Read Between the Comments

Orthodox Bridge only approves about half of my comments, and the ones they do approve are always approved later and I rarely find the comments to them and it’s just so unwieldy.  So I put them here. The paragraphs preceded by asterisks are those responding to me. My comments are in normal formatting.

***I’m interested to know what you are persuaded is the judge of truth?***

Better phrased: what is the *final* judge of truth? Before I answer that we need to get clear on the question. There can be numerous, subordinate, yet legitimate judges of truth (such as history, logic, the church–gasp!) which are not the final judge, which would be God’s Speech.

***I think this is what Robert is getting at when he points out the relative “novelty” of the Reformed tradition. Is this not your “judge of truth?” If it is not, are you the judge of truth? How many hard sciences and proofs need to converge for you to have faith in Christ’s work in the Church?***

I am not Reformed, but to continue with the question: yes, there is a subjective aspect to all of truth-judgments (not to truth itself). Everyone does it. You did it when you subjectively evaluated EO.

***You are right, antiquity IS NOT the only judge. But it seems that you are willing to be the ultimate judge of ANY evidence and .***

I am a subordinate judge of truth, as are we all. Otherwise, why bother?

***pick and choose what you’d like to acknowledge and dismiss based on it’ consistency with your worldview***

You would need to provide evidence.

***Nearly all of us here have been in your shoes. I certainly have. I understand where you are coming from. I used to walk into Orthodox Churches in Bulgaria and mutter under my breath, “pagans.” Then I’d go pick up Institutes and placate my own predilections.***

Please don’t patronize me. trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve spent years looking into this. I’ve lost friends forever because they thought I was leaving Protestantism. Even now, they refuse to talk to me.

***but my point is that many of us (Karen, Robert, me) have wrestled with the same cognitive dissonance you are and have had to challenge our own self will and our own limits to faith***

That is fideism.

***There comes a point when you must realize that the obstacle is not the evidence, but who it is you think is the proper judge of truth. If you reserve that right for yourself…so be it. But do so with full understanding of who and what it is you trust in.***

The mormon apologists I debated told me the same thing. Anyway, you made a decision based on your understanding of the relevant factors to enter EO. That is no different than what I am doing. You just don’t like my conclusions.

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Hi John Doe

***Antiquity per se is not a particularly cogent epistemology. ***

Agreed. Otherwise the truth would belong to Hinduism.

***However, the Vincentian Canon is: that which was believed “everywhere, always, by everyone”.*

Vincent also thought the imputation and continuation of Adam’s Guilt was believed by everyone.

***We know that prayers to Mary were widely employed by Christians from India to Iberia in later centuries. That such an early prayer can be found lends credence to the belief that prayers to saints were part of the Apostolic deposit.***

Thank you. This is the classic example of affirming the consequent:

If this, then that.

That.

Therefore, this.

(THIS IS ORTHODOX APOLOGETICS’ FATAL MOMENT.   HERE FALLS THEIR ENTIRE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY.  I HONESTLY FEEL LIKE I CAN CLAIM VICTORY)

***It also shows that the Church that determined the New Testament Canon also believed in petitioning the saints in prayer.***

What exactly are you trying to prove? If you mean that the “church” proximately determined the table of contents page in my Bible and *some* of these same guys also petitioned saints, then I don’t disagree.

If you take that proximate recognition as on the same level as God’s speech-act, and that those later witnesses (valuable fathers that they are) are on the same level as the Scriptural writers who warned not to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, then I demur.

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Hi Erik,

My moniker is that I believe in posting under my name. I’ve seen too many people “go crazy” under the protection of an anonymous avatar. See the Mark Driscoll fiasco.

***Does he who formulates a canon need to be infallible?***

No.

***In such case, how can you accept the Athanasian Canon of the New Testament? Athenasius believed in prayers to the saints, so by your reasoning, these are either licit, or his NT canon is not.***

One of my comments will surprise you. First of all, canonical discussions are far wider than Athanasius. Secondly, I believe the NT *canon*–formulated as canon–is fallible. The table of contents page in my bible is fallible and open to falsification. That has always been the Protestant position (though most Protestants have forgotten it).

