evangelical fellowship in which I spent 25 years.

Clearly my sympathies lie with the case made by Fr. Stephen Freeman. It has been noted that converts sometimes attempt to discredit their former affiliation, perhaps out of some need for self-vindication. I am sensitive to that temptation, and would hope that that is not where I am going with this. Actually, I appreciate my Church of Christ background, as I think it has primed me and others for Orthodoxy. I think we make for an interesting and growing sub-category of converts to Orthodoxy. But that said, becoming Orthodox from any Protestant persuasion (and yes, despite their denials, the Church of Christ is Protestant) is unlike moving between different denominations. In our highly mobile society, one could easily be raised Methodist, attend Presbyterian services while raising a family, and then settle in to big-box, nondenominationalism in later years. These changes could be based on personal choice or preference, convenience, spouse's influence or any number of reasons, though none would particularly be discrediting to the former association. A move to Orthodoxy from Protestantism, however, is something altogether different and by so doing implicitly conveys a rejection of the entire underpinnings of Protestantism.

Two posts earlier, I linked to the essay of a young man in the Church of Christ, now disillusioned with Restorationist theology and considering Orthodoxy. The discussion generated considerable response, primarily from among those former Church of Christ, now Orthodox, or at least moving in that direction. One respondent defended the Church of Christ position and encouraged us to "return to the church." As it turns out, this was just the continuation of a discussion he and others had been having on Fr. Stephen's blog from the previous week, and it is that dialogue that I wish to note.

You will find the discussion to be polite and gentlemanly, if a bit one-sided. Fr. Stephen Freeman is undoubtedly one of our most gifted writers. These explanations would have been extremely helpful to me 5 years ago. My hope is that they may help those coming out of the Church of Christ and similar groups. I encourage the reading of the entire posts and comments which I have linked. Some choice excerpts follow the links, below:

At the Edge of Tradition--More Notes from the Edge

The content of the Tradition is not a set of ideas – but a reality - God with us.

And this is the problem that always accompanies attempts to reach that reality through reform. It is not our reformation that is the problem in the first place. We cannot reform ourselves into union with Christ. We can submit ourselves to union with Christ and not much else. We can cooperate with union with Christ.

Invariably, the great stumbling block faced by various attempts to “recreate” or “rediscover” the “early Church,” is that the “early Church,” is not an historical reality. It is a present reality – not simply as the “early Church” (this is not a Biblical phrase anyway). The present reality is the same as the “early Church”: it is the Body of Christ, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, the true and living Way. It never ceased nor was overcome by the gates of Hell. It has lived and thrived in enough places to have picked up many languages, many customs, but always the same faith.

This always comes as a stumbling block, I believe, because the existence of the Orthodox Church stands as a stark witness to the True and Living God - not the idea of a God – but God.

Selected Comments, below:

from John (not me):

How does the Orthodox teaching on church tradition differ from the Jews tradition/oral law, which was condemned by Jesus? You are aware of the Matthew 15 text: He answered and said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? (Matthew 15:3 NKJV)

from Fr. Stephen:

The content of Tradition in Orthodox Christianity is nothing other than the living presence of the Spirit. Protestants always quote Matt. 15, but do not know the Scripture. Try reading 2 Thess. 2:15 “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.”

Do a word study on the Greek paradosis or paradidomi which is the word correctly translated “tradition” to “hand over or hand down”. The New Testament itself is Tradition. I did not write it – it was handed down to me by the Apostles of the Church.

St. Paul uses the word for tradition when he says, “That which I received I also delivered (traditioned) unto you, how that our Lord Jesus Christ, in the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks and broken it, said, “Take, eat, This is my body…” etc.

