Category: Church

Indifference to form was essential to the Evangelical movement. It stemmed from a conviction that mediation of any kind, whether Catholic or Protestant, posed a barrier to direct communion between God and the individual Christian. Ecclesial forms, the logic went, could be faked; they could result in nominal Christianity or dead orthodoxy.

Evangelicalism, accordingly, sought authentic or genuine faith, unencumbered by rites, dogma, and clergy. As such, born-again Protestantism is a new and highly modern form of Christianity, one that regards dependence on churchly mediation, whether through catechesis or creedal subscription, sacraments or ministerial blessings, pastors or priests, or councils of bishops or presbyteries, as in tension with rather than constituting a personal relationship with Christ.

If real antagonism exists between Evangelicalism and ecclesial Christianity, then why do born-again Protestants who desire historically grounded expression of the faith remain Evangelical? Why not simply join one of the other communions that guard ancient Christianity?

One suspects that the reason has something to do with the advantages of being rootless. Without an Evangelical identity, a born-again Protestant would have to choose one of those other traditions, join it, and reject the others. With an Evangelical identity, he can take the best from all Christian expressions without having to come under the discipline and restraint of a particular church’s ministry, authority, and tradition.

If this is so, then the Evangelical future called for in this statement is more modern than ancient, because it is more voluntary than received, more liberated than restrained, more tolerant than exclusive. Without becoming part of a historic Christian communion, Evangelicalism’s ancient future will yield merely the trappings of antiquity minus its churchly substance.

D. G. Hart ‘Born Again Free’ – Responses to Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

After World War II, conservative Protestants fled oppressively liberal mainline denominations and formed parachurch mission boards, seminaries, and publishing houses, as a matter of survival and faithfulness. As they did so, however, they downplayed their ecclesial differences to the point that establishment Evangelicalism forgot there really was anything important about baptism, the Lordâ??s Supper, or, sadly, the Church itselfâ?¦.

Now, after a half-century, we see Evangelical parachurch institutions and ministries almost indistinguishable in their broadness from the mainline institutions for which they were created as a conservative alternative. The Call hits exactly on some of the reasons for this: a hyper-confident Evangelical movement that thought it could win the world to Christ apart from his Body. Inasmuch as the Call directs us to reconsider the Kingdom communities of our churches, as opposed to databases of donors, we should listenâ?¦.

At the end of the day, the â??Ancient/Futureâ?? Evangelicalism is a natural extension of American Evangelicalismâ??s besetting sins of faddishness and consumerism. Thatâ??s the reason it is fanned (as so many Evangelical winds of doctrine are) by publishing houses. This project comes to us just as Evangelicalism is in the throes of an infatuation with the so-called emerging church, which is also fueled by publishing houses (the sellers of youth ministry curricula) and which is also enamored simultaneously with postmodern cynicism, egalitarianism, doctrinal flexibility, and ancient-seeming worship…

The emerging worshipers and the ancient futurists want to borrow some of the trappings of a time when Christianity was countercultural (dark rooms and candles simulating catacombs, for instance) while embracing primary aspects of contemporary cultural libertarianism (including feminism and pluralism)â?¦.

If the Ancient/Future Evangelicals wish to counter this culture, they will be forced to do so in more than the generalities theyâ??ve outlined. To take on consumerism, do you dare take on the dual-income family structure of contemporary Americanism? To take on the â??culture of death,â?? do you dare speak bluntly about welcoming the gift of children, about the personhood of the embryo, about the way in vitro fertilization turns a child into a means?

To speak against â??civil religion,â?? do you dare call for public prayers in the name of Jesus? To speak against â??political correctness,â?? do you dare say that only in Jesus Christ is salvation found, thus fueling the evangelism of the world religions, including the Jewish people?

Russell D. Moore â??Listen Closelyâ?? â?? Responses to Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future

So the most important thing of all is the desire to be one, and to prove that desire, not only by praying â?? because we pray for unity at every single liturgy â?? but prayer without activity, without work, is just blasphemous. To be praying all these things and not to be working, not be ready to make any possible sacrifice you could make that doesnâ??t violate the essence of the faith. In other words, the Orthodox have to desire unity and be ready to sacrifice everything that they can without violating their convictions about the gospel in order to be one, particularly with Roman Catholics.

