Meeting with a Baptist pastor about Orthodoxy

[Barky]

I have been updating my situation in the taverna but I thought this warrented a new thread.

For those of you who don't know, I have been contemplating orthodoxy for a few weeks now (I guess it's actually about a month). My girlfriend of 2 1/2 years has been born and raised protestant and I have been born and raised catholic. Recently I have decided I do not believe in Catholicism. This lead me on a journey that brought me to orthodoxy.

My girlfriend set up a meeting for me and her with the Baptist pastor of a church we have been attending. He seemed to be a really down to earth, honest Christian. He has stated how much he laments about the divisions in Christianity during his sermons and such. Anyway, to the meeting.

The first thing he showed me was all the books he's read about orthodoxy. He had the study bible, the book "Becoming Orthodox", and another one I can't remember. He started out by telling me his background in the church and what he's done in the church. He is baptist but he doesn't promote baptist, just Christianity he claims. He also told me about a meeting he had in the nineties. It was a kind of "common ground" conference from what he told me. There were protestants, orthodox, and catholic clergy there to discuss what, if any, common ground we all share. He said he went to matins and met Kallistos Ware and Peter Gilquist (he knows this man personally through campus crusade). In other words, he's had the opportunity to read and understand a lot about orthodoxy.

When we got to the meat and potatoes of discussion, he essentially came out and said if your looking for a pure church, you're not going to find it. He believes orthodox have frozen Christianity in the 4th century and won't let it develop. He references Paul in 1 Corinthians when he says he becomes all things to all men to win some to Christ. He thinks orthodox stick to Liturgy and practice and that's a bad thing. He also talked about the different worship styles he's seen, how beautiful they are, etc. He stressed how one worship style and liturgy seemed contradictory to the worship seen in the early church (mainly 1 corinthians).

He also thinks that we can't know for sure what the apostles taught outside the bible. We have our assurance in the scripture and that's about as far as we have it. He doesn't believe in the pure church after the 1st century with the death of John. He stressed historially how after 200 years you can't be sure about what the life of a culture (in this case the church) was. He says that he learned this from his history classes (he's a history minor). He did like Ignatius and Polycarp but he doesn't take their views as seriously as the ones written down by the apostles themselves. He claims his church is apostolic but he doesn't need apostolic succesion to be apostolic. He follows the teachings of the apostles right in the bible.

There were other arguments presented but these were the major ones. He essentially believed it's more important to get people out of a life of sin and into some kind of church community, instead of trying to get people to a certain sect. He talks about how much is stacked against Christianity and we need to be united against those force. He also said how a lot of the Orthodox clergy he's met have seemed very arrogant, etc.

I presented the other side of the argument with the orthodox counter. He, like my girlfriend, seemed to start out every sentence with "Well, I just don't think..." All I could think of in the back of my head is "and you are? Why is your opinion the true one?". My girlfriend also ate everything he said right up, said his arguments were sound. I can't say I'm surprised.

Keep me in your prayers, as I pray for all of you

 

[Khaleas]

Honestly, I'm kinda impressed... that's a direction of arguments I haven't heard before.
Keep your head screwed on straight and try to meet with your priest. After Pascha things seem to calm down a bit. You now met with a priest with your girlfriend, maybe she'll repay you the favor and meet with an Orthodox priest with you.
My prayers!

 

[rusmeister]

Allow me!

As an ex-Baptist raised in the faith, let me point you to Clark Carlton. He is the bane of Baptists. I back up him up totally from my own experience - he is authentic.
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/from_baptist_to_first_century.htm

Try that on for size. Here are a few outtakes that I think particularly important.