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David and Erik,

My point RE Adam’s guilt is that Vincent is a two-edged sword. The very guy you guys go to for doctrinal unity taught something you do not believe and he said that was always taught by the church.

Vincent writes,

“Who ever before his monstrous disciple Cœlestius denied that the whole human race is involved in the guilt of Adam’s sin?”

24.62

***Do you seriously believe Robert is arguing that Antiquity is the SOLE judge of Truth?**

No, but it seems like antiquity is being asked to carry a lot of weight.

*** course, there is specific Scriptural verification for Holy Tradition, as I sketched quickly above, also referencing Robert’s excellent blog article above “The Biblical Case for Holy Tradition”.***

I’ve seen it. I believe it commits the affirming the consequent fallacy, but that’s probably not the most germane point at the moment.

**But the Reformed often ask for some confirmation from history for Orthodox practices & Holy Tradition. That’s what you have here. Historic confirma-tion of Holy Tradition. **

Sure, but historic confirmation (like all forms of belief) comes in degrees, and this is not the same thing as a quote from Paul saying burn incense to the Queen of Heaven.

***There are also Ecc. Councils confirming Holy Tradition by hundreds if not thousands of Bishops convocating in counsel with each other to specifically discern what the Holy Spirit has taught the Church in past centuries.***

Sure, but even those decisions do not begin to cover the gamut of doctrine and practice today, as any Old Believer or Old Calendarist will tell you.

***But this is not the case with Prayers to the Saints and Mary for intercession to her Son. You have just the opposite…a consistent pattern, practice and believe throughout the Church which is confirmed by Church Councils.***

Notice I am not disagreeing with you, per se. I am simply examining the belief. Earlier I said that belief comes in degrees (or is strong or weak in varying degrees). The earlier you get the less specific the belief is.

Karen says:

May 7, 2015 at 7:46 am

I’m convinced there is nothing humans do that is completely passive. None of us (even from birth) are a tabula rasa on which our experiences just imprint themselves. God installs some hardwiring there first that makes us active processors and decision-makers from the get-go.

Reply

J. B. Aitken says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

May 7, 2015 at 12:22 pm

If I said stuff like that about you, my post wouldn’t be approved.

Yes, I understand how the brain works (interesting that you collapsed mind into brain), but I use “passive” in the sense of how 100.00% of studies on the brain use it.

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

May 7, 2015 at 12:25 pm

*** you are implicitly honoring and “praying to Mary” (and all the Saints) as Orthodox understand this as well.***

that’s begging the question, but otherwise kind of you to say so.

***I’m not convinced if you were to pray to *God* in the sense you understand prayer to Mary, you wouldn’t also be sinning (at least potentially) to be quite honest***

I wouldn’t be, because God attaches a promise to prayers to him, so I can approach him by faith. Since there is no promise attached to prayers to Mary, I cannot approach that with faith–“anything not of faith is sin” and all.

***God is not a divine vending machine, nor a genie to grant our wishes. ***

While that is a straw man, almost all of the prayers in Scripture are petitionary.

***God knows what we need before we ask, so the real purpose of prayer must be to come to know God more fully and in the process come to also more genuinely know ourselves.***

That’s a nice sentiment but not germane to the discussion.

***You cannot worship God rightly in the sense of including everything which goes to make up a fully orthodox Christian corporate liturgy without including prayers to Mary and the Saints.***

Thank you. That finally answered my question.

But how did you *know* know he was a saint?

Rome has their own view of "knowing" whether a departed person is truly a saint.  Whether that holds water or not, it's not my concern here.

The East will advance the following claims:

(1) We cannot know someone's final salvation.

(2) We know that the saints are saved (otherwise, how could they hear our prayers)

How do we alleviate the above contradiction?  How does the church make/recognize a saint?

Canonization does not make anybody a saint. Canonization recognizes that someone already was, in his own lifetime, a saint....Rather, it establishes the fact, publically and for all to see, that the man is already a saint -- that is, that the holy man and God have so cooperated together at every level of the man's existence that the man has become, by grace, a god, just as God Himself is God by nature. 

