Category: Church History (Page 18 of 19)

Pentecost and the Promise of God Fulfilled

May 29, 2012 / Robert Arakaki / 9 Comments

Icon of Pentecost

The Orthodox Church celebrates Pentecost as the fulfillment of Christ’s promise that the Father would send the Holy Spirit to His Church to lead Her into all Truth.

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” (John 14:26)

This abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church is foundational to Orthodox Christianity. The Holy Spirit is God with us, who leads the Church through the Liturgy, gave supernatural courage to the early martyrs, and guided the Ecumenical Councils to defeat the various heresies. The Holy Spirit led the bishops in the formulation of the Nicene Creed and in defining the canon of Holy Scripture. Indeed when we look at church history we see the work of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit preserves the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints.

What sets Orthodoxy apart from the Protestant understanding of Pentecost is Orthodoxy’s strong corporate sense of the Holy Spirit. In the Bible the Holy Spirit is given to the Church corporately, through the Apostles to their disciples in the laying on of hands, to ensure the preservation of Tradition. This corporate and historic view of Pentecost and its implications offer a sharp contrast to Protestant views and practices in which the role of the Church is minimized or neglected.

In Protestantism the Holy Spirit is understood to be given to individual believers separately, privately and independently of the Church (which is assumed to be flawed and weak). In this blog I will be comparing the two traditions’ understanding of Pentecost.

The River of God Flowing into History

The prophet Ezekiel had a vision of the eschatological temple. In chapter 47, he tells of a stream of water issuing from the altar in the New Temple. As this stream of water gets longer, it grows deeper and wider. It then branches out in various directions and wherever it goes it brings renewal and healing.

This prophetic vision was fulfilled on Pentecost. The Apostle Peter in his Pentecost sermon opens by quoting the prophet Joel: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh” (Acts 2:17; OSB; emphasis added). Pentecost also fulfills a prophecy made by Christ. In John’s Gospel Jesus announced:

If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John 37-40; OSB)

We enter into Ezekiel’s prophetic vision in our conversion to Christ. In the Septuagint version of Ezekiel 47:3 we read that the river was the “water of remission.” This is fulfilled in our baptism when we are baptized into Christ and receive forgiveness for our sins. The word “poured out” is also found in Romans 5:4 which talks about “the love of God being poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (OSB; emphasis added.)

Ezekiel’s prophecy presents a vivid picture of trees lining the side of the great river:

Along the bank of the river on this side and that, will grow all kinds of trees used for food. Their leaves will not wither, and their fruit will not fail. They will bear fruit every month, because their water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing. (Ezekiel 47:12; OSB; emphasis added.)

This verse is a picture of a spirituality rooted in divine grace. It echoes Psalm 1 which describes a life grounded in the reading and meditation of God’s Law. This verse also echoes Genesis 2:10-14 which describes how the Garden of Eden had a river that flowed in four different directions. The trees bearing fruit year round in Ezekiel’s prophecy can be understood as the restoration of the access to the Tree of Life forfeited by Adam and Eve. The river lined with fruit bearing trees can be understood as the Church as the river of God. It can also be understood as the Church as a tree offering the healing life-giving fruits of the Cross (Christ’s body and blood that we receive for life everlasting). Ezekiel’s vision of the river of life is recapitulated in the book of Revelation 22:1-5 with a slight twist, a Christocentric reference is made to the Lamb of God slain for the salvation of the world.

Church History as the River of God

The book of Acts is fundamentally a theological book. Luke structured his narrative along the lines of a particular trajectory framed by the Great Commission (cf. Matthew 28:19-20, Luke 24:47-49). Acts 1:8 sketches the three phases of the book: Jerusalem (the Jews), Samaria (the half-Jews), and the Gentiles (the ends of the earth or the non-Jews). Acts begins with Jesus’ original followers in Jerusalem and the Gospel being preached primarily to the Jews (Acts 1-11). This is the Jerusalem phase. Then we see Gospel preached to the Samaritans (Acts 8). It is not until we come to Acts 13 that we read of the Church engaged in intentional missions when the Church at Antioch sends out Paul and Barnabas to evangelize. Acts closes with Paul reaching Rome, the political capital of the Roman Empire and preaching the Gospel freely for two years. What we see is the river of God flowing into history from Jerusalem into the various parts of the Roman Empire as foretold by Ezekiel.

Protestant Version of Church History — Disruption

What happened afterwards? Did the river of God that began on Pentecost in Acts 2 run dry? One would think so given the widespread belief among Protestants that a general apostasy occurred soon after the original Apostles passed on. Many believed that Christianity remained largely in spiritual darkness (with the exception of a “faithful secret remnant”) for the next thousand years or more until Martin Luther rediscovered the true Gospel. Another trope used by Protestants hold that the early church valiantly bore witness to the Gospel but was captured by Emperor Constantine and transformed into an institutionalized church barely recognizable to the original Christians. This historical trope is important for Protestant theology because it needs some kind of disjuncture (apostasy or compromise) to justify its claim that the Protestant Reformation was necessary for the restoration of Gospel and Church of the New Testament. If there was no such break then there would be no need for a Reformed Church separated from the Church of Rome.

