That They May Be One - a Musical Explanation of Orthodoxy

 

It's sometimes weird how ideas come to me. The notion of the Church as One has been a fixture of theology as long as I have been Orthodox, but I haven't thought about it too much in the sense of what it means. How are we one? How do we relate to one another? What does it mean that all things are summed up in Christ?

When I was just beginning to learn music theory for guitar, I asked my guitar instructor, Matt Wade (who would be puzzled to see his name come up here) "when you play a solo, are you thinking about the chords or the scale?"

He said "well, chords and scales are pretty much the same thing to me."

It was one of those moments where I didn't really get what he was saying, but I knew enough to know I needed to learn this principle. Having learned it, I think it has application to the Christian life.

In Western music (with apologies to all you Byzantine Chant nerds), everything relates back to the major scale. If you want to make a major triad, you simply take the first, third, and fifth notes of the major scale. The third is, in this context, called a "major third" in that it is two full steps from the root (the "root" is the first note of the scale). If you want to make a minor triad, then you flat the third. "Flat in relation to what?" Well, the major scale intervals. Instead of two full steps from the root, you get a step and a half, and we call that a "flat third" or "minor third." 

There are, of course, other ways to look at it. You can say you are taking the first, third and fifth of the minor scale, but the minor scale is also in relation to the major scale. Say in the key of C, you have the root (C), flat third (Eb instead of E), and fifth (G) to make a C minor chord. For the entire natural minor scale, you also flat the 6th and 7th. "Flat in relation to what?" Well, the major 6th and major 7th.

Somewhat of a similar concept, also in relation to the major scale, a 7th chord (or "dominant chord") is a major triad with a flat 7th added (so four notes). "Flat in relation to what?" Well, the major 7th. Etc.

It doesn't matter what scale or chord you are talking about, it always relates back to the major scale. So when my guitar instructor said "chords and scales are pretty much the same thing," what he meant was both chords and scales are just ways of arranging the notes in the major scale, either augmenting them or diminishing them ("sharping" or "flatting" in this sense) to color the music you are playing. A different scale is not a different thing. It's a different application of the same thing. There is no natural minor scale, or major or minor pentatonic scale, or harmonic minor scale, or whatever, without relation to the major scale. It all begins and ends there. Every chord and every scale has a relation back to the intervals of the major scale.

The Christian life is very much like this. We tend to want to separate aspects of Christian living. There is the monastic life. The married life. Parish life. The episcopacy. The priesthood. These, as we like to view them, are all different things. "I'm a father, but not a priest." "I'm a monastic, so I am not in the world." But all of them ultimately relate back to the one life in Christ. He is the uniting principle in Christianity. In that sense, there is no "ultimate" expression of Christianity. There is no Church of one, other than the One Who is Christ. We are all members of the Church not of our own accord, nor in some sort of fragmented way, but in relation to Him. The married life seeks to glorify Christ by the union of the two people in the marriage. The priesthood seeks to glorify Christ by carrying out His ministry. The monastic life seeks to glorify Christ in prayer for the world, to and through Him Who redeemed the world. It's not different things, nor even a hierarchy of good things, but rather it's all different ways of expressing the same thing.

Monasticism is a later development in the Church. It is a perfectly Christian practice, and it is good, but we tend to want to make it the ideal. In a sense, it is the fullest expression of the Christian faith, because the monk or nun devotes his or her life to the things of God, doing all the services, saying all the prayers, working to adorn the grounds and one's cell, and being fully immersed in the Church. But in a proper sense, it is simply a different expression of the same thing. Are you less of a Christian because you stay away from liturgy to help an elderly parent or someone who is infirm, hungry or homeless? Are you less of a Christian because you cannot be in the church building every waking hour because you have to work and provide for your spouse and children? Are you less of a Christian because you cut the grass in your home and not on the church grounds? Of course not! The opposite is also true. Being "in the world" is not superior to monasticism, it's just different. All of our labors are needed. Because all of our labors point back to Christ.

Are you single and celibate? Fantastic! St. Paul famously extols your virtue! Are you married! Also fantastic! St. Paul celebrates you as well! Bishops are to be "husbands of one wife," but that does not, obviously, mean our bishops are transgressing because they are celibate and monastic. The Church, in her good order, determined that a bishop should be devoted to the Church and not have his loyalties divided by maintaining a family. Unlike the Catholics, our priests are not so bound, and are free to marry and have children. None of these is bad, and none of these is lesser than the others.