Given premise (1), how does the church *know* the man is now a saint?  Presumably before he was recognized as a saint, the church couldn't be sure of his final salvation, but now they are?  How did that happen?

(3) The saint just "happened."   

This begs the question.  I suppose they could answer by saying

(4) Saints appear within the life and practice of the church.  Through the church's doxastic practices we recognize that this individual was indeed a saint.

That's a better response and it almost works.  What it boils down to is this:

(4*) He is a saint because we recognize him as such through our worship practices.

While the position is clearer now than it was at the beginning of the post, I am not sure how this really advances the argument.  We will have the problem of (1).  What changed in the situation between (1) and (4*)?  I don't see how we aren't left with the conclusion:

(5) He becomes a saint by our wishing it were so.

This is absurd, but I suppose one could bolster it with Jesus's promise that 

(5*) the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth. AND
(5**) That means we can be sure that our practice is right.

But this sentence divorced from any external, verifiable standard can prove anything and worse, it's ad hoc.  

Therefore, I challenge premise (1)

(~1) The Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God.

On prayers to Mary

Orthodox Bridge usually doesn't approve my posts, so I copied/pasted it here.

Not outright disagreeing, but several observations and/or questions:

1) Reformed do not say the church was corrupted to that extent.  We've gone over this several times.
2) We presume that Mary has a human body and human nature in heaven.  We are just wondering how she can have nigh-omniscience and nigh-omnipotence with several hundred million people praying to her at once.
3) I assume you accept the Dormition of Mary.   If you don't, then my objections in (2) don't apply.  In that case Mary, being a disembodied soul, probably could be in two places at once since she isn' t limited by the body.
4) But in that case, the final resurrection would limit her bodily, which seems to be a throwback to chain of being ontology.
4) We do not have a promise from God attached to prayers to Mary; therefore, we would be praying without being sure she hears us.  Therefore, we would be praying without faith.

The one thing that scared me about the desert fathers

They offer many good insights on prayer and the soul, but if you take out "Jesus" you get pure and simple Buddhism.

Protestant thoughts on EO spirituality

Not arguing for ultimate truth or falsity in this review.  I am helping an EO guy give the fairest contrast between EO and classic Protestantism. I truly wish him in the best.

In classic Western Christian theological thought, the nature of God is generally understood as absolute, transcendent and indivisible (that is, not divided into parts). This is the doctrine called “divine simplicity” or “divine unity”

Mostly yes.  However, ALL Christian traditions believe in divine simplicity.  Gregory Palamas is very firm on this point.  What the East rejects is the view of divine simplicity that identifies essence with attribute in a 1:1 correspondence.  Interestingly enough, 19th century American Reformed theologians rejected this view of divine simplicity. The author quotes William Craig as saying God has no real relations within himself.  This needs upacking.  The West (rightly or wrongly) says God has no ontological distinctions within himself (meaning an essential separation between attribute A and attribute B and essence C.   The West very firmly holds to logical and rational distinctions between the essence/attributes.

Following this theological premise, Western theologians in the Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Reformed traditions have concluded that since God is radically transcendent, God’s relations with humans – in order to protect God’s transcendence and indivisibility – can (then) only be experienced through created entities or means (through intermediaries like angels, an image, or a symbol, which signifies God but are not God). 

What about God's covenantal relations?  It's a thought.

According to the classic Western view, therefore, even “grace” itself – God’s action within the soul – is a “created” effect of God – (and) is not God working in the soul directly.

This is an excellent criticism of Roman Catholicism.  I'm not sure, however, why this sentence, assuming it is a fair representation of Protestantism, necessitates God's grace as created.   God's action within the soul, if that is indeed what grace is, is God himself, and so eternal.  Now the effect in the soul is created, but that's not a particularly controversial statement.

the Western Christian spiritual tradition affirms that there are (then) essentially only two ways to know God:

What Luther and the Reformed are saying is what Romans 10 is saying, "We don't ascend to God to know God.  God descends to us in his Word."  This is what Luther meant by denying the theology of glory.

