The Bittersweet Journey

I have recently been reading The Orthodox Church, by Timothy Ware. As a Western "child of the Reformation", as it were, Orthodoxy has long seemed wholly other to me...as foreign as a glacier in the desert southwest. It symbology seemed arkane and its theology esoteric. Of course, this was largely due to cultural unfamiliarity, as I had not really bothered to read much concerning the theology of Orthodox Chritianity. And, I am forced to admit, there is a tendency for modern Evangelicals, in which I include myself, to be wary of any hint of "tradition" (aside from my own, of course), and to treat such things as the Westminster Confession, the Synod of Dort, the writings of the Puritan Divines, and a few recent articles by David Wells to be the final revelation of God to a fallen world.

I say these things humorously, but it is nevertheless a fact that Evangelicals, especially of the Reformed variety, have a "paradosis", or "tradition", that we treat as equally authoritative to any pronouncement of the ecumenical councils of church history, or the practice of the ancient church. We claim a purity of doctrine, a reliance upon scripture that borders on arrogance, yet we, in fact, lean greatly upon our own more recent "church fathers" as though their theological deductions were the ipsissimi verbi of God. Even the Puritan Divines, however, were more aware of Patristics and church history than are we. Certainly, they were more diligent in their study, and more familiar with the classic languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. And they were certainly more aware of contemplative tradition.

The first section of Timothy Ware's book deals with a facet of church history rarely dealt with at length in our studies at Evangelical seminaries, because it deals with the trajectory of Eastern, or Orthodox Christianity. And we are so firmly ensconced in our Western tradition, in spite of our "seven degrees of separation" from Rome, that we scarcely recognize that church history occurred elsewhere. In reading this information, I was struck by the bittersweet legacy of church history. It was punctuated by great men of faith, whose theological erudition and sanctity of life were exemplary, yet in whose lives often existed the residual fallenness that contributed to the fragmentation of the church. Perhaps one of the most bittersweet moments was the Reformation itself. At this time of break with the authoritarian dogmatics of the Roman Catholic church, there was great opportunity for rapprochement with Orthodox Christianity, whose understandings of Biblical Truth were more similar to that of the Reformers. Alas, however, the contextual difference at the time was too great. Germany, the birthplace of the Reformation, had long been a Roman Catholic outpost of prosetylization into the Orthodox world, instigating a power-struggle between Rome and Orthodoxy. To the Orthodox, the Reformation conflict with Roman Catholicism was merely an intramural theological spat in the Western church. And the arrogance with which the Reformers reached out to Orthodoxy, as though, having dispatched the errors of Rome, they were now ready to "save" Orthodoxy, did little to help matters. In fact, it was questionable whether the Reformers were in fact truly familiar with the beliefs of Orthodoxy, perhaps viewing the Orthodox as simply a more culturally foreign form of Romanism. As a result, a moment of great promise passed fleetingly.

Such, in fact, is the history of Christianity. The years are laden with missed opportunities of unity, as we have, in seeking the mind of Christ, more often than not lost his heart. Do not mistake me to say that I favor an ill-conceived ecumenism that reduces all of Christianity to a "lowest common denominator" approach. We have seen the effects of that in fundamentalism, in which the desire for Evangelical Christians to meet modernism and liberal theology head-on with a unified front resulted in strange bedfellows and a casual approach to doctrine that exists up to this day. But I do believe that Jesus' prayer for love and unity within the church has been lost in a sea of theological scholasticism, and that we have been guilty of presumption in despising the accumulated tradition of the church as thought the community of understanding were unimportant when confronted with our own self-importance. Perhaps...just perhaps...we should look back, not in anger, but in regret that our own pride may have interfered with a community of faith that could have nourished our wounded souls and provided for us a bulwark against the modern enculturation our churches face. And maybe there is yet time to experience the fullness of unity and love to which Jesus called us.