It is the same with service in the Church. I am a reader. I am not "in charge." I am not the boss. I have responsibilities, and I try to do those to the best of my ability. But while it is a great honor to serve the Church, it is not a point of pride nor anything to boast about. I am the lowliest servant. My priest is the head servant in our parish. He submits to the bishop, who is the chief servant in our diocese. But the bishop is not more saved than I am, or my priest is, either because he is a bishop or because he is a monk. We're all in this together. The uniting principle is not office or service, but Christ. The Church's order exists not to exalt one above another, but so that the Church can fulfill this one ministry of Christ effectively and in good order.

If your membership and participation in the Church does not relate back to Christ, then you are making sour music. If it does, then there is no need to bifurcate your vocation, membership, and service in comparison, much less opposition, to another's. The monk's service and salvation are in relation to Christ, as is my own, and as is yours. The Church is truly One in Him.

Finding the Church

Our parish hosted the 25th anniversary Our Life in Christ podcast this weekend. If you are unaware, Our Life in Christ is a podcast hosted by our old friend Steve Robinson and our now-new friend Bill Gould, beginning as a local radio show in Arizona, and eventually becoming a long-running podcast on Ancient Faith Radio. You can listen to older episodes, and soon, the last two episodes from Saturday, here:

Our Life in Christ: Ancient Faith Radio

The podcast has essentially been defunct since 2014, though Steve has posted lots of other podcasts, blogs and other media since then. Bill sort of semi-retired from Orthodox media, but has been very active in his own parish. That last part was part of the discussion on Saturday, and that part of the discussion is what prompts this post.

There has been much criticism of "netodoxy," or "online Orthodoxy," or "cyberdoxy," mostly centered around various people complaining about so-called "Orthobros." Best I can tell, an "Orthobro" is a young male convert who is either insufficiently liberal or somewhat to the right of whomever is using the pejorative.  Like most terms that begin as descriptive, it has become almost exclusively a pejorative today. Part of the discussion we had this weekend sharpened my view on this problem. It dealt with the issue of catechesis and formation, and how that is done. And ironically, it was not an approach "from the left" as it were, nor "from the right" for that matter. It was Bill Gould simply stating what should be obvious to anyone who has been Orthodox for more than five minutes: formation happens in the parish, and the parish is run by the priest and his bishop. The pejoratives miss the point. The issue is not what these people believe, but that they are not being formed. Note -- I did not say they are not being formed well. They are not being formed at all.

The problem with internet orthodoxy is not that people have the wrong opinions. Rigorists can soften, weak-kneed liberals can harden, and those of us occupying some part of the mushy middle can pick a side and move our center. Views and attitudes and foundational assumptions can change over time.  What doesn't change is how the Church operates, and I think setting up anyone, of whatever preconditioned viewpoint, to think there is a hard-set "right" or "wrong" view of just about anything that is not dogmatic is setting them up for disappointment. I've personally been through this.

When you join the Orthodox Church, you are not joining a set of beliefs. We don't have Confessions and a list of dogmatic things you must assent to, outside the Scriptures, the Canons and the Ecumenical Councils. Some parishes still use the "anathemas" to denounce former beliefs. Most simply pray for the catechumen, and eventually the newly illumined, to "set aside their former delusions." So there isn't a book you can go to and get all the answers to your questions. For us, becoming Orthodox, Our Life in Christ filled that role, but we knew at the time, if only because Bill and Steve talked about it, that this was not real. In order to see for ourselves, we had to find a Church.

When we did, we found a Church very much as they had described. There was a liturgy that was not subject to whim. There was the ancient faith, unapologetic and not subject to revision or "new understandings." But there was also a pastor, and that pastor administered the parish with the primary goal of caring for souls. Most priests do this. That priest reported to a bishop, who was himself subject to a Metropolitan, and the Metropolitan was subject to the Holy Synod of Antioch and, through it, the Patriarch of Antioch. When the priest didn't like something the Archdiocese was doing, he did it anyway. When I didn't like something the priest was doing, I usually kept my mouth shut and understood he was in charge. I'm sure when someone didn't like what I was doing in the chanter stand or the choir, or in catechesis or the Teen SOYO discussions, they mostly kept their mouths shut as well.

