Growing up, I attended Sunday school at our charismatic, Evangelical church every week. Even at a young age, I never really fit in. I asked too many questions. One Sunday in particular comes to mind. The nice older lady teaching the class was walking us through our statement of beliefs when one really caught my attention. The statement said that our denomination accepted the Trinitarian formula as expressed in the Nicene Creed.
My hand shot up. “Can we read that?” I asked. The teacher looked momentarily stunned, told me “no”, and then tried to move on. I kept asking questions. “Who wrote it? When? Why? You just told me that we believe what it says about God, so why can’t we read what it says? Why didn’t they print a copy of it in this pamphlet so people know what we believe?”
There were no answers forthcoming, no matter how hard I asked. The teacher made it clear we had to get through all the beliefs before we could have cookies. That was incentive enough to let the subject go.
I was eventually able to read the Nicene Creed, and find out about the Council of Nicea, but only because the school library had books on Christian History. I never got over the fact that a secular library would teach me more about Christianity than my own church would.
That was not the only time my questions went unanswered. Once I even sat down with our pastor to ask a whole series of questions, “Who was Christ? Why did Christ have to be born? Why did He have to die? Why do we have to come to church to hear a sermon, if we can watch it on TV? Did the original church have worship services the way we do?” I left after an hour very disappointed. The pastor had offered no deep wisdom, just Evangelical platitudes.
Evangelicalism, as I had discovered to my dismay, could never really answer my most important questions. Later as an adult, I realized that attempting to do so would have exposed how disconnected Evangelicalism is from actual Christianity. If you read the Nicene Creed, then you immediately realize that it reflects beliefs and teachings which are totally alien to Evangelicalism. The historical context makes things even worse. If you study the Council of Nicea, along with the beliefs and practices of the time, it is apparent that the 4th Century Christian Church was neither Evangelical nor even Protestant.
That presents a real pickle for an Evangelical denomination that, for example, wants to preserve the traditional teaching of the Trinity. While you can find support in scripture for the Trinitarian formula, it is not explicitly stated anywhere in the Bible. The Church had preserved that teaching in her Tradition, fully articulating it in the Creed as a response to Arianism.
So what is a good Evangelical denomination to do?
You do what mine did when I was a child. You claim the Trinity as taught in the Creed, or whatever other doctrine suits your fancy, but refuse to give any details, lest you encounter inconvenient historical contradictions you prefer to avoid. Contradictions such as: why do you accept the Biblical canon and the Nicene Creed given to you by a Church you otherwise completely reject? Or how can charismatic Evangelicalism be the true Christian Faith, when it plainly never existed before the 19th Century?
Yeah, better to avoid all that.
I was recently reminded of my first brush with the Nicene Creed in Sunday school because a contributor responded to a question on her latest article, “To Prevent Death, Please Stop Living”, with a lengthy post about the nature of Christ and the councils in which it was discussed. I highly recommend it. You can read it here in its entirety. The conclusions about Christ are below, for those who want the condensed version:
Thus far, all the Ecumenical Councils established the following:
1. Christ has two natures – He is both God and man, possessing a divine nature and a human nature
2. Each nature is full and complete – He is fully God and fully man
3. Each nature remains distinct – they do not intermix to form a third type of nature
4. Christ is only one Person – with two natures united in one Person, He will be both God and man forever
5. Things that are true of only one nature but not the other, are still true of the whole Person of Christ.
6. Christ possesses two wills – divine will and human will, where the human will willingly submits to the divine will.
Despite decades of Orthodoxy, I am still amazed by how much easier life is when you don’t have to avoid 1,500 years of Church History. I reread the post a few times. Each time I pondered something else the Church was telling me about Our Lord. The well of Orthodoxy is inexhaustible. We may live for eternity, but we will never want for new things to learn about God.
Out of curiosity, I went to the Website of my old denomination and looked at the statement of beliefs. The reference to the Nicene Creed is gone now, as is the word “Trinity.” Neither of those terms are anywhere on the official denominational Website. Instead, there is just this statement that says, “We believe in one God eternally existing in three persons; namely, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
I suppose that fixes the inconvenient “historical” issue, at least as far as that doctrine is concerned. Out of sight, out of mind. Until some kid raises his hand and asks, “Where does it say that in the Bible?” or “What is this Trinity thing my friends talk about and why don’t we use that word in our church?”
I feel sorry for Evangelicals. I wrote in this article about what it was like to watch Evangelical tourists in Europe visiting historic churches. They are quite lost when doing so. Their faith did not even exist when those churches were built. The triumphs of Christendom do not belong to them. They are rootless orphans living in makeshift hovels while surrounded by mansions.
