I just read a post by Frank Schaeffer over at Patheos, titled, Why Evangelical Bible Idolatry Sucks and Why I Go to a Greek Orthodox Church Even Though It’s A Mess Too. The way he describes his theology and worldview, as formed by the Greek Orthodox church, many aspects are very close to how I’ve come to see things. Does that make me more Orthodox in comparison to other branches of Christianity?
What are some of the examples of Orthodoxy that resonate with me? Here are a few examples, in order.
“Love Trumping Theology”
I find the above phrasing a tad confounding. It means, “The practice of love takes priority over theological correctness.” Schaeffer writes,
This loving “swooping up” also changes brains by producing a sense of benign tribal belonging, in this case to a mostly benevolent tribe. It isn’t about correct belief, let alone if the Bible is “true” (whatever that means) but about the brain-changing effect of community and the humbling mystery of unconditional love experienced in the “ordinary” in a sacramental context.
Absolute Certainty is Unattainable
Religious belief is a personal conviction based on available knowledge, personal experience, and ultimately, personal choice as to what to believe.
To believe something – rather than just stumbling into a malleable opinion — you’d have to have considered all the options. And that’s impossible.
Perfection is Found Only In Jesus
The Bible is not perfect. Is it not inerrant or infallible. It is a record of human thought describing God.
If Jesus is God then Jesus has the right to contradict the very imperfect book in which he has the misfortune to have his biography trapped. Jesus transcends the book he’s trapped in. He does this because he is the perfect fulfillment of an imperfect human tradition.
Jesus is more important than the Bible.
Jesus does not “fit” any “biblical interpretation,” which makes the text less important than him.
Christus Victor
Legal, forensic, penal-substitution models of the atonement are rejected as false and harmful ways of representing Christ’s work on the cross.
Jesus introduces the transforming possibility of nonviolence and forgiveness to our retributive primate way of being human that ensnares the rest of the Bible.
Until Jesus, the Bible is the story of retributive sacrifice to an angry “god” modeled on a pagan paradigm. Jesus ends sacrifice. Jesus is the opposite of a “substitutionary atonement.” He is the contradiction of human conceptions of justice projected on a “god” created by pagans and Jews in our own retributive image. This is where Jesus smashes “atonement theory.” Jesus’ death is an act of grace not the violent continuation sacrifice. Jesus’ death stops the sacrificial principle — the dark side of religion – forever.
Value of Uncertainty and Relationships
Modernism and the Western European influence place great value on certainty. Salvation does not require certainty. Rather, it requires community.
Some of the earliest Church Fathers — who themselves were partially responsible for the formation of the canon of the New Testament portion of what would (400 years later) become “The Bible” — believed that portions of “Old Testament” scriptures pointed to this apophatic anti-certainty anti-theology approach…
The more mystery-orientated Orthodox Church is less split than the more theologically inclined Western Church with its Reformation and all that followed…
The more you read about the Word the less you know the Word because the Word does not live in a book but is an actuality to be experienced. Truth is not to be found in writings about The Truth but only in The Truth within a living, not academic relationship…
In Jesus’ day, holiness codes of “correct belief” kept Jews from experiencing the full rich human community. They lived in separation from the “other” and the “unclean.” Likewise virtually every church today — including the more juridical and right wing and evangelical-influenced parts of the Orthodox Church — has some form of holiness code… And Jesus courted disaster because of the way he showed extraordinary mercy to those who had been deemed “outside” the grace of God…
According to the humble apophatic tradition the goal of discipleship is not about making sure we behave so that God will accept us. It is rather about maintaining strong relationships with other people and through that action, through this “spiritual kiss,” as St. Maximos says, the soul comes to the Word of God, because it gathers to itself the words of salvation—in other words mercy and love.
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