That's the way it works in the Church. I answer to my priest, not public opinion or popular sentiment. It is only where the priest is doing violence to the Church's order, whether by his own disobedience or his serious and public sin, that I have cause to go outside that order, and even there, I go up the chain of command, as it were, going around the priest but going back in line to the proper order. Again, we've actually been through this, and made mistakes along the way, so we've learned both what to do and what not to do. But there is no "order" online, and that is precisely the problem.

When we talked about what we should do when online Orthodoxy seems to be invading our parishes in the form of zealous inquirers, Bill had a really interesting answer. He said we should refer them to the priest, and through the priest, the bishop.  Steve suggested also reminding them that "this is what you signed up for," by which he meant obedience is what we all signed up for. This has been the practice at St. Patrick since her inception, so it's not so much that I found this idea novel or surprising. It's more that their articulation of the solution reminded me that it's really not my problem. I don't have to counter every wingnut on YouTube, and I don't have to stamp out every bad idea. And I'm a catechist, so if I don't have to do it, neither does anyone else really. Let the priest handle it. He's trained to do it, and even if he isn't very good at it (most priests, including our priest, are good at it), he's the one the bishop gave the authority to do it. I'm not in charge. Except as the priest delegates it to me, it is not my place to even tell an inquirer that he isn't in charge either. I do neither of us any favors when I usurp the role of the priest by presuming to lecture inquirers beyond what the priest has given me to do. Besides, in very broad, general terms, most Orthodox priests aren't going to do that either. In most cases, the priest isn't there to slay your heroes or discount your beliefs. What a good priest will do is simply say "I don't have a blessing to do that" (for example, if his bishop tells him to receive converts by chrismation but this particular convert insists on baptism). He will confirm and uphold the order of the Church.

So the real problem with cyberdoxy is not that it is always wrong, or even that it is sometimes controversial. It's that it isn't real. Bill said something along the lines of "there is no internet jurisdiction." Yes, precisely. There is no internet jurisdiction because bits and bytes aren't real human beings. It is very easy online to be rude, say hurtful things, etc. And lots of guys on YouTube seem to major in that, even as they also often have very good things to say, and good wisdom to pass on. It is the nature of internet anonymity (even if you use your real name, most people online cannot find you, and those that can mostly won't bother). There is no immediate downside to saying whatever you want, and because of that, people often feel free to say whatever they want. I know I've fallen into this, so I don't mean to criticize too harshly. But it is simply a fact that you can say things online without having to worry about someone else's hurt feelings, much less, as my father used to say, talk that "might tend to make a man's nose hurt."

The other side of the coin is also true. There is no online pastoral care. No matter how much affinity you feel for another person on the internet, they don't know you, and ultimately, they don't care about you except in an abstract sense. They are not your spiritual father. They are not forming you in the faith. At best, they are giving you information, and information can be good or bad, but it is not tailored to you if it is disseminated online by someone you don't know, and who doesn't know you.

What this means is simple -- do not trust what you see online except in the bare sense of obtaining information, and do not accept information blindly simply because you want to agree with it. That includes literally everything I've ever written on this blog. If you know me (and most readers of this blog do, since for good or ill I have never attempted to make it "viral"), then come and ask me if you have questions. Likely, if you are Orthodox, I will refer you to your priest, and if you are not, I will refer you to mine or one near you. But you are not Orthodox without a parish, a priest, and most important, a bishop. Orthodoxy is not a spectator sport. If you want to find the Church, you have to first find a parish.

The Very Real Danger of Indifference

 

It should go without saying -- and this isn't the first time I've talked about these issues -- that the Church can hurt you. Sometimes badly. I've witnessed it, my friends have witnessed it, and it has harmed us all in various ways that we are still sorting out to this day.

In nearly every instance where we've had conflict in the Church, someone's personal preference was more at issue than whatever "the thing" was that caused the conflict. Specifically, I am reminded of a former priest who wanted everything his way. Even where he was actively harming people with his insistence and self-will, and even when he was undermining his own bishop (who, obviously, was also our bishop back then), the fact that he wanted something was good enough reason to do it, and people who were in the way were treated as expendable. This behavior included dishonesty, active manipulation, and gaslighting. It included abuse involving reception into the Church and abuse in the confessional. It involved the priest actually instructing people to lie to others about what he was doing and what they had done.  It was really, really bad, and it went unchecked for far too long, mostly because this priest was willing to deceive his flock, his bishop, and his hierarchs and they naively took his word for it. I do not say this lightly. I'm not going to name names, but rest assured, we have the receipts in abundance.