I believe that the Orthodox, if we were serious about unity, would need not only to desire it, sacrifice for it, forgive everything, admit our own sins, distinguish between what is essential and what is not, but also would have to be ready to practice â??economiumâ?? on certain issues. This would mean, in my opinion, that we would have to be ready not just to admit that there
can be different ways of singing, and different styles of liturgy, and different uses of psalmsâ?¦there are some issues, especially between Orthodox and Catholics, that Orthodox would have to be ready to tolerate for a while (even though they think the issues are bad) for the sake of unity.

What do I have in mind? Things like the â??filioqueâ?? clause in the Creed [the clause in the Nicene Creed that says that the Holy Spirit proceeds, not only from the Father, but also, â??filioqueâ?? â?? from the Son]… If Rome would say it was not there originally, that the way it was explained was not right, we now can agree on certain aspects â?? I think the Orthodox would have to say, â??OK, let them keep itâ?? rather than insist that every last church in Portugal drop the â??filioqueâ?? before we can have unity.

In other words, the Orthodox may have to go along with something for a while, as long as itâ??s clear how we understand it.

Father Thomas Hopko What would the Orthodox have to do to have unity?

The Church is whole when all parts of the church are in communion with all others. For this reason each church must insist on the centrality of ecumenism and be disciplined by it. Notionally, all the leaders of the church meet together in councils in which the whole church is present. This council or assembly is a function of the mercy of God to his Church and by which the Church is renewed and sustained.

Ecumenism is not an extra, but an evangelical imperative. ‘The divided Churches are called to receive from one another or indeed to receive one another.’ This does not mean simply agreement on doctrine, but mutual ecclesial recognition, ‘the reception of one Church by another Church’ – in the eucharist. ‘The Church, although one, exists as churches (in the plural), and these churches exist as One Church in and through constantly receiving one another as sister Churches.’ (Zizioulas ‘The Theological Problem of Reception’)

Conciliarity is the practice of communion, that is, of sending apostles to, and receiving apostles from, all other parts of the church. Receiving Christ from these apostles and being obedient to Christ in them, is simply what Christian love is. The Church is love. The whole church’s sending, receiving, meeting, learning and teaching, disciplining and obeying, is the event of love. It is the life Christ lives to the Father. Indeed all society is an event of love, and a participation in the society of God, and no amount of corruption changes the truth of the origin of human sociality. Any particular society becomes, and remains, a society as it is formed in and disciplined by Christ, who is in one society with the Father.

But there is no worldwide council of the church. There is the weekly, or daily, celebration the eucharist, which both looks forward to the assembly of Christ with his whole people, and already is this assembly in miniature. And there are the many interim ecumenical meetings and forums of the church. All of them are partial, but if they are gatherings of the church, they give their witness by pointing forwards to the perfect eucharist of the whole church. In the eucharist we receive the whole Church, Christ and his whole people. We shall return to this theme in the next post.

When people ask me, for example, why the Orthodox jurisdictions in America are not united, the answer is very clear: because our leaders donâ??t want it. If they wanted it, we would have had it yesterday. There is nothing stopping themâ?¦ you may have to suffer a lot. You may have to give up some things: power, pre-eminence, prominence, property, possessions, prestige, positions, privilege and pleasure. Weâ??re not ready to give up those things because of pride, passion and prejudice. Forget it. Thereâ??s not going to be any unity. Thatâ??s what divides people generally, and it is certainly what divides churches.
Now here I would allow myself one little â??not my businessâ?? remark: I have a hunch those same things are operating in the Eastern Catholic Churches, tooâ?¦

We will never be one unless we desire it with all our hearts, and are ready to put away everything that we can to have itâ?¦. Everything that doesnâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Language doesnâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Calendars donâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Certain liturgical customs donâ??t belong to the essence of the faith. Even the Byzantine Rite Liturgy for us does not belong to the essence of the faith.

There was a whole thousand years when the Church had multiple rites of praise to God. In fact, the irony is, the time when there were the most multiple rituals for the sacraments and the services was the time there was the greatest unity in doctrine and spiritual life, evangelism, etc. In any case, the ritual is not of the essence of the faith. Language isnâ??t, calendars are notâ?¦ all those things are not part of the essence of the faith. But unless we have the desire for unity, which then would lead us to feel that we have an absolute obligation from God to distinguish between what is really essential and what is not, we are never going to be united.

