This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Nice Post Cliff,

I just want to thorw my observations about "Tradionalist" and "Fundies."

While I have some issues with some "traditionalist" views I understand it and repspect it more than I do that of the fundamentalist views. Though, they seem to be the same regarding life and homosexuality and women's ordination I don't belive they come from the same place. Like I said I can understand and respect the traditionalist view. It come from an organic place. It respects the traditionalist view of scriptrue and history. From the outside, it seems the fundies do the same thing. But I don't see that.

The fundie view of things seems to come from a place of fear of loss of power. They use the tradtionlist ideal and use them to keep the power of the straight white male. They fear that they will loose their power if any "non-traditonal" group comes to power.

I see traditionalist coming at these issuse with revernce and respect. I do not agree with them on many of the issues, but can respect their stance. But the Fundies, corrupt the "traditional" ideals and twist them so they do not loose power.

This is twisted inchoearent rambling, but it is my .5 cent on the issue.

I am just coming to realize how much I, who was raised Reformed, misunderstand what Tradition is and how Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, etc believe. Many of the comments you've made lately about Tradition are very appealing to me, becuase I am doubting everybody's interpretation of Scripture and the beginning to loathe the feeling that I need to back everything up with Scripture when it raelly doesn't need to be that way. Whereas, the appeal to Tradition and the authority of the Church and its godly men have held a consistent position for centuries. We Protestants claim to accept a wider variety of Christians, but I'm finding out when it comes down to it, Traditionalists' arms are more accepting than mine.

Anyways, thanks for reaching out to us who misunderstand you.

Needless to say, as an Orthodox I'm on your side of the traditionalist / atraditionalist divide, Clifton. So it's not surprising that I've enjoyed your recent posts, I suppose. You're touching on some great distinctions here. Somehow it hadn't occured to me that we traditionalists might be seen as essentially identical to 'fundamentalist protestants' by our atraditionalist friends, but if true this certainly sheds some light on attitudes exhibited by atraditionalist protestants toward us. I guess I should have known better, though, since en route to Orthodoxy I started out as a fundy protestant (as a kid), then an atraditionalist episcopalian (in college) before coming to Orthodoxy. At some point in there I held to most of the atraditionalist views too. But as you said, when a fundy says 'traditional' -as in 'traditional family values'- they mean 'oldfashioned' or at best 'as exhibited in scripture' (usually the OT). This is miles away from an Orthodox or RC understanding of real Holy Tradition. Perhaps this isn't useful, but I think it was Jaroslav Pelikan who said that 'Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living; Tradition is the living faith of the dead.'

I had another thought. I wonder if the different ways in which fundies and traditionalists approach 'tradition' and define the 'traditional' ('old-timey and OT' vs 'Apostolic, always everywhere and by all') has some relation or bearing on our politics too. Fundy protestants are almost universally politically conservative, and thoroughly so, whereas 'traditionalists' really run the gamut on a lot of isses, with occasional exceptions like abortion where they present a more unified front.

I don't see how your comments are helpful in any way (either in greater understanding between confessional Christians, or even in the bare minimum, solidarity against the culture of death, which we can have even with those who don't have a saving faith in Christ, like Muslims and Jews). I'm willing to learn from you; are you willing to do the same?

In Reformed circles we have something known as the "cage stage" which is when people who didn't grow up believing in the doctrines of grace (total depravity , etc.) are so excited about them that they go around starting disputes with all those who don't believe in them. They have zeal, but without knowledge. I sense among the Orthodox a similar problem. How many among you, at least of those who write on the Internet, are recent converts? If tradition is so important to you, shouldn't you be silent before it for a while longer, to grow up into its 2000-year history, before you are so quick to judge those lacking it.

Here, you make a distinction between those who oppose actions antithetical to Christianity based on their reading of Scripture and those who oppose them based on Church Tradition. Is this distinction truly significant in practice? Do you really think that all evangelicalism will apostatize because of the sola Scriptura hermeneutic? It's conceivable, I suppose, but among the Reformed with our confessional standards, subsidiary to Scripture, there will always be some that remain faithful.