What brings this to mind is I have recently become aware of more damage left in the wake of the very same situation we dealt with, continuing to this very day.  To put this in perspective, we left nearly four years ago, we wrote the bishop very shortly after that, and about a year later, the Metropolitan of that Archdiocese was informed of all of the issues by someone else. These things did not happen yesterday, but they continued long after we left and are still hurting people today. So I am reminded again of how the Church's failure to address real issues leaves good people floundering and wondering if the Church is for them. 

Part of the problem in these rare instances is that, in the Orthodox Church, we are patient, kind, and long-suffering, and we expect others to be as well. It puts us at a distinct disadvantage when someone instead is actively and intentionally manipulative, because they prey on the Church's weakness, take advantage of her kindness, and demand absolution from those they have harmed without any real repentance taking place. This sort of deception can irreparably harm souls. The Church's long-suffering and kindness become a shield for the wrongdoer and a sword for those being wronged. It feels like "forgive me, a sinner," but delivered with a smirk and crossed fingers.

I do want to be clear -- we have moved on, and I do not write any of this out of anger. We have a good priest and a good parish and we are well cared for. Mostly, I write out of sadness at the fact that four years later, people are still being hurt. And I don't have sufficient answers. I wish I did. Part of the problem is there just aren't that many truly deceptive priests, so this is not a common problem. But the other issue is, the Church takes a very honest view of suffering. We are to bear suffering, mistreatment, and criticism with grace. Ordinarily, this is a good thing, but the Church dare not sanction the cause of suffering, and dare not shield those who harm others within the Church. Spiritual deception and abuse are at least as bad as physical abuse, and the Church cannot afford to tolerate them. 

Of course, the Church cannot simply defrock priests and sanction bishops who either cause or ignore suffering, without first attempting to ensure that the priest and/or bishop actually did something wrong. Abusers in the ranks of the laity are as much a danger to good priests as abusive priests are to good laypeople. I have seen, in my Protestant days, good pastors run off by manipulative and abusive laypeople. So we can't simply swing the pendulum all the way to the other side. That's just keeping the abuse, but changing the identity of the abuser. In our situation, "attempting to ensure that the priest and/or bishop actually did something wrong" might have entailed actually speaking to those of us who alerted the Archdiocese. Still, I understand the Church cannot act on the bare word of anyone, clergy or laity, without attempting to sort out the facts.

All that said, the real problem strikes me as a communication problem. The Church reaching out to those who have been hurt, helping them process what happened, and attempting to reconcile the parties, could go a long way. Apparently, that was something that particular Archdiocese did not desire to do in our case, for whatever reason. I pray she begins to see the need for such a process. Indifference is cold. In many ways, it is worse than the abuse itself. 

Sometimes just hearing "I hear you, I see you, and I'm sorry that happened to you -- we will try to do better" is enough. I hope somebody is saying that to those who were hurt more recently than we were. If you know someone who is hurting in the present, please give them an ear, a shoulder, and some compassion. And encourage your clergy and hierarchs to do the same. They need it.

The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, reprise

 

the wedding of Malachi and Hannah

It was 13 years ago, plus a couple of months, when I first wrote about my wife and I entering into the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Since that time we've left one parish and jurisdiction (Antiochian) to join another parish in another jurisdiction (OCA), we've begun a mission and left the second parish to become full-time members here, and that mission just celebrated its first wedding, both members having come to the Church through the mission. It was a joyous celebration, and warrants a return to the Church's teachings on matrimony.

As I wrote previously, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony in the Orthodox Church is not the same as going to the Justice of the Peace, or even your typical Protestant wedding in a church. That is not to denigrate those things -- my wife and I were married in a little Baptist Church in Bremen, Georgia, one my father helped build with his bare hands. We certainly do not think God refused to bless our wedding because the parish and the pastor lacked the right credentials, or belonged to the "wrong" church body. We have never questioned our union, nor considered it lacking. Neither did the Church, our priest, or our bishop. We were accepted and treated as a married couple from the very beginning.

But we still went ahead and got crowned in the Orthodox Church. Why? Because, as our friends Malachi and Hannah learned this weekend, an Orthodox wedding is something God does to and for us, not something primarily we do before God. We submit, but God joins. We assent, but God unites. This is why in the Orthodox wedding service, there are no vows. We are not focused on what we say. We focus on what God says. My wife and I are what God says we are. And now Malachi and Hannah are what God says they are.

