www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Orthodoxy and Justification

Originally posted by Fr Kimel:
I know that the Reformation concern is considered foreign to Orthodox experience, yet perhaps for this very reason the Orthodox need to confront Luther here and perhaps learn from him.

I suggest that Luther poses two important challenges to all Christian churches.

First, when I am overwhelmed by uncertainty about my relationship with God and my status with him, what should the Christian do? Luther's answer: Look at Jesus, who loves and forgives us unconditionally, apart from our works and deservings. When the sinner despairs in his heart in his ability to "cooperate" with God's grace, what is the Gospel word that needs to be spoken to him?

Second, may the Gospel be proclaimed unconditionally? Thus Luther's famous distinction between Law (demand or conditional promise) and Gospel (unconditional promise).

It's taken the Roman Church four centuries to finally start listening to Luther here, and it has seen that in these two respects Luther had a profound understanding of the Good News and that she has something to learn from her. That is why I posted the link to the Joint Declaration. Might not also the Orthodox Church have something to learn?

The idea of "when are we saved" etc. is simply outside the Patristic tradition of BOTH East and West in the first millennium - and the Reformers were really rather ignorant of that tradition, thinking it to largely consist in "papal tradition."

Do not rely on your own effots, but on the grace of Christ. 'You are,' says the apostle, 'saved by grace. Therefore it is not a matter of arrogance here but faith when we celebrate: we are accepted! This is not pride but devotion.

James 2:14 - What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?

Originally posted by Fr Kimel:
[QUOTE] Why is Orthodoxy different?

The justification teaching of the ancient Christian writers is neglected. While Protestants often complain that Catholics missed the point entirely, Catholics tend to ignore the Protestant complaint. Meanwhile the Orthodox are sure that the only way to get things right is for everyone to come home to Orthodoxy, whether Freek, Russian, Coptic, or Syria.... The evidence will show that there is a stable, explicit, consensual tradition of exegesis of Paul's teaching of justification by grace alone through faith alone.... Some Protestants may imagine that contemporary Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic writers are still thoroughly engrossed in patristic teaching. Regrettably this can no longer be counted upon. It is too often only a thin veneer under which there is a prevailing accomodation to modern thought patterns. The fixation of Roman Catholics upon modern Vatican II teaching has led to the neglect of ancient ecumenical teaching, despite Vatican II appeals to the contrary. The defensiveness of many Orthodox teachers against both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism has led to a defensive myopia that fails to recognize the implications of the deep classic consensus that is represented in the texts we will examine. Orthodox are not noted for reading western patristic texts. Catholics neglect eastern sources. Protestants doubly neglect both.

Poor scholarship, dubious premise, BIG disappointment January 4, 2003

This book purports to show that there was a consensus among the Church Fathers in support of an essentially Protestant theology of "justification by faith alone" (JBFA) long before the Reformation. Oden tried to prove this by comparing isolated quotations from the Fathers to individual doctrinal points gleaned from several different Protestant sources. He made no effort to systematically develop the various nuanced positions of the Fathers on soteriology and acts as if every apparently anti-Pelagian comment equates to support for Protestant dogma.

For example, the dominant position among the Eastern Fathers as far back as the 2nd Century was Theosis -- partaking of the divine nature through union with Christ. This concept is neither mentioned nor explored in the book. This is a critical omission since John Calvin and his spiritual descendants explicity deny this concept.

It is also well established that the Protestant doctrine of JBFA is strongly tied to medieval Ockhamist and Scotian ideas in theology and philosophy. The Patristic Church did not share these ideas and was in fact more strongly influenced by Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought. The attempt to find Protestant doctrines among the Fathers is anachronistic at best and openly deceptive at worst.

When I purchased this book, I had hoped to see a detailed comparison between the positions held in the Patristic Church and those of later sectarians, both Protestant and Catholic. This is something that no one has done up to now. Earlier work by Buchanan was tainted by his outright anti-Catholic bigotry and Alister McGrath's "Iustitia Dei" -- for all of its attempt at covering medieval developments -- still concentrated on the Western/Augustinian tradition and did not examine the breath of the Patristic thought while virtually ignoring the contributions of the Ecumenical Councils before Trent.

I was disappointed to see that the positions of the Fathers were never systematically developed and that no attempt was made in the book to examine either Catholic or Eastern Orthodox soteriology. The continuitites and discontinuities between the Patristic positions and those of non-Protestants were virtually ignored. Meanwhile selective proof-texting made it seem as if there was a broad Protestant consensus on JBFA which was compatible with a similar broad consensus across the Patristic Church. This is not only poor scholarship, it is frankly dishonest.

The reality is that there were (and are) many Protestant positions, many Patristic positions, and many views within Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The doctrine of justification has developed over the centuries with each age adding its own peculiar contribution to the way it was articulated and lived. There never was a consensus AMONG the Fathers on all the fine points or AMONG the Reformers or AMONG their Catholic and Orthodox counterparts.

The bottom line is that Dr. Oden's book is a shoddy piece of propaganda alleging a continuity between the Early Church and the Protestants which did not -- and does not -- exist. I think he wrote this book in an irenic spirit similar to that of Daniel William's book "Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants." Unfortunately, this book will not serve to broaden the horizons of rank-and-file Protestants as Dr. William's did. Rather it will be used by those very narrow minded propangandists who are still trying to convince themselves (and others) that Baptists were not Protestants, that St. Thomas Aquinas was not a "Romanist", and that the Reformation was a return to historical "biblical" Christianity.

The truth is that Historical Christianity is a much broader and complex movement than any one tradition can claim and that Protestantism is as much a product of its contemporary environments in every age as any other form of Christianity. In fact by its very nature, Protestantism in any form is always discontinuous in its doctrine with the theological positions previously held even from within its own tradition.

I am sorely disappointed that Dr. Oden did not make a real effort to educate his co-religionists in what the Church Fathers really taught, but instead tried to confirm them in sectarian ignorance for the sake of a false irenicism.