Category: Peter Leithart (Page 2 of 2)

A Protestant Exodus? – My Response to Peter Leithart

October 17, 2013 / Robert Arakaki / 42 Comments

Maria Lago Studio “Exodus” Source

In Rev. Peter Leithart’s recent column for First Things: “The tragedy of conversion” (7 October 2013), he describes as tragic Protestants who acquired the taste for “catholicity and unity” and instead of remaining Protestant go so far as to convert to the Orthodox Church or to Rome. This is a crisis affecting Protestantism in general and the Federal Vision movement in particular. The New York Times published an article in 2009 about this trend: “More Protestants Find a Home in Orthodox Antioch Church.”

The recent exodus while not large in number is significant. Scott Hahn, a former Presbyterian seminary professor, wrote about his conversion in Rome Sweet Home. Other notable converts include Thomas Howard and Francis Beckwith, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society. More recently, a certain amount of controversy surrounded Jason Stellman. Ironically, it was Pastor Stellman whom the PCA assigned to be the lead prosecutor for Leithart’s heresy trial!

On the Eastern Orthodox side the late Peter Gillquist tells the story how he and his fellow Campus Crusade for Christ co-workers became Orthodox in his book Becoming Orthodox. Clark Carlton is a former Baptist seminarian and Matthew Gallatin a former Calvary Chapel pastor. Frank Schaeffer, son of the famous Evangelical thinker, Francis Schaeffer, converted to Orthodoxy. One prominent convert is the late Jaroslav Pelikan, world renowned Yale University professor who authored the five volume The Christian Tradition. Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publications and a former ruling elder in the PCA, is now a deacon serving the Orthodox Church.

When one looks at the kind of people exiting Protestantism, we see some of the most seasoned, serious, and brightest people of the Evangelical world: seminarians, seminary professors, pastors, authors, publishers, leaders of leading Evangelical organizations. One has to ask: What is going on here!?!

My assessment is that Protestantism having lost its theological center has become a fractured and confusing, if not volatile and unstable. Troubled by this state of confusion many are seeking refuge in the historic early Church. This is the backdrop to Leithart’s recent column.

Protestantism’s Meltdown

In the first half of the twentieth century American Protestantism was divided principally between liberals and conservatives. Then in the 1950s and 1960s there was an influx of Pentecostalism into historic mainline Protestant churches. The 1970s marked the beginning of the shift to post-denominational Protestantism. More recently, American Protestantism saw the rise of mega churches whose seeker friendly services downplayed doctrine. Church shopping became the new normal as people began to evaluate churches in terms of the services they had to offer instead of their teachings.

An ironic reaction to all this has been a growing ancient-future movement that sought to rediscover their roots in ancient Christianity. Soon Evangelicals began having processions with acolytes carrying crosses, clergy wearing vestments, reciting the Nicene Creed, quoting early church fathers, and holding weekly Eucharist. This return to the roots movement took several forms. One was the Emergent Movement which attempted to be post-modern and eclectic in worship and doctrine. Another was the Canterbury trail movement where people joined one of the various Anglican off-shoots from Episcopalianism.

Peter Leithart is part of the Federal Vision (FV) movement, a high church expression of Reformed theology that seeks to give greater emphasis to covenant theology, Trinitarian thinking, and the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion – as did many if not most of the early Reformers.

Leithart and his FV colleagues believe themselves to be on the cutting edge of “the-future-church” and much closer to getting it right than say the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) or the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). In actuality, they are just another “new-and-improved” Reformed splinter group. For them, a Christian moving from an older Protestant denomination–Methodist, Baptist, Anglican, or mainline Reformed—to the Federal Vision would be making a wise move in the right direction.

Given the peculiar way the FV folks understand “catholicity and unity,” it is no surprise that they think a Protestant converting to Orthodoxy is going in the wrong direction. An even bigger problem for them is knowledgeable Reformed Christians from the Federal Vision jumping ship! There is a quiet exodus from the FV to Orthodoxy under way right now. This is the growing crisis that the Rev. Peter Leithart is trying to head off.

