Part 1 of 2:
This is my response to a thread posted in the Soteriology subform of GT. The OP there, abacabb3, posted his response to a blog article written by a Calvinist-turned-Orthodox author. The original blog entry is here: Why I Stopped Being a Calvinist (Part 1): Calvinism presents a dehistoricized Bible | Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
abacabb3's blog response is here: Why I am a [Calvinistic] Christian Part 1 The Bible Says So | Reformed Christian Theology
The Orthodox blogger's claim is that "Calvinism presents a dehistoricized Bible." In his post, this blogger briefly addresses only one basic issue, namely, the assertion that Reformed theology (wrongly) emphasizes an individualistic interpretation in Paul's epistles, focusing on individual election and justification, while Paul's actual message was corporate, referring mainly to the inclusion of Gentiles into Israel, the two becoming one in the Christian Church. The blogger writes:
Now, I must say that it strikes me as a bit unusual that an Orthodox writer would appeal almost entirely to modern, and mostly Protestant, historical and textual criticism, in making a case against Calvinism and for Orthdoxy. First, it's been noted by several Orthodox scholars that the so-called "New Perspectives on Paul" aren't especially new, and that the early Church Fathers understood the matters of including gentiles into the covenant with Israel. While modern scholarship is helpful in confirming what the ancient Church pretty much knew to be the case, I wouldn't hang my hat on it. The blogger goes on to refer readers to no less than four meaty textbooks, and one long podcast series by N.T. Wright.
Now, as I am myself a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy from a Calvinist background, I very much understand which issues are of central importance in this dialogue. I do, in general, agree that Calvinists--indeed all Protestants--handle the Bible in a way that separates it from the historical current in which it was written, received, canonized, and defended. Classical Protestant traditions, Reformed included, generally accord much weight to the Bible's history, and to their credit, do not believe they are divorcing it from history, but rather are rescuing it from many centuries of man-made clutter that's been added to it.
In summary, I believe that the Orthodox blogger--and therefore, the Calvinist responder--both pretty much missed the real essence of the matter: the one focusing on Pauline scholarship, the other focusing on whether justification (in the Protestant sense!) is monergistic. Nothing really was said about the Bible's place in history and tradition. So in this post here, I will try to address three major areas:
1. The matter of how we, in modern times, can come closest to the mind of those who wrote the Scriptures.
2. The relationship between Scripture and the Church (both as a spiritual/sacramental reality, and as an earthly institution).
3. The fallacy of believing that anyone can "just read the Bible."
Distance in Time
The Calvinist blogger begins his response with this:
I grant that he has a point. There is no such thing as a denomination, or even an individual Christian, who today believes EXACTLY the same things as the apostles, or the very earliest Christians. It's very anachronistic to cite ancient sources in favor of a particular theological position that came centuries after their time. Would Clement have sided with The Roman Catholics or the Lutherans over the matter of transubstantiation or consubstantiation? Would Ignatius have agreed wholeheartedly with Gregory Palamas and his hesychastic monks on the matter of created vs. uncreated energies? Would Polycarp have come forward at a Billy Graham evangelism crusade? We simply can't answer these questions with certainty. And he has a point, that our understanding of history can change rapidly, even in an era where every word spoken is recorded in videos or on the Internet. So no, Calvinism is not wrong simply because it originated--as a consolidated movement--some 15 centuries later.
What I found on my own journey, however, is that we can get a bigger sense of whether a given group of interpreters possessed the same "mind," the same overall worldview and set of concerns, as those who came at an earlier date. We can see what the larger priorites were that occupied their minds. In the case of the early Fathers, we can see that worship, prayer, baptism, the eucharist, fasting, standing firm under persecution, mortification of sin and transformation by degrees of the Church--and within the Church, individual Christians--into the likeness of Christ himself. At the time of the Reformation, however, the entire emphasis in the West and largely shifted and this is confirmed by nearly any historical survey of Western christian history, I recommend in particular Many Mansions (Many Mansions: An Introduction to the Development and Diversity of Medieval Theology West and East (Cistercian Studies): David N. Bell, Terryl N. Kinder: 9780879075460: Amazon.com: Books) for a brief but thorough exploration of the matter.