Interestingly enough, however, my disillusionment with evangelical Protestantism was actually heightened by my stints as a supply preacher. Initially I was disturbed by the pressure to "perform." I was conscious of the fact that as the preacher, the "success" of the service was on my shoulders. In fact, in many rural churches, the Sunday service is referred to as "the preaching service."
I was also conscious of the grave responsibility entailed in preaching the Word of God. Baptists say they do not believe in sacraments, but they understand the sacramentality of the Word. And yet, I never knew what to preach. I had no lectionary or church calendar to guide me. The congregation was completely at the mercy of my whims and tastes. How often I prayed for God to "lay a message on my heart," and how often I ended up throwing something together at the last minute! Furthermore, I had no doctrinal plumb line against which to measure the content of my sermons. All I had was a pretty good notion of what would and would not fly in a Baptist church and the good sense not to say anything I knew would be controversial. I became acutely aware that the congregation was not simply hearing the Word of God, it was hearing the Word of God according to me!

In my rhetorical tribute to all things truly Baptist I insisted, "The lifeblood of denominational existence is our absolute commitment to the freedom of the believer . . . Our response to the Bible should be simply to approach it and obey it as we feel led; it is an individual matter." Obviously, I did not quote 2 Peter 1:20:no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. In my defense, however, I must say that at that time I knew very little about how the Scriptures were written or how the canon came into existence. All I knew was what I heard from the pulpit or read in Protestant books.
I did not realize at the time that the Bible I held had become in fact an idol, an idol that I myself controlled. An infallible book is only useful if you have an infallible interpreter, which is where the Baptist doctrine of "soul-competency" came in. As an individual, I was that interpreter, the sole arbiter of what the Bible did and did not mean. The Reformation did not do away with the medieval Papacy and all of its pretensions, it merely democratized it and made everyone Pope! So there I was, an eighteen-year-old, pontificating on the correct interpretation of Scripture.

There is also a great difference between claiming tradition for oneself and being claimed by tradition. I, along with Webber and the contributors to his book, was perfectly willing to claim the historic Church and the liturgy for my own understanding of Christianity. Yet, I was still in control! I, in true Protestant fashion, was judge and jury of what would and would not fit into my kind of Christianity. I was willing to claim the historic Church, but I had yet to recognize Her claim on me.
...
Gradually I came to recognize the fact that Holy Tradition has the same claim upon my life as the Gospel itself, for Tradition is nothing other than the Gospel lived throughout history. It is not my place to judge the Apostolic Tradition and decide how or if to incorporate it into my own religious tradition; rather Holy Tradition judges me and calls me to account for how I have handled "that Good Deposit" that has been committed to Christians. I finally began to understand Paul's admonition to the Thessalonians, a passage I had never heard preached on in a Baptist church, Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle (2 Thess. 2:15).

In short, Zizioulas introduced me, for the first time, to the Holy Trinity, in Whose image I had been created. Although Baptists profess faith in the Trinity; when you get right down to it, that belief is not much more than lip-service. The Trinity is rarely mentioned in Baptist churches, except at baptisms, and has absolutely nothing to do with how the church is organized or how Baptists view themselves as persons created in the image of God. In the final analysis, the Trinity is simply the solution to a theological problem: "how can Jesus be both God and different from the Father at the same time?." The doctrine, as understood by Baptists and most other Protestants has no positive content. If every reference to the Trinity were removed from Baptist hymnals and books, few people would even notice.

The centrl reason I abandoned Baptist faith in the first place and went agnostic:

I knew that God had made man to share in His eternal life and that man had blown the project by rebelling against God. God, in turn, sent His Son to fix the mess that man had made and restore to man the possibility of living a "full and meaningful life." But why was the Cross so necessary? It seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go to just so that we could romp around on streets of gold for eternity. And was God really going to send billions of people to hell just because they refused to "accept" His Son into their lives as their "personal Lord and Savior"? Was the gamble of creation worth all of those souls who would spend an eternity in torment, so that some could find eternal bliss?
All my life I had been told that "sin had left a crimson stain" and that "nothing but the blood" could make me clean again because "there is power in the blood." There was nothing I could add because "Jesus paid it all," and if I would "only trust Him" "one glad morning" I would "fly away." I knew all this and believed all this, yet there were questions just under the surface irritating my tidy, little faith. When I got right down to it, the sin of Adam really did not seem to merit the punishment of eternal perdition and the bliss of heaven did not seem worth the price that had to be paid. In other words, hell sounded unreasonable and heaven sounded boring.