Orthodox faith may be great for the educated Western convert, but what about for the greater portion of the Orthodox faithful worldwide? Do they have the same access to the church's tradition that you have? Or is their religion mainly one of ritual, without the Word of God in their own language giving those rituals significance? It may not be so today, but surely you must admit this has been a problem in the past. The Reformation, if you admire it for nothing else, you should admire for its focus on educating the people. The sacraments are important, yes (understressed in many of the churches of my tradition), but without the Word informing belief in them, they can be a stumbling block. Faith in Christ working through the sacraments becomes faith in the sacraments as enacted by the priest.

We all view the theological landscape relative to our own place within it. I remember years back I spent many days discussing doctrine with a Lutheran named Josh Strodtbeck, who saw Lutheranism as reformed Catholicism and everything else as a deformed version of it, at best. Likewise, my background would lead me to judge the churches by how they view God's action in salvation. You judge by the standard of a tradition, which, while it has its riches, unquestionably, (your lives of the saints are excellent), is an amorphous thing, lacking the clarity, the perspicacity (to use a Reformation word) of Scripture. Surely the Fathers have not agreed upon all points! Their words are of great value to us, yes, but they are interpreters of Scripture even as we are. The Orthodox, or so at least it seems sometimes, would substitute for the the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture the doctrine of the inspiration of the Fathers. This is too much for Reformed people like myself. Luther and Calvin both quoted from the Fathers frequently (St. Bernard being a particular favorite), yet they did not regard tradition as a second stream of Christian faith, on an equal plane with Scripture.

Not all of us Protestants have been led through reading Scripture to a "Darby-ite dispensational premillennial theology, their belief-only, non-sacramental soteriology." I resent being lumped together with fundamentalists as if we were of a piece. The Reformed, too, know the value of tradition, in its place.

And not all of us are politically active, at least not in the profoundly ungracious ways that fundamentalists are. There are no calls to vote a particular way from our pulpits, only to live holy lives according to the Gospel. I have written this comment, for whose length I apologize, because I respect your opinion. This seems more like a knee-jerk reaction against Protestantism in any form than a well-considered evaluation of the different types of Protestants that there are. I am sorry for you, because in judging all of us as you have, you are depriving yourself of allies in a time when you're going to need them. In an effort to distance yourself from the most hateful among us (who, even so, name Christ as their savior, and so, in the world's eyes, are in your same camp whether you will or no), you have distanced yourself from people who might be able to teach you something. What of the Dietrich Bonhoeffers and the Francis Shaeffers of the world? Can true holiness and Protestant theology ever coexist in your mind?

I think that the fact that there are many Orthodox who vote Democratic is more of a historical aberration - one that is waning with every election. The Democratic party has always worked hard to capture the vote of the "ethnic". The one women I could find who supported Kerry in my parish did so because she was a member of a teachers union. How she explained the incongruity of supporting the holocaust I did not ask her. Also, such groups as the "Orthodox Peace Fellowship" that seem to have confused the Peace of Christ with pacifism, while they do have some pull in the academic centers of Orthodoxy (such as they are), don't seem to carry weight with the average parishioner (and I for one am grateful for this).

Interestingly, in my own jurisdiction (Antiochian), the formal “Fundy’s” have pushed hard for tithing on not only the local level, but also for a tithe of each parish going to the archdiocese. While we are having a meeting about this next week, I am for now opposed to it. Centralized church bureaucracies have a very, very poor record in our society. David Mills wrote a good article about this in Touchstone a few months ago. What benefit is it to the Antiochian archdiocese to grow a centralized church bureaucracy? It seems the “Fundy’s” ignorance has influenced Metropolitan Phillip. I am not sure why the Orthodox believe they are immune to the pernicious influences of our culture. Look at the sympathies of our academics (seminary professionals) for certain liberalisms (e.g. OPF, “liturgical reform”, etc.). All this is cause for some level of concern and wisdom, in my opinion…