The focus of married life in Orthodoxy is leading one's spouse and children to salvation. Children are an expected part of marital union, though one ought not get too tightly wound about the parameters of that. Metropolitan Saba wrote a lovely piece on marriage and childbearing recently. In it, he wrote:

As implied by the petitions for childbearing in the marriage service, Orthodoxy does not teach that sexual marital intimacy is in any way sinful. Neither does the Church teach that intercourse in matrimony is merely tolerated for the sake of conceiving children, as does the Augustinian tradition of western Christianity. Nowhere in the New Testament does one find a denigration of sex in marriage or the view that it requires justification through procreation. St. Paul does warn, however, against excessive abstinence from marital relations: “Do not deprive each other, except by mutual consent and for a time, so you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you through your lack of self-control” (1 Cor. 7:5).

The discipline of marital fasting in Orthodoxy should be embraced freely by mutual agreement between the spouses in light of their current state of spiritual maturity, not as a matter of rigid law. Especially in this most intimate dimension of married life, misguided ascetical strictness may have disastrous consequences that are counterproductive to the healing and wellbeing of all concerned.

While children are certainly one of the great blessings of marriage and the Church encourages couples to “be fruitful and multiply,” there are no canons in the Church that forbid the use of non-abortifacient means of birth control by married couples—and some barrier method contraception was known in antiquity. The canons of the Church have detailed descriptions of sexual offences, but none limiting births apart from the condemnation of abortion. What some identify as the rare patristic condemnations of contraception reflect the identification of them with abortion considering the limited medical knowledge of those times.

As ever, the Church's focus in the marital union is not on mere childbearing, but a life in Christ, the giving of one's self to the other, and to the children born of the union.  We are not trying to breed more Christians, like livestock. We are trying to fill and subdue the earth by uniting ourselves, one another, and our children to Christ. So yes, we value and expect children in an Orthodox marriage, and we ought to have as many as God will bless us with. But the Church has no per se prohibition on contraception, nor does the Church endorse the novel idea that once a married couple is past childbearing age they should "live together as brother and sister." The marital union is a mirror of the love of the Holy Trinity. Withdrawing from that love to pursue man-made "rules" is folly. As His Eminence reminded us above, and as St. Paul says explicitly in the Holy Scriptures, husband and wife ought to deny one another only by mutual consent, and only for a short time. Thus, marital fasts (where the couple refrains from normal relations, for example, during fasting periods, on fast days or the night before communion) are fully appropriate in the Church, with the blessing and guidance of your parish priest. "Living together as brother and sister" is anomalous and ought be undertaken carefully, and rarely. The neo-monastic, Orthodox cosplay influence is not a pattern for normal married life in the Church.

Father David Bibeau once spoke at St. Elias in Atlanta, to a men's group. He said "you men are the priests of your households," and then he started talking about something of which I was previously unaware. He said that a startling percentage of families where the children continue to go to church as adults are families where the father goes to church weekly. The mother's influence is strong too, but not nearly as strong as the father's. Statistically, if you want your children to go to church, their father is going to have to take them and set the example and expectation. I'm not sure why that is, but I trust Fr. David and thus I believe it to be true. This means a huge part of the success of the marriage, if success is defined as leading one's spouse and children to salvation, hinges on the husband being willing to take on this role, being willing to die to himself and his desires, and take his family to Church regularly. It does not mean the wife cannot make up for that -- for sure if your husband will not go to Church, you go anyway, and take as many kids as you can. It does mean that if the husband is on board, the kids are far more likely to stick around into adulthood. Husbands should take this role seriously.

And yet, while we Orthodox do believe that the husband is the head of the household, it is in a priestly role, not a position of power, much less coercion or manipulation. The husband offers himself on behalf of the family.  He isn't the "boss" so much as he is the head servant. At Malachi and Hannah's wedding, Father Seth said God took Eve from Adam's side, not from his head, nor from his feet, but from his side. Not to Lord over him, and not to be under his feet, but to stand beside him. This is a good image.

One of our former (Lutheran) pastors once told his flock (including us) that we are too quick to pay attention to what God says to our spouse and too slow to listen to what God says to us.  And so, when St. Paul admonishes the wife to submit to her husband as to the Lord, that is not something for men to enforce, but for women to aspire to. Likewise, when St. Paul admonishes the husband to love his wife as Christ loved the Church, even being willing to die for her, that is not something for the wife to insist upon, but for the husband to attempt to live out daily. The roles of husband and wife, in a God-pleasing marriage, are not competing for power and glory, but are complimentary, designed to enrich the union at the expense of the pride and selfishness of the individuals. In marriage, we learn to put ourselves aside and live for others. That is the way of salvation.

