The Invisible Church and Other Barriers
I have already recounted
something of the existential crisis that led me to seek real, personal change
over the mere formal or theological elements, but my reservations about
Orthodoxy (and Catholicism, for that matter) were at this point still numerous.
Allow me to detail some of the most significant barriers that kept me a devoted
Anglican for five or six years. I’m afraid I cannot offer comprehensive answers
to each difficulty. Some of the issues are quite complex. Still, I’ll try to
give you some sense of my current perspective, and perhaps point you to some
other (and better) resources. There are many.
Primacy of Scripture
Like a good Protestant, I
was eager never to downgrade Scripture for the sake of some “tradition.”
However, as an amateur philosopher, I also knew that interpretations of
Scripture are driven by underlying assumptions—hence the thousands of
denominations (not to mention cults) who claim simply to be following the
“plain meaning” of the text. It is
somewhat delusional—in a fallen world—to think that one can simply apply
reason, do some basic historical and linguistic research and come away with the
fully accurate vision of Christian life (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick has some nice reflections about this fact). What
we’re taught about the Bible and what we take to be a proper interpretive lens
for the various debatable passages do not themselves derive from Scripture. So
an important question is what traditions
(handed-down teachings) have informed our understanding of the Bible? My
own (little “t”) tradition (whether I liked it or not) included a highly
modern, rational sense of “fact-finding.” I had my own philosophical framework
to guide this investigation. I had the general principles outlined during the
Reformation. I had some very basic training in Biblical languages and exegesis.
And I had the subconscious cultural conviction that my private experience attended
by emotional sincerity would aid me in applying what all these other intellectual
exercises were primarily intended to produce: the capacity to prove that I was right! I will not detail here
everything that helped me evaluate my own mistaken attitudes toward Tradition
(big “T”) that seemed to threaten the centrality of Scripture. Others have done
a better job at that (here or here, for instance). Suffice to
say that my uneasiness about accepting Tradition as united with Scripture was
unwarranted. The Holy Scriptures are revered, read, taught, and studied with
great zeal in the Orthodox Church.
[Note: On the problematic
assumptions beneath Sola Scriptura
see the first few episodes of this podcast by Dcn Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson
Publishers.]
Individualism vs. Individual Responsibility
Individualism, more or less,
makes one his own purveyor of truth and significance. Related beliefs and
attitudes are corrosive to anything that aims to be remotely worthy of the term
“communion.” Nevertheless, this fact does not remove our individual
responsibility to seek and to embrace the Truth for ourselves. Though I am no
expert, my understanding of Kierkegaard's reflections on faith had suggested that
even where it is possible, we must not simply absorb the prefabricated
concepts, categories, or convictions of someone else. I agree with this impulse
for authenticity. Certainly, we do not invent
our own faith, but what we discover in the religious sphere must be rendered genuinely ours, not just passively imbibed.
How can one balance such responsibility with the idea of obedience to
authority, submission in praxis, humility in the face of uncomfortable
mysteries? It’s very hard to answer such a question (though this lovely piece offers some very useful
points on that topic). In my experience, there is a kind of back and forth
movement in discovering a life of obedience to something new and unfamiliar. It
is rather like acclimating oneself to the vast, cold ocean. In this case, I
waded in a little; then I retreated to reflect on the experience. I waded in a
little more, and then retreated again. I observed the lives of others who were
already acclimated, and I observed my own life as I remained aloof. Over time,
what I wanted for myself became what I had begun to experience through testing
and observation. Full immersion was the only step left. There was still plenty
of risk (and plenty of fear), but doubling down on stagnation was in some ways
an even greater risk.
Ecclesiastical Variety and the Invisible Church
One of my old reservations
came from a latent idea that the “true Church” was really comprised of those
people whom God in His wisdom knew to be sincere followers of Christ,
regardless of their traditions or denominations. In spite of the painful
schisms to which they testify, I interpreted the highly diverse expressions of
Christianity, mostly as a providential accommodation of diverse peoples. C. S.