This, it seems to me differs greatly from the “traditions” that Jesus condemned.
However, the Protestant hermeneutic, forged in the 16th century battles with the Roman Catholic Church, placed blinders on itself and does not see many parts of Scripture. The New Testament teaching on Tradition is just such a blind spot.

from John (not me):

How could the tradition in 2 Thessalonians 2 refer to material that had not at that time been taught? The text refers to tradition that had been taught. Would not this be the teaching of the apostles and other inspired writers of the New Testament? Should not the 1 Corinthians 11 passage be understood in the same manner? How could these two passages have anything whatsoever to do with writings that were yet in the future? How are they relevant to a discussion of church tradition after the close of the New Testament?

from Fr. Stephen:

In the writings beyond the NT such as the Apostolic Fathers, they continued to view Tradition as the NT viewed Tradition. You are assuming that the Apostles had a Protestant view of the Bible, which they did not. It’s a mistake to read the 16th century back into the first. Read their context instead of imposing assumptions about the “Bible” on the New Testament and early Church. The Orthodox, who are the same people whom God used to give us the canon of Scripture in the first place, still remember how they have always read Scripture. They are not a modern movement but simply the same continuous Church that uses Scripture in the same continuous way.

There are a number of examples in the NT that represent fragments of early “Creeds” generally that would have been used at Baptism and for the teaching of the faith. The opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15 are just such an example. It too uses the formula, “What I received I delivered (traditioned)” and St. Paul recounts the most primitive recitation of the resurrection. But it begins with a creedal form.

Of course, since many Protestants do not have a creed, they wouldn’t recognize one even when it occurs in Scripture. It is like many things. Having separated themselves from Holy Tradition, they do not see things that are obvious and they think they see other things that are not there.

Everyone reads through some sort of Tradition. Evangelicals have a tradition, they just don’t call it that. There is some “teacher” whom various people follow, and they see his matrix of thought in the pages of Scripture. But such matrixes are without authority and do not represent the apostolic deposit of faith – only various systems invented by men. Fortunately, the text of Scripture itself can help prevent some errors – though not all. The Arians quoted Scripture, as did all the early heretics. The Apostolic Tradition, including proper historic succession in ordination, teaching and communion, was one of those marks looked for in the early Church.

The Christian Church is not something to be reinvented. It is the gift of God. It is not the following of a book, though we believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God. But it is of the Church that Scripture says it is the “pillar and ground of truth.” There are other such statements. The exaltation of Scripture as something apart from and over the Church is itself, not Scriptural. They are not separate. The Epistles are letters to the Church, while St. Paul says that the Corinthians are “my epistle, written on the fleshy tables of the heart.”

Those who actually knew the Apostles treated Tradition in the same manner in which the Orthodox Church does. That seems sufficient explanation.

from John (not me:)

Thank you for your response. Respectfully, I am not assuming anything. I am simply attempting to read the text with an open mind, seeking truth.

To quote the patristics from the 300’s, or even the 100’s, is irrelevant. It would seem to be begging the question. Is there a passage in the NT that authorizes using teaching beyond the NT as authoritative? Can it be shown, from the NT, that the tradition to which it refers is something beyond NT texts?

What is your understanding of “perfect/complete” in 2 Timothy 3.17? What is your understanding of “once for all” in Jude 3?

Thank you.

from Fr. Stephen:

First, I’m not sure there is anything in the NT that “authorizes” the NT. It’s authorization, if you will, is itself an Apostolic Tradition. When the NT says Scripture, it clearly means the OT. But the Church understands the NT as Scripture and authoritative. But you cannot posit the NT as prior to the Church. The verse from 2 Thessalonians, clearly sees a function for Tradition, and there is no reason to read that (from the text) that assumes that these “traditions” are somehow superseded by a text that is yet to come. They are traditions (of word or epistle).

2 Timothy is clearly a reference to the OT – the NT does not come to be described as “Scripture” until well into the 2nd century (not that its authority is weakened by that). I think perfect and complete refer to spiritual maturity and not to any sense that “now you have all the information you need there will be no use for tradition.”

