Friday, May 25, 2018

Becoming un-Baptist Part 7: Becoming Orthodox


Becoming un-Baptist Part 7: Becoming Orthodox

At the end of my theological journey, I found myself facing two choices: Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy.  I bumbled around and found myself listening to Ancient Faith Radio and Scott Hahn.  I admit that Scott Hahn had some compelling arguments for Roman Catholicism.  However, his most compelling arguments did not lead me to Rome.  My study of Church History showed me that Rome had made some moves away from Biblical and Early Christian thought and practice.[1]  This then left me with one valid option: go to an Orthodox church.

So, I went to an Orthodox Church and shocked the local priest by telling him that my wife and I had come for the purpose of becoming Orthodox.  The priest replied that we should start by coming to liturgy first for a few weeks, which we did.  I had already reasoned my way to the conclusion that Orthodoxy was true and I needed to be a part of it.

The first thing I noticed was how much Scripture I encountered in the Liturgy.  Not only that, but some exegetical work I had done in my earlier studies actually showed up in the liturgy, translated into English just as I had earlier argued that it should be translated.[2]  I was stunned.  At the same, I found that reading the Fathers became less and less like I was reading a foreign text and more like I was reading someone who shared in the same things in which I was sharing.  I did not feel the need to read the Fathers with an implicit distrust of their conclusions and methods as I once had done.

After my initial impressions, I realized something quite important; becoming Orthodox was not a mere rearranging of my mental assent about various points of doctrine or practice.  It was an entrance into a way of life that was quite distinct from what I had experienced as a Protestant.  I found myself with set fasting, which we practiced as a community.  I entered into a worship that did not cater to my feelings, but was centered upon the worship of God. 

Becoming Orthodox was also a significant shift in my world-view.  One example of this is how I lost my Baptist Salvation Calculus Formula that allowed me to determine the state of another person’s salvation, and I found myself praying for God’s mercy upon others and upon myself.  I began to practically understand that God is the Judge and that I will be judged along with everyone else.

I would like to say that since becoming Orthodox, I have purged myself from all sin and am a resplendent example of how all others should be.  Such is decidedly not the case.  I managed to maintain all my personal flaws.  However, I have entered into an ancient (yet new to me) way of living as a Christian with a set and proven pattern for spiritual growth.



[1] The first thing that comes to my mind are the liturgical deviations which have come to pass since Vatican 2.  To these I would add the addition of the Filioque to the Nicene Creed, forced clerical celibacy, the ability to merit God’s grace, and Papal Supremacy.
[2] In particular the passage from James 1:17.  The ESV reads “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” I argued that the text ought to be translated as: “All good giving and every perfect gift…”  Then to my amazement, the priest comes out and states exactly what the Greek actually states!

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Becoming un-Baptist 6: When Protestant Theology Crumbles Or, How Gerry Breshears Helped Me Become an Orthodox Christian


Becoming un-Baptist 6: When Protestant Theology Crumbles
Or, How Gerry Breshears Helped Me Become an Orthodox Christian


In my previous series of posts entitled “Becoming un-Baptist,”[1] I recounted how I went from being a confessional Baptist to no longer even being baptistic in my theology.  The crumbling of my Baptist theology was not the end of my reconsideration and shifting of my theological views.  Indeed, it was part of a larger shift in my theological paradigm.

I consider myself to have been privileged to have studied at Western Seminary.  One of the professors there who helped me become a better thinker was Gerry Breshears.[2]  Sometimes this came through my own disagreement with some of his positions.  However, this came primarily through his practice of Sola Scriptura (even though he would likely be displeased by my use of a Latin phrase instead of the English “Scripture Alone”).  Gerry constantly and helpfully pressed me and others to support our beliefs and opinions directly from Scripture. 

I still remember one comment he made on a doctrinal statement I submitted.  Gerry’s
brief comment was, “Do you have a Bible verse for this?”  The fact was, that I did not have a Bible verse.  I had reached a point where I could not find a passage of Scripture that would clearly support limited atonement.  While I know it is very dangerous to speculate about another’s feelings and thoughts, I strongly suspect that Gerry took no small satisfaction in compelling his students to completely reevaluate their theological positions in light of the biblical texts.  He set me upon a trajectory of critically examining every doctrine I had held in light of Scripture.  Ideally, I suppose that I should have figured this all out during my 5½ years that I was a student at Western Seminary.  This was decidedly not the case. 

I found that reading the Bible continued to crumble my doctrinal views.  At the same time as this process was ongoing, I entered into a journey of studying the Church Fathers.  This resulted in even further problems for my doctrinal positions.  The Fathers were quoting verses and interpreting them in ways that were often utterly foreign to my doctrines.  This led me to reread the Bible and find that those verses which I had overlooked (or interpreted around) suddenly came to bear upon my understanding of doctrine. 

I went through a theological crisis.  As one doctrine crumbled after another, I found that I was less certain of more and more things which led me to question ever further and find even yet more questions.  This was a ridiculous time in my life.  I found that simply reading the Bible became difficult because I was constantly beset with the problem of a shifting paradigm.  Passages which once made sense, suddenly did not; and passages which were once overlooked gave answers which were not compatible with what I had believed.

