Fun fact: Tertullian is the first Christian writer to oppose infant baptism, sometime around the year 200. Before this time, infant baptism was a normative part of the Church. Tertullian’s opposition to infant baptism reveals this to us. But for what reasons should baptism be delayed according to Tertullian? Was it because the pure practice of the Church was corrupted? Was it because the Apostles only baptized adults and this sacrament was not to be given to children? No. Tertullian opposes infant baptism because he believed that post baptismal sins could not be forgiven. He believed that we should wait to be baptized so that the sins we accumulate in our lifetime could be washed away in our baptism and our sins from then on would be few. This is a heretical teaching. He says nothing of the “true” and “pure” practice of so-called believers baptism and frankly, neither does anyone else.

“From infancy and throughout the earliest childhood you teach the child that Jesus is his best friend. You teach him that God is his loving Father, you teach him to pray to God and you teach him to sing Jesus loves me. This teaching goes on through his early years. But then somewhere around the age of ten or eleven and you take the child and you thrust him out of the kingdom and you say to him, ‘You are lost and you need to be saved’. Well, the child is confused, puzzled and perplexed. He says, ‘What do you mean I’m lost, what do you mean I need to be saved?’ And you say to him, ‘You must love Jesus you must trust Jesus’. But the child says, ‘But I do love Jesus. I do trust Jesus, I always have’. What do you say to the child then? The contradiction resides in imposing a practice intended for adults outside of the Church the command to repent and believe upon a child who already identifies with Christ having been raised in the church. A child’s faith is real and being raised in the Christian home by a believing family, he is a partaker of the covenant of God.”

-Jordan Bajis-

This post will focus on the authority of the Church. This post probably should have come first, before the previous post on Mary and the Saints. The reason for this is because of what the Church is. If the Church is what she says she is, then all other issues of doctrine and praxis will fall into place quite nicely. One may not be comfortable with all of the doctrines and practices of the Church at first but one can still submit to the authority of the Church and thus believe what she proclaims in the gospel and what she teaches to those united with Christ in His body.

As I noted in my previous post, I am not a theologian. Therefore what I have to say regarding the authority of the Church may not be entirely accurate. I will do my best to lay out clearly why I submit to the authority of the Church and what that means in regards to doctrine and practice.

While I was attending Spring Arbor University, I had the opportunity to be in a community of Christians with a variety of beliefs. Some believed in what is called the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gift of tongues. Others believed that women could be apart of ministry. Still others believed that the spiritual gifts had all but disappeared after the first century. With all of this diversity, I had ample time and opportunity to talk with others about what they believed and why.

During the fall semester of my junior year, I had to take a class called Doctrines of the Christian Faith. In this class the students were presented with various doctrines that Protestants disagree on. Examples include how long God took to create the universe, what will happen during the End Times, what exactly the Eucharist is and can children to be baptized. This class, along with some personal struggles about my own thoughts on doctrine, lead me to eventually ask that with all of these disagreements in Protestantism, who’s right? And how can I know who is right?

Eventually I came to realize that without an infallible interpreter, what good is an infallible book. I tried all of these different hermeneutical schemes such as “the clear interprets the unclear” or the “grammatical, historical method”. But what I soon found out was that what I considered clear, others considered unclear. When arguing for the age of creation, the grammatical, historical method was used by my opponents and myself and yet we vehemently disagreed. These and other methods of interpretation were not infallible. If they were then those who used them would consistently agree. The truth is, they do not. What was I to do?

The Church is the body of Christ; Christ is the head of the body. Jesus Christ did not found a philosophy or a movement or an idea. He founded a Church. A visible, tangible, community of people who are His body. They were not a loose group of like-minded individuals. They were a communion of people in communion with Christ. Jesus also gave His apostles authority that is passed from apostle to bishop to bishop to bishop. He also promised that His Holy Spirit would guild His body into all truth. He did not say He would guide John Coolidge or Jane Doe into all truth. He spoke to the apostles, not Peter alone, Paul alone or John alone; He spoke to all of them because they are the beginning of the Church, His body when the Holy Spirit descended upon them on the day of Pentecost.