The emphasis had largely shifted away from a corporate understanding of the Church, the Body of Christ, as that which is "saved," to a more individual emphasis upon individual persons begin saved, who then collectively make up the Church. The understanding of salvation being primarily about crime and punishment, of justification as being primarily about having sufficient "merit" to stand before God guiltless per the law, and of Christ's death being primarily about satisfaction of justice and wrath--these were all entrenched in the thinking of both the medieval Roman Catholics and their Lutheran and Reformed detractors (and much more so in the Reformed). Note that the Reformers didn't dispute that salvation was about having sufficient merit, they simply changed the metaphysical mechanism by which that merit became the believer's...for Rome, Christ's merit was infused by degrees through good works and sacraments; for the Reformed, it was legally imputed all at once in an abstract switch-a-roo. But the underlying framework remained. And thus, both Rome and Geneva are far closer to each other on fundamental issues, than either is to Eastern Orthodoxy.
In Orthodoxy, the overall understanding of Christ's atonement being grounded in the Incarnation more so than in the crucifixion; of salvation being about transformation into the very likeness of God more so than about eternally contemplating God's essence; of Christ's life recapitulating all of human experience (as with Irenaeus of 2nd Century Lyons, so too with Orthodoxy today); of sacraments as mystical participation in the divine energies, and not about being infused with legal merit--all these things are demonstrable closer to the thinking of both Latin and Greek Christians from the earliest writings. So it isn't "distance in time" that makes me believe Orthodoxy is closer to the apostolic doctrine than Calvinism. It's the "mind of the Church" that makes Orthodox closer in thought to the early Christians, and therefore to the apostles.
Scripture and the Church
Immediately after asking the question "Ultimately, in the present day (2,000 years removed) we generally have monergists (belief is given to believers by God) and synergists (the opposite)*. Only one side is right. If proximity in time does not help us know who has it right, what does?" the Calvinist blogger answers with this:
Really? Proves? Historically? On what basis is this substantiated? Only this:
Apparently, all that is required of someone to see that not only the BIble, but also the early Fathers, taught doctrine consistent with Calvinism, is that they read the Scriptures honestly. If this is true, then we have an awful lot of dishonest readers. Not only today, but throughout all of history. Chrysostom, a synergist, failed to read the Bible honestly. The Cappadocian fathers, synergists, failed to read the Bible honestly. John Wesely wasn't just wrong, he wasn't honest.
At this point I have to narrow down my response. Apart from remarking that the blogger's subsequent quotes from Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch are completely and utterly irrelevant to the discussion of a 16th century understanding of justification, I will jump to this:
And here, is where the blogger breaks most decisively from both the Orthodox and the Patristic understanding of this. The Bible is the CHURCH'S primary source, and by way of that, is the individual Christian's primary source. When anyone today picks up a Bible, what is he picking up? He's picking up one of many translations, of some interpolation of a multiplicity of copies of what may have been original documents. He's picking up someone's decision as to whether the Greek Septuagint was more or less faithful than the Hebrew Masoretic. He's picking up a canon of books that was settled across many centuries and disagreed on by many titans of Christian thought and piety. In other words, what he is picking up, is a bound volume of traditions. Yes, Scripture is God's Word, and is such because it simply is. But what we have, here in time and space, came to us mediated by many, many many people.
When the blogger decides that Wisdom of Sirach is not to be considered canonical, or that 2 Maccabees isn't to be consulted decisively to discern whether prayers for the dead were part of Scripture, what he is really deciding is that one group's tradition (the Reformers') is better than another group's (everyone other than the Reformers). On what basis is this decision made? It can't be on the basis of reading the Bible, that he determines whose tradition of the Bible is the correct one--that's circular. What's really happening--what really makes the Calvinist's bible "dehistoricized"--is that he is picking up many centuries of tradition, and then using these to sweep aside everything else that was believed by the same people who held and delivered those traditions about Scripture down through the Church.