Ralph Winter, a prominent Protestant missiologist, called this the BOBO theory — that the Christian faith Blinked Off after the apostles, then Blinked On in our time or whenever our church began (1517 for Protestants, 1823 for Mormons). But there is no hint whatsoever in Scripture that Blinked Off-Blinked On would happen to Christ’s Church especially in light of Christ’s promise that he would not leave them orphans but would send the Holy Spirit to guide them and protect them! Nor is there historical evidence that the Christian faith went AWOL for almost fifteen hundred years! The uncompromising witness of the martyrs in the face of persecution and the early church’s memorializing the martyrs contradict the notion of a widespread early apostasy. Ralph Winter’s article described how the Gospel advanced among the barbarian tribes even during the so-called Dark Ages.

While Rome and Western Europe saw the collapse of civilization and the onset of the Dark Ages, it must be kept in mind that in the Byzantine East culture, commerce, and learning continued to thrive for almost the next thousand years. Thus, the Protestant paradigm of church history has two major problems: (1) it cannot be supported by historical evidence and (2) it contradicts the promises given by Christ to his followers. Ultimately, the BOBO view of church history is a denial of Christ’s promise to send the Holy Spirit to be in and with the Church throughout history.

In their approach to church history many Protestants make two mistakes: (1) they assume that the church in the New Testament was Protestant in structure and practice, and (2) they ignore the historical continuity between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Church of the first millennium. The Protestant dismissal of the Orthodox understanding of church history with a wave of the hand is astounding. They assume this without looking at the evidence! But, the fact is that the pre and post Nicean Church simply did not look anything like a Protestant Church. Very early on Christians crossed themselves frequently. Early Christian worship was focused on the Eucharist, not the sermon, and all Christians held to the real presence in the Eucharist. Christian initiation was done via the sacrament of baptism after a lengthy process of instruction in which one had to commit to memory a creed. The early church was episcopal in structure (ruled by bishops) and conciliar (major decisions made by gatherings of bishops).

That the early Christians followed these practices is supported by leading scholars with no axe to grind. Highly recommended are: Jaroslav Pelikan’s magisterial The Christian Tradition, J.N.D. Kelly’s Early Christian Doctrines,Oscar Cullmann’s Early Christian Worship, W.H.C. Frend’s The Rise of Christianity. For primary sources highly recommended are: The Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus’ Against the Heretics, and Eusebius’ Church History.

This unfounded assumption resulted in Protestants misreading the New Testament and the early church fathers. There is in the Reformed tradition a growing appreciation of the fact that original Reformers like Calvin had a high regard for the church fathers. But even here, the Reformers’ appreciation of the church fathers was limited and selective. When the fathers’ writings seem to support Protestant ideas, Calvin and the Reformers freely quoted Athanasius and Augustine. But these same Fathers were ignored when they spoke on the rule of bishops, the Eucharist, church unity, the place of Holy Tradition, and a theosis union with God.

Orthodox Version of Church History – Continuity

The trope of church history as the river of God is useful for understanding Orthodoxy. The trope of the river of God assumes a fulfillment in history of Christ’s promises that the Holy Spirit would guide the Church into all truth (John 16:13) and that it would be stronger than the powers of Hell (Matthew 16:18). The Orthodox Church believes that we can expect to see these Scriptural promises fulfilled throughout the age of the church. It believes that what began on Pentecost continues to the present day.

The Orthodox Church is the river of God flowing in the book of Acts into the two millennia continuously and without break to the present day. This trope assumes a fundamental continuity in terms of doctrine, liturgy, and spirituality from Pentecost to the present day. If Orthodoxy can support its claim to historical continuity then Protestants will need to reexamine their assumption of a fundamental break occurring in church history and with that the need for a Reformation.

Worship. The Eucharist has been integral to Christian worship from the beginning. The Orthodox Church uses the Liturgy of St. James which dates to the first century in Jerusalem, the Liturgy of St. Basil which dates to the fourth century and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom which dates to the fifth century. Without exception, the Eucharist has been a part of the Sunday worship in Orthodoxy. The same cannot be said of Protestant worship. Most Protestant churches celebrate the Eucharist infrequently. While many Reformed, Anglican and Lutheran Christians claim to practice weekly communion, their claim rings hollow in light of the fact that they reject the historic understanding of the real presence in the Eucharist.