"The fall arises out of man's free decision to reject personal communion with God and restrict himself to the autonomy and self-sufficiency of his own nature."13 In other words, sin is the free choice of individual autonomy. Irony of ironies: that which I had been touting all of these years as the basis of true religion the absolute autonomy of the individual turned out to be the Original Sin!

The ultimate concern of Protestantism is neither God nor the Scriptures nor anything that could reasonably be labeled Truth, but rather the absolute sovereignty of the individual. The freedom of the individual was to be defended from any attempt to impose a standard of orthodoxy, even if that standard happened to be the Truth. One Baptist wrote, "The very act of credal imposition itself, whether the doctrine is correct or not [emphasis mine], violates long standing religious convictions of Baptists . . . ."20 In the final analysis, Truth is what each individual says it is, and any attempt to suggest otherwise is a violation of individual freedom.

It is very important to have accurate information on Baptists teach. By all means get this from Baptists. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ACCEPT INFO FROM ANY OTHER SOURCE AS THE FINAL WORD!!!
The same thing goes for info on Orthodoxy. Get your info from reliable, canonical Orthodox sources. Do NOT accept info on Orthodoxy from that pastor as the final word.

Let me tell you one reason I rejected the Baptists out-of-hand when I returned to faith. Simply put, I discovered that they had completely misinformed me on Catholicism. (Are you familiar with Jack Chick?) They attacked something they didn't know anything about. That (among other things), for me, discredited them completely.

Get your info straight from the horse's mouth.

 

[Philothei]

I have been updating my situation in the taverna but I thought this warrented a new thread.

For those of you who don't know, I have been contemplating orthodoxy for a few weeks now (I guess it's actually about a month). My girlfriend of 2 1/2 years has been born and raised protestant and I have been born and raised catholic. Recently I have decided I do not believe in Catholicism. This lead me on a journey that brought me to orthodoxy.

My girlfriend set up a meeting for me and her with the Baptist pastor of a church we have been attending. He seemed to be a really down to earth, honest Christian. He has stated how much he laments about the divisions in Christianity during his sermons and such. Anyway, to the meeting.

The first thing he showed me was all the books he's read about orthodoxy. He had the study bible, the book "Becoming Orthodox", and another one I can't remember. He started out by telling me his background in the church and what he's done in the church. He is baptist but he doesn't promote baptist, just Christianity he claims. He also told me about a meeting he had in the nineties. It was a kind of "common ground" conference from what he told me. There were protestants, orthodox, and catholic clergy there to discuss what, if any, common ground we all share. He said he went to matins and met Kallistos Ware and Peter Gilquist (he knows this man personally through campus crusade). In other words, he's had the opportunity to read and understand a lot about orthodoxy.

When we got to the meat and potatoes of discussion, he essentially came out and said if your looking for a pure church, you're not going to find it. He believes orthodox have frozen Christianity in the 4th century and won't let it develop. He references Paul in 1 Corinthians when he says he becomes all things to all men to win some to Christ. He thinks orthodox stick to Liturgy and practice and that's a bad thing. He also talked about the different worship styles he's seen, how beautiful they are, etc. He stressed how one worship style and liturgy seemed contradictory to the worship seen in the early church (mainly 1 corinthians).

He also thinks that we can't know for sure what the apostles taught outside the bible. We have our assurance in the scripture and that's about as far as we have it. He doesn't believe in the pure church after the 1st century with the death of John. He stressed historially how after 200 years you can't be sure about what the life of a culture (in this case the church) was. He says that he learned this from his history classes (he's a history minor). He did like Ignatius and Polycarp but he doesn't take their views as seriously as the ones written down by the apostles themselves. He claims his church is apostolic but he doesn't need apostolic succesion to be apostolic. He follows the teachings of the apostles right in the bible.

