+Z’ev

Today’s Assigned Readings:

Ezekiel 43:1-12; Hebrews 9:1-14; Luke 11:14-23

And for Saturday evening, the Eve of Pentecost:
Exodus 19:3-8a,16-20; 1 Peter 2:4-10

For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!
Hebrews 9:13-14

The pages of my other blog have, at times, been filled with theological debate. In the last 5 years I’ve been noted as a good host for such debates - even when I don’t fall to one side or another of them. I have, however, often come down on one side or the other. Following the debut of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, I noted that one might get too emotional watching the movie and confuse emotion with faith. (I still agree with that assessment, although I open admit - then as now and before - to weeping hysterically at Jesus of Nazareth or The Greatest Story Ever Told.) For thus critiquing what was - then - the coolest Christian movie on the planet, I was called “an Anti-Western Kook.” Note-to-self: I still need that on a t-shirt.

And yet here is tonight’s passage from Hebrews - which seems quite standardly western if you read it with western eyes. You kind of have to overlook it with eastern one (it gets a serious gloss from John Chrysostom, and is turned into quite something else).

Three years later, an email back-and-forth between myself and an Orthodox writer on the topic of the atonement produced quite a storm of blog posts and theological debates. This time, following Bp Kallistos Ware, I was pointing out that even the bloodiest forms of God-punished-Jesus-instead-of-us theories of atonement found parallels inside the Orthodox Church (especially, in this case, in the Matins of the Resurrection). To claim “this” was Orthodoxy and “that” was not (usually in an East versus West kind of way) was just not possible. But to deny that claim cuts the rug out from under those converts who want to imagine a Good, Pure and Perfect East as over against a defunct west. Having been such a convert - and then become a rug-cutter - I wondered what Orthodoxy was.

One of the better soundbites to come out of modern Orthodoxy is this: 100% of the Fathers are 85% Orthodox. One must think in black-and-white terms to use the line - the assumption of the speaker in all cases is that he or she (or at least her priest) can tell you what is and is not Orthodox among the Saints.

One can expect this to come up in a couple of situations. On the one hand, as one begins to use quotes from the Fathers to suggest something that another party thinks isn’t “really” Orthodox, out will come the 85% line. (Try reading Olivier Clement to Ultra-conservatives.) Or, on the other hand, a reader will go to ask someone wiser about a quote from St So-and-so that appears to be heresy. My personal favourite is from the Council of Hatfield, held in 680 - well before the Great Schism between east and west. To prove that England held the orthodox and catholic faith, the Council submitted a statement of Faith to the Pope including the filioque. No one thought anything of it - the filioque was part and parcel of the gloriously variegated theology of the Church. It was a couple hundred years before it would get tied into secular politics and cause trouble. But point out today that any number of Orthodox saints were there (including Bede, who was commemorated yesterday) endorsing the filioque, and the response (from a calm voice, at least) is sure to be “100% of the Fathers are 85% Orthodox.”

Let’s hold on to that. Here’s why: It’s totally true. And all the examples that can be cited will prove it of any writer out there whom the Orthodox claim - from St Paul to blessed Father Seraphim of Platina, who died in the 1980s, to Fr Thomas Hopko (who is still alive). Now, which 85% of which writer is Orthodox will depend on who you ask and that’s also important. Because there is no final authority that can judge that to be so - or not so - save maybe (maybe) a majority opinion. As if such were possible.

Remember a couple of posts ago when we talked about Sola Scriptura? Imagine, if you will, that the Orthodox or Roman Catholic argument can be summed up as Sola Ecclesia - Church Alone - and the same things are true. As I said on Tuesday:

Now, I’ll be the first to admit: there’s no such thing as Sola Scriptura. This is not because of any weakness in the scriptures, but rather because a text is meaningless without context - and that includes the reader. The assumptions and history a reader brings to the text are just as important as what the author intended, at least as regards the “meaning” a reader will pull out of the text. So, a conservative, socially traditional sort will pull from this material what he needs, ignoring all the rest. The same is true of the sort of person one might call a “liberal” or socially progressive. What these parties bring to the discussion influences the truth they pull out.

It matters not if that “reader” of Sola Ecclesia is a more-liberal Orthodox/Catholic person (think many Politicians or Fr Alexander Schmemman) or a more-conservative sort (think Fr Seraphim or Frederica Matthewes-Green). It may be that one is accepting the “read” of one’s priest or that one is reading alone. Either way, what one brings to the the quest (including one’s own mental limitations) is vital to what one brings out of it.

The same is true of Anglicans or Lutherans, of Presbyterians or Emergent Church folk. The claim that the Church is, of itself - rather than accepting that the Church is the living people in it - causes one to go seeking a black and white place: which can not be. For the Church is the people - and pointing at one place or another of “tradition” and attempting to solidify it (as in the case of the Scriptures) results in the ossification of those things around it, too. A tradition is living - ie, alive, changing, growing, reproducing. The Tradition™ is usually imagined as dead - unchanging. Except it’s not really. It changes all the time… in other words The Tradition™ is really a bunch of traditions in a constant, glorious and often contradictory flux. Glory to God for all things!

That’s where, ultimately, we’re left with a living community - the Church - surrounded by dead shells. We are like the ancients who lost their temple and wondered “What now?”.

By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the sanctuary has not yet been disclosed as long as the first tent is still standing. This is a symbol of the present time, during which gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various baptisms, regulations for the body imposed until the time comes to set things right.

But then Christ came… and in him all these things can live as living traditions weaving together his people. In plain black and white, 100% of the Tradition (Eastern, Western, Catholic, Protestant, Ancient, Modern, Postmodern, Emergent) is 85% Orthodox.

Peter calls us, on this Eve of Pentecost,

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy

The living priesthood of Christ - that is all of us - may make our homes as we feel called, to offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim his mighty acts.