Leadership. Pastoral authority in Orthodoxy is grounded in apostolic succession. The five ancient patriarchates can all trace their spiritual lineage back to the original Apostles. Protestantism, due to its being a schismatic break off from the Papacy, cannot lay claim to apostolic succession. Apostolic succession is more than formal authorization but a sharing in the Holy Spirit across the generations that goes back to the original Pentecost in Acts. Critical to apostolic succession is faithfulness to the “pattern of sound words” (II Timothy 1:13). Thus, while Anglicanism can claim to possess apostolic succession, the fact that many of its current bishops hold blatantly heretical views undermines this claim. In short, in no way can Protestants claim continuity in leadership.

Doctrine. An important means of maintaining doctrinal unity in the early Church are the Ecumenical Councils. The entire Church of the first millennium accepted the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Protestantism has abandoned them in several ways: (1) it passively accepted the Papacy’s insertion of the Filioque clause and (2) it downgraded the binding authority of the Nicene Creed with its novel doctrine of sola scriptura. Having rejected the binding authority of the Seven Ecumenical Councils Protestant churches underwent a bewildering number of doctrinal permutations that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable to the early church fathers.

Spirituality. There is a rich stream of spirituality running through the history of the Orthodox Church. One of the best examples is the lives of the saints. The Orthodox Church considers them heroes of the faith whose lives exemplify the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives throughout the history of the church. Orthodoxy can point to Saint Polycarp who boldly confessed Christ even when the Roman governor threatened to burn him alive, Saint Mary of Egypt a prostitute who spent decades in the desert in order to cleanse her soul, Saint Athanasius who defended the divine nature of Christ against the heresies of Arius, Saint Gregory Palamas who expounded on the uncreated light of Mount Tabor, the Chinese Martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion, Peter the Aleut martyred in San Francisco in the early 1800s, Father Arseny who suffered in the Soviet gulags. The river of God flows on!

When one looks for the heroes of the faith in Protestantism, especially in popular Evangelicalism, what one is likely to find are popular radio preachers, well respected seminary professors, and celebrity athletes. Many of these Protestant celebrities will be forgotten in time. It would be hard for a Protestant to claim a rich and unbroken history of spiritual formation.

When one compares Orthodox with Protestant spirituality, we find a marked sobriety and stillness in Orthodoxy not often found in Evangelical and Pentecostal circles where emotional fervor and free expression typically dominate. All too often the charismatic quest for a continuous spiritual high has led to burn outs and spiritual collapse. Christians in Reformed and mainstream Protestantism struggle with a spirituality grounded in cerebral propositional reasoning rather than that inner stillness nourished by the liturgical worship found in historic Orthodoxy.

Synergy: God provides the water, we receive it.

Come and Drink!

Come and Drink!

On Pentecost Sunday Orthodoxy celebrates Pentecost in a special service that comprises three long kneeling prayers. Aside from this annual service, Pentecost is an ongoing reality in Orthodoxy. It is experienced in the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. It is experienced vividly in the monastic communities.

In Protestantism the individual reception of the Holy Spirit overwhelms the understanding of the Holy Spirit being given to the Church. There has been much debate between Evangelicals and Pentecostals over whether the baptism in the Spirit occurs when one has a born again experience or as a separate event accompanied by speaking in tongues. What the two sides have in common is their silence on the role of the Church. However, historically one receives the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of chrismation which follows the sacrament of baptism. This sacramental approach to Christian conversion avoids Protestantism’s subjectivism. To those who deny the efficacy of sacraments I would respond that the sacraments are no mere rituals anymore than wedding vows are just words. For the Orthodox, Pentecost is not so much something I experience by myself, but through life in the Church. Life in the Church is like the River of God in which we are immersed into its water of life (the sacrament of baptism) and eat of the fruit of the tree (partake of the Eucharist). To the Protestants and Evangelicals who are spiritually thirsty, the Orthodox Church says: Come and Drink!

Robert Arakaki

Response to Robin Phillips — “Are Calvinists Also Among the Gnostics?”

March 4, 2012 / Robert Arakaki / 56 Comments

Robin Phillips

On 29 March 2011, Robin Phillips posted an intriguing and disturbing article, “Are Calvinists Also Among the Gnostics?” in which he discussed the tendency to Gnosticism in Reformed theology. More recently in December 2011, he posted, “A Critical Absence of the Divine: How a ‘Zero-Sum’ Theology Destroys Sacred Space” in which he discussed how this Gnostic tendency has impacted Reformed worship and church architecture.

This is not just Phillips’ own interpretation of Calvin and Reformed theology but a synopsis of an emerging discussion among scholars. He is careful to note that Calvin himself sought to maintain a dialectical balance between his spiritualizing tendency by putting a premium on secondary means. It was Calvin’s spiritual descendants (Jonathan Edwards, B.B. Warfield) who took this spiritualizing tendency further than he intended.

