Thema

Eastern Heterodoxy

Douglas Jones

n the west it is usual to think of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism as opposite extremes; but to an [Eastern] Orthodox they appear as two sides of the same coin," [1] explains one popular introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy. Another notes that "Orthodoxy has maintained the New Testament tradition, whereas Rome has often added to it and Protestantism subtracted from it." [2] Such table-turning is the enduring joy of Eastern Orthodox evangelists and an effective lure to rootless evangelicals. After all, when evangelicals reject modernity, seeking a depth beyond "The Four Spiritual Laws," Eastern Orthodoxy entices them to embrace a creedal antiquity that confirms their inbred hostility to Roman tyranny and promises a community with the intriguing warmth of a well-kept secret. What more could one ask?

We're told that more and more evangelicals, individuals and whole congregations, are making the trek to Eastern Orthodoxy. Though the numbers are still relatively small, the weaknesses in contemporary evangelicalism are a potential vacuum to the alleged strengths of Eastern Orthodoxy, strengths far more enticing than Rome could ever offer.

The Eastern Flavor

The Church: Eastern Orthodoxy sees itself as the Church, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, which alone has faithfully maintained Christ's truth through unbroken continuity with the apostles. Through this body of clergy and laity, Christ is active and present in the world today. From the perspective of Eastern Orthodoxy, Rome illegitimately sought supremacy over all of Christendom in the eleventh century and ultimately separated itself from the Orthodox Church. The Protestant Reformation was merely a confused footnote to the folly of Rome.

Rejecting the infallibility of Church councils and the Roman Pontiff, Eastern Orthodoxy holds that the "decisions of an Ecumenical [worldwide] Council, formulated by the bishops under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and accepted by the clergy and laity, constitute the highest authority of the Orthodox Church." [3] Note that at "a true Ecumenical Council the bishops recognize what the truth is and proclaim it; this proclamation is then verified by the assent of the whole Christian people, an assent which is not, as a rule, expressed formally and explicitly, but lived. " [4] Hence, "the whole Church catholic . . . bishops, presbyters, deacons, and laity, . . . through time and space, amounts to an ongoing council. . . . In the long run, then, ultimate authority is vested by Him [Christ] in her." [5]

Apostolic Tradition: That tradition to which the Church is called as guardian, is made up of the Bible, true Councils, the Church Fathers, liturgy, canon law, and icons. All parts of this Sacred Tradition aid in guiding the Church as the divinely inspired interpreter of the Bible. The Eastern Orthodox chide Rome and Protestantism for artificially severing Scripture and tradition: "If the two are 'fulness,' there could be no question of [their being] . . . opposed to one another, but of two modalities of the one and the same fulness of the Revelation communicated to the Church." [6] As such, "Scripture exists within Tradition. To separate and contrast the two is to impoverish the idea of both alike." [7]

The Triune God: Eastern Orthodoxy views the trinity as the essence of their faith, "the catholic truth above all other." [8] Such an emphasis leads them to focus strongly on expositing the early trinitarian and christological councils in detailed yet practical terms: "Our private lives, our personal relations, and all our plans of forming a Christian society depend upon a right theology of the Trinity." [9]

Since the divine mystery of the Trinity (three divine persons in the one Godhead) is so central, the Eastern Orthodox are sensitive that "a tiny difference in Trinitarian theology may well have repercussions upon every aspect of Christian life and thought." [10] Hence, they maintain that the historic dispute between the East and West over the filioque ("and the Son") clause in trinitarian debates is not at all trivial. Some Eastern thinkers argue that the West's insistence that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son has had grave effects on Western practices, pointing to it as the source of Rome's Papal tyranny.

On the one hand, this triune God is so absolutely transcendent, beyond us, that His essence is strictly unknowable, forever beyond our creaturely thought which can only contemplate inferior degrees of being. To regard the essence of God properly, we must move into a state of unknowing mysticism, "proceeding by negations one ascends from the inferior degrees of being to the highest." [11]

On the other hand, such a transcendent God exists and acts within creation by means of His energies , that aspect of the divine being, distinct from His unapproachable essence, which permeates all His creation: "As light and heat radiate from fire but are not fire by nature, yet are energies of fire, so there are energies that radiate, as it were, from divine nature, but are not the essence of the divine nature itself." [12]

Creation and the Fall: Though God created man with free will and rationality, Adam stood in a state of undeveloped simplicity. When he fell, he fell "not from a great height of knowledge and perfection. . . . [H]ence he is not to be judged too harshly for his error." [13] The deteriorating effects of Adam's sin (death, disease) extended to his descendants, but his guilt did not. His descendants are only guilty in so far as they repeat Adam's sin of their own free will. Given this, they reject the view that the deeds of those in an unredeemed state are always tainted with sin. "The Orthodox picture of fallen humanity is far less sombre than the Augustinian or Calvinist view." [14]

