An Orthodox Deconstruction of Reformed Theology

Justin-H.S. said:

They both presuppose ADS.

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ADS? They both make ads.

zippy2006 said:

Well, that is a much better answer.

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so, my original answer was true (at least from the Orthodox POV). prolly should have asked WHY I said heresy, rather than the sarcastic response.

Justin-H.S. said:

How is it a caricature if they’re both the same argument with the only difference being the amount of linear time that passed?

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They’re not the same argument.

The first argument says, “this church claimed books A-C are canon, this other church claimed books X-Z are canon — who do we follow??” Further, it says that the canon of Scripture is defined by an (ecumenical) council.

The second argument says, “the Church existed prior to the writing of the New Testament (and even existed prior to Moses writing the Pentateuch), therefore the written Scriptures cannot be the exclusive and only defining guide, nor can they be said to create the Church ex nihilo”

Two very different arguments - not related to the difference (or lack thereof) between a year, decade, century, and millennium

Justin-H.S. said:

Here's an easy one: At some point in the first hour, Mr. Dyer says the NT wasn't even canonized until the late 4th century (and Revelation wasn't included for another couple hundred years after that), so how could the early Church have been a 'Sola Scriptura' church if some churches had A,B,C scriptures while others had X,Y,Z scriptures. It wasn't until several councils after the first Nicaea that scriptures A,B,C were deemed authentic along with X,Y,Z scriptures along with 21 other epistles. So, that essentially cancels out that the Ordo Theologae comes from the scriptures alone.

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At one point Paul hadn't written his letter to Timothy.

Justin-H.S. said:

That's not what the argument was. The argument was: Some communities had books A,B,C, while others had X,Y,Z which were all deemed canon at a latter council. There's no language in the argument about a "Who do we follow?" situation.

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I still think it’s two distinct arguments

Plus this is also a historically inaccurate representation of how the canon was canonized

I think sometimes what is holy tradition & Biblical but not specifically accounted for in the Bible becomes confused. For ex. the Didache testifies to the Wed & Friday fast days; the Lord tells us in Matthew 6 when we fast as an activity but not the specific days. Another ex. is pro life, some will argue that abortion is not in the Bible ( although pro life is Biblical truth) while the Didache clearly indicates we are to be pro life.


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Justin-H.S. said:

If I wanted to be historically accurate, I'd have included a clause in the argument saying "There were also books 1,2,3 which were excluded from the canon due to inauthenticity;" but for the sake of brevity, didn't.

The reason I prefer the ante-Nicene to the Apostolic age for this argument is because Many-a-Reformationist (the subject of discussion) like to argue that the Church inexplicably fell apart after Nicea 1 due to some conspircacy to do with "Constantine and the Papists." To state that the NT wasn't even canonized until after Nicea 1 breaks that dumb argument.

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Right, but we have plenty of ante-Nicene fathers and local churches with their “local canons” (so-to-speak) that match the current lists. The problem is that there isn’t a definitive date or event — before or after Nicea — that we can point to and say “this is when the NT was canonized.”

Even to talk about the Canon in that way is to buy in to the radical Protestant narrative about us and the Catholics (not all Protestants, as we both know, are the same). It’s like when we recognize the Saints. The radical Protestants would have one believe that we are “making” someone a saint and “deciding” who is a saint, thus placing ourselves in the judgment throne of God, etc. We would disagree — we simply recognize and acknowledge the presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit in our reposed brethren. Same way with the development of the Scripture canon. The list of Scriptures weren’t ever formally canonized in an ecumenical council - they were simply recognized over time by the Church as being guiding lights, writings from Spirit-bearers, and Spirit-bearing texts themselves

The fact that there is history behind the canon might get an uninformed Protestant to start thinking about this a bit deeper, but I know plenty of Protestants who know early church history inside and out and won’t be swayed in the slightest by pointing out the *slight* variants in the various lists of canonical

zippy2006 said:

Lol, sure. Catholicism and Protestantism are two sides of the "not Orthodox" coin, just as Protestantism and Orthodoxy are two sides of "not Catholic" coin, and Orthodoxy and Catholicism are two sides of the "not Protestant" coin. What a brilliant answer.

Another illuminating response from the ever-polemical Orthodox.

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Pretty much. Imho, in a few years, as socialism, pluralism, feminism, homosexuality, and confusion continue to batter away at every single Church and denomination, we’ll all be praying in basements and hanging on to Faith quietly. That might sound kind of dramatic or silly, but it’s what seems to be coming down the road.