Gosh, Evan, where does one start? You bring up so many things, and really all of them have been spoken to in many many places. Let me just say, with all Christian Charity, you are profoundly ignorant on a great many things. As just one small example, your speculation that the "Orthodox faithful worldwide" might not have the "same access to the church's tradition" as an english speaking educated western is simply without any basis at all - not one iota - and reveals a perspective of Holy Scripture that is refuted ad nauseum by the Church for at least 500 years now. In my opinion, your post is flame bait.

In all seriousness, I have a question for you or perhaps someone else knows the answer. Is it true that Calvin at the very least condoned, if not directly ordered, the nailing of dissidents to the ceiling of his church? If so, does anyone know of a site on the net I might be able to read about these (alleged) historical facts?

Evan:

I appreciate you comments, lengthy or no. If you look among the archives of my blog, you will see an appreciation of Bonhoeffer, and though I don't remember writing of my apprecation of Schaeffer and what his presuppositional apologetics did to shape my own thinking on the matter, let me here and now express that depth. I also would point you to a comment I made in the very post that offends you:

Please don't misunderstand. We do not question the depth or sincerity of their faith in Christ or their love and devotion to their Lord and ours. There are many aspects of their faith walk, however much we may disagree with important aspects of it, their sacrifice and service, that put some of us to shame. Beyond that, these were once our home communities and many are still our friends. We do not reject them as somehow not Christian, or question their salvation. We have enough to do to ensure that the good work done in us by God is not begun in vain, that we end our life well and fully in the Faith. And many of us converts to Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism first came to faith as evangelicals or fundamentalist Christians.

I don't have time at the moment (soon to leave to teach my evening logic class) to address your points one by one. But let me say a couple of things. I do happen to personally think that sola scriptura as it is practiced does lead to heresy. First it cannot be practiced purely. You claim your confessional standards are subsidiary to Scripture, but I ask you where in antiquity do you find an anthropology which claims humanity totally depraved such that they cannot even will to want to repent? Where is the belief that Christ's atoning work is so efficient it cannot apply to any who will not finally be saved? Where is the rejection of free will such that the saved cannot will to even want to be saved or the damned will to even want to be damned? If you are doubly predestinarian, where did you get your beliefs?

And here I must insist, you cannot lay claim to an authoritative interpretation of Scripture. That is only begging the question. After all, how is one to decide between interpretive contradictions? If human reason is depraved and cannot of its own come to know the truth, then only the elect can know these doctrines. But if these doctrines didn't exist prior to the Reformation (and that is my challenge to you), that means there have been no elect until the Reformation. But that undoes your whole claim to apostolic authority.

I grant you that in my haste I'm making some wide logical claims, and their imprecision may necessitate some corrrections, but I am quite happy to continue the dialogue on that front.

With regard to the state of the Orthodox, you are, as Christopher has put it, sadly mistaken.

More later as I get the opportunity.

"Flame bait"? This is why I don't like to enter into these kind of discussions in the first place (perhaps it would've been wiser had I held my tongue).

First, Christopher: I'll attempt to be brief. In response to what you said about Calvin, as far as I know, he supported the burning of Servetus, but nothing more.

And, as for whether the Orthodox across the world are as knowledgable as those in the States, I don't know, nor did I say that I did. If you admit that it was a "speculation" that how can you say it was simply a flame. I'm a member of this neighborhood, too, so to speak - you can find my blog at donovan.covblogs.com. Perhaps I should've left that paragraph out, as I was speaking off of what I have heard from others, rather than my own knowledge. Devotional religion is a problem in Catholicism, as you might agree, so I assumed (forgive me) that it might be a problem in Orthodoxy as well.