The Authentic Christianity of Dolly Parton

 

It feels weird to speak of a world without Dolly in it.  I grew up on her music, her variety show, and in the shadow of her influence on our culture, particularly here in the South. To call her an icon is to understate the case.

It feels a bit weirder to talk about her "authenticity."  Put mildly, Dolly had some aesthetic work done.  The photo to the left shows only a part of that work over the years.  Dolly dressed garishly, on purpose, wore a lot of makeup, had big hair and big ..... other things.

But the biggest part of her was her personality, and beneath the fake hair, complexion, nails, and ...... other things...... I doubt anyone ever encountered a more real person.

A friend of mine commented yesterday, quoting someone from Twitter, "she was the real that people in this country strive to be."

Her faith is well known.  Dolly played up the "spiritual but not religious" aspects, but one listen to her catalog begins to reveal some deep roots in Southern Christianity.  The realest part of her was her faith.  In a 2019 interview, she said "I always felt responsible to God that I was supposed to be doing something for God. I still feel like that, and I'm still doing it, trying to. Sinning all the way, but trying my best, and asking forgiveness seventy times seven."  She lived her faith, out loud, unapologetic, and real, just like her. Christianity wasn't something she believed.  It was a life she lived.

Our Lord teaches us, "you will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them."  The list of Dolly Parton's charity efforts is far too long to recite here, and is mostly well known, though Dolly only spoke of them herself to help further the charities.  From paying schoolchildren if they graduated high school (reducing the dropout rate in her hometown from over 30% to around 6% in the process), to giving away free books, to helping victims of fires or funding COVID vaccines, she tried to give away substantial portions of her fortune, estimated at over $450 million.  She likely will continue funding charity long after her death yesterday. Money neither saves nor condemns, but what you do with it matters. But it was never just the money -- Dolly spent time in her communities, pushed up people, and was a guiding light for goodness, mercy and charity in this world.

But that is not all.  She was married to her husband for 59 years until death parted them last year. "Jolene" is a testament to her love for her husband and appreciation for the sanctity of marriage, and yet still manages to give the auburn-haired, emerald-eyed foil a measure of grace.  Every community, every group, every clique in the world seems to love her.  It's not because she caved into every demand of special interest groups.  It's because she loved every human person, unconditionally, and without apology.  She purposely avoided taking political sides, even at times when such was demanded of public figures.  She would not stoop to degrade anyone. She always radiated love for her fellow man.  It was this love, in part, that pushed her to eschew divisive rhetoric and public posturing:

"I ain't that good a Christian to think that I am so good that I can judge people. That's God's job, not mine. So as far as politics, I hate politics. Hate politics."

Hating politics, but loving people and refusing to judge them?  It's hard to conceive of a better example for modern Christians to emulate.  

She wasn't perfect, of course.  She would be the first to tell you that. But in a world of Kardashians (all of whom Dolly surely loved too), I hope we can all agree we should try harder to be like Dolly.

The Problem of So-Called "Liberal" Theology

I say "so-called 'liberal' theology" not because it's a poor descriptor, but because I think most people tend to equate the word "liberal" with a host of secular political opinions that may or may not be accurate (for example, we can distinguish between "leftist," "Marxist," and "liberal," not to mention the rise of the use of the term "classical liberal" to define what we now usually call "conservatives").

In any event, this isn't a post about politics, and it is certainly not about secular politics. It's about essentially three competing approaches to theology: innovationist (liberal), traditional (what most people would call "conservative" in a positive sense), and rigorist (what most people would call "conservative" or "fundamentalist" in a pejorative sense).

I'm a traditionalist.  I've written a fair amount in recent years about the dangers of rigorist theology and the legalistic boxes it tends to put us in.  But I'm in a discussion now involving an atheist/former Lutheran, some liberal Lutheran theologians, and some more traditional Lutheran theologians. In that discussion, the basic problem of "liberal theology" sort of jumped off the page.

I won't recount specific here.  The discussion isn't private so much as the participants likely do not expect to have their words broadcast outside that conversation.  I want to respect that for all involved.  So without getting into the details of the discussion, what jumps out is this: Liberal theologians tend to approach the Scriptures, the Church, even the miracles of Christ, with skepticism.  That is, if secular science, culture, politics -- whatever -- enters into the picture, it usually is expected to act as a trump card for whatever Christians have believed for millennia now.

