Eastern Orthodoxy: An Evangelical Assessment - Michael Reeves

you so what we're going to look at now is we could try to do an evangelical assessment of Eastern Orthodoxy and so this isn't really looking at mission in an Eastern Orthodox majority context though it can apply towards that this is really looking at the theology and we we saw in the last session a little bit how Eastern Orthodoxy has experienced something of a revival strangely in the West and it's got a particular attraction for evangelicals I think especially in the United States at the moment and if I may I'm gonna add a couple more reasons to what we saw this morning to why there should be this attraction towards Eastern Orthodoxy in the West there's the mysticism of Eastern Orthodoxy seems to be peculiarly attractive to those dissatisfied with Western charismatic experience I give an example of that from one of the ex ministers of the church I used to be at in central London conservative evangelical church one of these ministers became a leading figure in the 1960s in the charismatic movement and then his name was Michael Harper he then converted to become an Eastern Orthodox priest and it seemed that his charismatic experience was a stepping stone towards the mysticism of Eastern Orthodoxy in the u.s. even more strongly it seems to me there's an appeal in Eastern Orthodoxy towards the rootless evangelicals there's an appeal of rootedness tradition stability similar to the appeal of Rome and a beauty an aesthetic which which is attractive an attractive contrast to the banal everydayness of evangelicalism weather it doesn't seem to be any sense of awe or wonder and so there's that seems to be especially strong attraction in the United States as I see it and also sonically more humdrum perhaps I think some of the converts you see from evangelicalism to Eastern Orthodoxy are fleeing particular Western problems to an unknown that can be molded so Roman Catholicism is a bit more of a known quantity Eastern Orthodoxy is a slightly more less defined and slightly less known quantity and therefore you can flee it into a religion that can be more comfortable according to what you want because Eastern Orthodoxy is quite vaguely understood in the West the artist mentioned that Christian Christianity in the East Eastern Orthodoxy has never experienced medieval scholasticism had Renaissance a Reformation in fact in the 1570s a Lutheran mission team was sent to Constantinople in the hopes of starting a reformation of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Eastern Orthodox simply didn't understand the categories they were using this didn't understand what they were talking about they haven't really had an Enlightenment so Eastern Orthodoxy is important and attractive to the West as well so it's important whether you're administering in Nice northa Doc's majority context or not to have some grasp of an appreciation for ability to be able to discerning Li think about Eastern Orthodoxy now this is a simply massive massive task for however long we've got and so what I'm going to try to do to give us a good handle on Eastern Orthodoxy to start with is try to get to those defining strands absolutely core moments in Eastern Orthodox theology around which other things hang the yacht has looked at gibbeted ecclesiology which is core I'm going to focus on some other issues key theological issues so that by having gone to those core doctrinal points we can then get a good sense of where Eastern Orthodoxy is at in its main concerns for example if we were to have but one hour in trying to examine Lutheranism you want to go in on justification pretty quick let's get a good understanding of justification if you then want to see well how is the reformed tradition different to the Lutheran well you certainly want to mention pretty quickly union with Christ let's talk about that and see what that's doing to the doctrine of justification I'm gonna suggest there are two main strands to Eastern Orthodox theology that you need to understand to have a fair grasp of it and the first is to do with icons now why icons why is this not a random statement well the first Sunday in Lent is called the Sunday of the triumph of Orthodoxy in the church calendar of Eastern Orthodoxy which celebrates the veneration of icons now it there's a bit of history here iconoclasm had been officially defeated but then came back in a small way and then is finally defeated under the championship of the empress Theodosia in constantinople and she leads this procession on this day in the year 8 for three taking icons back into hagia sofia and so the restoration of icons to the churches after the iconoclasts have removed them this is the triumph of Orthodoxy and therefore the triumph of Orthodoxy is all about the veneration of icons which gives you a sense of how central icons are to Orthodox identity and this then helps you understand some of the more popular face of Eastern Orthodoxy priests wearing beards for instance it's just like its Nikon ik culture the priest is an icon of Christ and so Christ had a beard the priest will have a beard Constantinople was an icon of the heavenly Jerusalem the emperor in Constantinople was to be an icon of the heavenly Emperor and so he surrounded with incredible glory and splendor now the icon controversy was really an extension of the Christological controversy it was seen as part of the christological controversy so of the seven ecumenical councils that the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to herself as the Church of the seven councils and of those seven councils the first is nice ear and really from Nicaea they're all really building on nice ear to define more clearly aspects of contested Christology so you have the Council of Nicaea which produces the first version of the Nicene Creed which then gets developed then you have Cal Seton which is not a Creed it provides a definition of the Creed and so on now the first six of these councils from Nicaea on the first six explicitly concern Christology the seventh Council which is the second Council of Nicaea in 787 concerns icons and so that and