L’auditoire de Calvin – Geneva

Symptoms and Diagnosis

The gnosticizing tendency is manifested in the minimizing or denial of secondary causation and the emphasis on divine immediacy. This is the notion that material means, e.g., sacraments, are irrelevant or interfere with the divine economy. Divine immediacy takes place by means of the Word of God. This has been extremely consequential for Reformed Christianity. It has resulted in the denial of sacred space, stained glass, gothic arches, crosses, altars, the church calendar. It explains the widely known iconoclasm of Reformed theology. It also accounts for Calvin’s aversion to annointing a sick person with oil for healing even though the practice is taught in Scripture. Reading this has helped me to understand why so many Reformed churches have a stark austere beauty. The purpose of Reformed architecture is to support the primacy of Scripture proclaimed in the sermon. This world view has ramifications for the rest of life, some of them quite surprising. It has led to Reformed pastors telling parents that all their good works as parents to raise believing children are of no lasting benefit.Robin Phillips’ argument is fairly complex. It is recommended that visitors go to Phillips’ site directly and read the posting directly. Below are excerpts from the two postings to assist the reader.

Excerpts from:

A Critical Absence of the Divine: How a ‘Zero-Sum’ Theology Destroys Sacred Space

The ancient Gnostics didn’t know about game theory, but they tended to treat God’s glory as if it was a zero-sum contest between God and creation. The glory of God, they seemed to think, could only be maintained by denigrating the created order, or at least denying that anything of spiritual value could be derived from the creation. In fact, the Gnostics adopted such a low view of the material world that they ended up denying that Christ even had a physical body. It would be beneath the dignity of the Divine Being, they thought, to have his glory mediated through material flesh.

In this article I will suggest that one of the temptations of the reformed theological tradition has been a tendency to operate with similar ‘zero-sum’ assumptions. What I am calling a ‘zero-sum’ approach (though the economic metaphor is only a metaphor and should not be pressed too closely) manifests itself in a number of ways, not least in the tendency to view the glory of God and the glory of creation as if they exist in an inverse relationship to each other, so that whatever is granted to the latter is that much less that is left over for the former.

In their polemics against the proliferation of images within Roman Catholic worship, both the English Puritans and the Continental Calvinists had a tendency to veer towards the type of disembodied Gnosticism that they would have discountenanced in any other context. The result has been to denigrate the created order and to create a false dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical.

I have sometimes heard extraordinary language is used to denounce the efficacy of good parental works from teachers who think that if our works can lead to godly offspring then we are depending on ourselves rather than God. Since godly parenting is ‘impossible’ and ‘beyond us’ and ‘outside our ability’ (all concepts that I have heard invoked) the solution is not to parent by works but by ‘faith.’

Are Calvinists Also Among the Gnostics?

Earlier in the year as I was reading history for my doctoral research with King’s College, London, I was struck again and again by just how Gnostic so much of the Calvinist tradition is, especially Calvinism of the Puritan variety.

The churches that followed in Calvin’s wake would be marked by this de-physicalising influence and the corollary tendency for the cerebral to swallow up the sacramental, for the invisible to absorb the incarnational.

The result of this disenchantment with liturgical approaches, together with the notion that worship was first and foremost a matter of instruction in the Word of God, dovetailed with the assumption among reformed communities (though not among those of the Lutheran and Anglican traditions) that for worship to be ‘spiritual’ it must be what they called ‘simple’ in the sense of being disencumbered with the trappings of materiality.

My Response

Overall, I agree with what Robin Phillips had to say. He raised issues that I had never thought of when I was a Reformed Christian. I think the concerns he raised are important and deserve to be addressed by other Protestants. In my comments below I do two things: (1) I point out areas where Phillips may have been too hard on Calvin, and (2) I raise implications of Phillips’ argument that he may have overlooked.

Where Phillips May Have Been Too Hard on Calvin

One missing element in Phillips’ analysis is Calvin’s emphasis on our mystical union with Christ and the importance of the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper for our life in Christ. These important themes have been suppressed or glossed over by certain of Calvin’s spiritual descendants. This is an element that the Mercersburg movement has sought to recover and reintroduce to the church with limited success.

Overlooked Implications of Phillips’ Argument

Christ United Reformed Church

One missing element in Phillips’ postings is a discussion of the role of the pastor and the sermon in Christian worship. If one wishes to take the denial of secondary causation to its logical conclusion one would need to deny the need for sermon in which Scripture is explained and interpreted by the pastor. This mediation consists not just in the sermon on Sunday morning but also the pastor’s standing with the church at large. In the Reformed tradition the pastor occupies an office of the church; as part of the learned clergy he seeks to apply the best scholarship to his exposition of the text; and he seeks to speak the word to the situation of the flock under his care. Thus, the ordained minister serves several critical mediatorial functions in the life of the church. Without this understanding one becomes vulnerable to the direct ‘word of God’ given in certain Pentecostal circles.