Being beset with questions, I decided to find answers.  The answers I found were significantly unsettling.  It was my journey to find answers that led to the collapse of my Protestant theology.  At first my questions and answers in no way threatened my Protestant beliefs.  I should note that none of my questions arose from any sort of perniciousness.  These were sincere questions as I was attempting to discern the Truth which I should believe.

The first issue that I had was imputed righteousness.  I could find no textual support for this understanding of righteousness.  The answer I was given was that if righteousness is not imputed, than it must be imparted, and that view is clearly wrong.  Meanwhile I was thinking that perhaps both were wrong.

There were several other fairly significant theological questions that I had.  However, the most important came when I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the New Testament in the Greek, and I realized that I could not support Sola Scriptura from Scripture alone.  This was troubling, and doubly so, because I realized I could make a better argument for tradition from the New Testament (especially when I was reading the Greek) than I had previously thought possible.  In fact, by following Scripture, I ended up realizing that Paul taught that He had handed down an unwritten tradition.  This can be seen in:

2nd Thessalonians 2:15 “So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”
and
1st Corinthians 11:2 “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.”

I looked at these and other verses and I realized that the Bible taught that that unwritten traditions handed down from the Apostles were to be kept. This then was the moment when it all imploded.  The very exegetical method I had been taught led me to a point where it killed itself and thrust me into the arms of Tradition.  I found myself pondering the probability that there was an Apostolic Tradition beyond the books of the New Testament and I began reading the writings from the Early Christians with an eye towards discerning what these unwritten Apostolis Traditions were.

This was all happening while I was almost Anglican.  However, as I was entering into the Apostolic Tradition, Anglicanism seemed less and less like a valid option, I was left with two real choices: Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy. 



[2] There were several others, but this post is about the formative effect that Gerry’s methodology had upon my own way of thinking about theology.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Becoming un-Baptist Part 5: Almost Anglican


Becoming un-Baptist Part 5: Almost Anglican

In my previous posts, I discussed how I had ceased to be a Baptist (church leadership, theology of baptism, and the practice of baptism).  As I was departing the Baptist fold, I nearly became an Anglican.  In the Anglican Church, I found a more ancient from of liturgy than is practiced among Baptists.  The worship was centered upon the Eucharist.  There was a prayer book that provided a vocabulary and a direction for my prayers.  I also had (and still have) friends who are Anglican.  Even more important for me, I found pieces of the Fathers in the worship service and was able to feel something of a connection with the Christian Tradition.

My wife and I enjoyed our fellowship within the Anglican churches we attended.  However, we never quite became Anglicans (for which I am thankful).  At the same time that we were attending Anglican churches, I was continuing to undergo some significant doctrinal disruptions.  Not only was I finding myself being un-Baptist, but in some ways, I was becoming un-Protestant.  This can be problematic when attending a Protestant church.

Could there have been room for me in the Anglican Communion?  Probably, if I had found a conservative Anglo-Catholic parish and remained there for the rest of my life.  However what I found was a Professor of Church History at an Anglo-Catholic Seminary talking about how we should reconsider the conclusions of Chalcedon (the fourth ecumenical council) and the remainder of the ecumenical councils.  In the parishes I attended, I found Anglicanism to be a rather low church affair because the worship was tailored to have people feel comfortable.  The doctrine seemed more like the Reformers than it did the Fathers.  Luther’s Law Gospel hermeneutic (this hermeneutic is prone to divide Scripture into the categories of Law, which condemns, and Gospel, which gives life.  Luther even opined that the Epistle of James: “was a right strawy epistle…for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.”) was on display along with a dash of Calvinism (this was probably more to a living out of the 39 articles than anything else).  These points grew a little troubling for me.  I was becoming less and less convinced of the Reformation and the Anglican world is decidedly part of the Reformation.

Coming from Southern Baptist land, I liked the Anglican Church in North America.  They were conservatives starting a Church with true doctrine and practice as opposed to the Episcopal Church which well… um… would allow anyone to believe anything and remain a bishop.  As I spent more time, I began to feel as though the ACNA was simply resetting the theological capitulation to culture clock back to the 1970’s and doing so through a functional schism.  As a Baptist, schism is not a negative.  However, for an un-Baptist, schism is troubling, and it gave me a little more pause.

The breaking point for me was listening to Anglican Unscripted and hearing Kevin and George talk about how the Anglican Church followed the canons of Nicaea.  Then on Sunday I went to church and saw a deaconess pushing around an old priest at the altar because he was moving too slowly for her.  As I was sitting there, I realized that this deaconess would be ordained as a priestess and that the canons of Nicaea were not followed when they were inconvenient or at odds with modern sensibilities.

The very things that I loved about the Anglican Communion was the very thing that they were doing their best to down play or ignore.  I loved the pre-Reformation streams of thought.  However, as I encountered it, these came through a Reformation grid and a further American evangelical grid.  There was a liturgy that at times was strikingly beautiful, yet was also divorcing itself from the shared worship practices of the Old Testament and the Early Church.  This was not the place I was looking for.  However, during my time there, I began to appreciate the formative nature of liturgy and written prayers.