that wasn't considered to be a departure from the christological topic it was considered to be really wrapping up still disputed issues about Cristalle adji as of the second council of nicaea a say 8787 the Second Council of Nicaea defended the great Icona file theologian John of Damascus now John of Damascus argued the world is iconic in its nature and to reject icons is to fall into will possibly manic ism of a sort which says that spirit is good matter is by nature evil or at least if to reject icons is not Manichean it is and here's the central charge to reject icons is docetic it is a denial of the true humanity of Christ for John of Damascus in his defense of icons primarily turned to the Incarnation as this central defence of icons in the Incarnation Christ assumed creation created flesh so God John said day F I'd matter we'll come to back to this matter of deification in a little moment so just hold on to that language for now God deified matter making matter of vehicle of the spirit and so the logic goes if created flesh can bear the spirit and be a vehicle of the Spirit and God's revelation so can created wood and paint and that wasn't seemed to be a strange extrapolation because Christ is the head of creation all creation must follow him all creation will be glorified in him ultimately and so in Christ we see God uses created matter flesh as a vehicle of his glory and he can do that in other aspects of his creation - now that's about where John leaves things into the lake patristic iconology but the theology of icons then gets developed and I'm going to move on to Gregory Palamas a little bit later and a key component in the mature Eastern Orthodox theology of icons is an understanding of the Transfiguration of Christ an understanding of the Transfiguration that's most fully developed by Gregory Palamas now Gregory Palamas fall for you Western theologians his dates were 1296 to 1359 he is it was a monk on famous holy Mount Athos he was Archbishop of Thessalonica and he was not too far off in time from Thomas Aquinas and might be helpful to think of him as a sort of Aquinas of the east he has that significance and gravitas for the east and is really gonna set the theology for the next few hundred years now here's what pala mas does with the transfiguration and why it's important for icons so think of the Transfiguration of Christ where they see his glory and his face shines like the Sun and his clothes are whiter than any laundry could whiten what happens is in the Transfiguration the light of divine glory shines here's the key bit from Jesus of Nazareth human flesh divine glory shines through human flesh created flesh as a divine light shines forth from picture of all human flesh and it is perceived both intellectually and sensibly so there's an intellectual appreciation of the divine glory of God and you can actually see it so the disciples can see it in his flesh now this light of Transfiguration would tend to get referred to in the theology by Paulo Mass and others later as the light of table or table the mountain on which the Transfiguration supposed to have happened and this light the divine light of God's glory shines through the Incarnate sons created flesh and is perceived then by his disciples and they then become transformed by that sight of glory and so this light of table or is experienced by the disciples and later can today be experienced by the Saints as they are inwardly initially inwardly transformed by the perception of Christ and God's glory through Christ and so a key figure he'll be to think of Moses to who appears of course on table or the Saints in perceiving this light of divine glory are themselves transfigured their bodies become transfigured so Moses in Exodus 33 to 35 Moses spends time with God and he begins to radiate shine with God's glory himself so what happens is the glory of God shines through created matter is perceived by disciples by believers and they themselves begin to be filled with this divine light and glory and it spills over and them too and not only internally transforms them but begins to even your TISS joked about them having a glow-in-the-dark here that's the idea is that some Saints particularly on Mount Athos go the stories some Saints have been transfigured in this life so that they glow they seem afire with the light of God's glory so that the picture is God's divine glory shines first of all through the human flesh that created flesh of the incarnate son is perceived then by disciples and believers who themselves receiving this light of type or this divine glory then themselves pass it on shine on the light of divine glory hence you can not only see the picture above flesh of Jesus and see divine glory shining through it wood and paint other created matter can be vehicles of divine glory and so can Saints so that you could have an icon of Moses or Gregory Palamas himself Saints who've beheld the divine glory themselves have become glorious and you can have icons of them and by beholding a saint you can receive God's glory so you could spend time gazing upon an icon of Christ or Mary or Gregory Palamas and through that what you're what you're wanting is to see the uncreated divine light of God's glory that's what you're wanting to experience there's this mystical appreciation of God's glory now with Gregory Palamas it seems to me that the idea of deification in this theology has undergone somewhat of a change let me unpack this in the early church fathers you see clearly on the second century theologians talking about the idea of deification but as I read the early church fathers it seems to me what they mean by defecation is something rather different to what pala Mass means by a defecation and what theologians in Eastern Orthodoxy subsequently mean when you read say Irenaeus of Lyon Athanasius let's take a fallacious Athanasius he believed that the son becoming incarnate God becomes man that man might become God the Son of God becomes man that meant but might become sons of God what the son is bringing to us is his knowledge of the father he is in the image of his father because he knows his father