Another missing element is the neglect of history as a consequence of gnosticism. Much of Reformed theology understands theology as consisting of timeless truths found in Scripture. The notion of a mediated faith tradition is either derided or subordinated to the divine revelation in Scripture. This tendency to ahistoricism gives rise to an uncritical acceptance of innovations of recent and a minimizing a solidarity with the historic church.

A possible implication that can be drawn from Phillips’ argument is that the Gnostic tendency in Protestant theology may account for the exuberant worship in Pentecostalism and the mega churches. Early Gnosticism had two opposite, seemingly contradictory manifestations: (1) the ascetic form that denigrated the body by eschewing food and sex, and (2) the libertine form that indulged the desires of the flesh in order to liberate the soul.

Possible Remedies

If Phillips is right in his diagnosis of a Gnostic tendency running through Reformed theology, what are the remedies available? There has emerged in recent years a reaction to the disembodied approach to the Christian faith.

The focus of this posting is to present a remedy for the ills described by Phillips. Below are some options available to those troubled by the Reformed tradition’s dualistic tendencies with my observations about the feasibility of the option presented. I will start of with the options that are closer to home for Reformed Christians before looking at more radical alternatives.

Mercersburg Theology. In recent years there has emerged in Reformed circles a renewed interest in Mercersburg Theology with its emphasis on the Eucharist, the church fathers, and church history. Among the proponents are Keith Mathison, Jonathan Bonomo, and W. Bradford Littlejohn. Keith Mathison’s Given For You attempts to make the Eucharist the focus of Sunday worship. The appeal of Mercersburg Theology lies in the fact that it is a form of high church Calvinism rooted in the theology of John Calvin and Continental Reformed theology. One can be “Catholic” and “Reformed” at the same time just by working with Reformed sources. The weakness of Mercersburg Theology is that it has had little impact on church life. I expect that the current interest in Mercersburg Theology will in time be forgotten. The ephemerality of Mercersburg Theology can be seen in its absence in the United Church of Christ, the one denomination with direct ties to Mercersburg Theology.

Ancient-Future Worship and the Convergence Movement. Examples of the ancient-future worship can be found in Thomas Oden and Robert Webber. They have advocated a return to a more historically grounded and liturgically approach to worship and theology. While Oden remained a Methodist, Webber left his Baptist roots to become an Episcopalian. The ancient-future movement is diverse in composition and eclectic in its method. This eclecticism can be seen in the fact that rather than affiliate with one of the historic traditions, many ancient-future evangelicals on their own initiative appropriate elements from outside traditions. The best example of the convergence movement is the Charismatic Episcopal Church which seeks the blending or convergence of three steams: Evangelicalism, historic Anglicanism, and the charismatic renewal. For a conservative Reformed Christian the challenge here is the postmodern eclecticism and a free wheeling independence unchecked by historic tradition.

Anglicanism. A number of Protestants and Evangelicals see in Anglicanism an appealing mixture of liturgical worship, historic tradition, and ordered church life. Unlike the previous option, the Anglican option is more solidly rooted in a defined historic tradition and has a canon of theological writings: Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, Richard Hooker and William Laud. The Anglican tradition possesses a certain stability with its tradition of using a normative prayer book for its worship life. While the Anglican tradition allows for a more embodied approach to worship and church life, it is currently in a state of disarray as a result of the current apostasy in the Episcopal Church.

Roman Catholicism. A number of Protestants, even Reformed Christians, have abandoned Protestantism and “crossed the Tiber River.” While the Roman Catholic Church is an embodied form of Christianity, becoming Roman Catholic would be a drastic cure for those seeking a remedy for Calvinism’s gnostic tendencies. One major issue for a Reformed Christian is the jettisoning of sola scriptura for the infallibility of the Papacy. While Roman Catholicism does take an embodied approach to faith, its organizational life seem to be heavily influenced by a bureaucratic and legalistic ethos. A Reformed Christian thinking of becoming Roman Catholic would do well to take a good hard look at the Great Schism of 1054 and ask if Rome did the right thing in breaking away from the other historic patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

Born in the USA – Metropolitan Jonah, OCA

Eastern Orthodoxy. Long ignored and overlooked by Protestants, one of the biggest surprise in recent years is Orthodoxy’s rapid growth as growing numbers convert to Orthodoxy. Long regarded as an ethnic denomination, Orthodoxy is in the process of becoming an American church. The appeal of Orthodoxy lies in its historical rootedness and its mystical/organic approach to worship and church life. Orthodoxy’s emphasis on the Incarnation of Christ and its implication for all of life present a deep cure for any gnostic tendency one may have. Becoming Orthodox will not be easy for a Reformed Christian, it will require giving up the Scripture over Tradition paradigm that underlies sola scriptura for Scripture in Tradition paradigm.

