Renunciation #2: Sola Scriptura

The following is the relevant passage from my chrismation ceremony:

Do you renounce the erroneous accord of the false Reformed teachers, who do not accept the sacred traditions, do not honor the Saints, and reject prayers on behalf of the departed?

Protestants believe in Sola Scriptura. Orthodox believe in a "faith that was once for all delivered" (Jude 3) to the Apostles, that this faith was transmitted both orally and in writing and regardless the mode we are called to "stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter" (2 Thessalonians 2:15), that the Apostles put in a place a practical process for preserving the oral component throughout history ("what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" 2 Timothy 2:2), but that the power behind the preservation is the promise of Christ: "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18)

As I thought about this and subsequent posting on the renunciations, something occurred to me: Why reinvent the wheel? I probably could write an article explaining it, but others already have, and they have done a far better job than I could do. So I have decided for the renunciation series instead to include links to excellent explanatory articles if I find one.

So for the topic of sacred tradition vs sola scriptura, the best article I found, and really the article that precipitated the theological crisis leading to my conversion, is this one by John Whiteford: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/tca_solascriptura.aspx

And many people have written to him and asked clarifications, and here are supplemental articles he has written to respond to those requests: http://www.saintjonah.org/articles/responses_sola.htm

Enjoy the readings on this very foundational topic!

Renunciation #1: Unconditional Election

As I thought where to begin to share the differences between my new faith and my old faith, I had an idea. During my chrismation ceremony, I had to publicly and formally renounce certain beliefs. The specific set of beliefs needing to be renounced depended upon  my background. My specific renunciations were tailored to distancing myself from Reformed beliefs since that was where my previous identity lay. My idea is to write a blog post for each thing that I had to renounce in order to illustrate differences that the Orthodox Church considers significant enough to require formal renunciation. The first renunciation was as follows:

Do you renounce the false doctrine that the predestination of man to their salvation, or their rejection, is not in accordance with the Divine foreknowledge of their faith and good works, or of their unbelief and ungodliness, but according to some irresistible destiny?

I want to start with this renunciation for a number of reasons: First, this is the easiest one for Evangelicals to understand since they themselves have this discussion: Some say that predestination is based on foreknowledge, others that predestination is not based on foreknowledge, and others that it does not matter so why discuss it. The only odd thing would be that I needed to formally renounce my previous belief. But this is where the difference comes in. For Evangelicals, your views on predestination are peripheral. You can believe whatever you want on this as long as your model of the atonement is penal substitution. But for Orthodoxy, this is not peripheral: It is core. You cannot receive any sacraments in the Orthodox Church if you believe that predestination is based on some irresistible destiny.

The second reason I start with this renunciation is that my whole identity was wrapped up in what I had to renounce. All of the other things I renounced I had already questioned before I began approaching Orthodoxy. But this I did not question until I actually read the text of what I would have to renounce, and it gave me pause. I had been very happy as a Five Point Calvinist. I liked the water-tight system. It was very logical and self-consistent. The problem is that a self-consistent system can be wrong if it is based on incorrect premises, and the system was not based on Apostolic tradition. Instead, it was based on a novel tradition that St. Augustine started in the 4th century.

The Orthodox Church strictly adheres to the standard of Orthodoxy that St. Vincent of Lérins (died around 434 AD) formulated: "Magnopere curandum est ut id teneatur quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est." Basically, this means that Orthodoxy is that which has been believed by the Church "everywhere, always, and by everyone." The consensus view of the Fathers before Augustine was that predestination was based on foreknowledge, so a deviation from that is a deviation from the Apostolic Tradition and thus from Orthodoxy, so I had to renounce this belief.

Since the remaining 4 points of Calvinism makes no sense without Unconditional Election, I had to drop the whole system. This caused cognitive dissonance. And it went deeper than the fact that I would have to admit to my sister Melodie and my friend Maria that they had been right. I had been passionately Calvinistic because I deeply understood my brokenness and knew that I could not help myself. I had a strong felt need for a God whose "grace was more powerful than my brokenness". I needed a God who demonstrated his love by efficaciously saving me, not potentially saving me because if it was only potential, I knew that my brokenness would activate the exception clause.

In retrospect, I have to acknowledge that Melodie sang the words of this hymn as sincerely as I did:

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be;

Let that grace now, like a fetter,

Bind my wand'ring heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for thy courts above.