And the battering and confusion often come from within. We are the ones who compromise, let evil in, and then excuse this evil with a redefinition of mercy and grace. Yikes. So...

Yes, we have differences. That is true. We have things in common as well. As it gets darker and weirder, it’ll be more and more necessary to go deeply internal, cultivate a strong prayer and spiritual life, cling to Christ, and watch our hearts.

Justin-H.S. said:

It's a wide range. I've heard as far as 9th century AD until the canon was realized, and even then the Reformers still came through and changed their own canon citing some humanistic reasoning of 'going back to the original Hebrew.'


I get what you're saying. Point being, relying on scripture alone to determine the practice of the faith is a failing project (as revealed by modern and post-modern Christianity) since the scriptures were in flux for a better part of the first millennium.

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Agreed and agreed. Even to your first point, you could argue it was after the 9th century. Rome was still in communion with the other Patriarchs at that time and the Roman (OT) canon is different from the Byzantine so even by that late it wasn’t universal.

On the note of Hebrew, I’d like to learn more about the views of that vs Septuagint over time. I know St Jerome learned Hebrew so he could translate the Hebrew texts instead of the Greek into Latin.

And, agreed that relying solely on Scripture is problematic (this was a big factor in my own conversion), although I still disagree with your reasoning (it’s a problem because the definition of scripture was in flux). I can understand what you’re saying, but even if the canon wasn’t debated at all, sola scriptura as a principle would still have issues.

Justin-H.S. said:

TL;DR - It all boils down to what your Ordo Theologae (Order of Theology) is.

For Roman Catholics; Theology derives from the Pope.
For Protestants; Theology derives from the scriptures.
For Othodox; Theology derives from the Holy Trinity.

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This is actually sort of a cheap shot. All three traditions believe that God reveals himself. None of them has a direct pipeline to the Holy Trinity. (Protestants have misrepresented Catholics as claiming that for the Pope, but it's not really true.) They have somewhat different ways of judging what God actually wants, but there's a fair amount of overlap.

All the stuff about the canon not being frozen until a few centuries turns out to be irrelevant to Protestants. Inspiration is vested in the authors, not the table of contents. (Lutherans to this day have no mandatory canon.) The Gospels and Paul would be sufficient for almost all doctrine, and those were accepted as far back as we know.

While there's a fair amount of "pop theology," careful Protestants understand that for the first Cent or so there were living memories that had a good deal of information. Scripture was defined as the authority during the 16th Cent because it seemed apparent that over time this tradition had diverged, so checking it against what was written in the 1st Cent was the obvious approach. I don't think Protestants actually made any judgement about Orthodox in this regard, although I would consider it to be true of Orthodox tradition as well.

Craig has flirted with Reformed theology and offers a much better polemic.

Orthodox Christian Theology

There’s a lot of mythology about Nicea among certain Protestant elements. It didn’t invent the Trinity, nor was the canon defined there.

However the current Protestant movement has influences from both the magisterial Reformers (folks like Luther and Calvin) and the left wing (“anabaptists”).

The left wing believed (and those influenced by it still believe) that the Church has no business defining heretics in the context of government enforcement. I.e. Christians shouldn’t persecute each other. It’s reasonable to see Nicea as an important point in development of that.

What many of them fail to realize is that much of what was decided at Nicea has earlier roots, in part in the translation of theology from the original Jewish concepts to Greek concepts, and in part in the way church governance and politics developed..

You don’t hear this so much from the descendants of the magisterial Reformation, because they’re happy with the doctrinal developments at Nicea and later, and not so willing to say that uncharitable behavior discredits theology. (This is true by necessity, since the magisterial Reformation continued the tradition of persecuting heretics as long as it was politically possible.)

hedrick said:

I don't think Protestants actually made any judgement about Orthodox in this regard, although I would consider it to be true of Orthodox tradition as well.

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The second generation of Lutherans (the “Tubingen school” - some of Melanchthon’s student like Jakob Andraea if I remember correctly) had some dialogues with the Patriarch of Constantinople (Jeremias II). They went back and forth a bit but without much real progress. It’s been a while since I’ve read the letters, but I believe the biggest sticking points were the filioque and invocation of saints... I don’t recall sola scriptura being debated but I’m sure it came up (it’s worth noting that the Historic Lutheran view of Sola Scriptura still maintains that the Church Fathers are of a HUGE importance)

hedrick said:

None of them has a direct pipeline to the Holy Trinity.

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you know this about us, how?