Finding the Right Remedy

These are confusing times. There are many spiritual pitfalls for unwary Christians. Robin Phillips relates that he and his family were at one time members of a crypto-Gnostic group. They found spiritual growth and healing in the liturgical life of an Anglican parish. Soon after, they affiliated themselves with a Reformed church where they heard fierce denunciations of icons and liturgical symbolism by James Jordan. In another posting, “Aids or Idols? The Place of Images in Worship” (posted 3 October 2010) Phillips presents a reasoned and Scriptural defense of the use of icons in Christian worship. I suspect that the Anglican via media which enabled him to take an inclusive and reasonable approach to the use of icons was broad enough to allow him to become a Calvinist. Phillips closes this posting with a question for his readers to ponder.

Further, if our practice implies that colors, symbols, gestures, smells and three-dimensional objects are inappropriate for the house of the Lord and must be reserved for “secular” occasions like birthdays, parades, weddings and Christmas banquets, then are we not driving a wedge between the deepest human yearnings and the God who made them? Are we not reinforcing the myth that Christian truth should be kept unbodied – a myth that has had enormous implications for how modern evangelicals understand the meaning of “kingdom of God” and has virtually eliminated any concept of Christendom from contemporary Protestant consciousness?

If Gnosticism’s toxic influence can be discerned in Reformed theology, what is the appropriate remedy? What remedy does Robin Phillips propose? I appreciate his reasonable and open minded approach to the issues, but how do we stop the dread disease of Gnosticism? He seems to be advocating via media, but is the Anglican via media sufficient to defeat this pernicious spiritual disease? Or do we need stronger medicine along the lines of Orthodoxy?

Gnosticism is dangerous spiritually because it makes the individual believer independent of the Church and divorces faith from action. The best cure for a religious tradition weakened by implicit gnosticism is not a system of doctrine that denounces the gnostic heresy but rather an orthodox faith embodied in a Christian community. An embodied faith community will be marked by a common Eucharistic worship, a shared universal confession of faith, and a leadership that follow the teachings of the apostles. Irenaeus of Lyons in his classic apologia against Gnosticism: Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) put forward two identifying for the true Christian Church: catholicity and apostolicity.

Priests and Bishop at the Eucharist

The Orthodox Church offers strong protection against Gnosticism through its holistic understanding of Christianity as the Tradition of Christ lived out by the Church, the body of Christ. Orthodoxy’s strongest defense against Gnosticism lies not in the Liturgy, icons, holy days, priests wearing vestments, creeds, and prayer books but in Holy Tradition. A church can have all the listed items and not be a capital “O” Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy is relational; one is linked to the Church Catholic through the Eucharist and one is linked to the Apostles through apostolic succession via the bishop. The theological method of Orthodoxy is the reception of Apostolic Tradition, not the negotiation of competing extremes, e.g., low church Evangelicalism versus high church Anglo-Catholicism. The classic form of sola scriptura combined with the regulative principle is quite compatible with the rich liturgical and aesthetic traditions of Anglicanism and Lutheranism. But even then there is fundamental divide between them and Orthodoxy — Holy Tradition. So long as one holds to sola scriptura one cannot be an Orthodox Christian, one remains a Protestant. Sola Scriptura because it denies the binding authority of Tradition is vulnerable to being reinterpreted and renegotiated opening the way for doctrinal innovation or doctrinal drift. Becoming Orthodox is indeed strong medicine but let us keep in mind Ignatius of Antioch’s teaching that the Eucharist is the “medicine of immortality” received from the bishop, the true successor to the apostles:

The Eucharist – Medicine of Immortality

…so that you obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undisturbed mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die, but live for ever in Jesus Christ (Ignatius of Antioch, Letters to the Ephesians 20:2).

Robert Arakaki

See also:

Robin Phillips – “8 Gnostic Myths You May Have Imbibed”

Robert Arakaki – Irenaeus of Lyons: Contending for the Faith Once Delivered

Book Review: Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

February 3, 2012 / Robert Arakaki / 19 Comments

Tell me the history of the church and I can tell you your theology.

Church history is not neutral but is shaped by our theological beliefs. This is especially the case with Emperor Constantine:

to many Evangelicals and Anabaptists Constantine was the arch villain who caused the early Church to fall from its apostolic purity,
to mainstream Protestants and Roman Catholics Constantine was a pivotal historical figure who made Christianity into a public religion,
to Eastern Orthodox Christians he is Saint Constantine “equal to the apostles.”

Defending Constantine by Peter J. Leithart is more than a biography of Constantine the Great. It starts off as a theological history and ends as an attempt to construct a political theology. Leithart draws upon a wide range of scholarship to present the reader with a fine grained and nuanced understanding of Constantine the man and the consequences of his embrace of Christianity.