I just did not have a box at the time to understand how she could consistently sing that song since the author's original intent was to invoke God's irresistible grace, and that was certainly my intent when I sang it but she did not believe in irresistible grace. Even more annoying was the fact that Wesley, who actively lobbied against all 5 Point of Calvinism, was my favorite hymn writer. How could he write songs expressing the cry of my heart when with his other pen he attacked the very five pillars of my belief system? Well, I did not have to dig very deep to discover that Wesley drank deeply at the wells of Eastern Orthodoxy. He obviously did not convert, but he fed himself on the wholesome food.

Anyways, this was enough to enable me to let my guard down, and when I did, I discovered that I actually had repressed negative feelings about Calvinism. Calvinism is only good news is you are one of the elect. And so when you go to encourage yourself with it, you have to have make one really crucial assumption: namely, that you are one of the elect. And you know what, that is an unprovable assumption. You can look for "evidence", but in retrospect, it was pretty circular reasoning: if you are able to believe that the promises apply to you, then that is evidence that you are elect since God only gives the ability to believe his promises to the elect, and so since you know that you are one of the elect now, you can know that the promises apply to you.

In the end when I separated my identity from Calvinism, I realized that I could live without the misplaced assurance that it had given me. And when I let go of it, all of sudden all of those "hard passages" were no longer hard. You no longer had to contort Greek to explain how God so loved the world but reprobated most of it. Or how the warnings in Hebrews made any sense at all if perseverance was guaranteed.

I do not mean to imply that everything I learned from a Calvinist was wrong. A lot of the things that my Calvinist counselor Dan Bush said to me about God's love were true. The problem is that I could not really receive them because we were working in a Calvinistic context, and every time he said something true about God's love, this inward voice would extinguish the benefit: "Well, but is only true if you are one of the elect......"

Well, the above is a sketch of how I came to be accept this distinctive and essential doctrine of the Orthodox Church.

So What Is So Different

Not surprisingly, after I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, I have been asked a question over and over: "So what is so different?"

The person who asks this presupposes that there are substantive differences and expects me to enumerate things that they not only understand to be different but also that they consider significant. I usually disappoint this type of person because many of the differences lie exactly in what we consider to be important. If I give a concrete example of a different belief, they will say that that is a peripheral issue and not essential. But if I try to explain the more abstract concept that many differences have to do with what we assign to the essential and peripheral categories, they cannot follow.

For example, I can list that I believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and they (probably unconsciously) believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. However, as soon as I say this, the response is, "But that is not important; those are just words. Tell me something that is actually important like what you believe about salvation." Their entire presupposition is that the only thing that matters is my model of the atonement; everything else is secondary. But this issue of what is important is the very difference.

Taking our cues from the Nicene Creed, the nature of the Trinity is very important to us. The Creed explicitly says a lot about the nature of the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, it says relatively little about the nature of the atonement ("For us men and our salvation he came down from heaven"). "For our salvation", now that is bare. It does not take sides in the dispute: Is it moral influence? Is it ransom? Is it satisfaction? And if satisfaction, it is to satisfy God's honor or his wrath? Etc. To the Fathers, your model of the atonement was not a key predictor of the salvation of your soul. However, your understanding of the Godhead was.

Take as another example this actual quote from my former pastor: "The main thing is where you stand in your relationship with Christ.  If it is healthy and based on a correct foundation of faith and grace, then the rests are just forms and traditions." He assumes that forms and traditions do not matter. So if I try to illustrate differences in forms and traditions, he will respond that I am missing the crux of the matter, avoiding the question, or looking too superficially at the faith. In fact, it is true that I am giving a superficial answer, but the reason is that it is hard to explain a difference in presuppositions. Defense mechanisms protect our presuppositions to the point that sometimes they are invisible to us.

In the above example, I could quote Scripture to explain my presupposition that the form of our worship is important ('For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, “See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.”' Hebrews 8:5) or that non-Scriptural oral tradition is important ("So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter." 2 Thessalonians 2:15), but if he is not psychologically and philosophically prepared for a discussion of presuppositions, he will not be able to understand me.

To paraphrase one author that I read, whose name currently escapes me: The Orthodox don't just give different answers to the same questions; they actually ask different questions.

With all my friends and family as well as the missionary agency to which I belong all Evangelical Protestant, on the eve of the decision to convert, I was confronted with the fact that a conversion would bring a lot of "inconvenience" to my life, but the Orthodox Faith was too compelling to just ignore, so I converted. But now, by God's grace, I need to learn how to answer their questions graciously, humbly, and understandably.  Welcome to my new blog where I will share the journey as I learn in my heart to "regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15).