The seat of the Image of God is not thought to be in the reasoning or intellective faculty of the human being, but rather in the “Nous”, sometimes translated incorrectly as “Mind”, but in the East understood as “heart.” This is not necessarily the physical “heart” but at the center of man’s being.

I like this statement.  If nous means heart, then this anthropology isn't that different from Reformed sources.  I understand that the EO will say that God's energies interact with the nous.  I know the Reformed do not take that view.  Fair enough.  I have reasons for not holding to the energies, but that's not the point of the post.

Carrying this line of thinking forward to its logical conclusion, the West has rejected as an authentic experience of God the Uncreated Light or Vision of God (theoria) of our hesychast, contemplative tradition in Eastern Christianity.

We reject hesychasm, but not the experiencing of the divine light.  Too many credible Western theologians and pastors have experienced the divine light for us to deny that it is real.  

I find that in Western Christianity because of the approaches we have been discussing, there tends to be a dichotomy between the realm of God and the realm of man. It tends to set-up, as Father Stephen Freeman puts it, a “two-storey universe”: God and the spiritual realm “up there, and us down here”.

It hinges upon how God promised to meet man.  We understand that God meets man covenantally through his Word.   We also see the covenant as the bridge between the two realms (though I fully agree with Allen's critique of Roman Catholicism).

Can a coherentism hold?

The Eastern Orthodox view of the Patrum Consensus, and of the evaluating of theological claims, presupposes some form of coherentism.  Briefly defined, coherentism is the belief the essence of truth (or better, a true particular) is whether belief x properly coheres within a system.  Bertrand Russell explains it “forms part of the completely rounded system of truth” (Russell 1964, 122).  As Alvin Plantinga notes, “It is a relation that holds just among beliefs” (Plantinga 1993, 179).  

We see something similar with Eastern Orthodoxy.  How can we evaluate a particular teaching of a church father?  Here is a clear example (and also a response to yours truly).  Summarizing Vincent of Lerins,

This approach examines a doctrine by asking three questions: (1) Was this doctrine held by early Christians? (the test of antiquity); (2) Was this doctrine widely held among early Christians? (the test of ubiquity); and (3) Was this doctrine affirmed by the church as a whole? (the test of catholicity).

Explained another way:

The solution to this problem is to read Scripture not individually, but corporately in solidarity with the Church.  The early Church viewed Scripture and Tradition (T¹) not in tension with each other but as congruent.

Practical Problem 1: So let’s flesh this out.  Father Z advances teaching x. How do we know x is right?  We judge it in light of the teaching of the church (x*).  How then do we know that x* is right?  

When you evaluate a later father in light of earlier teachings, this isn’t a problem.  When you evaluate fathers contemporaneous with one another, then it gets problematic.  Let’s assume Fathers Y and X minister around the same time and leave a corpus of work.  Further, let’s assume they write about an issue that had not yet been decisively solved.  

Back to (PP1).  Let’s say that x* is indeed the inherited tradition of the church.  It is Truth.  It is what has been always taught.  Said this way, it sounds like a standard to compare other teachings--and indeed it can (and sometimes should) be used that way.  Here’s the problem, though:  some of the terms that constitute x* were themselves not yet part of x*.  We will call these terms x*...m, n, p...z.  Examples would be later ecumenical councils, later fathers, different liturgies, etc.  Orthodox love to say that “their view of tradition isn’t static.”  Indeed, it is not.  The question is how to know whether x*...n is part of tradition.

I suggest that this problem is best seen in a logical fallacy.  In other words,

p ⊃ q

q

---

p

This is the fallacy of asserting the consequent

“If this, then that.”
That,

Therefore, this.

If (T¹) is true, then x*...n

x*...n

Therefore, an unbroken T¹.

If (T¹), then the Dormition of Mary.

The Dormition of Mary is celebrated as tradition.

Therefore, T¹.  

Stated less formally, the Orthodox must prove that the current instantiation of tradition, be it the Dormition of Mary or whatever, is already within p from the beginning.  This has not been done.  