Keeping the sheep in line

A former PCA elder, currently an Orthodox catechumen, explained to me the implicit insult in his move towards Orthodoxy: “What! You actually believe the Apostles and their disciples got the Faith right centuries ago . . . before our FV insights . . . . Grrrrr!!” What adds to their grief and distress is that Pastor Leithart and his mentor Pastor James B. Jordan were two of the prominent CREC & PCA leaders who cracked open the door for their bright and zealous disciples to inquire into historic Orthodoxy with the unexpected results of some converting to Orthodoxy! Now, they are writing articles like this one in an effort at damage control. It seems to me that what Rev. Leithart is trying to do is keep people from straying off the Protestant reservation.

Leithart’s Theology of Time

Leithart’s opposition to Protestants converting to Orthodoxy stems from his understanding church history.

He writes:

Apart from all the detailed historical arguments, this quest makes an assumption about the nature of time, an assumption that I have labeled “tragic.”

It’s the assumption that the old is always purer and better, and that if we want to regain life and health we need to go back to the beginning (Emphasis added).

Leithart sees church history as progressive and dialectical. For him, early Christianity was just the beginning of a long evolutionary journey and that the mature church of Protestantism is to be preferred over the infancy of early Christianity. To dissuade Protestants from converting to Orthodoxy Leithart argues that the true Church is not to be found among the Protestants, Catholics, or Orthodox but ahead of us in the future. He writes:

History is patterned in the same way. Eden is not the golden time to which we return; it is the infancy from which we begin and grow up. The golden age is ahead, in the Edenic Jerusalem.

This evolutionary approach to church history is congruent with postmillennialism favored by Reformed theologians. It reminds me of Mercersburg Theology’s Philip Schaff who posited that church history is the outworking of a Hegelian dialect, that over time division will be resolved into deeper unity, and that over time heresy and error will be resolved into deeper truth. This is radically at odds with how Orthodoxy understands truth and what the Bible teaches.

Leithart’s portrayal of time is based on a false characterization of the Orthodox understanding of time. Time is not the issue here. The issue here is the promise of the Holy Spirit Christ made to His Apostles in the Upper Room discourse (John 13-16). Was the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to be a brief flash of inspiration for the Apostles and their disciples? Or did the Holy Spirit come to inhabit the Church permanently, “abide with you forever” (John 14:16)? For the Orthodox these are not difficult questions. Christ’s promises were proven true not only in the book of Acts but in subsequent church history. For Orthodox Christians the Holy Spirit guided the early Church through the Ecumenical Councils and continues to guide the Church. This is very different from the Blinked-Out/Blinked-On theory of church history prevalent among Protestants. This theory assumes that the light went out in the early Church and did not come back on until the Protestant Reformation. The Orthodox understanding of Holy Tradition and the Bible arising out of Holy Tradition means that the Apostles got their teachings directly from Christ and the Holy Spirit. Neither Scripture nor Tradition are dependent on Rev. Leithart’s notion that time is the crucial factor or his implicit evolutionary assumption “new is always better.”

The Faith Once and for All Delivered to the Saints

The Bible rules out an evolutionary understanding of theology. We find in Jude 3:

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. (Emphasis added; OSB)

There are three important points made in this short verse. One, the word πιστει (pistei, faith) has the definite article which indicates that the writer has in mind a body of truth or a set of doctrines. This points to one true Faith, not multiple versions as would be assumed by Leithart’s theory of history. Two, the word παραδοθειση (paradotheise, aorist passive participle, delivered) points to a traditioning process. Reinecker’s Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament has this to say about παραδοθειση:

The word is used for handing down authorized tradition in Israel (s. 1 Cor. 15:1-3; 2 Thess. 3:6), and Jude is therefore saying that the Christian apostolic tradition is normative for the people of God (Green). (p. 803)