The leading of the Holy Spirit can be seen in the account of the first council in Acts 15. “It seems good to us [the body of Christ] and the Holy Spirit…” (by the bishop James, not Paul or Peter or another apostle). If Jesus Christ was not a liar; if He is with us always even until the end of the age; if the gates of Hades shall not prevail against the Church, then what other choice to I have then to submit to the Church, the body, whose head is Christ?

If there is no infallible interpreter then the Bible is only good as a compilation of ancient literature and a paper weight. I mean no disrespect to the Scriptures, but having come out of the failed experiment called the Protestant Reformation, I know that my own interpretations, however sincere, are not to be trusted. My doctrines have changed over the years, why won’t they change again? Why won’t they change back? With each new piece of archeological or scientific evidence or a new undiscovered textual variant I might have to change my theology again.

And so as I came to accept the authority of the Church the doctrine falls into place nicely. How can I say that the Church is right on this, that and twenty other doctrines, and yet the Church is wrong on this one practice or belief. It all comes back to this silly Protestant idea that until now, until I came along, nobody knew the right way to read Paul or had the right doctrine concerning salvation or whatever else. If the Church is being lead by the Holy Spirit, any heresy will be thwarted, however long it takes. Who was I to say that I was the only one being faithful to true Christ. Arrogance and pride, no more, no less.

I understand that this is not an apologetic for the authority of the Church. Anyone looking for an argument will find no such thing here. This is my personal journey and it is not exhaustive. After I began to submit to the Church I was able to submit to her doctrine and practice such as the ever-virginity of Mary and the necessity of fasting regularly with no difficulty. As I said in my previous post, I no longer have issue with what the Church teaches. When I find that the Church teaches such and such doctrine or practice, I accept it; not blindly but in faith.

JOhn

I was once asked why there was so much information within the life of the Church that was not written down. The relitively recent idea that for something to be reliable it must be written down takes a heavy toll on the mind of a 21st century American. This and other modern presumptions are often superimposed on the cultures and peoples of the past. We assume that everyone thinks like us. The fact of the matter is, this idea is patently false. That being the case, I’d like to offer an analogy.

How much literature was written against abortion before Roe v. Wade? Basically none! Why? Because it was so obvious to everyone that the life of an unborn child was valuable.

The same with the Church. How much literature was written about worship and liturgy, for example, in the New Testament and in the early Church. Not much. Why? Because every Christian worshiped in the same way, using the same liturgy.

Of coures, such information can be found about the liturgy of the early Church as well as information regarding the evils of abortion before Roe v. Wade. But when you are in a group of likeminded individuals why would it be necessary to articulate information that everyone is well aware of. It’s like sitting down at a meal with your family and trying to write down everyone’s habits and quirks. Why would you do that? In fact, you wouldn’t. Everyone in your family knows each other well enough that it would be silly to chronicle this information unless you were cataloging it for an outsider. By the way, the Church wasn’t interested in writing everything down and showing it to the pagans saying, “Look at this everybody! This is what we do! This is how we do it!” This does not mean that the gospel was not preached. What it means is that the life of the Christian, the life lived within the Church was not shouted on the rooftops. There’s no point in telling someone to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays (and the reasons why) or to instruct them on how to make the sign of the cross if they don’t give a rats behind about the Gospel itself, or worse yet, if they were going to persecute you.

Are there fiery attacks against new teachings (read heresy) introduced into the Church by bishops and priests? Yes. Then where are the attacks against infant baptism, the veneration of the Saints and the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ in the early Church? St. Irenaeus attacked the teachings of the Gnostics, St. Justin Martyr wrote against the Jews and St. Augustine spoke out against the teaching of Pelagianism. Where are the Christians who denounced the veneration of the saints? Where are the Christians who denounced the practice of infant baptism? Where are the Christians who said that the body and blood of Christ was merely a symbolic representation done to remember what Christ did for us on the cross? One cannot say that these “writings” were erased from history by evil bishops who were trying to deceive their followers. If such was the case then why do we still have the writings of the Gnostics among other heretics? If the Church was in the business of eradicating any traces of dissent it seems they did a poor job and other writings that condemn practices still a part of the life of the Church would most likely be around today, in fragments if not in whole volumes. They are not.