Then, Clifton: Thank you for your gracious reply. Perhaps I should've confined myself to saying that I regret that you, as a convert to Orthodoxy, have adopted a mindset that puts you at odds with those who would stand with you on many significant moral issues of the day. As for the theological issues, they're all-consuming, and I don't really expect two believers in differing absolute truths (though not differing, I would argue, as much as you suggest) to come to agreement upon them. I am, at least presently, convinced that Orthodox believers who have been catechized properly in the teachings of their own faith can work out their salvation within the bounds of that church.

I know that we, as Protestants, are often blind to how enwrapped in tradition we are and how that affects our reading of Scripture. Still, I would argue that the problem of interpretive contradictions that you raise is broadly epistemological and cannot be limited to the Protestant churches. As long as your tradition is expressed in words, there is potential for misunderstanding and ambiguity, just as there is with sola Scriptura. My point (which, because of the length of the paragraph was perhaps obscure) was that tradition is much larger, much more heterogenous (by which I don't mean "necessarily false," only that it comes from so many sources - writings of dozens of Fathers and saints, councils, creeds, liturgies, hymns, etc.), and generally much more difficult to get a handle on than the text of Scripture.

The Reformed philosopher Cornelius Van Til called our efforts to understand Scripture the "hermeneutical spiral." I may explain it poorly, since his writing is quite abstruse and I've picked it up secondhand, but I think it goes something like this: "See - here we have a text that we know to be inspired by God (by Calvin's "witness of the Holy Spirit"). However, we do not understand it in ourselves. We must pray that He will illumine us, so that our conceptual frameworks may undergo continual revision to be brought in line with the intended meaning of the text." Forever intertwined, Calvin wrote, are the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self. Through the capacity of reason God gave us, by the guidance of the Spirit, we find increasing truth of the Word of Scripture in our own experience.

I think we're all taking too much of an "insider's view" of this dispute. If we took G.K. Chesterton's advice (in Orthodoxy) and viewed Christianity as it would look to a man from China, so chapel spires looked as odd as pagoda roofs, then we would be astonished by how much agreement there is between, say, you and me. We can both affirm the Nicene Creed. This suggests a whole worldview, to use a now-cliched term. It tells us where the universe came from, what happened to make it as it is today, and the only way it can get out of this mess. What a contrast between all of us who view mankind as fallen and, say, the Greeks. That kind of contrast was revolutionary in the culture of the first few centuries AD. It still can be today, if we believe in it, and don't make our intramural disputes more important.

They are important, of course. I will commune in my church, and you in yours. But, strategically speaking, isn't it counterproductive for us to spend more time denouncing each other before the world then we spend calling the world to repentance? I'm happy to see people get into the Kingdom of Christ at all, whether they end up in my corner of it or not. I know I don't have everything figured out.

As for your questions about the doctrines of grace, well, that could end up being quite a long and tangential response. But I'm not double predestinarian, so you can rest easy there. I consider such doctrines (like much of Reformed theology post-Calvin) to evidence an excessive rationalism, possibly resulting from vestigial scholasticism and the nascent modernist insistence on reason, rather than mystery.

As for humanity's total inability prior to the Spirit's work, I see that as implicit in the teaching that we are "dead in transgressions and sins" until He makes us alive in Christ (Eph. 2:1). As the Apostle Paul goes on to say, our faith itself is the gift of God. Which does not contradict that is, in fact, our faith. Paradoxically, we are responsible to respond to God's call, though we cannot until He makes our ears able to hear it. In the words of St. Augustine, "Command what you will, Lord, but give what you command" - otherwise, we are lost. Finally, I think there is a sense in which Christ's work applies to those who are not finally saved. It is found in Hebrews 10:29 - "How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?"

I don't think these doctrines were unknown before the Reformation. For one, those who wrote Scripture knew of them :) If that doesn't count, then I'd say St. Augustine and St. Bernard knew of them, at least. (I don't know patristics as well as I should.) And I don't believe that you have to know all the true doctrines of Scripture in order to be saved. Therefore, your argument about there being, in my view, no elect (except the writers of Scripture) before the Reformation doesn't work.