Back to Coherentism

Does a doctrine like the Dormition of Mary cohere within Orthodox Tradition?  I actually think it does.  But that’s not good enough for truth.  All coherence can demonstrate is consistency.  To be good enough for warrant it must demonstrate a correspondence with an external standard.  Any such standard, either the Scriptures or the earliest (i.e., writings contemporary with the Apostles) Christian writings, must bear witness to it.

There is a possible rejoinder: one can demonstrate that x*...n is compatible with such a standard.  That is certainly possible, but it does not demonstrate the historical evidence of x*...n from the earliest days.  Therefore, the Evangelical is warranted in not practicing x*...n.  

Ecumenical Ascesis: Giving and Taking Away with the same hand

My recent studies in philosophy of mind and consciousness have brought me back to the desert fathers.  I think they have some profound insights on depression and wholeness.  Of course, their understanding of salvation and the work of Christ is an utter disaster.  

The more friendly-minded Eastern Orthodox will say that “The Spirit is working in other Christian traditions,” and that is nice of them to say so.  However, they will also say that true healing of the nous (it’s hard to find an evangelical equivalent of that phrase.  Picture a midway point between justification and sanctification and call it salvation) can only happen within the life of the Church.

But if the Spirit is working outside the boundaries of the church, can it not be that true healing is happening there?  If so, then what of the other claim that healing of the nous can only happen within the liturgical and ascetical life of the church?

Further, what of the Evangelicals who have engaged in healing ministries?  I don’t mean specifically bodily healing, though that’s included, but healing of the psyche.  John Wimber comes to mind.  Unless one wants to say “he does it by demons,” one is forced to conclude that the power of Christ--never separated from his body--is operative in Evangelicalism.   Therefore, Evangelicals are part of the Body of Christ.  

Response to Toll-Houses

From a sermon by John Maximovitch

This topic deals with life-after-death experiences.  True, the bible says man is appointed once to die and then the judgment, but numerous anecdotal testimonies force us to give a more coherent account of the state of the soul after death before the final judgment.  

Maximovitch writes,

Often this spiritual vision begins in the dying even before death, and while still seeing those around them and even speaking with them, they see what others do not see.

So far, so good.  This corroborates other experiences.

He further notes,

But when it leaves the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and bad. Usually it inclines toward those which are more akin to it in spirit, and if while in the body it was under the influence of certain ones, it will remain in dependence upon them when it leaves the body, however unpleasant they may turn out to be upon encountering them.

Leaving aside the lack of Scriptural (or even Patristic) evidence, I don’t have a huge problem with this statement.  

For the course of two days the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit places on earth which were dear to it, but on the third day it moves into other spheres. [3] At this time (the third day), it passes through legions of evil spirits which obstruct its path and accuse it of various sins, to which they themselves had tempted it.

This is a dangerous teaching because there isn’t a word about the Power of Jesus breaking sin in my life, or the Spirit’s being a downpayment, or that we are upon death made perfect in holiness (Hebr. 12:23).

According to various revelations there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called "toll-houses," at each of which one or another form of sin is tested; after passing through one the soul comes upon the next one, and only after successfully passing through all of them can the soul continue its path without being immediately cast into gehenna. How terrible these demons and their toll-houses are may be seen in the fact that Mother of God Herself, when informed by the Archangel Gabriel of Her approaching death, answering her prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from heaven to receive the soul of His Most Pure Mother and conduct it to heaven. Terrible indeed is the third day for the soul of the departed, and for this reason it especially needs prayers then for itself.

What is most terrible is that Jesus doesn’t seem strong enough or too interested to do anything to help.  I would hate to think that Jesus wasn’t good enough, that his cross wasn’t strong enough to save me, but rather the final instance of my getting into heaven has to do with enough people praying for me at the right moment. Further, what are these “various revelations?”  He gives a list of fathers but no references that we may check them.

But someone might say, "Jacob, you are a continuationist. How can you reject or falsify these claims to continuing revelation?" First of all, modern-day prophecy does not introduce new doctrine, which is precisely what the above claims are doing.