he couldn't image his father if he didn't know his father and so he's bringing the knowledge of God and bringing us into his own communion with his father and so deification in the early church seems to me to be something quite akin to what we would call adoption today that Saints are united to Christ and brought to share the divine communion and by sharing the divine communion the sons communion knowledge of his father by doing that become transformed and glorified Christ like glorious holy so that there's there's quite a relational knowledge based a relational communion understanding of what deification is here which as I say I think can be likened to adoption with Palmas though that's now really shifted with Palomar deification means to be filled with the uncreated light so it's not so clearly a relational idea anymore and we're gonna see a little bit more why with an extra bit of his theology in place this is not really a relational thing it's receiving the force of divine glory and that that's important because when we talk about deification it it seems to me as I read the early church fathers and as I read Paulo Mass and subsequent Orthodox theologians that there's not one doctrine of deification there's a shifting over time which is worth noting and so when you read early church fathers don't read in a modern eastern orthodox understanding of deification I don't believe they're exactly the same so that's the first basic strand of Eastern Orthodoxy the understanding of icons the second key element of Eastern Orthodox theology that helps you get a get a handle on it as a whole is is the idea of God's incomprehensible ëthey no theologians in the East and West have traditionally and normally believed in the incomprehensible 'ti of God but they mean rather different things by it so Augustine for instance absolutely believed in the in comprehensibility of God but he didn't mean quite what we're going to see later Eastern Orthodox theologians meaning by it when or gustan talked about the incomprehensive ility of God he meant it more like this God is intelligible but my knowledge of him is not comprehensive so let me try to take an example I hope this works so I know our giris my knowledge of him unless he's been lying to even if he's been lying to me I know some things about me that even just by looking at him but now Acuras is a great man there's much to know about him but he is finite so even without Garris I have a true knowledge of him however much I know him I have a true knowledge of him but I don't comprehensively know him I don't know everything about him there's loads of our our Garris I don't know just as I can see him now but I can't see every aspect of him right now does that make sense so my knowledge of him is I have a true knowledge my knowledge he's intelligible to me but my knowledge is not comprehensive all sided and if that is true of our Garris a finite human being how much more so with God who is infinite I this is Augustine's thinking I becomes really standard Western thinking I do have true knowledge of God through his revelation of himself but it's not a comprehensive knowledge I hope to grow in it but being infinite my finite mind will never completely know everything about God I want to keep growing in the knowledge of His infinite riches but in Eastern Orthodoxy in comprehensibility means something slightly different and the great theologian of divine incomprehensible 'ti is the theologian who's known today as pseudo-dionysius he's uncle Dennis in the West now while Dennis lived he was living in ministering in the late 5th early 6th century his works were written as if they were composed by dionysius the areopagite from who was converted in acts 17 and so because it's written as if that guy had written it his works acquired an almost apostolic authority in many circles both east and west actually particularly in the East and his writings had simply enormous influence and Dionysius or Dennis really feeds very strongly he's a real Fountainhead of the Eastern Orthodox tradition of apophatic theology yot has mentioned apophatic theology and the West it's often known as the via negativa the way of negation because apophatic theology is about negation denial meaning that when we did apophatic theology we speak of God in his tries transcendence by saying what he's not so God is not in time he does not have a body he's not sinful he's not limited and so on and that is in in in a pure apophatic theologians mind is more accurate than to say what he is for example God loves his people I love my wife now if I simply think my love for my wife that love is exactly the same as God's love I'm going to get confused so apophatic theology say you can't simply take the terms of reference we use and project them up onto God it's dangerous and in fact so dangerous is it that every thought we have about God God is love holy righteous merciful every thought because of the difference between us and God every thought is in fact a deceptive likeness not a helpful revelation but because of how different we are and so in a sense you could understand you know pure apophatic theology is a raging fear of idolatry if every thought about God that I have is a deceptive likeness you want to get rid of the idols so what I do is I in a sense fence off my knowledge of God by saying he's not that he's not that he's not that my fear is that you create a God not only beyond words but beyond the word and so create for yourself a super Idol there's my fear with this pure apophatic theology and no language in this understanding is adequate to describe the incomprehensible because God is actually beyond negation as well as affirmation using language that goes back to Plato Dionysus would say that God is not only beyond intelligibility God is literally above essence he is super essential now what's that going to do to your knowledge of God if that's how you do if that's your way to do theology well having fenced-off what God is not you haven't yet said what he is and so what God is has not been defined and God is left with this theology ultimately in the darkness of unknowing and this