Pastor Leithart’s underlying motive for writing this history is to refute John Howard Yoder‘s radical Anabaptist political theology. This stream of Protestantism holds that the church is a community of faithful believers who renounce all worldly power and adheres to pacifism. This position leads Yoder to the position that Constantine never truly converted to Christianity and that the Christian church he allied himself with was a fallen, compromised church (see Leithart pp. 252-254; 305-306). By refuting Yoder, Leithart intends to present Constantine as a model for Christian political practice.

The purpose of this review is not just to assess Leithart’s book but also to comment on some of his ideas from the standpoint of an Eastern Orthodox Christian.

Constantinian Paradigm

Constantine’s historical significance lies in his embrace of Christianity which laid the basis for the Constantinian paradigm. This is the belief that Christianity has a rightful place in the public sphere and that the church has an obligation to bring Christian moral values to the family, society, and politics. Similarly, the Constantinian paradigm views Christian clergy as public leaders and allows for the use of state resources to support the church. This alliance which began with the Edict of Milan in 313 would frame Western society and politics until the 1800s and 1900s. The Constantinian paradigm began to be displaced by the Enlightenment which gave rise to non-theistic systems of thought like Communism and Rawlsian liberalism.

Constantine matters to Reformed and Orthodox Christians because both traditions rely on the Constantinian paradigm. Important to Reformed theology is the belief that the call to reformation extends not only to the church but to society as well. This is apparent in the last chapter of Calvin’s Institutes “Civil Government” (Book 4, Chapter XX). While Reformed Christians might agree with Yoder on the fall of the church, they would disagree with his view of the church as a pure community of disciples removed from society.

Eastern Orthodox Christians will likewise take issue with Yoder’s political theology, especially with the assumption of the fall of the church. The Orthodox Church believes that it has maintained an unbroken chain of apostolic succession going back to the original apostles. Furthermore, Orthodoxy holds to the doctrine of symphonia — the doctrine of church and state distinct from each other but working in harmony.

Leithart does the Christian community a great service with his discussion of the historical origins of the notion of the fall of the church (p. 307). He shows how Yoder’s allegations that Constantine corrupted the church rests on poor history (p. 317-321). Leithart shows that Yoder’s flawed church history leads to a defective theology. His critique of Yoder’s historiography demonstrates the aphorism stated at the outset of this blog posting: Tell me the history of the church and I can tell you your theology.

Discipling the Nations

Arch of Constantine

Constantine was not the first emperor to issue edicts of toleration. What distinguishes him was his turn away from Roman paganism and his supportive attitude towards Christianity. When Constantine defeated Maxentius and entered Rome as victor, rather than follow the conventions which stipulated that the victor enter the Capitolium and offer sacrifice to Jupiter, he refused (p. 66). This marked an epochal shift in Rome’s political culture. Constantine’s outlawing of the gladiatorial shows reshaped Roman culture. It in effect shut down a key means by which the populace were instructed in the values of violence and martial glory (Leithart p. 304).

In embracing the Christian cause Constantine did not relinquish the power of the sword. He continued to engage in military campaigns and he continued to engage in political intrigues characteristic of any political elite. His refusal to abandon the powers of the state is a disappointment to those who hold an Anabaptist political theology.

Hagia Sophia – Church of Holy Wisdom

Another momentous decision by Constantine was the founding of Constantinople, the New Rome (pp. 119-120). This decision was rooted in Constantine’s desire to raise up a new metropolis built from a Christian foundation. The old Rome, the traditional center of power, was deeply stained by its pagan past. From the standpoint of political theology the establishment of Constantinople reflected the belief in the possibility of a Christian civilization. This can be traced to the call to disciple the nations in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) and in the eschatological vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation. The radical Anabaptist tradition disavows the possibility of the Christianization of societies and holds instead to the idea of a Christian counter culture marked by ethical purity and pacifism.

There is a certain paradoxical quality to the attitudes that Eastern and Western churches hold towards Constantine. In the Western tradition Constantine is more of a remote historical figure, yet there has been considerably more discussion about the Constantinian paradigm, i.e., how politics ought to be shaped by Christian values. Thus, Leithart’s book is part of a long running debate in the Western tradition. Eastern Orthodoxy venerates Constantine as a saint, but there is relatively little written about political theology in the Eastern tradition.

Constructing a Political Theology

Sacrifice to Apollo – 5th BCE Vase in Louvre

One of the fascinating insights presented by Leithart is his argument that: (1) every ancient city had a sacrificial center, (2) Constantine’s significance lies in his abandonment of the responsibility of attending to the sacrifices expected of Roman emperors, and (3) just as significant his welcoming the church, the city of God founded on the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross (pp. 326-331). Leithart’s political theology juxtaposes pagan Rome against the New Jerusalem, the Church.

He writes:

The church too was a sacrificial city, the true city of sacrifice, the city of final sacrifice, which in its Eucharistic liturgy of sacrifice announced the end of animal sacrifice and the initiation of a new sacrificial order (p. 329).