The notion of the “complete” NT is a very modern idea – an interpretation put forward within fundamentalist protestantism that is simply novel in the Christian interpretation of Scripture. Thus in 1 Corinthians 13 “when that which is perfect shall come” clearly refers to the fulfillment of the eschaton, not the completion of the NT.

In Jude, once and for all, is the Apostolic deposit of faith, which certainly includes Scripture, but is also the whole life of the Church, including its Tradition (which is not an addition of later information). The doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, is not a development, but a vocalization of what the Church always believed and of the Apostolic foundation, even if the Apostles would not have put it in terms of ousia and hypostasis (just to use an example).

Vestments and many things about the services are not necessarily thought of as “Tradition” in Orthodoxy. Tradition is the indwelling of the Church by the same Spirit that “raised Christ from the dead,” the “Spirit that leads us into all Truth.” There could be no reading of the Scripture and discernment of its meaning without that Spirit. Tradition is a way we describe the fact that we have the same faith that the Apostles have – and not simply a love a antiquity.

We would say that Jude 3 refers to the “faith” once and for all delivered. The “faith” generally is not used in the NT as a synonym for Scripture but is indeed the deposit of the faith (which Jude indeed mentions in 17 and 18 of that “spoken” by the Apostles (which is certainly echoed particularly in St. Paul’s pastoral epistles). But there is no evidence that the readers of Jude would as yet have any knowledge of the letters to Timothy and Titus. But they, as did all the Churches, knew the words of the Apostles, which, of course, agree with the writings of the Apostles. That faith was once and for all delivered to the saints (the Church). It was not laying around to be reinvented in the 16th century or in later centuries, but is the one faith, the same faith, which has been preserved in the Orthodox Church (from whom came the martyrs, the fathers, and the single living witness of the Apostles). In the modern world they contributed more martyrs for the faith than in all centuries prior (added together). It’s saints do indeed earnestly contend for the faith and continue to hold fast to that which was once and for all delivered to them. That faith has not been changed nor altered. This cannot be said for Protestant Churches, unfortunately. Many engage in practices unknown as little as 40 years ago or even still more recent. Its theology is a constant moving target reflecting cultural winds and various theological “movements.”

The letters of the NT, interestingly, with the sole exception of the letter to Rome (which, interestingly was in Greek like the other letters) were written to Churches’ whose address is still an Orthodox Church. Of course they are written to the whole Church – but who can claim to be in communion with those Churches and to share in the same Apostolic life which was and is theirs?

But no where do any of the Apostles sit down to write a complete treatise on the Christian faith. They write letters very often for very specific purposes. It is the Apostolic Deposit, their “word” to the Churches, that gives us the matrix for reading their writings and interpreting them correctly.

Forgive me if my tone is too argumentative. I am at a Church assembly this week and only have a limited time to read and respond for the blog. Brevity sometimes is the enemy of kindness – your questions are important, even classical in their form. And they are certainly worthy of conversation.

from John (not me):

Thank you for your detailed response.

I am not positing the NT as prior to the church. The church was established in Acts 2.

2 Timothy 3 – v 15 is surely the OT. V 16 surely could include the developing NT. Note ‘the Holy Scriptures’ vs ‘all/every Scripture.’ Is all/every of 16 limited to the reference in 15? I’m not so sure that it is. Also, if Scripture of v 16 excludes the NT, then it would appear that one could be ‘complete’ and practice ‘every good work’ (v 17) apart from the NT and apart from Christ, who is revealed in the NT. Why could v 16 not be a reference inclusive of the NT before the second century?

It seems that the way you are interpreting indwelling of the Spirit comes pretty close to claiming inspiration for the patristics, a claim which I believe you are unwilling to make.