On the contrary there are a plethora of Christians who express time and time again like broken records the need to submit to the authority of the bishop and the necessity of the bishops to pass on the Apostolic Tradition given to them by those who came before. Thank God for men like St. Ignatuis, St. Polycarp, St. Irenaeus and their orthodox contemporaries.

I will not be spending my time rehashing theological arguments per se. Doctrine is important. Period. But along with this doctrine, certain relationships needed to be developed. Particularly relationships with Mary and the Saints.

The first propaganda pamphlets I read were titled Mary, Ever-Virgin and Facing Up to Mary. In the Orthodox Church we carry a number of pamphlets on various doctrines and practices that introduce them to inquirers. They are by no means exhaustive but they are a great introduction to a handful of subjects.

After reading the pamphlet Mary, Ever-Virgin over and over again, I was stuck on Matthew 1:25 and the meaning of “until” or “till”. I took out my Greek materials (I am familiar with some Greek) and began to look at the underlying Greek words. To my surprise, I had no choice but to agree with the pamphlet’s statements. What exactly is being said by the words “until” or “till”? The underlying Greek words have a broader meaning than the English words, “until”, “till” or “to”. Most often, these three English words denote an absence of something after the fact. In the case of Matthew’s gospel, it would seem that after the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph had a normal marriage that included sexual relations. But looking at other passages in the Scriptures, I saw how mistaken I was to assume the above mentioned relationship between Mary and Joseph. If the words “until”, “till” and “to” mean that the action changes after the fact, then Jesus’ words “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age” mean that at the end of the age, He will not be with us. Or when it is said of Christ, “sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a footstool under your feet”, that means once the enemies become the footstool, Christ will no longer sit at the right hand of the Father. Silliness, I know. Anyway, I reevaluated my stance on two things. First, I could see that my interpretation was faulty and required correction (and more than just here). Second, I made a mental note to question my Bible translation (not my Bible, but the translation) whenever I came across difficult passages. I began to realize that I could not base my doctrine on my own interpretations and I could not base it on Protestant translations either. I needed two things: first, the Church, and second an intermediate understanding of Koine Greek.

Then there were the other passages in the New Testament concerning the Mother of God. I had to reconsider these as well. What else could I be reading into the text, or rather, what else could biased translations be putting into the text for me? I had to know. I do not intend to do an exegesis for some or all of passages relating to Mary (others have done so already). Instead I want to focus on my relationship to the Mother of God.

It was very difficult to begin to pray with and to the Mother of God. This is understandable. Though I had read some information on the communion and intercession of the Saints (including Mary) I was not comfortable engaging the Saints in prayer. It was not a matter conscience. I did not think that doing so was sinful or that the doctrine was incorrect. I just didn’t know these people. For this reason, I believe that when asking the Saints and Mary for their intercessions, it is best to begin in the Liturgy. This is where I found the ability to begin to relate to the Mary. I first needed to know something about her before I could begin speaking with her. I will not post the various portions of the Liturgy that speak of Mary but I can say that it is through these portions of the Liturgy that I began to understand who she is and why she is beloved by Orthodox Christians. It works with meeting new friends and friends of friends. It helped me here as well.

The more I attended the Liturgy, the better acquainted I became with Mary. Before long, I decided to not only ask the Saints for intercessions (in general) but also specifically to ask Mary for hers. After some softening up, I opened my prayer to include the Mother of my Lord. It was weird at first, but now I cannot leave her out even when I shorten my prayers (I do not always give prayer the amount of time that I should everyday).

My relationship with the Saints and Mary is new. It will be for quite some time. However hesitant I was to call upon Mary during prayer, now I have no such reservations. I do so now out of love for her and for the Saints (specifically Sts. John the Apostle and Panteleimon).