The Christian Faith is not something discovered through rational study of the Bible or the result of creative engagement with culture, but received from the Apostles. Protestant theology with its sola scriptura assumes that Christian doctrine arises from the study of Scripture independent of Tradition. This is a novel theological method alien to that of the early Church Fathers. Three, the word ‘απαξ (hapax) points to a unique one-time revelation. The same word used in Hebrews 9:28 to describe Christ’s unique one-time sacrifice on the Cross. That one time revelation was the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus taught his Apostles the Faith they were to teach the nations. As recipients of the Apostolic Tradition we are obligated to safeguard it from change until the Lord returns at the Second Coming. Thus, if we take Jude 3 at face value we have no choice but to reject Rev. Leithart’s evolutionary approach to Christian doctrine.

Another telling and related bible verse few Protestants seem to notice is 2 Thessalonians 2:15: “Therefore, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by words or our epistle.” (Emphasis added; OSB) Note that the verb used here is “stand fast” (στηκεν), not to move ahead. This sense of standing one’s ground can be found in Paul’s use of the same Greek word in 1 Corinthians 16:13 and Galatians 5:1.

If one holds to the traditioning model of theology then antiquity becomes a very important criterion for theological orthodoxy. Antiquity is important, not because older is better but because antiquity is one of the distinguishing markers of apostolicity. Apostolicity without antiquity is sheer nonsense. That is why unbroken apostolic succession is so important. This leaves Protestants seeking the early Church with only two choices: acceptance of Orthodoxy’s Holy Tradition or submission to the Roman Pontiff. Anglicanism, despite its having bishops, because it originated from a schismatic break with Rome, cannot claim unbroken continuity.

Coming to Zion

St. Seraphim Cathedral – Dallas, Texas

The fundamental problem with Rev. Leithart’s approach to church history is his understanding of time as χρονος (chronos). It omits the understanding of history as καιρος (kairos). Because of the Incarnation of the divine Word, human history is no longer trapped by chronological time. Because the Kingdom of God has broken into human history the golden age Leithart longs for is present in the Liturgy. Orthodox worship involves the shift from chronos to kairos. Frederica Mathewes-Green describes in At the Corner of East and Now a typical Orthodox Sunday service:

This first service of the day is called the “Kairon,” from the Greek word for time. Not chronos, orderly measured time, but kairos, the right time, the moment-in-time, the time of fulfillment. Worship lifts us out of ordinary time into the eternal now. At the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, the deacon says to the priest, “It is time for the Lord to act.” (p. 15)

For Orthodoxy the golden era of Christianity is now. We are not moving towards Mount Zion, we are already at Mount Zion. We read in Hebrews 12:22-24:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. (Emphasis added; OSB)

The first thing to note is the opening phrase “you have come.” The Greek for “have come” is προσεληλυθατε (proseleluthate) which is the perfect active indicative form of “come to” or “draw near.” The perfect means: you have already come to Mount Zion, not you will come one day in the future come to Mount Zion. This passage in Hebrews 12 describes what happens every time we celebrate the Divine Liturgy.

"The Lamb of God is broken and shared, broken but divided; forever eaten yet never consumed, but sanctifying those who partake of Him."

“The Lamb of God is broken and shared, broken but not divided; forever eaten yet never consumed, . . .”

The Church is the city of the living God, not in the process of becoming the city of God. In the Eucharist the local congregation gathers as the people of God to join in the eternal worship of heaven. As we transition into the second half of the Liturgy the Trisagion hymn reminds us that in the Eucharist we are surrounded by an innumerable number of angels. When I look around the church I see icons of the saints, “the spirits of just men made perfect.” As we go up for Holy Communion we see the communion chalice which contains the blood of Christ which speaks more powerfully than that of Abel’s. Thus, Hebrews 12:22-24 describes the Orthodox Liturgy. Gabe Martini notes in his response to Rev. Leithart:

In the Eucharistic fellowship of the Church, we are ever-united with all the Saints of history, both past and present. Our orientation is eschatological, and eschatology is not merely “the future,” in a strictly linear sense. This is nowhere more pronounced than in our celebration of the Eucharist, which is an event that points the faithful towards the east—not merely towards Eden or the beginnings of a nostalgic faith, but towards the great wedding feast of the Lamb. This is played out not only in our written tradition and services, but also in our iconography of the Mystical Supper, which shows both Jesus and the apostles not in a dingy upper room of first-century Palestine but at the table of the wedding feast in eternity.