Jude 3 – While in the vast majority of cases in the NT ‘faith’ means belief producing obedience (I imagine we would agree on that), I have always understood the Jude 3 reference to mean the gospel system of salvation by an obedient faith. You and I have somewhat different backgrounds, in that you’re Catholic and I’m not, so I’m not sure I’m hearing accurately what you are saying relative to your understanding of ‘the faith’ here. For instance, I am uncertain of exactly what you mean by ‘Apostolic Deposit.’ It seems that you are assuming that ‘the faith’ would include later tradition. I have yet to see any evidence from the NT text that later tradition should be accepted as authoritative. The fact that some of the patristics may have taught that is not sufficient proof. There must be a NT passage that demonstrates that what the NT meant by tradition was more than the teaching of the Apostles and the developing NT text.

from Fr. Stephen:

On our backgrounds – I am a former Protestant so that I am familiar with a good bit of what you are saying (though I think our Protestant experiences are different). I am not a Roman Catholic, but Eastern Orthodox which has not been in communion with Rome for over a thousand years and has a very different history and understanding of many things. I would like to continue the conversation, though I’ll probably have to take it up next week.

from Jesse:

I believe what originally led me to Orthodoxy (and I’m not there yet, not quite) and Tradition was realizing that the New Testament, to which I had attributed ALL authority, was itself a product of tradition. When I realized that the NT was finalized by the same people I had been raised to believe were in “apostasy” by about the time of Constantine, I was forced to make the choice of saying that the NT was a relatively worthless document (like much of contemporary biblical criticism) or of accepting a greater role for tradition. One could, of course, say that the NT document was the culmination and end of the Holy Spirit’s work, but that struck me as being blasphemous (what a relief after learning some more about Orthodoxy to realize that the Holy Spirit could still be alive and powerfully active in the Church!). After accepting that tradition should still be a part of the Christian’s life, it didn’t take long to realize that Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and even Roman Catholics didn’t have any more claim to it than the church of Christ did (yes, I’m from the church of Christ as well, John). Thank God that the Orthodox church was slowly entering into the picture, in a variety of ways (that I just now realized might be the work of grace). That is my journey, in a very very small nutshell.

from John (not me:)

Jesse: I am not having this discussion because I am considering converting. You need to remain in the church of Christ. Our goal is to restore Christianity as practiced in the NT. I think we have the framework correct. One always needs to work on improving their individual Christian life.

I have yet to see anything offered which would justify human tradition beyond the NT. If this line of tradition were correct, the danger would be that once a divergence from the NT occurred – there would be no end to it. Should we trust our spiritual lives to a succession of men, or directly to God’s word? If this line of tradition is required, what about those who became Christians in Acts? Did they not know what they were doing?

I hope to continue this discussion, and I will be the picture of courtesy. But, my intention is to lead a pursuit of truth for us all, and this intention should not be misread. May we all humbly bow before God, and Him only, as we seek to hear, believe, and obey His word.

from Alex:

John

God’s Word is not a book. It is a person – a man. He dwells in Christians, and they in Him. He, the Truth, the Way, and the Life, is a man, not a book. So yes, if you wish to follow Him, you must follow those in whom He dwells.

The Christians in Acts had an idea of what they were doing – but did they not also hold council to resolve certain disputes not fully understood? What makes you think that nothing could possibly ever come up after the 1st council which would not need to be resolved?

And what do you think that the Apostles at the Council of Jerusalem referenced? Do you think that they all sat around saying, man, too bad the NT hasn’t been written yet? Preposterous! They were guided by the Spirit of God. Do you think that this Spirit suddenly departed after the NT was completed? If so, then I have some bad news for you – you, and all the rest of us are doomed. After all, the NT does not present itself as its own canon – only the Church can do that, and it has.

However, the Lord keeps His promise, and He has sent us the Comforter. Regarding your question about inspired ‘patristics’, do you think that the Fathers of the Church are given a different Holy Spirit than the writers of the NT?

I would encourage you to investigate where the NT that you have so much respect for came from. The only reason that you can even speak of something called the New Testament, as a book, is that the Orthodox Church said so in council, many years after the Apostles fell asleep.