In my next post, I would like to discuss the authority of the Church. It is this issue that basically settles all issues of doctrine and praxis in my mind. To put it quite frankly, I recently told another catechumen whom I know personally, I’ve come to the point where I am not surprised when I find out that the Church has always taught such-and-such doctrine. Whatever it is, I believe it.

JOhn

When I first stepped into Holy Ascension, I was not overwhelmed by everything that I saw, heard and even smelled. I saw icons and vestments, I heard chanting, I smelled incense. I don’t know what others experience, but I hear that many people are overwhelmed by what they encounter, but I, strangely, was not. I will admit that all of these things were new and strange to me but again, I was not overwhelmed.

I entered the Church with an open mind. I did not understand in the least anything that I encountered but instead of fire off the radar and just discounting everything as heresy and bad doctrine, I came to listen and to see. “Come and see.” Now where did I read that in my Bible?

I want to fast forward to the sermon, which is the focal point of the Liturgy of the Word. The sermon was delivered by Father Joshua and it was far more practical than “intellectual”. This, of course, pissed me off. I apologize for the language, but that is exactly how I felt. None the less, I listened intently. Though I forget the lectionary reading for that Sunday, I do recall Father talking about what salvation is and is not. Of course, Father wasn’t in any way going to affirm my own views of salvation. I was used to fitting salvation on three small pages in six paragraphs on a gospel tract. I listened to what salvation was but mostly what it was not. It was not a system; it was not a mental assent to particular points of doctrine; it was not to be delegated to a box, or compartment, of my life; it was not forensic but organic; it was not merely being declared righteous but actually being made righteous. Salvation was so much more than anything I could ever imagine.

Clark Carlton once said “there’s got to be more to [Christianity] than this,” while sitting in a church one Sunday. When I had heard the sermon on salvation and thought about it during the rest of the Liturgy and afterwards, I had Clark’s quote, or a variation of it, in my head. I thought that salvation had to be more than what I had previously imagined it to be. If salvation was not, then I would have had no choice but to renounce Christianity as a false religion. Christianity would ultimately be a religion that could not heal me; a religion that could not transformation me; a religion that could not free me from my bondage to sin. If I could not be freed from myself then I might as well engage the flesh. What other options where there?

I didn’t want to admit it at first, but I agreed with the sermon in my heart. By heart, I do not mean what it means in the West: that is, the seat of the emotions. In the Fathers and in the Bible, the seat of the emotions are the bowls. In my heart, that is my whole being, I knew that Orthodox worship was reverent and heavenly. In my whole being, I knew that salvation extended beyond my finite understanding. But I was not quite ready to give up on Protestantism yet. I still had an opportunity to talk with Father after the Liturgy and the meal.

As we sat around the table, I recall seeing three other SAU students there, all either catechumens or going to be. There were some Hillsdale students and others sitting around the table as well. The topics were sporadic, based on whatever questions anyone put forth. When I finally got the courage to say something, I asked, “did the Protestant Reformation do anything good?” It was a trick question. I wanted Father to say that the reverence for the Scriptures was one issue that the Protestants were to be commended on. I got no such answer. Although Father admitted that it was right to protest against various aberrations in Roman Catholic doctrine, the Reformers ultimately threw out the baby with the bath water. I was done. My attempts to get Father to validate my cornerstone Protestant belief, sola Scriptura, was a bust. I’m not sure why I expected him to, especially now that I know him better. My heart won out over my rationalism. The fullness that I had experienced in the Church started me on a long and difficult investigation, both theologically and practically (two sides of the same coin). My theological examination of Orthodoxy begins with the panagia, Mary, the Theokotos. But that will have to wait for another post.

JOhn

During the next days I would like to post a small series on why I am not Protestant. I’m sure I’ve gone over some of the reasons that I reject Protestantism in previous posts but I have not put these things together in a single post or series of posts.

My intent, to begin with, will not be theological. True, I have theological problems with Protestantism but these issues are not the only problems that I encountered on my road to Orthodoxy. I would like to begin with a quote that I found while listening to a podcast by Clark Carlton on his journey to Orthodoxy.