All those who knew that Christ, and Christ alone, was the ground, the source, the author of their salvation were saved. The doctrines of grace, I argue, are implicit in such a confession of faith, but people don't necessarily have to see that in order to make a true confession. Otherwise, children and the mentally handicapped couldn't be saved in my view either.

"Do [the Orthodox faithful worldwide] have the same access to the church's tradition that you have? Or is their religion mainly one of ritual ...?"

Evan,

The way these questions are framed indicates that you do not understand what the Orthodox mean by the Apostolic Tradition. That is certainly no fault of yours, but it does make it difficult to understand what traditionalist Christians are talking about.

Stated in the starkest terms, the Apostolic Tradition is the new life which our Lord Jesus Christ won on the Cross and demonstrated by His Resurrection. Christ gave this new life to His Apostles, and they in turn gave it to those whom they received into the Church. Each generation in the Church imparts this new life to the next generation of believers. This new life - the life in Christ - is imparted *personally*, from one Christian to another.

It is the life in Christ, rather than doctrinal information, that is the essential content of the Apostolic Tradition. That is not to say that doctrine is not important; indeed, it is essential. But apart from the life in Christ which Christ bestows through His Church, one can *know* the doctrinal information but can never embrace, understand, and confess it with the understanding of the heart ("even the demons believe, and shudder").

When a baby is born again in the waters of Holy Baptism, that is Tradition. When a toddler learns about Jesus at his mother's knee, that is Tradition. When the Church gathers to offer the Eucharist, that is Tradition. When the parish priest or the lay Sunday School teachers catechize elementary-school children, that is Tradition. When the priest proclaims the Word in his Sunday sermon, that is Tradition. And when the Church sings the ancient hymns of her liturgy, the fruit of the creativity and sanctity of St Ambrose, St Romanos the Melodist, St John of Damascus, and many others - that is Tradition.

It is simply impossible to approach the Scriptures with any hope of understanding unless you already have received, and believe, the Gospel. The Gospel is not something that can be deduced from the Scriptures. It is, instead, the Light by which we can see what the Scriptures really mean. No one ever came to the Gospel by "Scripture Alone"; everyone is dependent on someone who already has the Gospel, who can "open the Scriptures" for them. The Apostles themselves had to have Christ "open the Scriptures", as He did on the road to Emmaus. And since then, it is the role of the Church herself, the pillar and bulwark of the Truth, to impart the Gospel to each believer and thus "open the Scriptures" to each one.

So it is a false dichotomy to distinguish "access to the tradition" from "a religion of ritual". The Tradition is the Gospel, the new life in Christ; and it is through the Church's liturgical and sacramental life that we receive that new life. The "Orthodox faithful worldwide" - whom you seem to regard as "the great unwashed" - may not have the intellectual command of theology and Church history that some of us in the blogosphere think we have; but they have the Gospel, they have the life in Christ, they have the Holy Spirit, and they have an intimate relationship of utter dependence on our Lord Jesus Christ. And they have it because they have received it, they nourish it, and they maintain it, in and through the Church's liturgy and sacraments - in the "ritual", as you put it.

Evan:

My over-hasty reply, received by you as gracious, was met with a most gracious reply on your part. And it seems that my haste--though I did touch on subjects pertinent to my claims in the original post above--did ultimately attribute to you convictions that were not yours. I don't know if it makes you a very good Reformed Christian, but in that you touch on doctrines of synergy, the sacraments (in your first reply), the respect for tradition, among others, that we Orthodox (or in my case an "Orthodox to be") also hold, you are right that we do indeed have much greater agreement than noted in the original post.

And indeed, that was my point: to draw the significant distinctions necessary to show that the original characterization of Tradition-loving Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Angicans as pretty much the same as conservative evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians was substantially wrong.