I had a professor in the Antiochian House of Studies whose teachings may illustrate this.  He, too, will remain nameless.  But his basic view was that the Apostle John Mark of the Seventy wrote most of the New Testament.  I don't recall off the top of my head whether he was claiming John Mark wrote down what the Twelve were teaching, or whether he was a disciple of someone.  That's mostly because I didn't buy the argument to begin with.  In my paper for the class "Scripture II: New Testament," I wrote the following:

Contrary to the view put forth in our text, this student has always considered John the Apostle to be the author of both the Gospel of John and of Revelation . . . I will avoid a lengthy discursus on this point beyond this paragraph and defer to the assigned text and my esteemed professor throughout this paper that John Mark is the author of Revelation.  I would like to note, however, that one reason I hold this view is John’s portrayal in our iconography and the tradition behind the icon.  John the Theologian is my Patron Saint.  The icon I have of him in my home is of St. John dictating Revelation to St. Prochorus. 

Granted, I wrote these words, so I obviously believe them and stand by them.  The point is, this strikes me as a pretty on-the-nose objection to "liberal theology."  Liberal theology defers to modernity and innovation.  "New ideas" must transplant the old.  Proper theology defers to tradition.  Not blindly, and not as a "religion of dead men," but properly.  Using this example, there is no reason beyond pure academic skepticism and innovation to think anyone but St. John wrote Revelation (and the Gospel of John, and the Epistles of John).  To the extent literary criticism and so forth might call into question the authorship, the Church usually has answers.  For example, modern scholarship often notes that St. John likely would not be a very good writer because of his background. The Church answers, "there is no such concern about St. Prochorus, and the Church has always said St. John dictated the texts anyway, or at least some of them, so why would we choose another author when we know from history how these writings were made?"

It is so with nearly any issue where it is contended the view of the Church through the centuries has been "proven" wrong by modern scholarship.  It is assumed that the assertion and argument is "proof," but the tradition of the Church is simply man-made, utterly fallible, and therefore may be discarded. Not for nothing, archaeology has "proven" many of the things that scholars believed were "myths" to be historical facts. For that reason alone, naked skepticism ought to be tempered with some respect for those who went before us.

As a former Lutheran, we were not taught to believe the Bible was a plaything that could be read apart from the witness of the historical Church. The Lutheran Confessions make that clear, and while I believe the Lutheran Church broke with Holy Tradition on numerous points (including the relative authority of Holy Tradition), there was still a lot of solid ground to stand on in terms of the Patristic witness set forth in those Confessions. Some Lutherans today do not maintain this, and feel free to depart from the Tradition of the Church on certain points (the ever-virginity of Mary, the intercession of the departed saints, etc.).  Not all of them are liberals.  The Radical Reformation, however, is where the wheels truly came off.  If anyone can read the Bible and their interpretation of what it says is more authoritative than the Church and her Saints, then truly anything goes.  This has spawned both fundamentalism and wide-open innovationism, depending on how one runs things. Certainly Lutherans, like Orthodox, have people in both camps.  But theology doesn't operate that way, so those camps ought to be confronted rather than embraced.

In and of itself, some level of skepticism is not unhealthy.  There are cultural practices in the Church that are not dogmatic, what our Greek brethren often call "Yiayia theology," though they exist in the Arabic and Slavic Churches and others as well.  Cultural practices are not dogma, as I wrote here. But where the Church speaks -- in her iconography, in her teaching and in her liturgy and offices -- we are not free to simply discard what she says. As I put it in the discussion I mention above, "you're not going to find a direct parallel to what is a novel interpretation of (the Bible). The Fathers were perceptive, but we can forgive them for not knowing some 20th century smart boys would try to upend what the Bible says." 

The basic problem, thus, is not whether we wish to be kind and loving to people.  I am convinced and believe that liberal theologians believe they are simply being kind and loving.  They take "God is love" as an overriding theological principle that undoes words of condemnation and correction.  As if loving parents are always considered "nice" by their kids, when in fact loving parents correct, discipline, and teach.  Tossing aside the correction, discipline, and education is to toss aside love itself.