Therefore, your statement about ‘restoring Christianity as practiced in the NT’ cuts off the branch on which it is sitting – since you assert that the Church which wrote and compiled the NT was in and of itself in spiritual darkness. What evidence outside of the NT do you have that New Testament Christianity is any different that what we claim it is?

from J.D.:

I have spent over 60 years in the Church of Christ and was blessed in many ways and in other ways saw behavior that was embarrassing. But no one group has a monopoly on that. I converted about two months ago after four years of absorbing the ancient faith in many ways.

One of the subtle things I realized regarding the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 was the obvious decision made regarding the Gentiles. The OT is chocked full of the notion that the Gentiles would one day be drawn in. It took the leadership of the church devoid of scripture to decide, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, what would be the best way to achieve this to the glory of God and to grace the church and bless the “nations”. When you get over to Acts 16 it says in essence they went town to town delivering this decision (dogma) with obvious authority. The description is not additional scripture it is simply the end game of the church extolling through its authority how this should happen.

The Church of Christ has a lot of great people who love the Lord, but they got eaten up and eaten by western rationalization.

God bless them all and God bless those of you who are on the journey from Churches of Christ. When you go from trying to “figure it all out” mentally, to wanting to be in holy communion with God and experiencing what truly is Holy Communion, you will never regret entering the journey to full maturation (theosis).

from Patrick:

John,

You are quite clever at avoiding questions put to you while continuing with a line of questioning that stem from false presuppositions. Since you clearly come from a mindset that says “everything must be in the scriptures and if it isn’t in the scripture either implicitly or explicitly then it isn’t true” i.e. Sola Scriptura, then answer:

1) Where does the NT claim this authority for itself? If you’re so convinced that NT has to qualify everything, why doesn’t it come out and make it clear that the NT writings are the final and only authority for the individual christian? Everything for you about the life of the Christian has to be in the scriptures alone yet the scriptures themselves do not say this. However, the scriptures do give the Church this authority.

2) How do you trust the NT in the first place since it was canonized by the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (which you consider false and apostate) in council almost 400 years after the start of the Church?

3) How did people learn the faith and become christians without a formal NT to guide them during the 400 years when there was no formal NT? Even once the NT was finalized, how did average Christians get their hands on one since there was no printing press but had to be hand copied making them expensive.

4) How is it that you follow the “tradition” of the “Church of Christ” yet reject tradition? Doesn’t the “Church of Christ” have a specific way of conducting church service every Sunday, a specific way you have of doing things, a specific order to follow every Sunday morning? Isn’t there a specific place where the pulpit sits and a specific time the sermon begins? Where does the NT give you specific directions of how to conduct your Sunday morning worship? It doesn’t. Therfore, doesn’t the “Church of Christ” have it’s own “tradition?” Did the Apostles pass on this unwritten tradition to you? Tell me, which “Church of Christ” father was around in the first century that has passed on the tradition to which you now hold? Or does the “Church of Christ” start over brand new every Sunday morning so as not to be seen as holding to tradition?

Please, I would like to know.

from David:

There are no churches of Christ or Church of Christ or any other such thing. It doesn’t exist. Though you can find many buildings around the country with such labels on the front lawn.

Rationalistic non-denominationalism is a philosophical idea. For a time, and within a certain group of naturally like-minded persons predisposed to the experiment it inspired a movement. This movement almost immediately fell off the tracks and has remained so ever sense.

There is no “there” there. When someone says, you should come back to the church, I must admit that I have no idea what they are talking about.

True Knowledge of God--Living the Tradition

from Fr. Stephen, in the comments:

1. There is no such thing as the “New Testament” Church. This is a fiction – an imaginary description of the Church that grows out of certain forms of Protestant thought. It has a particular history in 19th century America, where a number of individuals and groups set out to recreate, restore or otherwise establish the “New Testament Church.” The Mormons are an example. Joseph Smith claimed to have refounded the New Testament Church with visitations to him of John the Baptist, the Apostles, Jesus, and no less than God the Father and the Holy Spirit (complete with feathers). Other groups attempted the same thing. In Eastern Kentucky and Eastern Tennessee the so-called Restoration Movement had its beginnings as well. With them an extreme form of the Protestant Sola Scriptura (Scripture Only) was used to establish a new, restored “New Testament Church.”