Salvation & Sacrament: Once Adam initiated the deterioration of human nature, God desired to reverse the process by means of Christ's incarnation: "God descends to the world and becomes man, and man is raised to divine fullness and becomes god." [15] Thus they describe salvation as deification or theosis -- the process of becoming metaphysically united with God's divine energies: "We remain creatures while becoming God by grace, as Christ remained God in becoming man by the Incarnation." [16] And so, "the gulf between creature and Creator is not impassable, . . . If we make proper use of this facility for communion with God, then we will be 'like' God. . . . To acquire this likeness is to be deified, it is to become a 'second god,' a 'god by grace.'" [17]

Eastern deification/salvation is "not static but dynamic; it is not a completed state, a state of having arrived, . . . but a constant moving toward theosis. . . . [I]t can never be achieved fully in this life." [18] Christ's deifying of human nature in the Incarnation is only the beginning of the process. From then, the believer's move "toward God is a 'synergy' of God's power and free human effort." [19] As one Russian ascetic noted, "being assisted by grace, man accomplishes the work of his salvation." [20]

Man accomplishes his salvation through the deifying grace available in the Eastern Church. They see Rome as artificially limiting the flow of grace to the seven sacraments. Instead, the East emphasizes more wholistically that the "Church is the sacrament of the kingdom." [21] Every aspect of Church life and ritual deifies us: the liturgy, eucharist, architecture, calendar, fasts, vigils, alms, icons, penance, and all "other good works done in the name of Christ -- these are the means whereby we acquire the Holy Spirit." [22] Given this, they strongly affirm the generalization that "Outside the Church there is no salvation, because salvation is the Church. " [23]

Tradition, Trinity, mysticism, energies, incarnation, deification, synergism, sacrament, the Church -- these mold the world of Eastern Orthodoxy; these reveal its heart.

Primary Apostasies

A Paganized Deity: The Colossian church struggled in the midst of a culture enslaved to mystical and ascetic Greek philosophy with its degrees of divine being. To them Paul declared, "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ" (Col. 2:8). Eastern Orthodoxy loudly repudiates Plato only to embrace Plotinus, whose Neo-Platonic system has been openly cultivated into every aspect of Eastern Orthodox theology, from God's degrees of being to human deification. Such paganism flies in the face of the first commandment.

Subjugation of Scripture: Christ reserved some of his most heated denunciations for that ecclesiastical body which subjugated God's revelation to human tradition. Eastern Orthodoxy attempts to evade this charge by claiming to preserve only divine tradition. But the Pharisees made the same claim, and it in no way alleviated Christ's condemnations. Those who attempt to suppress God's covenantal word invite on themselves the curses of the covenant.

Church as Emperor: With God's written revelation suppressed due to its "obscurity," the ecclesiastics take over the supreme position. Their own traditions are somehow remarkably clearer than God's word. Once supreme and unconstrained, the church becomes a magisterial authority rather than ministerial authority. That is not Christ's Church.

Salvation without the Cross: Since deification is grounded in the incarnation rather than the atonement, Christ's cross becomes, in principle, non-essential, a quaint sideshow in deification. Discussions of substitutionary atonement and propitiation are virtually absent from their published explanations of salvation. Such concerns cannot fit comfortably into their Neo-Platonic scheme. Deification needs only incarnation and a faucet of grace, but apostolic faith is essentially driven by the sacrificed Messiah whose perfect righteousness is decisively imputed to His people. Biblical salvation is deeply Hebraic, not Hellenistic.

Glorification by Human Discipline: Eastern Orthodoxy attempts to evade the charge of self-salvation by appealing to the foundational grace shown in the incarnation. Rome speaks of merit, and the East speaks of acquisition, but both substitute human effort for Christ's effort. So both have reason to boast, but not before Christ. Climbing up the chain of being, even when aided by grace, is Plotinus again, not New Covenant faith.

Arrogant Worship: God forbids us to worship Him on our own terms. He sets the terms of His worship. To ignore such commands is to mock His Lordship. More than almost anything else, Israel's deterioration under its Kings is expressed by its arrogance in worshiping Jehovah as their tradition saw fit. They used all sorts of images, statues, and sacrifices to worship Jehovah , not other gods. The Lord judged their arrogance in a fearful way. Eastern Orthodoxy shows no concern for conforming any aspect of its worship to the requisites of the Lord. They rejoice in imitating the inferior worship of the Old Covenant temple and shallowly overturn the ancient prohibition on venerating images. God says that He will not be mocked.

Scripture promised us that the church would include false teachers (II Pet. 2:2), and right in the midst of apostolic tradition, Paul warns us that "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, . . . they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables" (II Tim. 4:3). Eastern fables point us to Hellenistic heterodoxy not covenantal orthodoxy. May the Lord have mercy on us all.