No, the real issue is, do we wish to be faithful.  In Orthodox theology, God has given us a life to live.  As I've written many times before, God loves us and wants us to be whole, and so He gives us the opportunity to unite to Him and enter into His life, which is Life itself.  Walking with Him is not mean, even when others do not wish to walk with him.  We ought not go around berating others for their sins, as if we do not have a log in our own eye.  We also cannot whitewash the teaching of the Church to avoid hurting feelings.  Liberal theology too often lands in subjective feelings. As the image I chose above implies, liberal theology doesn't want to offend anyone or hurt feelings.

Of course, the problem with this is nobody wants to offend anyone or hurt feelings, but we cannot sacrifice truth for feelings.  We should say everything in the kindest way, and we should avoid causing unnecessary offense.  But a truth claim about Christianity cannot be reduced to myth or fabrication simply because it offends someone.  Someone will always be offended by anything we do or say.  The ever-reductionist intersectional claims of the secular left demonstrate that well enough. We, as Christians, are to give grace where we take offense, and we are to act gracefully to avoid giving offense, but that does not eradicate the truth of our faith. And the main issue I have seen over and over with liberal theology is when offense is taken, no effort is made to see if that offense is reasonable or feigned.  Rather, the skepticism I described above is employed to answer the question: "can we get by without saying this thing that someone, rightly or wrongly, took offense to?"  It's almost uncanny how often the answer is "yes."

The Christian faith is neither conservative nor liberal.  It is neither innovationist nor rigorist.  Secular politics has no place in the Church of Christ, nor do naked secular worldviews.  Scholarship is helpful when it is employed to help us understand things. Not all scholarship fits that mold, and while it might be acceptable in the academy to find "fresh, new approaches" to the Bible and Christian history, it is not acceptable for Orthodox Christians to set aside the teaching of the Church to embrace those approaches. Scholarship is not theology, and we ought not pretend it is.

It is tempting, judging from responses I see from my friends, to drive into the opposite ditch.  That way leads to heartache, as I have discussed a lot over the last few years. There is a "reasonable middle" in the Church. We should all strive to occupy that ground.

You Had to Be There....

Coming of age in the late 80s and early 90s, we had a saying -- "you just had to be there."  In the post-COVID era, I feel like this should be repurposed to the Church.

I cannot say how many times someone has told me they realized after COVID that they can "worship God at home," or "watch the services on Facebook."  This may work for certain Christian traditions, but the more sacramental and the more liturgical you are, the less it makes any sense at all.

If going to church is no more than gathering with like-minded people to learn stuff about God and listen to inspiring messages and sing songs, then sure -- you can do that anywhere.  But if church is an encounter with the living God, Who gives Himself to us in the sacraments, and if the priest is not just a dynamic and engaging figure who happens to know some stuff about God, but someone who has submitted to Holy Orders in the Church to preside over the sacraments and give eternal life to others, then that is not something that can be appreciated virtually.

I sympathize, don't misunderstand.  I prefer doing Zoom mediations and depositions in the post-COVID world.  COVID taught us that not everything must be done face-to-face.  Telemedicine, as just one example, has grown since 2020.  Convenience is great, and anyonymity can sometimes be comforting.  But Christianity is not something that can be virtualized.  Yes, the Church is messy.  Yes other people sometimes irritate or annoy us, or tempt us to sin in other ways.  Yes, the priest might be in a bad mood or the choir might be missing some of its better voices or the reader might get a frog in his throat right before chanting something (that literally happened to me last month).  Maybe someone's toddler is crying or, worse, some adult is acting out.  Maybe the building is too hot or it's too far to drive or I was out too late and want to sleep in.

Maybe there's a football game on that morning!

Still, salvation is, at its core, a two-fold process.  We acquire union with God, then we take God's light into the world .  The former can only be done in person.  Priests consecrate the sacraments, and with the sole exception of emergency baptism, laity are not authorized to do so.  We can't give obedience to a TV screen or a YouTube video on our phone.  We must give obedience to people, starting with our priests and bishops.  We can't even forgive people virtually, for if we avoid people, what is there to ever forgive?  The problem with this is, who is there to ever love?  Because we also can't love people virtually.  Not really, not as they actually are.  At best we're loving a facsimile of the person.  So not only can't we receive God virtually, but we also cannot share Him virtually.  God's love is communal.  We are, as I've said many times, saved in community.

It remains fascinating to me, this preference for virtual "church."  The entire point of salvation is learning to love others as Christ loves us.  The only way to do that is in union with Christ, for it is in Him that we learn to love our neighbor.  It's one reason the Orthodox Church does not serve private masses -- there must be at least one layperson present to have a valid Divine Liturgy.  When it comes to God, you do have to be there.