he Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. What does that remind you of? Rome? Well, the Roman Catholic Church is not the only outfit laying a claim to catholicity, or universality. The Orthodox Catholic Church, though unfamiliar to most of evangelicalism, has a long history of activity in North America and is enjoying a resurgence of interest and popular appeal in our country. The archbishop of Constantinople is the ecumenical patriarch of fourteen autonomous Orthodox churches around the world. Total membership in these churches is over one hundred million, with about five million of them in the United States. The first Orthodox mission in North America began in Alaska in 1794 and was an effort of the Orthodox Church of Russia. Orthodox Catholic parishes (translation: local churches) did not appear in any number in this country until the early part of this century, and that was due to large numbers of immigrants and refugees from Greece, Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East. There are about 1,500 such parishes in the United States at present.
Let's say I decide to go Orthodox. What am I getting involved with? A little history is in order here. If you looked up "Orthodox Catholicism" in an encyclopedia, you would find that in 1054 A.D. representatives of Pope Leo IX excommunicated Patriarch Cerularius of Constantinople over the issue of whether leavened or unleavened bread was to be used in communion. The Patriarch responded by anathematizing the Pope. Actually, the trouble between the Greek and Latin wings of the church had been brewing for hundreds of years, and the Great Schism of 1054 would not be set in concrete for several hundred years more. In any case, the patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria sided with the patriarch of Constantinople. The modern Orthodox Catholic churches trace their origins to one of these patriarchates, and you would find a heavy emphasis on the apostolic succession of the church leaders and the infallibility of Holy Tradition. Doctrinally, you would find that the Orthodox churches accept the teachings of the first seven ecumenical councils, and that their doctrinal structure has remained unchanged since then. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) was the Orthodox equivalent of the Roman Catholic Council of Trent (1564). It declared the clear opposition of the Orthodox church to the principles of the Protestant Reformation. It claimed that its Tradition was of equal authority with the Scriptures, denied that the fall of man resulted in a change in man's moral nature, taught baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, Purgatory, worship of images, and the Mass as an unbloody sacrifice offered to God. In sum, it denied the Gospel and much that is essential to biblical religion.
Fascinating. It sounds as if Orthodoxy is just Roman Catholicism with a beard. I mean, wouldn't many of the scriptural objections to Roman Catholicism apply to Orthodox Catholicism also? Yes, they would. Trouble is, not many Protestants remember what those objections are, or used to be, and more and more of those Protestants are positively attracted to the liturgy, hierarchy, and sacramental mystery of Roman and Orthodox Catholicism. A recent issue of Again, a publication of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, was wholly devoted to the testimonies of eleven evangelical Protestant pastors who recently converted to the Orthodox church. They were graduates of Trinity, Columbia Bible College, Western Conservative Baptist, Asbury, Biola, and Westminster Theological Seminary.
Amazing. Why would well-educated Protestants do such a thing? Several reasons were given by these pastors-turned-priests, but nothing you would call an argument or biblical justification. Their personal pilgrimages were pushed along by sincere distress at the condition of evangelicalism in our country, and were pulled toward Orthodoxy by the beauty of liturgy, the stability of tradition and hierarchy, and the glory of sacramental mystery.
I think I know what you are talking about on the attraction of the smells and bells, but what is so inviting about tradition? I don't recall that Jesus had a good word for it. Rather than take my word for it, why don't you listen to one of the converts tell the story?
"One day in Columbia a Jehovah's Witness pastor came to my door. Not wanting to waste any time, I immediately told him that Christ was God incarnate. He contradicted me showing his proof texts from the Bible. I tried to correct him, but with basically the same technique he was using. We continued in the same vein until he ended the conversation by insulting me and leaving. I had no doubt that I was correct but I still was left with a profound disquiet. Both of us claimed to hold the Bible as the final authority. Who was to be the referee?"
Who indeed? The point that this Protestant missionary to Columbia went on to make, and one that was repeated in other testimonies, was that the Bible can only be understood in the light of the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church. Without that Tradition we are no closer to truth than the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Wait a minute! Are you telling me that because the missionary to Columbia was unable to refute false doctrine, which an elder must be able to do, he believes that no scriptural refutation of false doctrine is possible? Well, that does seem to be his conclusion. And a growing number of professing Protestants are falling for it, in one way or another. It starts with comments like, "Godly men disagree on this issue (you can fill in the blank here); I guess the Scriptures are ambiguous." The next step is to deny the self-interpretive character of the Bible, that is, deny that the Scriptures are the final authority in matters of interpretation of the text. The last step is to start looking for an interpreter. Those who start on that search will find the Orthodox Church waiting with open arms. All you will have to do is leave a few things behind.
But then, we evangelicals have never really known what to do with those obscure Latinisms anyway -- sola Scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia.