“A man’s religion will take him only as high as his concept of God.”

-A.W. Tozer-

I have not encountered this quote until listening to this podcast but as soon as I heard it, like Clark himself, I understood how true this statement is. The question that I am trying to flesh out in this post is who, or what, was God to the fundamentalist Protestant John? Worded another way, I need to ask myself, “what think ye of Christ?”

Well, for starters, God was completely rational. Let me explain. As a Theological Studies major with a Philosophy minor, all things were rational. In my mind, it was necessary to understand God not through faith but through reason. This is not an attack on reason itself, for reason is a valuable tool. But when given the choice between reason and faith, the greatest tool at my disposal was reason. What I could not comprehend was relegated to the “faith” column until I had the proper knowledge to flesh the issue out in my head. Such was the case when confronted with doctrines like baptism of the Spirit, and predestination. Until I began focusing on these, and other, issues I stuck with my initial thoughts on the matter and put them in the “faith” column.

For this reason, I was striving to find a church where the sermon was very intellectual. I was not looking for a practical sermon, though if the sermon could be both intellectual and practical that was acceptable. But any time a pastor decided to stress what I had to do over what I had to think (read “believe”) I considered it an insult to my intellect and a blatant disregard for “true” Christianity. I once confronted my Free Methodist pastor and asked him why he did not preach book by book, line by line. He said that I was much like St. Paul, focused very much on the intellect. Soon after, I started to actively pursue a new pastor who would not include me in with those who needed to be talked down to. I very quickly found myself in a Baptist Church, albeit very shortly. A new semester at SAU was beginning.

During the course of my stay at SAU I immediately found a distaste for the Methodist Church that the school was affiliated with. From my past experience, Free Methodist pastors were “soft”. No intelligent sermons where to be found there. I branched out, first looking into a Lutheran church and finally settling on another Baptist church in the area. Sadly, the Baptist church near the campus was nothing like the Baptist church from my hometown. For now, this church would have to do.

Meanwhile, as a student at Spring Arbor, whose major and minor, as mentioned above, were very much focused on the intellect, I was spending all my time thinking about God. I did take some time to pray, some times to worship, some time to do some other things that God requires of His followers. But mostly, I just thought about God. In fact, the Theological Studies major at SAU only requires one three credit class on actually living out my spiritual life. Spiritual Formation, CMI 361, was the only place I was required to think about, and participate in, fasting, different forms of prayer, almsgiving, charity and meditation on the Scriptures (as opposed to merely absorbing information).

Finally, after years of struggling with two particular sins, I broke. All of the memorized Bible verses, all of the Bible commentaries that I had read, all of the papers that I wrote, every homework assignment I had completed could not prepare me for the pit of despair that I fell head first into quite suddenly. I tried to stay afloat during this time by attending a charismatic group of students that met once a week to worship. Emotional manipulation was in no way a remedy to the deep wounds that I had suffered at the hands of my own sins. I was unable to figure out how such a way of living, how such a system of thinking (read “believing”) could rescue me from my own personal hell that I was stuck in. I think I assumed that God would really strike me like lightning and I would suddenly be able to recover my former self and to lead a life of holiness. Yeah… right.

It was in the midst of my despair, my struggle to stay afloat, that God brought to me someone whom I now have the utmost respect for. I was asked to come to the Divine Liturgy for the first time last fall in the middle of September.

Before I continue, I’d like to go back to my previous question that I posed to myself: What think ye of Christ? Who was Christ in my previous life? Who was the God-Man? What was my relationship to Him? How did He enter into my life and transform it? I think I have adequately explained whom I pictured Christ to be. He was the Great Enlightener, come to bring knowledge to the world in order to give salvation to us though it. Ladies and gentlemen, I was nothing more than a Gnostic. Maybe not completely, I certainly would not have admitted it, but what was the difference between the Gnostics and myself? Was not my salvation dependent on the knowledge that I had possessed? Was not my goal as a Christian (read Gnostic) to pass this information along (call it “evangelism”) so that others could assent to it too? What think ye of Christ? Nothing more than information to be understood, not a person to be in union with. My religion did not extend beyond the bounds of who I thought Christ to be.