But there is no such thing. The Church existed before the New Testament was written – thus to name it by something that was created through it would be absurd. The Scripture calls the Church many things: the Body of Christ, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, the Fullness of Him that Filleth All and All.

The adjectives this Church came to use in subsequent centuries are noted in the Nicene Creed: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. During the centuries in which this same Church, founded by Christ, suffered to preserve the faith that had once and for all been delivered to it, it came to use yet another adjective to differentiate it from those who held false beliefs. Believers came to refer to the Church as the Orthodox Church, an adjective still in general use.

It was this very Church that was first called “Christian” in the city of Antioch, whose Patriarch continues to this day, holding the same faith as Peter and Paul and others who have graced that God-protected Church. His line of succession can be recited without fear of contradiction to this day.

2. The Scriptures are a great gift to the Church (though in the pages of the NT the word “Scriptures” generally only refers to the OT, the only “Scriptures” known to the Church of the first century. St. Justin Martyr, writing in the 2nd century, refers to the gospels as the “memoirs of the Apostles.” But it was the Church, established by Christ, that came to accept the books that now comprise the “New Testament” as authoritative and declared them as the authoritative canon in the 4th century. They were certainly used and quoted authoritatively before that on account of their Apostolic origin. However, Christ did not command the Apostles to write books. They did write, and as with their other actions (teachings, etc.) they were treated as authoritative.

But they were Apostles (those who are sent). They obeyed Christ’s command to “go forth into the world and make disciples, teaching them to observe whatsoever things I have commanded you, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Thus they traveled and established communities of believers, appointing leaders within those communities (Bishops, presbyters, deacons, etc.). The bishops were charged with shepherding the young communities and held the authority of the Apostles in those communities. Only those communities whose bishops were in communion (holding the same faith and practice) with other communities of apostolic origin were considered faithful Christian communities. These communities did not disappear nor did they alter the faith (or if the faith was altered, they were expelled from the communion of the one Church). They continue to this day, without disruption. What was delivered to them they kept.

It is incorrect to refer to the “New Testament Church.” It would be more accurate to say, “The Church’s New Testament.”

3. Some within the Protestant family have made of the bible a “Christian Koran,” reducing Christianity to a “people of the book.” They define Christianity and the Church by its obedience to Scripture and set themselves as the only authoritative interpreters. They have no warrant for such a claim – no appointment by the Apostles to such an office. They are an American fiction – born of the 19th century hubris of this land which considered itself the birthplace of all good things. Not content with unjust claims to an entire continent – its people sought to claim for themselves the title of “New Testament Church”.

4. The Apostles were obedient to Christ. They preached, taught and baptized. They appointed leaders (including an additional Apostle for the Twelve) according to the authority given them. They met in Council (recorded in the book of Acts) and made authoritative decisions for the Church. Their successors, the bishops, would also meet in council when necessary, and make authoritative decisions for the life of the Church and for its continued faithfulness. Those who would ask “where is the warrant in Scripture for such authority” need look no further than Titus 2:15 “Speak these things, exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.” Titus was a Bishop, appointed by St. Paul. Those who taught and exercised authority neither added to nor subtracted from the faith that had been delivered to them.

5. The content of that faith is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The teachings concerning that salvation are important and authoritative – but the teachings serve a greater purpose: to communicate Christ Himself, not information about Christ. We are not saved by information but by the indwelling of Christ with whom we have been made one in Holy Baptism, by whom we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit in Chrismation, through whom the continued authority He established is confirmed in ordination, etc. But all things are for the excellency of knowing Christ, who alone is our salvation.

There were Christians who lived during the first century (part of what others falsely call the “New Testament Church”) who fell away and were lost. St. Paul himself mentions two of these: Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim. 1:20). The creation of a “New Testament” Church offers no guarantees of salvation. Christ alone is our salvation – and He was not rediscovered in 19th century America.