Thus, if Rev. Leithart’s theological argument is flawed, then Protestants should give serious consideration to converting to Orthodoxy. Crossing the Bosphorus presents a way out of a current situation in Protestantism that Leithart described as “agonizing.” It involves leaving a sinking ship for a more structurally sound vessel. If Protestantism is a sinking ship, the real tragedy would be for one to go down with the ship and not help others cross over to a better, more stable and historic boat. I would urge Rev. Leithart and other Protestants to reconsider their position.

The Blessings of Crossing Over

The Bosphorus Strait

People convert for various reasons. Part of what prompted my converting to Orthodoxy was Protestantism’s theological incoherence. Despite the initial appeal of sola scriptura I found Protestantism’s lack of Tradition has resulted in hermeneutical havoc. My research led me to the unexpected conclusion that Protestantism’s hermeneutical chaos was intrinsic to sola Scriptura! When I discovered the Ecumenical Councils and the notion of Holy Tradition I found a stable framework for reading Scripture. One unanticipated blessing was Orthodoxy’s rich tradition of spirituality which taught me about the need for denying the passions the flesh and the cultivation of humility for spiritual growth in Christ. Another benefit in converting to Orthodoxy is that I found myself receiving the Eucharist in the same church as that of the ancient fathers like John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Athanasius the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem etc. I find great comfort knowing that I am now in the one holy catholic and apostolic Church confessed in the Nicene Creed. I no longer find myself yearning to be part of that Church because I am now at home. I pray other yearning Protestants will find a home in the Orthodox Church.

Robert Arakaki

See Also

Rev. Peter Leithart: “Too catholic to be Catholic.”

Robert Arakaki: “Unintentional Schism? A Response to Peter Leithart’s ‘Too catholic to be Catholic.”

Robert Arakaki: “Crossing the Bosphorus.”

Unintentional Schism? A Response to Peter Leithart’s “Too catholic to be Catholic”

June 12, 2012 / Robert Arakaki / 39 Comments

Victim of Climate Change?

Of late Protestantism seems to be undergoing a “climate change.” Theological positions are shifting and church affiliations are undergoing realignment in surprising ways. Reformed Christians are rediscovering liturgical worship and the church fathers. While pastors sought to enrich their Protestant heritage, they did not intend that people would jettison their Protestantism altogether and become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. These defections are raising concerns among pastors. Peter Leithart in a recent posting noted:

My friends tell me that my name has been invoked in various web skirmishes concerning Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism, sometimes by people, including friends, who claim that I nurtured them along in their departure from the Protestant world. My friends also hinted that it would be good for me to say again why I’m not heading to Rome or Constantinople or Moscow (Russia!), nor encouraging anyone to do so.

Leithart’s “Too catholic to be Catholic” is an apologia for his remaining Protestant. A considerable part of the article focused on the matter of closed Communion and church unity. He argues that converting to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy does not heal divisions among Christians but rather reproduces the divisions in different ways.

Mercersburg Theology Paves the Way

I once held to this view. Prior to becoming Orthodox my theology was shaped by Mercersburg theology. Mercersburg Theology was a form of high church Calvinism in the 1800s that sought to incorporate the early church fathers and the Eucharist into Reformed Christianity. In many ways the Mercersburg theologians, John Nevin and Philip Schaff, anticipated the inclusive approach advocated by Leithart by more than a century. There is little that is new to what Leithart is advocating. There seems to be a Mercersburg revival among young Reformed scholars like W. Brad Littlejohn and Jonathan Bonomo.