There were other arguments presented but these were the major ones. He essentially believed it's more important to get people out of a life of sin and into some kind of church community, instead of trying to get people to a certain sect. He talks about how much is stacked against Christianity and we need to be united against those force. He also said how a lot of the Orthodox clergy he's met have seemed very arrogant, etc.

I presented the other side of the argument with the orthodox counter. He, like my girlfriend, seemed to start out every sentence with "Well, I just don't think..." All I could think of in the back of my head is "and you are? Why is your opinion the true one?". My girlfriend also ate everything he said right up, said his arguments were sound. I can't say I'm surprised.

Keep me in your prayers, as I pray for all of you

Can I just say I am not a bit suprised?

Keep up the faith Barky...


Nice post Rus....

 

[Julina]

Recently I have decided I do not believe in Catholicism. This lead me on a journey that brought me to orthodoxy.

that's interesting, because both believe that they are the one true church founded by Jesus Christ himself. but i think i could see reasons not to believe in Catholicism.

anyway,

He believes orthodox have frozen Christianity in the 4th century and won't let it develop.

i'm actually looking into Orthodoxy right now too, and i've wondered if it's too outdated to be practiced nowadays. then i realized that they must be doing something right since they've been around for thousands of years. Orthodox Christianity doesn't need to "develop" because it's all there! to me, a lot of protestant denominations have watered things down.

He thinks orthodox stick to Liturgy and practice and that's a bad thing.

i'm assuming he thinks this because Orthodoxy is "underdeveloped" in his eyes. my question is how could it be a bad thing? someone actually asked me why pray from a book, but if there's nothing to go by then everything is just made up, and could actually contradict what Christianity is really about.
there is other archaeological and historical evidence of the early church besides the bible. if someone bases all their beliefs on the bible, to me they're worshipping a book instead of God.

He essentially believed it's more important to get people out of a life of sin and into some kind of church community, instead of trying to get people to a certain sect.

someone pointed out that those who confess their sins only once in their life are more likely to fall back, whereas it's not the case with continual confession. also, all churches have some kind of community. and if he's baptist, then isn't that a certain sect as well?

one of my friends is baptist and she pointed out that she and i have essentially the same beliefs, just expressed in different manners. i think she has a point: we are all Christian. everyone needs a church where they can feel comfortable about their beliefs. i don't want to say that one is more "right" or "wrong" than others, but i think there are some out there that have some things completely backwards (taking the "Christ" out of "Christian").

i think you and your gf should meet with an orthodox priest.
then the Orthodox priest can meet with the Baptist pastor

 

[Philothei]

He essentially believed it's more important to get people out of a life of sin and into some kind of church community, instead of trying to get people to a certain sect.

oh how typical western sense of sin.... I did not notice that one... I guess did not read it carefully....

But how typical to see sin as something that "needs to be experienced" to make the "mistake" and learn from it... while the Fathers tell us to "duck" it since human experience is the same across the board, and the infant does not have to burn their hand to learn if it only "obey" the parent and "believe" and "trust" him. We are all "disobedient" to some degree as we live in the world. Orthodoxy does not abvocate "anahorisis" (departure) unless one is called for that like the ascetics and monastics, other than that Orthodoxy advocates "spiritual struggle" with one's passions not "sectarian" life style...

I think Protos that way escape the whole "growing in the virtues" fight that is expected in Christian life... it is a cope out to stuggle that gives in to secularism and relativism... how sad....

 

[Kolya]

For those of you who don't know, I have been contemplating orthodoxy for a few weeks now ....

I see you progressing and I reflect back that it was a scant 5 years ago that I stood where you are now, and it was such an issue in my life!
Now I can't believe that I ever belonged to any other faith . I was Chrismated on Palm Sunday 2004, so this week marks a milestone in my life. We took our first communion on Great and Holy Thursday!

Good for you Barky! Don't let anyone else dictate what you must follow. I'm praying for both you and your GF.