I used to do this myself. I really believed "Orthodoxy is one tradition, Rome is another...but I have the Bible! I don't need either of them." It was only by painful discernment that I realized how naive my beliefs really were in this matter.
I can only summarize this point by saying, I came to realize and understand, that apart from apostolic succession of ordained leaders in the Church, there is simply no way to determine which historical current actually holds a credible claim to delivering correct traditions, and these traditions include the Bible itself.
This is my response to a thread posted in the Soteriology subform of GT. The OP there, abacabb3, posted his response to a blog article written by a Calvinist-turned-Orthodox author. The original blog entry is here: Why I Stopped Being a Calvinist (Part 1): Calvinism presents a dehistoricized Bible | Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
abacabb3's blog response is here: Why I am a [Calvinistic] Christian Part 1 The Bible Says So | Reformed Christian Theology
The Orthodox blogger's claim is that "Calvinism presents a dehistoricized Bible." In his post, this blogger briefly addresses only one basic issue, namely, the assertion that Reformed theology (wrongly) emphasizes an individualistic interpretation in Paul's epistles, focusing on individual election and justification, while Paul's actual message was corporate, referring mainly to the inclusion of Gentiles into Israel, the two becoming one in the Christian Church. The blogger writes:
In the latter half of the twentieth century there were huge advances in our understanding of first-century Judaism, largely as a result of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and all the scholarship this spawned. These discoveries have given us a far better appreciation for the kinds of theological debates that were percolating at the time of the Apostle Paul. This means that we are in a better position to carefully reconstruct the types of arguments that Pauls Jewish opponents would likely have been making against the gospel of Christ.
As we engage with this scholarship, it begins to look increasingly obvious that the standard debates between Calvinists and non-Calvinists on topics like predestination and total depravity were just nowhere on the radar screen in Pauls day.
When we stop reading Paul in light of later debates between Augustine and the Pelagians or between Calvinists and Arminiansbut instead read Paul in light of what historians now know about Second Temple Judaismit becomes clear that in most of the passages taken to be the standard Calvinist proof-texts, Paul was actually addressing Jew/Gentile relations, and other related issues. Similarly, many of the passages that we immediately assume to be about issues of individual salvation actually had a more covenantal nuance, and this includes most of the arsenal of favorite Calvinist passages. All of this emerges as we carefully reconstruct Pauls historic context in light of what historians now know of first century Judaism.
Now, I must say that it strikes me as a bit unusual that an Orthodox writer would appeal almost entirely to modern, and mostly Protestant, historical and textual criticism, in making a case against Calvinism and for Orthdoxy. First, it's been noted by several Orthodox scholars that the so-called "New Perspectives on Paul" aren't especially new, and that the early Church Fathers understood the matters of including gentiles into the covenant with Israel. While modern scholarship is helpful in confirming what the ancient Church pretty much knew to be the case, I wouldn't hang my hat on it. The blogger goes on to refer readers to no less than four meaty textbooks, and one long podcast series by N.T. Wright.
Now, as I am myself a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy from a Calvinist background, I very much understand which issues are of central importance in this dialogue. I do, in general, agree that Calvinists--indeed all Protestants--handle the Bible in a way that separates it from the historical current in which it was written, received, canonized, and defended. Classical Protestant traditions, Reformed included, generally accord much weight to the Bible's history, and to their credit, do not believe they are divorcing it from history, but rather are rescuing it from many centuries of man-made clutter that's been added to it.
In summary, I believe that the Orthodox blogger--and therefore, the Calvinist responder--both pretty much missed the real essence of the matter: the one focusing on Pauline scholarship, the other focusing on whether justification (in the Protestant sense!) is monergistic. Nothing really was said about the Bible's place in history and tradition. So in this post here, I will try to address three major areas:
1. The matter of how we, in modern times, can come closest to the mind of those who wrote the Scriptures.
2. The relationship between Scripture and the Church (both as a spiritual/sacramental reality, and as an earthly institution).