Lewis’s The Last Battle, the
beautiful conclusion to the incomparable Chronicles of Narnia, seems to support
this view. After the apocalyptic climax, the characters find themselves in the truer Narnia revealed beneath or behind or
within the old. It is Lewis’s allegorical vision of the new Heavens and new
Earth. Among those who have now entered this eternal realm, the Pevensie
children find one of the Calormen—a pagan and violent people devoted to a
savage deity named Tash. This particular Calormene, Emeth, is just as surprised
as some of Lewis’s readers to discover he is welcomed by Aslan to this new
reality, opposed as he was to Aslan and the religion of the Narnian people. In
this lovely vignette, Lewis seems to be suggesting (as indeed Christ’s own words
about the final judgment also suggest) that God, who sees the inner heart of
each human being, responds in love wherever He is welcome and brings those who
truly seek Him into the life He offers. Who, then, am I to pretend I know who
is “in” or “out”? This generous inclusivity in the plan of salvation has always
appealed to me, and still does. Yet at some point, I realized that I had conflated
this soteriological charity with a highly inclusive ecclesiology. Or, to use
less pretentious words, I had confused the conditions for “getting into heaven”
with the proper attitude toward “being the Church.” All sorts of concepts are
wrapped up in this confusion (sin, salvation, communion, etc.), and I can’t address
them all. Let it suffice, for now, to say that the Orthodox do believe that God
provides grace to all; The Holy Spirit goes wither it wills, but it is up to
individuals to participate, to soak in, to cooperate with that grace. Additionally,
individuals are not meant to eat, drink, and dwell in isolation from each other,
and so Christ himself establishes the food, the drink, the unity of his own
body—in short, the Church and her Holy Mysteries—for the continuance and the
conveyance of a life steeped in His loving energies. The Church, therefore, is
a particular, concrete, historical reality, built and maintained by Christ and
His holy disciples. It is not merely an idea or inner disposition. The modern concept
of an “invisible church” to which all sincere believers mystically belong is
only an intellectual palliative for the kaleidoscopic fragmentation of
Christian denominationalism. There’s no significant historical or scriptural
warrant for it, and unfortunately, the idea also keeps us largely content with
some very deep divisions. [Read more on
this here.]
All of this is not to say that other Christians,
Protestant or Catholic, are disqualified from God’s grace; they certainly are
not. But remember, from an Orthodox perspective, salvation is not about
“getting in” or “making the cut.” It is about abundant life. Plenty of people,
like the Calormene, can “make the cut” by the mercy of God. Nevertheless, those
outside of the Orthodox Church presently do not share the full life and unity
available within it, meaning that the power and provision for which the Church
was established are at best impeded or missing and at worst, completely
distorted.
I will, by necessity, say
more about ecclesiology in another installment when I address the Eucharist.
For now, allow me to close this section with this quotation from Bishop
Kallistos Ware in his wonderful book The
Orthodox Way:
It is
of course true that there are many who with their conscious brain reject Christ
and his Church, or who have never heard of him; and yet, unknown to themselves,
these people are true servants of the one Lord in their deep heart and in the
implicit direction of their whole life. God is able to save those who in this
life never belonged to his Church. But looking at the matter from our side, this does not entitle any of
us to say, “The Church is unnecessary for me.” There is in Christianity no such
thing as a spiritual élite
exempt from the obligations of normal church membership.
The Religion of the Heart
Dallas Willard, whom I have
previously covered at some length, clearly endorses a generous ecumenism,
perhaps even the “invisible Church” notion I have just addressed above.[1] He
does so primarily because he sees the turmoil created by a toxic dedication to
one-upmanship amongst the members of differing Christian groups and
subcultures. In emphasizing charity,
Willard does well to remind us of Christ’s centrality and the “Religion of the
Heart” which focuses not on mere behavioral or ritualistic conformity, but on
the sincerity and inner devotion that Christ Himself speaks of in Matthew, Chapters
5-7 (The Sermon on the Mount). For a long time, this emphasis kept me from
considering any Tradition that seemed to require robust ascetic or sacramental
practices. This is sadly ironic since, in the end, those were precisely what my
heart needed for deeper transformation. Still, I do fully believe that the
development of a genuine spiritual disposition must be primary in our local Church
communities. And yet we need not treat that goal as somehow incompatible with
outward bodily practices. Physical actions often involve and reinforce proper
spiritual attitudes. After all, the Word became flesh in order that the body
itself might be redeemed in the death and resurrection of Christ (cf. Romans
8:23). When Christ criticized the Pharisees for a legalistic, perfunctory,
and/or self-congratulatory approach to “righteousness,” he was not thereby
suggesting that all their forms and practices were themselves the source of that
error. Jesus gave plenty of commands and He Himself followed the law perfectly,
also enjoining his disciples to fast, pray, baptize, serve, offer communion,
etc. We must all guard against temptations
to pride and vanity. And, yes, I have shown plenty of both. But don’t allow my
personal failures or the fear of legalism deprive you of a chance to harness further
the grace of God, to train in obedience for the sanctification of soul and body
(cf. 1 Cor. 9: 26-27 and Titus 2:11-14).
The Biggest Obstacle
After years of reflection,
probably the most significant impediment to my adopting a fully Orthodox
perspective was how I understood the Eucharist—communion—and its implications
for what it meant to belong to God’s Church. I was scandalized by the practice
of closed communion and the sense that I was being cut out, excluded—rejected
as unworthy or incomplete. The topic is too important, I think, to deal with in
a paragraph. It is a broad strand in the full tapestry I am only beginning to
understand. So I will address it at length in a subsequent installment.
[1]
See Chapter 7 of Knowing Christ Today, especially 178 and
181-182.
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