This meant, of course, that I had to downplay the important similarities, though I did not eliminate them. One of those extremely important similarities, as you note here, is the reliance on and devotion to Christ himself. One thing I am so thankful for in Orthodox soteriology, we leave the myterious a mystery. A proverb you'll hear often: "We can say where the Church is, we cannot say where it isn't." We know that salvation is by hypostatic union with Christ, or divinization, and that the means to such is a life of repentance in the Church and the regular encounters with grace in the sacraments Christ gives us through the Church. Beyond that, even Orthodox cannot say that at the end they themselves will without fail be saved. Indeed, we have it on extremely good authority that there will be Orthodox in hell. So though I would without hesitation claim that my heritage churches' understanding of salvation is incomplete, I do not doubt the mercy and grace of God nor the efforts to maintain faithfulness and repentance on the part of those Restoration Movement ancestors of mine, and am hopeful that they, too, will be in heaven, where I myself hope to be. I cannot teach that their beliefs and the way of life resultant from that is sufficient. But it has the one thing necessary: faith in Christ.

As you rightly note, these other matters would require lengthy posts to substantiate, and beyond the Scriptural and patristic citations would require some laborious, though I think ultimately rewarding, efforts at establishing epistemological claims and boundaries. I am in agreement that these are surely not well-pursued in conjunction with this post. But who knows maybe elsewhere at a later day and time?

The Lord bless you, Evan. And pray for me, a sinner.

Hallo Evan,

You wrote: 'The Reformed philosopher Cornelius Van Til called our efforts to understand Scripture the "hermeneutical spiral." I may explain it poorly, since his writing is quite abstruse and I've picked it up secondhand, but I think it goes something like this: "See - here we have a text that we know to be inspired by God (by Calvin's "witness of the Holy Spirit"). However, we do not understand it in ourselves. We must pray that He will illumine us, so that our conceptual frameworks may undergo continual revision to be brought in line with the intended meaning of the text." Forever intertwined, Calvin wrote, are the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self. Through the capacity of reason God gave us, by the guidance of the Spirit, we find increasing truth of the Word of Scripture in our own experience.'

I am certainly not of a mental calibre with Dr. Van Til, but I think I see a signpost for the necessity of Holy Tradition here. We do not understand Scripture in and of ourselves. It is practically impossible. I may spend every waking moment of my life in prayer and study of Scripture, but I will not exhast it, nor will I fully understand it. Scripture is, thank goodness, not a theological hand-book. It is narrative and song, theology and lamentation, parable and personal letters. If only taken as a piece of literature, it would be an incredibly dense thing to delve. But when we consider that it is not merely literature, but "God-breathed," it takes on even deeper significance and density.

All of this is to say that Scripture really demands a Holy Tradition to go alongside it or within it, if you will. It would be an awful task for men to have to guess and hope their way through Scripture, clearing away ancient prejudice and mental fog, just to arrive at the rudimentary truths of the faith, much less peer into the depths of Scripture and uncover "the dark sayings of the wise." Rather, Sacred Tradition guides us into and through Scripture. It is Philip running alongside the Ethiopian Eunuch's chariot, calling out to us, "Do you understand what you read?" Scripture and Tradition are really inseperable, as both need the other. Scripture exists in a unique role within Tradition: but it is a part of the life of the Church, the Holy Spirit.

As far as Tradition being harder to handle, I would think it is more frequently the opposite: Scripture is considerably harder to get a handle on. Now, some aspects of Scripture are fiarly straightfoward, at least to those conditioned in the Christian tradition. But the whole of Scripture- and it is an organic whole- must be considered, and it is hardly straightforward. Witness not the differences in Scripture interpretation among the many different readers of Scripture. There are passages that I consider perfectly straightforward that my Baptist brethern consider vague and ill-defined. An Armenian approaching "Calvinist" passages finds them vague and in need of conditioning with "Arminian" passages, and vice versa. A Lutheran and Baptist both share sola scriptura and sola fide, but their understandings of the Sacraments could not be further apart. They both consider their approach to Scripture as correct and straightfoward, but one must be wrong (or worse than the really correct one).