in Eastern Orthodox circles it is argued is just how God has revealed himself so at Sinai the Lord is hidden in thick cloud and darkness and that's not a point about the law it's about how God reveals himself that God is actually hidden in his revelation now with those two things in mind so the icons we want to see the light of divine glory this lighter table or and God is unknowable and absolutely hidden in darkness you see attention here we got a big dilemma here how do you see the unseeable if the goal is to see the uncreated light of divine glory but God is completely unknowable what what do we do with that tension and Gregory Palamas came up with an answer he developed a distinction between the essence of God and the energies of God now and this is characteristic of em I snorted ox theology upon us in making this distinction was absolutely critical in founding the shape of Eastern Orthodoxy now the essence of God God in his being is utterly unknowable utterly in communicable so God reveals himself in his energies now what are these energies in a sense you could say this is God in himself God in his essence and God as he works outwardly God add extra but but these energies they are the uncreated glory of God this is not a created thing so you have the essence and the uncreated energies of God the workings the operations of God and these energies are inseparable from the essence of God but they are distinct because the essence of God remember is utterly incomprehensible but we will perceive the energies of God now you could in the West you might think that sounds a bit like how God is in himself and then you've got grace so God who God is in eternity and then how he relates to us sort of economic and immanent Trinity stuff you could be thinking and that sort so it wouldn't quite be accurate actually be slightly distorted understanding vladimir lossky says this lossky says the energy is not a divine function which exists on account of creatures that BR on staying a grace would know got it gracious towards creatures that's not how it works listeners even if creatures did not exist God would nonetheless manifest himself beyond his essence just as the Rays of the Sun would shine out from the solar disk whether or not there were any beings capable of receiving their light so this is not like grace these energies are not a kindness of God as such God just emanates out this is not a personal communication here now I'm hoping then that having seen those two key strands icons and gods in comprehensibility and seeing how Palmas is trying to hold that together with the energies essence distinction I'm hoping we've then got a good handle on some of the essence of that's not meant to be a pond of Eastern Orthodox theology so how are we then to assess this what are we to make of this well with the icons I think when the first places to go most popularly evangelicals would go as they'd say isn't there going to be a confusion between the veneration of icons and adoration or worship and I think that's a legitimate challenge and worry we do need to respect that distinction to be fair a distinction in veneration and adoration though it might get confused popularly I've got one of my staff Bob Letham he told me about the time there he went round to a conservative household very much of the reformed tradition and there in the living room by the piano framed nicely was a picture of the doctor Martyn lloyd-jones and Bob Levin was saying now they were venerating that there was a real respect for lloyd-jones there it absolutely was not worship but there was a real respect there so we need to we need to understand there is the possibility to make a distinction even though that distinction might actually collapse in practice but we're theologians I think should go is a little bit deeper into some of the more core issues and some Western theologians have wanted to ask this this distinct shoot in essence and energies does this mean there are two parts to God and can you divide God up in this way and there seem to be some important problems some fall out here if you do for instance what does that mean about the Incarnation can the Sun really become incarnate if God is in communicable now what Palomar could say is well God's energies of become incarnate because God's essence is absolutely in communicable but if you say that if you went for that solution Athanasius would have you in a heartbeat because Nicaea was all about defending that the son the one who becomes incarnate is of the same being being essence of the father it is the one who sought the very being of God of the Father who becomes incarnate it is not merely the energies of God that becomes incarnate it is the essence of God so God has communicated his very being in the Incarnation so this seems to Western theologies to be a problem here with the Incarnation by having these two parts in God a next question will be how can we know the unknowable God with such a sharp discrepancy between the knowable energies and the unknowable essence of God can we actually know God and we're left without confidence in our knowledge of or a standing before God and Donald Fairburn at gordon-conwell has pointed out the constant refrain that you get in Orthodox liturgy lord have mercy lord have mercy lord have mercy but the repetition of it is actually suggesting a lack of real confidence in that mercy because God is unknowable you don't know if he is gonna have mercy or has had mercy and so Eastern Orthodoxy with this radical understanding of God's incomprehensible 'ti leaves you with a mystical contemplation that I suggest is ultimately agnostic it is not a faith that can seek understanding and this is as I see it a departure from what Athanasius fought for against areas Athanasius taught that because the word is truly God and becomes flesh that means there is a true revelation of God in the Incarnation an earthen easy said that to distinguish himself from Aris Oh arias was saying the son who becomes flesh is not truly God but what does that mean for revelation if the son is not truly God you've not got a real revelation of God in the Incarnation