I even feel sorry for Evangelicals when they cherry-pick quotes from Church Fathers. Something which happens online on a regular basis. They will triumphantly find and publish a sentence or two that seemingly backs up some Evangelical claim. Moments later, they are sadly made aware that, often in the same document, the saint they are referencing espoused Church doctrines (Eucharist, baptism, liturgy, confession, icons, etc.) that are explicitly against Evangelical teachings. The cognitive dissonance this provokes is awful to behold. Poor Evangelicals are left arguing that we are to ignore everything some saint wrote, said, or believed with the exception of the chosen few sentences that can be interpreted as agreeing with one Evangelical doctrine or another. It’s very sad.
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It is so much easier to have discussions about God and His Church when you can be honest about all aspects of Christian History. Evangelicals clearly can’t, and they project that inability, wrongly, onto Orthodox Christians. Below are a few historical and Theological examples Protestants believe will be “inconvenient” from an Orthodox perspective that really aren’t:
- “Heretics were Patriarchs of Constantinople!” – Yep. They all got condemned. Sometimes the Church needs time to sort things out.
- “You were under the Pope!” – Not like you think. We were in communion with the Patriarch of Rome, who was an exemplar of Orthodoxy for much of the first millennium. When the Pope ceased to be Orthodox, we ceased to be in communion with him.
- “That’s not in the Bible!” – Yep. The Bible is neither systematic Theology nor a liturgical handbook. The way Evangelicals do church services, for example, isn’t in the Bible. That doesn’t stop them, however. The Bible is full of references to liturgical worship (see Jewish temple, Book of Revelations) and the Eucharist. “Revivals”, electric guitars, and unfermented grape juice are, on the other hand, conspicuously absent.
So much of the Christian Faith was defended and explained during historical periods that Evangelicalism consciously avoids dealing with. This leaves Evangelicalism with no real understanding of even basic Christians beliefs. Which is a strange predicament for a group claiming to adhere to Christian “fundamentals.” Nor does Evangelicalism have even a tenuous historical connection to Christ and His Church. At this point, for me, it is an open question if Evangelicalism is a heretical “Christian” movement, or is it a totally separate religion?
Evangelicalism is much more well-known in America than Orthodoxy. Which creates serious problems, as many of the common misconceptions of God and the Christian Faith are caused by Evangelicalism. TV preachers and evangelists have wreaked havoc among non-believers by exposing them to a counterfeit god and a counterfeit faith. When we encounter those who reject God, we must be patient. They frequently aren’t rejecting the real God, about Whom they know nothing. Rather, they are rejecting the version of God learned from ignorant men in designer suits. To teach them about God, we must also teach them to “unlearn” what they think they already know.
But this is not to say that Evangelicals are bad people. There are many good people in Evangelicalism who are trying to be followers of Christ. They just don’t know how. It is up to God to have mercy on them, and up to us Orthodox to figure out how to reach them. The fact that I am sitting here typing this post tells you that is entirely possible, no matter how frustrating it might be to witness to them.
Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America
I converted to Orthodoxy late in life (I’m now 64) after spending many years struggling with evangelicalism that I did not choose, but was born into. Today, I’m a subdeacon in an Antiochian parish and evangelicalism is so far in my rear view mirror. The “how did the church suddenly disappear with the death of the Apostles and then suddenly reappear in the 16th century in northern Europe” never resonated with me.
A few Sundays ago I looked out from the altar during Divine Liturgy. On the right side of the nave in the first two rows stood two families and an elderly woman. In the remaining rows of the nave stood all men, two older men like me, and the rest younger men. We’ve seen this trend in the last two years in our Antiochian parish; mostly young men who are disaffected evangelicals and are fleeing these faith traditions. The local Serbian, OCA, and ROCOR churches are seeing this trend, and even the local Greek churches are seeing this trend too.
With what’s going on with the SBC, PCA, and other evangelicals, as well as the goofy mega churches, these men are jumping ship.
I predict in the next 5 years the PCA and SBC will be ordaining women clergy, performing same sex marriages, and preaching egalitarian sermons. The fate of evangelicals will be that of the UMC, UCC, ELCA, PCUSA, Episcopalian, and other mainline Protestant churches.