Do I even dare comment? I am showing my face here, but I do this knowing that I cannot begin to challenge the level of articulation on this page. I am in awe and somewhat intimidated. That being said, allow me to embarass myself.

My understanding of liberal Christianity...specifically liberal Protestantism...may not be the norm, but I am going to try to share where I am coming from. I am Baptist. I adhere to much of that tradition. But I have been heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism post-Vatican II. I have studied Calvin a great deal. I have a deep and abiding love for the desert mothers and fathers. I pray the Apostles' Creed in my church every Sunday. I know that may make me an unusual Baptist, but the "Emergent movement" has forced some hands of late. Unusual I will be.

If there was one particular notion that served as a starting point for me that shapes how I engage Tradition it would be this: the faith was never intended to be monolithic. Please do not respond to this statement by refuting it. I am not asking if you all agree with my statement; I am merely sharing a perspective. There are four Gospels that give us four accounts of Christ's life. They represent four communities...and one canonizing community who sought the four in order to be the one. This is the concept I am trying to articulate.

So, when I speak of working out my own salvation in fear and trembling (for example), I do it in the knowledge that through that struggle differences in individuals and in communities will emerge. I do not expect homogenous unity. Why? Well, we have a fallen world. That is all. I really do not feel the need for another answer there. Until Christ comes again and sets us all in the right, I assume that we will stumble and teeter on the edge of oblivion in our own peculiar ways, establishing allegiances to streams of Christianity. To one degree or another, history has borne out this reality.

I am not suggesting that there have not been coherent schools of thought for 2,000 years. There most certainly have been and continue to be such schools. Orthodoxy has been the most consistant witness to Christ's teachings and presense in the world than any other. Rome comes close to doing it as well, but our Western context shows that great shifts in thought are normative. In the East, this is not the case.

I am a Western Christian. I am Baptist. I believe that without pluralism (such an overused word now), we would all be damned to Hell. God needs us all, Calvinist, Orthodox, Catholic etc, to fulfill his work. How do I know this? I see it in this series of posts. Cliff's journey suggsts to me that without the stepping stones of traditions, he may very well have been lost. I do not know the other contributers nearly as well, but there has been mention of participation in multiple traditions. I too have journeyed in several traditions and still do. I do so not because I think that they are the same and can be distilled into some vague pseudo-faith. I do so because my salvation is dear to me and I refuse to ignore the voices that speak. In those voices will be God's voice and thus my salvation.

This is why I need all of you.
This is why I will always find myself as "the liberal." I like the multiplicity of thoughts and theologies. I find I need them.

So, unlike some liberals who may wish to silence the conservative, I wish you to speak. I assume you have my salvation in mind when you do. The thing that may frighten all of you to know is that I have your salvation in mind as well. I am working for it so that we may all praise God before His throne.

Now, folks, refute away. I will try to keep up.

Without further knowledge of your church, I can say little more. Thank you for your responses. You're right - Chris Jones, whom I'm glad to see again, probably knows I'm at least a little atypical for a Reformed Christian. Just like he's a little atypical for a Lutheran :)

Tradition, if it means nothing more than the community of faith, is inescapable. We aren't saved without it, and we don't live without it. I suppose, as a Westerner, I think more of it as some sort of "unwritten document" that you claim to possess. Maybe that's more what the Catholics say about the magisterium than what the Orthodox say about tradition.

My question, I suppose, then, is only "What if the tradition is wrong?" Now I'm not saying it's wrong on the important things, or at least not on the most important things. The creeds remain, even if we don't always understand exactly the same thing by them. Protestants split far too often, it is true. But semper reformanda has brought us good things as well. Perhaps Christianity in the West would've disappeared entirely were it not for the Reformation, as the Catholic Church slipped further and further into decadence.

Jonathan, you're absolutely right that we need tradition. But which? Can we go simply by that which is oldest? And is it (I ask honestly) all of a piece? I don't know how the hermeneutical spiral works. But I sense that it's essential. And it's not an isolated project. As the Body of Christ, we're all in it together.