but this seems to be exactly where Eastern Orthodox is taking you to similar conclusions as Arianism please I'm not suggesting Eastern Orthodoxy is Arian it's got there through a slightly different route but it's left you with a similar problem from there let me turn to just quickly a couple of other issues quite quickly that we haven't had time to address the first I've put I've put in authority scripture tradition now that is such a Western thing to have written any Eastern Orthodox guy would say first of all authority what a Western concern and scripture and tradition what a Western way of phrasing it because but but a Protestant is concerned with these things Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't really seem to be especially concerned with questions of authority it thinks more of a spiritual stream of life and grace of which both Scripture and tradition er apart so Basil the Great said we do not content ourselves with what was reported in Acts and in the epistles and the Gospels but both before and after reading them we add other doctrines received from oral teaching and carrying much weight in the mystery that's worth saying Eastern Orthodox theologians speak with different emphases about the role of Scripture and its relationship to tradition so there's not quite one voice here but here's what does unite them none have scripture as a supreme authority trumping all others and I should just say when these North adducts say scripture for the Old Testament they mean the Septuagint the Alexandrian canon meaning including the Apocrypha though sometimes this is of a second-class Scripture and so processin see the same problem here they would see in Roman Catholicism that it is not the church that produced the Bible the church is the creature of the Word of God Scripture is supreme and creative and no word of man ever has the same authority as Scripture move on from revelation to soteriology sorry I'm having to move quite fast here if I'm to try to give some sense of some of these other things as well soteriology now jerem but the Orthodox Church likes to refer to herself as the Church of the seven councils and we've seen the importance of the second Council of Nicaea concerning icons but there was a church council at the same time in the same sort of timeframe that the Orthodox don't recognize it's not surprising they don't because it happened in the West it was the Council of Carthage in 84 1:8 now it's not surprising the Orthodox don't recognize it but it is significant that they don't because the Council of Carthage was the council that rejected pelagianism and in the East not having been troubled by Pelagius so directly questions of sin grace freewill were not so prominent and thus in the West theologians were more prone to consider justification grace the human will much more than they ever were in the east and then that maps out into quite a different understanding of what salvation is so first of all let's start with a human problem in Eastern Orthodoxy there is again there are different positions but there is generally a considerably weaker view of the fall the idea of total depravity is absent the idea of original guilt is almost universally absent rather you become guilty by doing bad things now with this we himming carefully hit this weaker view of the fall this then affects if you have a lesser problem the solutions going to be lesser it's going to look different and so the Incarnation redemption in Eastern Orthodox because of the problem is different the Incarnation is not so much about salvation from sin as about deification so the emphasis is on the coming of God to man the conquest of death in the resurrection it's not a turn and the sin at the cross because sin is not the problem we're seeking to really deal with and so you might say in different theologies you can have systems where there are two act 2 act stories and three act or three act schemes of salvation in that we're in the West most used to a three act scheme so a three act scheme is your creation full redemption right it's 4 X 3 X the creation full redemption now Eastern Orthodoxy is a bit more of a to act show you have creation and then deification there's not such a big deal about the fall in the middle it's there but it's not such a prominent feature and I suggest this is actually precisely the difference in that we have a serial scholar in the room this is precisely the difference between Cyril of Alexandria and nestorius so Nestorius believe very much in this to act scheme of salvation that you have the first age of corruption and then you have a second age of in corruption and Jesus lifts us from one into the other that's your scheme of salvation whereas Cyril fighting for the Orthodox has wanted to say no no no rather than Christ coming as an exemplar to lead us into the second age rather you have God comes in the flesh as a entirely sufficient Savior in him is salvation and so rather than leading us into a second age he accomplishes salvation in himself and this leads to final little observation the issue of synergism synergistic soteriology in Eastern Orthodoxy as in salvation is a cooperative of thing a cooperation between God and man now this synergism seems to me to be a departure from not a faithfulness to cerillion orthodoxy cyril saying god's redemption is sufficient he's not an exemplar and if that's right that synergism is a departure from that orthodoxy then Eastern Orthodoxy has departed from patristic orthodoxy and those who are not synergistic have actually maintained faithfulness to patristic orthodoxy but synergism seems to be in Eastern Orthodoxy of a piece with a failure to see the complete sufficiency of Christ for salvation which he gets displayed in prayers to the Saints and especially Mary and those prayers often seem to slide into the belief that Mary and the Saints are not just intercessory friends they're mediators and so once again you have a a detraction from the complete sufficiency of Christ as a savior

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Length: 46min 0sec (2760 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018