Like Nevin and Schaff I believed then that through a historical dialectic the divisions between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism would be resolved. According to this view even if I were to become a Catholic, the dividing issues would still remain between the two traditions and for that reason it would be better to remain a Protestant and help Protestants recover their Catholic roots. In this way a more radical healing of the divisions would come about.

However, as I studied the early Church the more the underlying assumptions of Mercersburg Theology and the Protestant Reformation became problematic. Theology in the early Church was based upon the receiving of Holy Tradition and being in communion with its bishops. Nowhere was there any evidence of people reading the Bible for themselves. Contrary to the popular understanding of tradition as extra-biblical man-made inventions, the early Christians sought to preserve the teachings and practices of the Apostles. (See my posting on apostolic succession.) And just as surprising was the discovery that the New Testament teaches the passing on of the apostolic doctrine from one generation to the next (II Timothy 1:13-14, 2:2; II Thessalonians 2:15). (See my posting on the biblical basis for Holy Tradition.)

This historic-biblical understanding of Tradition was radically different from Mercersburg’s scholastic method which viewed the writings of the church fathers as theological resources for constructing theological systems than as part of a traditioning process. The notion of Tradition contradicts the idea of doctrinal evolution that underlies much of Western Christianity. For the early Christians then and Orthodoxy today, Holy Tradition is a body of doctrine and praxis received as a treasure to be safeguarded and preserved from alteration; it is not a jar of silly putty to be shaped and played with as we like. Furthermore, theology in the early Church was conciliar in which the Church Catholic made binding decisions on matters of doctrine and practice. This was a fulfillment of Christ’s promise that he would send the Holy Spirit to guide the Church into all truth. (See my recent blog posting on Pentecost.) What impressed me about the early Church was the reality of church unity back then. As a Protestant I was haunted by the fact that there was so much theological diversity among Protestants and even within the same denomination. And I was troubled by the fact that Protestant Christianity seemed to bear little resemblance to the early Church.

Horizontal Unity versus Vertical Unity

Leithart posed the question: “Are you willing to start going to a Eucharistic table where your Protestant friends are no longer welcome?” My response is that there are two dimensions to Eucharistic unity: horizontal unity in which one shares the same faith with others across the world in the present moment and vertical unity in which one shares the same faith with others across time, e.g., fellowship with the church fathers. As I became increasingly aware of the significant differences between Protestantism and the early church fathers I reached the conclusion that Protestants, even the original Reformers, would be barred from receiving Communion in the early Church. This led me to an awkward dilemma. Did I want to be in communion with contemporary Protestantism and out of communion with the early church fathers and the Ecumenical Councils? Or was I willing to give up my Protestant beliefs in order to be in communion with the one holy catholic and apostolic Church?

In other words, Pastor Leithart’s advocacy of open communion is inadvertently divisive because it sacrifices vertical unity with the historic Church for horizontal unity with the contemporary Protestant church.

Many Protestants would object: But we believe in the same things the early Christians did! I would respond: Do you really believe the same things the early Christians did?

Does your church accept the Nicene Creed as authoritative? (Many Evangelicals today never heard of the Nicene Creed.)
Does your church celebrate the historic Liturgy or is your order of worship something recently concocted? (Most Protestant churches do not celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday. Those who celebrate the Eucharist regularly do not have a received liturgical tradition that goes back to the Apostles, e.g., the Liturgy of St. James, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Mark.)
Does your church accept the doctrine of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood as taught by the early church fathers and the ancient liturgies? (Most Protestants today believe that the bread and wine are just symbols. The Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation and the Reformed doctrine of the spiritual feeding in the Lord’s Supper have no counterpart in the teachings of the early Church.)
Who is your bishop? What is his line of succession? (Virtually all Protestants lack bishops in the historic sense.)
Does your church accept the Seventh Ecumenical Council’s decision about the veneration of icons? (No Protestant denominations and none of the Reformers venerated icons as decreed by Nicea II.)
Does your church reject the novel doctrines of sola fide (justification by faith alone) and sola scriptura (the Bible alone)? (None of the early church fathers taught these Protestant doctrines.)