Father Thomas Hopko What would the Orthodox have to do to have unity?

The bishop represents the whole history of the Church, all its apostles and doctors, to his congregation. He is the catholicity of the Church, in one person. In him the worldwide church makes itself present to each local congregation. A bishop is a member of the assembly of the whole church, drawn from every corner of the world. If the bishop is present, the whole Church is present in each particular congregation, so that the whole geographic and historic catholicity of the Church is present in that particular part of the world. This Church on earth is the form in which Christ together with all his people is presently visible to the world.

Bishops are apostles. The point about apostles is that there is a plurality of them. Twelve indicates completeness, so there is one apostle for every part of the world (The same is true of the seventy apostles, for there are notionally seventy nations in the world). When one apostle falls, his place is filled by another. Apostolic succession does not run individual to individual, so the power of consecration does not run bishop to bishop in unbroken quasi-physical transmission, no single gap in all those centuries. It is ‘possessed’ by the assembly and council of apostles and bishops as a whole, represented in the council of the whole church as this participates in the whole Christ. Thus the worldwide council of the church is a foretaste of the ultimate assembly of all creatures in worship of God.

The bishop teaches his people the doctrine of the whole Church, and when the Church refuses any part of these gifts and disciplines, and sets out to found its faith on something less than the full deposit of faith, the bishop will exercise the discipline that will bring it back to obedience, and he will endure the suffering that this will involve.

By popular demand, and at the insistence of Matthew Baker, it is time for more from the wonderful Fr Thomas Hopko. What goes for the Orthodox goes for the rest of us. I have taken some liberties with Fr Hopko’s paragraphs.

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If you are in Eucharistic communion, you are one church. That’s what makes the Church one. It’s the unity in the body broken,
the blood shed of Jesus before the face of God. That’s where the Church is actualized on earth in the celebration of the mysteries: baptism, chrism, Eucharist. That’s what makes us one. That is where the unity of our doctrine is shown, our unity of worship, our unity of morals, our ethics, the unity of spiritual life.

We claim to belong to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church of Christ, the church that teaches the gospel truly, fully, that prays properly, that acts and teaches the right way to behave according to Christ, according to God Almighty, according to the Holy Scriptures, the canons, the saints, the fathers, etc.

So what is really required… all above everything, is a real desire for unity…to want to be one, to suffer over the division, to weep over it, to carry it around like a sword in your soul that we who claim Christ and praise God in Christ (especially in this world which is getting less and less Christian as the clock ticks) are divided…

Father Thomas Hopko What would the Orthodox have to do to have unity?

The whole Christian community is under a discipline imposed upon it by an external authority. It is formed and disciplined, as it is redeemed, by Christ who comes to it from outside. But Christ is no absentee landlord who exercises only a distant or theoretical authority. The authority of Christ is exercised by Christ, made present to us in his whole people the Church, and carried out by the office-holders of the Church. The lordship of Christ presently makes itself felt as these specific overseers.

No community of Christians is under its own authority, and so no individual community can ordain its own leaders. This must be done for it by the rest of the church, by all other congregations, as it were. Such overseers are sent by the whole Church to each local church, which must receive this overseer and his discipline willingly, as a gift received from the whole Church. Because these overseers must be trained in the full deposit of faith, we need a trained and ordained clergy. Christ makes himself present to us in the form of these disciplinarians, who are responsible for connecting us to all the people of Christ, mediating to us the whole Church, and passing on to us all the characteristics of the servanthood of Christ. Obedience to the God who is really God is freedom, and obedience to his word and then, to those he made his apostles, is the form Christ takes for us now.

Our overseers are the love and discipline of Christ for us as they pass on what they have received from Christ and enable us to receive it in full and thankfully. We have to help these overseers to be good transmitters of the faith, and we do this by encouraging them to instruct us, and by taking our complaints to them and to God when they fail to do so. So discussion of the office of the bishop is no defence of clerical interests, but an essential part of the living witness of the contemporary Church.

Next we must relate the bishop to the assembly and to the plurality-and-unity of the whole Christ.