Then, having successfully passed through the toll-houses and bowed down before God, the soul for the course of 37 more days visits the heavenly habitations and the abysses of hell, not knowing yet where it will remain, and only on the fortieth day is its place appointed until the resurrection of the dead.

If this is true, not knowing where the soul will be, then how could Paul confidently state that he would be with Christ upon death? I think that decisively refutes the above anecdote that Mary had to pray to Jesus to make it past the toll-houses.

On the other hand, given that I don’t think heaven and hell are geo-spatial realities per se, I have no problem saying that the soul can “roam various spheres.”  Of course, we have no evidence for such a claim but I see no real theological problem with it.

To be fair, not all EO accept toll-houses, but a large and legitimate expression of certain traditions within EO do. Further, toll-houses seem to corroborate the larger EO mentality regarding an utter lack of confidence in Christ's finished work and my final salvation.

RE Hopko on Predestination

A friend asked me to look at this piece by Fr Thomas Hopko on predestination. I understand he is now with the Lord, so I write this in peace.  This is not an exhaustive commentary, either on his end or my end.  Further, while I hold to predestination I am not *defending* it per se, but rather rebutting some inadequate counter proposals.

Further, I think he and I are closer on free will than he might realize.

Fr Hopko begins on a positive note:  he points out that what most discussions on predestination usually concern “Providence” rather than predestination.  God’s governing the world is not the same thing as his choosing me (or choosing my choosing, what have you).  

Concerning “foreknowledge” Hopko writes,

It is on the basis of his foreknowledge that he makes his plan, that he works out his plan in relationship to creatures, who are free.

If I can rephrase this:  God orders the world based on his foreknowledge.  Okay.   However, we run into troubled waters:

You have to say, “Things do not happen because God knows them, God knows them because they happen.”

I can only ask in response:  Are they happening independent of God?    Hopko is even more explicit,

My action determines God’s knowledge, and that is very important. God knows things because I will freely do them. I don’t do them because God knows them.

This seems to contradict his earlier claim that God foreknows everything.  If God foreknows everything, then my action--since I do not yet exist--cannot cause his knowledge.   Concerning God and Time,

For God, there is no past, present, and future. All knowledge of God is in God before anything even happens. All the whole knowledge of creation, the whole knowledge of everything that could be, and would be, and how it will be, is in the divine mind of God before anything creaturely even exists. That would be a dogma of ancient Orthodox Christian faith; there is no doubt about that.

I don’t accept the Boethian view of time, but even here, if we say that I pre-exist in the mind of God, I only pre-exist as an idea, not as an acting agent.  This means a) God foreknows my actions because I am already in his mind and b) I am not yet acting as a physical agent, which means c) my actions cannot cause God’s knowledge.

Some writers, in fact some very important Christian writers, will say, “God will never violate the freedom of his creature. Once he gives the freedom, he will not violate it.” But I think that we would have to go a step further, on the basis of Scripture and understanding of Scripture in the Tradition of our Church, by our great spiritual teachers, and that is that it is not simply the case that God will not violate our freedom. We have to say something stronger. We have to say, “God cannot violate our freedom.” God cannot force us to do anything at all. He simply cannot do it.

Hopko is skipping over so many issues related to human freedom.  For what it’s worth, I accept real free will.  I don’t like the term “libertarian free will,” but I hold to free will.  

Hopko then goes on to speak of the “eternal council,” which is pretty good so I will move on.

But here, unlike the Calvinists, we Eastern Orthodox ancient Christians would never say that God arbitrarily chooses some and makes them elect, and he could choose anybody He wants. We do not believe in irresistible grace. We believe grace is resistible. We do not believe that the “sovereignty of God” means he could make anybody into St. Paul if he wanted to. That is simply not true, because our freedom is involved.

This is just bad.  Which Calvinist holds that God arbitrarily chooses people?  Citation, please.  We hold that God does not choose us as a reward for fore-knowing we would choose him.  That’s not grace.  That’s wage-labor.  And we believe grace is resistible.  We prefer to say that God’s ultimate calling is effectual.  Instead of interacting with cogent defenses of effectual calling, Hopko attacks bad connotations of “irresistible grace.”