The gap between modern day Protestantism and the early Church is considerable. The early Church did not subscribe to the view that if one accepted Jesus as Savior one was automatically a Christian and therefore a member of the body of Christ. Becoming a Christian in the early Church was a fairly lengthy process in which one faithfully attended the Sunday liturgies for at least a year and learned the Creed by heart. Conversion in the early Church meant undergoing the sacrament of Baptism in which one was born anew in Christ, received the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of Chrismation, then brought before the altar where one received the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. (See Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures, especially Lectures XIX to XXIII.)

Pastor Leithart is critical of the notion of closed communion. He wonders what the difference is between the Catholics, Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, or the Continental Reformed? For Pastor Leithart this is a rhetorical throw away question. But actually, this is a very useful question to ask. Another way to pose the question is to ask: What does Communion mean for this particular body? What does Communion tell me about the boundaries for their faith? How a church body practices Communion brings to light how they define the parameters of doctrinal orthodoxy, i.e., how it distinguishes right doctrine from heresy. It shines a spotlight on the theological core of the church body. A church body without a theological core is like a person without an identity (a very unhealthy situation to be in!).

Communion in Roman Catholicism means: (1) that one accepts the infallible teaching authority of the Pope and (2) that one accepts the Catholic Church’s dogma on transubstantiation. Communion in the Orthodox Church means: (1) that one has received the “pattern of sound teachings” (II Timothy 1:13-14) passed on from the Apostles through the bishops (II Timothy 2:2) to the church of today, and (2) that one has placed one’s self under the authority of the bishop the guardian and teacher of Apostolic Tradition (II Timothy 4:1-5). In the case of the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod, to be in communion means that one accepts the distinctive Lutheran doctrines as found in the Book of Concord. Even Baptists practice a form of closed communion; only those who have been baptized by total immersion are granted access to the communion table.

What Pastor Leithart is doing with his rhetorical question is not only trivializing the Eucharist by detaching it from doctrinal authority but isolating the Eucharist from the historic church be it Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox. He seems to be saying we all should be giving communion to each other regardless of our doctrines or regardless of our what our faith tradition teaches. Is he implying that there are no core doctrines? And that communion is to be given to all without condition? And that there is no such thing as wrong doctrine (heresy)? I’m sure that Pastor Leithart does have doctrinal standards that he applies when he celebrates Holy Communion. Once he spells out what the preconditions are then he in effect declares what he considers to be the boundaries of his church tradition.

A Critique of the Branch Theory of the Church

Leithart’s criticism of closed communion is apparently based upon the branch theory of the church. The branch theory of the church believes that despite the outward divisions, the various denominations (branches) remain part of the one true Church. This view holds that despite the differences we are all one and that we need to recover a visible expression of our underlying oneness. In its original version, the branch theory encompassed the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions; then somewhere along the way it was broadened to include Lutherans, Reformed Christians, Baptists, and born again Evangelicals! Given Protestantism’s inability to find common theological ground, the attempt is made to substitute orthodoxy with inclusiveness. Such an approach is radically at odds with historic Christianity. Furthermore, the branch theory calls into question Christ’s promises that the gates of Hell would not prevail over the Church and that the Holy Spirit would guide the Church into all truth. (See my recent blog posting: Pentecost and the Promise of God Fulfilled.)

Orthodoxy rejects the branch theory on several grounds. One, none of the church fathers taught this doctrine. Historically, it was invented by the Anglican theologian, William Palmer (1803-1885), and then popularized by the Oxford Movement in the mid 1800s. Two, the branch theory assumes that heterodoxy is compatible with the one true Church. Three, the branch theory assumes that each of the branch (denomination) has a part of the Truth but no one branch (denomination) has retained Apostolic Tradition intact. This implies that the original Apostolic Tradition is no longer intact but exists only in broken fragments. On the grounds that it has faithfully preserved the Apostles’ teachings for the past two thousand years, Orthodoxy is compelled to reject the branch theory. The irony and tragedy here is that Leithart’s position on open communion seems to have roots going back to the 1800s, not to the ancient Church.