 

[Thekla]

prayers for you Barky

 

[Barky]

Thanks for all the responses

to all:
I'm planning on setting up a meeting with the orthodox priest after pascha. I think my girlfriend wouldn't mind after meeting with the pastor. My girlfriend barely said three words during the meeting, as it was me and him going back and forth with the different arguments. She did say she wanted to go back again today, that there wasn't much "closure". I have a bad feeling that "closure" would be me giving up this search and settling in on a church with her. He did commend me immensly for the journey I'm taking and was very amiable during the whole meeting. It was very pleasant really, everything was calm and under control.

Rus:
There are some great points there, maybe I can get my girlfriend to read it. I am starting to see more and more that the pastors are the absolute authority figures of each individual church. The pastor said himself that he likes the freedom of "doing his own thing" free from any councils or dogmas holding him back from preaching. There are some glaring problems there obviously.

Also, he seemed to be under the impression that I was excited about the faith because of all the excitement in the church. He talked about how all the people are converts and full of energy but over in Russia its the same old boring service. I was a little surprised by this assumption

Julina:
My original post is somewhere in this forum if you care to look. Basically I can't believe in certain dogmatic things deemed infallible by the church.

The pastor claimed to be baptist but did not hold strong to that denomination. He basically chose baptist because he can do his own thing and not have to worry about anyone coming down on him. He promotes unity over all in the Christian faith, given all the adversity against it.

 

[Thekla]

He essentially believed it's more important to get people out of a life of sin and into some kind of church community, instead of trying to get people to a certain sect.

the quality of the treatment and the hospital (Church) does matter.

 

[Kolya]

the quality of the treatment and the hospital (Church) does matter.

Excellent point!

 

[gzt]

I really think that anybody converting to Orthodoxy should examine themselves in light of what the Baptist pastor says, because he is right about a lot of things. Nobody converts for completely pure reasons, obviously, but you need to be aware of and fight the temptation to ritualism etc. If it were just you, I would simply reply, "Well, that's not the way I see it at all, but thank you for your concern. I will certainly keep that in mind." But, since your girlfriend is involved, a different approach may be necessary. Here's an idea: take her to as many Holy Week services as you can and then the Pascha and see if she understands a bit more why we're right.

 

[Barky]

I really think that anybody converting to Orthodoxy should examine themselves in light of what the Baptist pastor says, because he is right about a lot of things. Nobody converts for completely pure reasons, obviously, but you need to be aware of and fight the temptation to ritualism etc. If it were just you, I would simply reply, "Well, that's not the way I see it at all, but thank you for your concern. I will certainly keep that in mind." But, since your girlfriend is involved, a different approach may be necessary. Here's an idea: take her to as many Holy Week services as you can and then the Pascha and see if she understands a bit more why we're right.

She doesn't really like the services. The mission I'm in is very small and doesn't have a lot of the high production values that a bigger church would.

Also, she constantly says how using "physical things" in order to worship is almost like a weakness. Relying on these "physical things" (eucharist, icons, incense, etc.) takes away the fact that all we need is Jesus. It almost sounds neo-gnostic but I'm sure she would deny it.

 

[gzt]

Right, but the Holy Week services and Pascha change some peoples' minds, or at least plant the seeds for doing so. Evangelical is just as physical, or, at least, somatic, being based in emotional response.

Anyways, a lot of these sorts of concerns and problems are answered with, essentially, saying, "Yeah, we agree that your concern is important and valid, but that's really not what's going on here."

 

[Jacob4707]

When we got to the meat and potatoes of discussion, he essentially came out and said if your looking for a pure church, you're not going to find it. He believes orthodox have frozen Christianity in the 4th century and won't let it develop.

Well, he's wrong. The Orthodox have frozen Christianity in the 7th century.

- Jaroslav Pelikan THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION 2 The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700), p. 1, referencing Harnack (1931) and Gibbon (1896)

 

[Orthosdoxa]

Also, she constantly says how using "physical things" in order to worship is almost like a weakness.

Have you mentioned to her how "physical things" play a vital role in salvation?