I found chapter 6 “End of Sacrifice” especially helpful for understanding the way religion and sacrifice permeated pagan Rome and how Constantine’s “conversion” led to the passing of pagan sacrificial system and the ascendancy of the Christian Eucharist as the basis for Western culture. What is striking about this passage is that one can easily see in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy a resemblance to the sacrificial city described by Leithart, but it is much harder to see this resemblance in the Reformed churches due to the fact that the sermon has displaced the Eucharist in many Reformed congregations. Nonetheless, it should be noted that many Reformed churches still proclaim Christ’s sacrificial death.

St. Polycarp Before the Crowds

As an Orthodox Christian I would like to point out the role of the early martyrs in the evangelization of the Roman Empire. The ancient polis rested on the civic liturgy, i.e., public officials offering up sacrifices to the gods to ensure the well being of the city. The ancient Christians attacked the ancient sacrificial system through two means: (1) the proclamation of the Good News of Christ’s death and resurrection, and (2) their willingness to sacrifice their lives for the Gospel of Christ. The inability of the authorities to cow the Christians like Polycarp into offering up the traditional sacrifices meant the end of the pagan religions.

Leithart asserts that Constantine provides a model for Christian political practice. As much as I’d like to support Leithart in this there are a number of questions that need to be raised from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. One is that Constantine was a catechumen for much of his adult life and was not baptized until shortly before his death. The significance here is that he was able to rule with a relatively free hand executing members of his household without fear of excommunication. The first Christian emperor was Theodosius who was baptized shortly after he became emperor. It was only because Theodosius had been baptized that Bishop Ambrose of Milan was able to threaten him with excommunication over the massacre of 7000 in Thessalonica in 380. The sacrament of baptism effectively brought the most powerful man in the Roman Empire under the authority of the Church. It would have been good for Leithart to have qualified his touting Constantine as a role model for Christian politics by presenting him as providing the beginning of a social template and by including other notable Christian rulers, e.g., Justinian the Great in the East and Charlemagne in the West.

Post-Constantinian Society

Killing Fields – Phnom Penh, Cambodia

In the subsection “There Will Be Blood, Again” (pp. 340-341), Leithart discusses the implications of a post-Constantinian society. He asserts that when the modern state excludes the church, it has no moral brakes to speak of and instead seeks to be “resacralized” by other means (p. 340). This is a point that needs to be explored through a discussion as to whether or not the Nazi Holocaust, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the so-called “right” to abortion are modern equivalents to ancient ritual offerings to the gods. Leithart’s suggestion of a grim nihilistic future politics is something that Christians need to take seriously. “There Will Be Blood” is a fascinating discussion of modern politics and if I have a criticism it is that it is far too brief. Only two pages?!

Conclusions and Findings

In this reviewer’s opinion Leithart’s critique of Yoder’s Anabaptist political theology is like fighting yesterday’s war. He touches on modern politics in just the last few pages of the book (pp. 340-341). Hopefully, Leithart will be writing more on this important subject matter.

Any attempt to construct a Christian political theology needs to study Constantine’s impact on the church’s role in society. Without question, it is Constantine who made Christianity into a public religion. Much of American political history, e.g., the Moral Majority, the Prohibition, the Abolitionist movement, the Puritan Commonwealth all assume the Constantinian paradigm. The widespread influence of anti-Constantinianism has impeded the ability of Christians to scrutinize Christianity’s role in modern society. It has also prevented many Christian leaders from understanding the significance of the recent move away from the Constantinian paradigm in America.

Reading Defending Constantine has made me conscious of a significant difference between Western and Eastern Christianity. Where the West has had a long continuous history with the Constantinian paradigm, Eastern Christianity has suffered numerous disruptions, e.g., the Muslim conquests of North Africa, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918. However, with the Greek War for Independence in the 1820s and the fall of Communism in the late 1980s we see attempts being made to bring back some form of the Constantinian paradigm in Russia and in the Balkans with results that can be disconcerting for Westerners schooled in Lockean liberalism. My impression is that American Protestants and Roman Catholics are much more comfortable speaking up in the public square and theorizing on Christians’ role in politics than the Orthodox. This can be seen in Liberation Theology in Roman Catholic circles and Christian Reconstructionism in Protestant circles. Orthodoxy in America has been much more reticent in its public witness despite its doctrine of symphonia. It has yet to match the literary output of Christian political thinkers in the West. There is much Christians from both the Reformed and Orthodox traditions can learn from Constantine. Leithart has done us a great favor by critiquing the anti-Constantinian prejudice widespread in American Protestantism and his presenting Constantine as a model for political theology.

Robert Arakaki

Category: Church History (Page 18 of 19)

Pentecost and the Promise of God Fulfilled

Response to Robin Phillips — “Are Calvinists Also Among the Gnostics?”

Book Review: Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

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