3. The fallacy of believing that anyone can "just read the Bible."
Distance in Time
The Calvinist blogger begins his response with this:
To accuse Calvinism of understanding a dehistoricized view of justification, usually it is implied that because Calvinism was contrived 1500 years after the time of Christ, the Protestant reformers had no idea what they were reading about. Of course, this isnt true of 20th and 21st century Arminian scholars, Eastern Orthodox church fathers, insert any other group here. Even if we ignore the hypocrisy that all of us disputing the matter live 2,000 years removed from the early church and will equally be be chronologically impaired, their argument is faulty for two reasons:
1. In as little as a few years, people can totally forget the original context of a belief anyway and change it to something totally different. Remember when the War in Iraq became more about spreading democracy (2004 Presidential election) than weapons of mass destruction (2002 midterm elections)? Thats how short term some peoples memories are. So, a belief system supposedly less removed in time (i.e. Roman Catholicism, Ethiopian Orthodox, etcetera) is not necessarily better, as people can start getting things wrong almost instantly.
Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that we have Christian heresies talked about in epistles from Paul, Peter, John and Jude. Obviously, they were less removed in time than the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches. Are those heresies more correct than what present day churches teach, due to their proximity in time?
I grant that he has a point. There is no such thing as a denomination, or even an individual Christian, who today believes EXACTLY the same things as the apostles, or the very earliest Christians. It's very anachronistic to cite ancient sources in favor of a particular theological position that came centuries after their time. Would Clement have sided with The Roman Catholics or the Lutherans over the matter of transubstantiation or consubstantiation? Would Ignatius have agreed wholeheartedly with Gregory Palamas and his hesychastic monks on the matter of created vs. uncreated energies? Would Polycarp have come forward at a Billy Graham evangelism crusade? We simply can't answer these questions with certainty. And he has a point, that our understanding of history can change rapidly, even in an era where every word spoken is recorded in videos or on the Internet. So no, Calvinism is not wrong simply because it originated--as a consolidated movement--some 15 centuries later.
What I found on my own journey, however, is that we can get a bigger sense of whether a given group of interpreters possessed the same "mind," the same overall worldview and set of concerns, as those who came at an earlier date. We can see what the larger priorites were that occupied their minds. In the case of the early Fathers, we can see that worship, prayer, baptism, the eucharist, fasting, standing firm under persecution, mortification of sin and transformation by degrees of the Church--and within the Church, individual Christians--into the likeness of Christ himself. At the time of the Reformation, however, the entire emphasis in the West and largely shifted and this is confirmed by nearly any historical survey of Western christian history, I recommend in particular Many Mansions (Many Mansions: An Introduction to the Development and Diversity of Medieval Theology West and East (Cistercian Studies): David N. Bell, Terryl N. Kinder: 9780879075460: Amazon.com: Books) for a brief but thorough exploration of the matter.
The emphasis had largely shifted away from a corporate understanding of the Church, the Body of Christ, as that which is "saved," to a more individual emphasis upon individual persons begin saved, who then collectively make up the Church. The understanding of salvation being primarily about crime and punishment, of justification as being primarily about having sufficient "merit" to stand before God guiltless per the law, and of Christ's death being primarily about satisfaction of justice and wrath--these were all entrenched in the thinking of both the medieval Roman Catholics and their Lutheran and Reformed detractors (and much more so in the Reformed). Note that the Reformers didn't dispute that salvation was about having sufficient merit, they simply changed the metaphysical mechanism by which that merit became the believer's...for Rome, Christ's merit was infused by degrees through good works and sacraments; for the Reformed, it was legally imputed all at once in an abstract switch-a-roo. But the underlying framework remained. And thus, both Rome and Geneva are far closer to each other on fundamental issues, than either is to Eastern Orthodoxy.