6. There is a Church that has kept the faith. It authoritatively declared the content of the canon of Scripture for it alone knew the word of the Apostles. Its faithful labored endlessly, and copied manuscripts of the Scripture by hand (as they did everything else we currently have from the ancient Western world). Those who today arrogantly or ignorantly claim to have restored the New Testament Church do so with a book for which they did not die, did not labor, did not produce, with whose keeping they were not entrusted. They have not given the world the millions of martyrs of the Orthodox Church and yet they would steal for themselves the title of “Church.”

The simple reading of history in these matters should lead to conclusions that show such claims to be false. I believe that many hunger for a “New Testament Church” for salutary reasons, but are greatly mistaken about the nature of Christian history and the work of God for our salvation. They have a distorted understanding of what the Bible itself is, having created a “holy book” for themselves that is best compared to the Muslim view of the Koran. They may be called “Bible Christians” but they are not “Church Christians” for they cannot create for themselves something that is the creation of God alone.

These seem to me to be some points worth noting.

The Orthodox Reading of Scripture

The answer goes to the heart of the matter. What is the matrix by which you seek to interpret Scripture and by what authority do you use it? Anyone who says he just reads the Scripture and that there is no matrix by which he interprets is deceiving himself and his listeners and not admitting that he has already accepted a matrix and on its basis he selects Scripture to fit his point. There really is no other way to read.

Orthodoxy has never denied this. Instead, like Irenaeus, it points to that which it has received. Irenaeus called it the “Apostolic Hypothesis.” It has also been called the “rule of faith,” and various other names. But if you have not accepted this “matrix” you cannot interpret Scripture in the form of the Apostles or their successors or the Church that Christ founded.

Others accept as their matrix a statement of faith written 1500 years later, constructed on a matrix invented by medieval scholastics who sought to reform the Church. They had no command from God, no conversation with the Apostles, nothing but their own ideas and rationality from which to construct new matrixes. From Germany Luther gave us his “salvation by grace through faith,” and read the Scriptures accordingly. Calvin gave us his matrix of the sovereignty of God. Neither could speak with authority or true assurance and neither would have succeeded in their reform had the state not conveniently enforced it with the sword (read the history). The Reformation never succeeded without the state’s cooperation and frequently suceeded by drastically destroying property and torturing its opposition. Not that this was not followed by a war from Catholic authorities. All of these things happened apart from Holy Orthodoxy. But the myth of a popular uprising cleansing the Church of false doctrine, fostered for years by Protestant historians is simply a fabrication.

More to the point of this post – the matrix of Protestant interpretation, though frequently seeking for something like the Apostolic Hyposthesis, in many places failed to adhere to that primitive standard.

Christian doctrine is not a battle over the Scriptures. Sola Scriptura has not worked and never did. Such an approach simply leads to endless argument and confusion. Others may claim to use the “plain sense” of Scripture or some other 18th century rationalist construct. Such constructs are no more effective than other failed efforts of Sola Scriptura. Either we embrace the faith of the Apostles, once and for all delivered to the saints, or else we exile ourselves to confusion or, worse yet, to the false guidance of those who never sat in the seat of the Apostles.

Speaking With Authority

The authority of Scripture is Christ Himself – and the authority of Scripture comes only through union with Christ – crucified and risen. The authority of St. Paul (at least the authority to which he pointed) is not found in his apostleship – but rather in his weakness – his union with the crucified Jesus:

If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness (2 Corinthians 11:30).

and

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal. 2:20).

This, it seems to me, is a particular problem for those who would exalt a method of interpretation and the “authority” of the Scriptures over the lived reality of the Apostles and those appointed to succeed them – most of whom died a martyr’s death. The authority of the Cross, of a life lived in conformity with the crucified Christ, bears an authenticity in interpreting the word of God that is simply missing in various modern systems of rational interpretation. Where are the marks of the Lord Jesus in man-made rational systems?