Jesus became a "physical thing". God could just have THOUGHT our salvation into reality, but He didn't - He used matter.

The Apostles used matter to heal people - a handkerchief, even one of their shadows. God created physical things, too, not just mental. They are all tied together for our salvation.

 

[katherine2001]

She doesn't really like the services. The mission I'm in is very small and doesn't have a lot of the high production values that a bigger church would.

Also, she constantly says how using "physical things" in order to worship is almost like a weakness. Relying on these "physical things" (eucharist, icons, incense, etc.) takes away the fact that all we need is Jesus. It almost sounds neo-gnostic but I'm sure she would deny it.

I was Baptist for 25 years, so I understand her discomfort about physical things because to Baptists (and most Evangelicals), the physical world=evil. However, that is not true. Explain to her that Jesus saved the physical world as well by His incarnation, His baptism, His cruxifiction, and His resurrection. In fact, the idea that the physical world=evil is actually a Gnostic teaching, and is a heresy (though I guess it would get you into a fight to actually say such a thing). I agree with Thekla that the hospital that is treating you is extremely important. With all due respect, the Baptists (nor any other Evangelical Church that I am aware of) has any idea of how to battle spiritual illness. In the Orthodox Church, the priests have all kinds of treatments that they can apply to help heal our wounds. You are in my prayers.

 

[Theophorus]

He essentially believed it's more important to get people out of a life of sin and into some kind of church community, instead of trying to get people to a certain sect.

Well, he is a baptist by choice right, a sect member? Or is he just settling for the best thing at the moment, chasing the invisible church.

And if he really believes that the most important thing is to get people out of sin and into a church community, then what is wrong with Orthodoxy?

 

[silouanathonite]

She doesn't really like the services. The mission I'm in is very small and doesn't have a lot of the high production values that a bigger church would.

Also, she constantly says how using "physical things" in order to worship is almost like a weakness. Relying on these "physical things" (eucharist, icons, incense, etc.) takes away the fact that all we need is Jesus. It almost sounds neo-gnostic but I'm sure she would deny it.

I find that to completely ridiculous in many ways. Christ used a human being, who unless she didn't have a physical womb, to come into the world. Kind of important if you ask me. Christ could have healed many people by just saying, which he did at times. There are also times when you used physical matter to heal people. He told some to go to the water and be healed. Some wanted to just touch the hem of his garment, and not once did Christ say, "What are you doing touching the hem of my garment. You don't need that, just touch me". He said, "Your faith has made you well". He even used dirt/clay to heal a blind man. Even the apostles tell ask the elders to be anointed with oil if we are sick. What gets me sometimes is that those who claim to read and know scripture seem to miss a lot. Let me also to be first to say that I am probably the last to say that I completely know Scripture, but I will say the main reason why I know these things is because I make attempt to pay attention to the hymns being sung at Church. I could go on and on about many physical things from scripture. What is also important is to look at the reality in our lives. How many times do we use physical things to express ourselves and what we truly mean to others. If we can look at it, the times that we do is because we might actually lack the words to do so. Does that make us weak or does it present another side of ourselves to the person that we truly love. If it does, we certainly love a lot of weak people.

I once heard a priest say we can worship God in a sewer if that is all that we can give, and God would accept it, but the reality is that God deserves more than that. We give the best of what this world has to offer because in the end it is his anyway to begin with. That is all I will say.

Have a glorious and blessed Holy Week.

 

[zhilan]

The problem is, where does the bible come from? Without the Church it is easy to worship the bible rather than Christ.

I don't understand people who stay we're stuck in early Christianity. I had a Catholic priest tell me that too. I never quite understood what that meant.

And sure, I'm certain some Orthodox priest are arrogant. Arrogance is a human sin, and we are all human, so there will definitely be some arrogant Orthodox priests and some arrogant Baptist ministers and some arrogant anyone. My experience has been that the Orthodox priest I know are some of the most humble people I've ever met.

I do however, think that some people mistake conviction and principle for arrogance, which it most certainly is not.