Is denying Communion to Protestants a Bad Thing?

Orthodoxy is not a social club but a covenant community entrusted with safeguarding the Apostolic Tradition. This is the teaching and practice of the Apostles handed down from generation to generation with care and diligence; much like how the crown jewels of the British monarchy are treated with great respect and care. Protestants are denied Communion because they do not share in the historic Faith but hold to a novel theological system that none of the church fathers taught.

By denying Protestants Communion Orthodoxy is actually doing Protestants a favor by making visible Protestantism’s alienation from its patristic roots. We invite Protestants to become part of a historic Faith that has been handed down from the Apostles. We invite Protestants to leave behind their doctrinal innovations and embrace the historic Christian Faith. But it should be made clear that Orthodoxy will not endorse a cheap ecumenicism that jeopardizes our ties with the historic Church. The Eucharist is not just a symbol but a genuine receiving of Christ’s body and blood. Eucharistic union with the Orthodox Church means being in communion with the one holy catholic and apostolic Church confessed in the Nicene Creed.

Learning From Ignatius of Antioch

Icon – Ignatius of Antioch (d. 98/117)

Let us give heed to Ignatius of Antioch, the third bishop of Antioch who was martyred circa 117. Tradition has it that Ignatius was one of the children Jesus took into his arms and blessed. It is important to keep in mind that Antioch was the Apostle Paul’s home church (Acts 11:25-26, 13:1-2). This means that Ignatius was discipled at one of the spiritual capitals of the early Church. Orthodoxy can claim a direct historic link to Ignatius through the Patriarchate of Antioch which still exists today. The church Antioch continues today under the leadership of the Patriarch of Antioch, Ignatius IV.

Ignatius wrote:

Let no one do any of the things appertaining to the Church without the bishop. Let that be considered a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by one whom he appoints. Wherever the bishop appears let the congregation be present; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. (Letter to the Smyrneans VIII)

For Ignatius the Catholic Church was evidenced by two things: the Eucharist and the bishop. The Orthodox Church holds to the same view as Ignatius. It is surprising that Pastor Leithart feels free to ignore the very point that Ignatius stressed over and over as he faced death as a martyr for Christ. Ignatius also has stern words of warning:

“Be not deceived,” my brethren, if any one follow a maker of schism, “he does not inherit the kingdom of God;” if any man walk in strange doctrine he has no part in the Passion. (Letter to the Philadelphians III)

What we read here from Ignatius is not a call to doctrinal inclusiveness but to doctrinal orthodoxy. “Strange doctrines” refers to any teaching not taught the Apostles and their successors, the bishops. Because they lack bishops Protestants have been vulnerable to strange teachings. The novelty and Protestant assumptions underlying Pastor Leithart’s article “Too catholic to be Catholic” becomes stark when compared against Ignatius of Antioch’s letters. The two positions are too different to be reconciled. Leithart’s “Too catholic” article cannot be squared away against Ignatius’ teachings. One has to accept the one and reject the other. This means that one must choose between communion with contemporary Protestantism or communion with the historic Church via Eastern Orthodoxy.

Conclusion

Pastor Leithart misses the mark when he makes inclusiveness and doctrinal diversity the basis for being “catholic.” What Leithart is proposing is a Protestant solution (doctrinal inclusiveness) for a Protestant problem (denominational divisions and doctrinal innovation). Ironically, Leithart’s attempt at ecumenicism exacts a high price – schism from the historic Church. To conclude, Leithart’s “catholicism” is unintentionally schismatic.

Robert Arakaki

See also: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick’s response: “Too catholic to be Catholic”: Communion With Idolators?

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: Peter Leithart (Page 2 of 2)

A Protestant Exodus? – My Response to Peter Leithart

Unintentional Schism? A Response to Peter Leithart’s “Too catholic to be Catholic”

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

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