Selected comments, below:

from John (not me):

Do you not need a NT text that authorizes going beyond the NT for authority? It seems to me to be essential if you are going to jump from the NT to church history. I am not aware of any such text.

On the appeal to martyrdom, what about the other religions who can introduce a long list of their own martyrs? I have had that point offered to me as an objection to Christianity. I do not believe you can prove the truthfulness of a doctrine by the martyrdom of its proponents.

We all appeal to reason every day. We would be dysfunctional without it. Why do you have such a problem with using the mind God gave us when it comes to the Bible? Did God reveal Himself so that only a few could understand His message? How do we know which “few”? We have to use reason whether we read the Bible for ourselves or allow someone else to do that for us. You can play the “Locke card” all day and all night, but you can’t escape the use of human intellect to understand God’s message, or any other communication. I ask again, Is God not capable of giving a communication that can be understood?

It is getting awkward talking with you without using your name. You know I can’t call you “Father,” and hopefully you know by now that I am not attempting to be rude. I just can’t do that. I will call you “Stephen” and please call me “John.” Also, as you know by now, I am not a prospect for conversion to Orthodoxy. However it is hoped that we both can grow by discussing Biblical teaching with the desire to trust and obey Biblical truth.

from Fr. Stephen:

John,

I understand about the use of the title “Father.” You shouldn’t violate your conscience in the matter – I wouldn’t want you to.

The absolute distinction between Scripture and the Church in which it was written is, to me, an example of a reductionist principle. The Scripture cannot be lifted out of the context of the life of the Church – it would be as though one was “disincarnating” the word of God. The life of that Church has a real history with real people whose names we know and whose testimony we know. That the Orthodox Church is that same Church is simply historically accurate. That the Scriptures are taken away from that Church to be used to serve another group, is, of course, possible. But not reasonable except according to certain a priori assumptions.

Where you and I probably differ the most is that we have very different a priori assumptions. You would say that your assumptions are “Scriptural.” I would say that the assumptions come first and have then been applied as a hermeneutic to Scripture.

As an Orthodox Christian, I would say that the hermeneutic of Scripture begins in the Church – the community founded by Christ – to whom the Scriptures were written and through whom they were and are interpreted.

There is something of a “hermeutical circle” that has to start somewhere which always gets us into a priori assumptions. Even reason has to have a tradition by which it reasons.

One of my complaints with Locke (to use the card) is that the Enlightenment understanding of reason (whether it is Locke or some other Enlightenment figure) is a cultural tradition that is mostly an illustration of its century (ies), not an absolute objective example of some God-given faculty.

Another objection to the “rational” approach to Biblical interpretation is that the Scriptures are not given in a “rational” form. The Scriptures are not a collection of syllogisms. They are letters, gospels (which is a very unique form of writing) prophetic books, poetry, Law, etc. The Church bears witness that these are the Word of God but how that functions in the life of the Church is not to treat them like syllogistic texts. A story and a syllogism are very different things.

from Brantley:

John,

If the authors of the text of the New Testament were God inspired, weren’t the ones who decided which texts to include in the canon also inspired?

And with respect to the New Testament “authorizing” some tradition outside of itself, it seems that 2nd Thessalonians 2:15 would seem to be a direct answer to your question. Any other way of reading it would seem to be a twisting of meaning to make it mean what you want it to mean. (I’m aware that you’ve already commented on this passage in another thread, but if it’s not possible for you to read those verses without honestly realizing that there were traditions that were not documented at that time, I don’t know that there’s anything anyone here can tell you that would be edifying for you.)

Not to be ironic, it seems to me that it may simply NOT be possible to encapsulate the Logos of God with words.

For example, when Luke and Cleopas were on the road to Emmaus, they talked extensively (hours!) with Jesus. Where is the record of that conversation? Did Luke and Cleopas take it to their graves? What do you suppose they talked about? Why was it not written down?