In Orthodoxy, the overall understanding of Christ's atonement being grounded in the Incarnation more so than in the crucifixion; of salvation being about transformation into the very likeness of God more so than about eternally contemplating God's essence; of Christ's life recapitulating all of human experience (as with Irenaeus of 2nd Century Lyons, so too with Orthodoxy today); of sacraments as mystical participation in the divine energies, and not about being infused with legal merit--all these things are demonstrable closer to the thinking of both Latin and Greek Christians from the earliest writings. So it isn't "distance in time" that makes me believe Orthodoxy is closer to the apostolic doctrine than Calvinism. It's the "mind of the Church" that makes Orthodox closer in thought to the early Christians, and therefore to the apostles.
Scripture and the Church
Immediately after asking the question "Ultimately, in the present day (2,000 years removed) we generally have monergists (belief is given to believers by God) and synergists (the opposite)*. Only one side is right. If proximity in time does not help us know who has it right, what does?" the Calvinist blogger answers with this:
2. Well, the Bible does! The Bible presents a soteriology, as do the earliest church fathers (Clement, Polycarp, and Ignatius), that is Calvinist. This proves to us that historically, the Calvinist interpretation is correct.
Really? Proves? Historically? On what basis is this substantiated? Only this:
Because this is evident to anyone who honestly reads the Scriptures, anti-Calvinists will ultimately deride Calvinists for their Sola Scriptura view because if we were to look at the Scripture alone, it is apparent that the doctrine of election is specifically stated...
Apparently, all that is required of someone to see that not only the BIble, but also the early Fathers, taught doctrine consistent with Calvinism, is that they read the Scriptures honestly. If this is true, then we have an awful lot of dishonest readers. Not only today, but throughout all of history. Chrysostom, a synergist, failed to read the Bible honestly. The Cappadocian fathers, synergists, failed to read the Bible honestly. John Wesely wasn't just wrong, he wasn't honest.
At this point I have to narrow down my response. Apart from remarking that the blogger's subsequent quotes from Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch are completely and utterly irrelevant to the discussion of a 16th century understanding of justification, I will jump to this:
So, as long as our understanding of something is grounded in Scripture, then we have the historical context correct, not incorrect. That is the whole idea behind sola scriptura, and as anyone who has taken History 101 knows, you should always get your ideas from primary sources, not secondary sources. The Bible is the Christians primary source.
And here, is where the blogger breaks most decisively from both the Orthodox and the Patristic understanding of this. The Bible is the CHURCH'S primary source, and by way of that, is the individual Christian's primary source. When anyone today picks up a Bible, what is he picking up? He's picking up one of many translations, of some interpolation of a multiplicity of copies of what may have been original documents. He's picking up someone's decision as to whether the Greek Septuagint was more or less faithful than the Hebrew Masoretic. He's picking up a canon of books that was settled across many centuries and disagreed on by many titans of Christian thought and piety. In other words, what he is picking up, is a bound volume of traditions. Yes, Scripture is God's Word, and is such because it simply is. But what we have, here in time and space, came to us mediated by many, many many people.
When the blogger decides that Wisdom of Sirach is not to be considered canonical, or that 2 Maccabees isn't to be consulted decisively to discern whether prayers for the dead were part of Scripture, what he is really deciding is that one group's tradition (the Reformers') is better than another group's (everyone other than the Reformers). On what basis is this decision made? It can't be on the basis of reading the Bible, that he determines whose tradition of the Bible is the correct one--that's circular. What's really happening--what really makes the Calvinist's bible "dehistoricized"--is that he is picking up many centuries of tradition, and then using these to sweep aside everything else that was believed by the same people who held and delivered those traditions about Scripture down through the Church.
I used to do this myself. I really believed "Orthodoxy is one tradition, Rome is another...but I have the Bible! I don't need either of them." It was only by painful discernment that I realized how naive my beliefs really were in this matter.
I can only summarize this point by saying, I came to realize and understand, that apart from apostolic succession of ordained leaders in the Church, there is simply no way to determine which historical current actually holds a credible claim to delivering correct traditions, and these traditions include the Bible itself.