In part two of this series I will continue with my journey to Orthodoxy, spending most of my time on my first experience in the Divine Liturgy followed by the conversation that I and other SAU students had with the priest following the Liturgy and fellowship meal.

JOhn

“At let us also be mindful that we are the only witnesses to the resurrection that most people will ever know.”

-Clark Carlton-

This was Clark’s final comment on a podcast about proofs of the resurrection, specifically speaking about historical “proofs” like the Shroud of Turin. I like what Clark says for two reasons. First, his statement shows me how sinful I am. Think about it. Every person you meet and will ever meet should see Christ in you. For myself, that is a very scary thought. What if (and this truly is no “if”) they see something else? Admittedly I would argue that the people I meet do not see Christ in me. Of course, God can certainly use what little I have to make Himself known, I readily admit this, but when I step back every day and see how I interacted with various people throughout the day, I must admit that there are at least a few dozen instances (probably more) where I could have thought, said or done something different; something that would show this person who Jesus Christ really is. If I read this quote when I got up in the morning, at each meal during the day and when I lay down to sleep for a month, either I would fall into despair at my inability to show Jesus Christ to others or I would be humbled before God in prayer seeking the holiness and communion with Him that I lack in order to show others.

The second reason why I love what Clark has to say is because frankly…

[At this point in the blog, one need not continue reading in order to get the point that the author is trying to express. This, in fair warning, is a rant.]

… I hate tracts! I don’t know who ever thought of such a silly idea as a three page, six paragraph piece of paper that tries to fit within its pages that which is ultimately one of the greatest mysteries of the universe. Seriously! What better way to never have to work on holiness than a piece of paper that does the talking for you. What a great “tool” to hide behind so that you don’t have to interact with someone and show them just how much you fail at imitating Christ and how much you also need a Savior.

What I am not advocating in this post is walking up to someone you don’t know and shoving the question in their face: “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” That just doesn’t reach very many people. There are times and places for various types of contact with different sorts of people. Some people prefer are open to talking about religion, the afterlife, the state of humanity. Others are tough to crack and need to know that you care more about them than just “converting” them. Each person functions just a little bit differently than others.

You see and can reach more people in one day than a single tract can. More often than not, you’re just littering anyway. There are those who you work with on a daily basis. If you go to school, there are your classmates and teachers. There are the people you see on the bus if you ride one. There are the customers you interact with if your job requires you to be in contact with customers. There are family and friends. Each person can see a little bit of Christ in you day after day, even if each time it is only just a sliver. Some may object and argue that any one of those people that I listed above could die at any time. That’s true, but so could we. The last thing I want my family to remember about me is that though I professed to be a Christian, I acted more like a hypocritical jerk. The same can be said about my coworkers, my friends or my classmates. Any one of them could remember me not as an example of Christ but as a selfish jerk who cared only for my own interests.

The rant is winding down now, so don’t worry. My point is, “we are the only witnesses to the resurrection that most people will ever know”. If we really thought about it, this quote would move us to change our lives for God’s sake and for the sake of those whom we meet daily. I’m preaching to myself as much as anyone else. After that mouthful I must say that there are multiple occasions throughout my day at work where immediately after a bit of conversation, I remind myself that there were moments where I could have done or said something different. Sometimes I catch myself before hand, reminding myself of the negative results of my comment, and say it anyway. It’s a shame. And it’s shameful. There are plenty of people at work who know that I’m “religious”. It’s just too bad that they don’t always see it.

JOhn

I came across an article that speaks of an event called the Toronto Blessing. I was once apart of a group on campus that often visited such gatherings and I believe once went to Toronto itself. Judging by the content of this article, I am glad that I made a transition from that group to the Orthodox Church. The article is linked here.

JOhn

Here is an interesting article by an atheist who visits a megachurch in Australia. The final impression of the author is in some ways not unlike my own, but in other ways, I would have to disagree.

The link to the article can be found here.

JOhn