This is a dumb argument because no Prot really believes the 4th century church got the canon right (nor does any Roman or Eastwrn for that matter). They say that, but only because the institutions require it. On the individual level they all throw out some book. Usually James, which Luther famously called an epistle of straw. Calvinists tend to throw out Hebrews, because it shows “it is finished” in Luke means only the death part of the sacrifice not everyone’s full salvation as Hebrews shows Christ still had to apply his blood to the altar in the hy of holies in heaven. The General (or Catholic) epistles as a whole are generally spit upon. Acts 2:38 is rejected by all Baptists. Some reject John, some Matthew. Most teject the Pastorals, because Paul is not faith alonist in them. So you can argue all you like “You believe the church of the 4th century got the canon right, so how can you reject their interpretation of its contents?” and the answer is “I only say I believe they got the canon right; but that’s just a public profession extorted from me to claim I believe what I do not, but I won’t say that out loud.” Source? I am the one and only Prot who dares say the quiet part out loud. The church fathers produced the worst possible canon, but we’re stuck with it because dishonest Prots won’t be honest, and Eastern Orthodoc and Catholics too; everyon saying that the 4th century chirch got the canon right is a liar. You don’t believe in “call no man father” and you don’t believe in “let the bishop be the husband of one wife.” All inerrantists are lying. All honest people admit the canon is a mess.
What basis do you use to decide that the canon of scripture is a mess? The Christian Faith you describe would not be worth believing in. There would be no truth, just subjective opinion of angry people. Why even bother with such a “faith?” On the Orthodox side, call no man father was a particular point for particular audience. Clearly spiritual fatherhood was clear especially in Paul’s letters. Assuming you don’t reject Paul’s teaching, which I guess I can’t assume. And bishops being unmarried is a church discipline. Many bishops are widowers actually. But the Apostle Paul wished all could be celibate as he was. Married priests still exist, whereas married bishops did too. And could again, if the discipline changed. The passage is not commanding everyone to be married, as that would contradict the teaching on celibacy being a preferred state. Assuming you don’t reject that.
John, North America has been evangelized??? If by “evangelized” you mean, three thousand miles wide and a quarter of an inch deep, then I guess you’re correct.
Whatever we think of Evangelicalism, it has far exceeded the Orthodox in evangelizing the Americas, feeding the poor, and world missions. We must look to ourselves and shore up what is lacking. Not only does God judge sin, but also fruitlessness. It was put to me this way: as Orthodox we have the full pizza with all twelve slices, yet we only are eating one. Evangelicals have the same pie but only five slices (obviously, missing some things), and they are eating four out of five they have. When it comes to planting churches, reaching the lost, and world missions, we–the Orthodox–have fallen behind and risk God’s judgement. While we are the true Church, we are not living up to our inheritance.
It all goes back to Pelagius and Augustine. Pelagius said you merit grace by becoming a Christian. Augustine said God zaps random people with grace and that saves them first AND THEN after being saved they become a Christian. Evangelicals continue Augustine’s belief; the RCC took Augusyine a step further at Vatican II, i.e. if “God zaps random people with grace and that saves them first AND THEN after being saved they become a Christian” then why is the “becoming a Christian” part necessecary, since they are already saved by the magic grace zapping? Hence V2 says God gives grace to some Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. and this saves them without them having to become a Christian. Protestants will eventually figure out this is where Augustinian “logic” leads as well and follow Rome into this herest. So it turns out Pelagius was right all along, i.e. “you merit grace by becoming a Christian.”
If we merit grace by becoming a Christian how is this not a contradiction of the term itself? For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
(Ephesians 2:8, NASB)
A gift is not something merited or earned or deserve. It’s merit and value is totally on the side of the giver.
The definition that grace if partially merited ceases to be grace is false. Noah was righteous in his generations and thus found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Gen 6) So also Cornelius was rewarded with an opportunity to the hear the gospel because the angels says “for your alms deeds and prayers have come up as a remembrance before the Lord” (Acts 10). So the notion that grace is completely unearned is a gnostic heresy. This is the mistake of basing one’s underatanding of salvation on Abraham (who is completely beside the point) rather than on Noah. Abraham believed God (about his plan to give him descendants) and counted it to him (to God) as righteosness (when God as yet had given him none, becauae he believed God would keep his promise and this engaged in theodicy in justifying God before the fact.) (Gen 15:5-6) The interpretation that that passage is about Abraham being justified by God for mere faith is gnostic heresy.
I graduated from an evangelical Bible college in 1979. I have a BA in Missiology; I intended to be a missionary…
I loved it. But in my church history classes, I couldn’t figure out what happened to the Church between Pentecost and… well… us. There was a bare mention of Constantine, but I don’t remember a reference to any other Christian person between Pentecost and the present. I asked about that, and I was told that the Church went dark, so to speak… Succumbed to false prophets, etc.
Good Lord. Not even they seemed curious.
Yeah, coming from a similar background, and was fed the line that the True Church was very small and hidden for many centuries (various Anabaptist sects, etc). They tend to forget the words of our Lord “…I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell WILL NOT PREVAIL against it…”!
I’m SO HAPPY that a Protestant bible university gave me the tools i needed to know to become Orthodox!!