Tripp:

You wrote:

If there was one particular notion that served as a starting point for me that shapes how I engage Tradition it would be this: the faith was never intended to be monolithic.

and

I do not expect homogenous unity. Why? Well, we have a fallen world. That is all. I really do not feel the need for another answer there.

First of all, we do all have need of one another. Even if I would ever be so bold with you so as to say that you are not a member of the Church, which is to say, not a member of the Orthodox Church, that doesn't mean I don't need you or your witness. You should also know that even if I ever grew so bold, I would also just as boldly say: the mercy God will extend to you is not substantively different than the mercy I hope he will extend to me.

But this is not the same as saying "it all comes out in the wash." It does matter whether or not I'm a member of the Church, the Orthodox Church, for that is how God has designed our salvation. Ideas have consequences, and if my ideas of God and his work are askew, I cannot but be led further and further away from God by my ideas. Only in Holy Orthodoxy do we have the assurance that the ideas held will not lead us astray (i. e., that these truths the Church guards for us are infallible).

You say that God needs all of us. Strictly speaking that is not true. But what is true, which is even more beautiful, is that God chooses to love all of us. His face toward us is always love and mercy, which mercy is freely given and thus much better than "having to."

It has been clearly revealed what is the surest way to his love, and what will work for us peace and wholeness, not just individually in our own persons, but between us and our spouses, our children, our families, and neighbors. These witnesses are demonstrable evidence of the truth of Orthodoxy's claims.

Don't misunderstand: Orthodoxy has some of the worst sinners and heretics in its history and its present, and I dare say will in its future. But as you yourself admit: "Orthodoxy has been the most consistant witness to Christ's teachings and presense in the world than any other."

Amen, brother. It's why I'm where I am. Come join me! ;-)

Ya see, Cliff, I am already there with you.

I agree with everything you just posted.

I wonder now if we perceive the relationships between say, Baptists and Orthodox differently. I dunno.

Well, Tripp, you may be "there" but you (and me too) haven't paid the membership dues yet. So our "there" is not yet there.

Just a point about the differences between traditionalists and atraditionalists. I'm not sure I qualify as a traditionalist (I attend an Anglo-Catholic parish), but I am part, culturally at least, of the "family" of catholic churches, and therefore have more in common with my Roman and Orthodox brethren than I do with evangelical fundamentalists. That said I had an interesting experience after the Sept.11 terrorist attacks. I saw the second aircraft hit the towers live on TV and I spent the next 24 hours glued to the box, (I'm an American citizen living in New Zealand). For a number of reasons the experience of that day left me traumatized and in pain for many weeks afterwards. And this is where the problem arose. Although the church I attend is Anglo-Catholic, it is in many respects politically liberal, and even left wing. And while I was still in deep pain and grief over 911, I just couldnt stand hearing the facile "blame America first/ all war is wrong" crap that I was hearing from the pulpit and from the church leadership. Whether they were right or wrong wasnt the point for me, at least not entirely, it was simply that I needed time to heal a little and process what I was feeling, which was a lot of rage and grief, in a safe environment, and at that point my church had ceased to be such an environment for me. So I stopped going and rather by accident ended up attending a Vineyard evangelical church for a while. It was there at the Vineyard church that I found the space I needed to talk to Christians who would just listen and not judge, would would just offer the love of Christ and not political rants. In short I found people just living the Gospel, while my own church leaders were busy with a left wing political crusade.

I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say, except that, for all the supposed differences between us as far as Christian Tradition goes, I had more in common at that point with these evangelicals than I did with my own church people. But most of all I was left with a profound and very grateful appreciation for their love and simple committment to just living the Gospel as best they could and as best they knew. I will always be thankful for what they gave me for those few months.

I'm back at my own church now, butI feel a disconnect from the Anglican church in general, in part because of my experience, that has sparked an interest in Orthodoxy.