Prelude
This item follows on my enigmatic first item on December 3.
I’ve very frequently been quite harsh toward Evangelical Christians — “Why can’t you stupid people see that you need to be Orthodox!!!” has been the gist. So to anyone who has felt hectored, I apologize. If you’re still here, forgive me — and thanks for bearing with me in my chronic (26 year) convertitis.
I should know from my own experience that it’s not illegitimate to settle into a religious tradition and not be looking for the location of the exits immediately; that was my demeanor toward Calvinism for 20 years or so, and toward Evangelicalism for nearly 30 years before that. Both times, I was sort of blind-sided into recognizing the need to change.
Further, phenomenology and theology sometimes co-exist awkwardly. For instance, I now thoroughly believe that Baptism is not just a symbol, but is one’s initiation in the Church — a very important matter (theology). But I can’t help but feel that my Christian life began, in a non-trivial sense, 12 or so years before my Baptism when I realized (after being caught in flagrante delicto) that beating up on my brother to take away a toy was disappointing to Jesus and I needed Him to forgive me — and to “come into my heart,” as my then-tribe put it (phenomenology).
Bereft though they were of sacrament, Liturgy, incense, Church Fathers, icons, beauty and so forth, that realization and my response were important. But I’ve concluded that Evangelical Is Not Enough.
But I’ve tried to hector others into recognizing that it’s not enough. I wouldn’t have put it that way, but that’s what it amounted to.
I could say more about why I felt driven to hectoring people, but for reasons I need not share, I won’t.
Anyway: I need to reconcile myself to the reality of divided Christianity — that not all sincere Christians have entered the Ark, the one holy catholic and apostolic church of the Nicene Creed, and almost certainly some never will. The most I can do under my own power is to produce discontent with where they are — unholy discontent, which could lead them out of Christianity entirely. I don’t intend that.
But if you ever do feel any holy discontent, be sure to give Orthodoxy a look.
And I’ll probably be unable to completely eliminate critiques because Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism differ in important regards (more about that below), and where they do differ, I believe Orthodoxly.
The Main Act
Two kinds of believers
I sometimes think that the modern world’s true cultural divide is not between believers and unbelievers but between those who think life is a puzzle that is capable of being solved and those who believe it’s a mystery that ought to be approached by way of silence and humility. I am a problem solver by disposition, but in my heart I am strongly on the side of the mysterians.
…
It’s a mistake to treat [the tradition of Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Karl Rahner] as a watered-down version of the more certain expressions of faith typically associated with organized religion. The most sincere believers I’ve known have also been the most humble, the most perplexed. It may be that those who feel most powerfully the presence of God in their lives likewise feel most powerfully the impossibility of adequately capturing that presence in words. And it may be that those for whom God is not a symbol or a cudgel but a lived reality find this reality most mysterious.
Christopher Beha, Jon Fosse and the Power of Faith at 1 a.m.
I’m with Beha: “I am a problem solver by disposition, but in my heart I am strongly on the side of the mysterians.” I’ve been trying to solve the puzzle for many decades now, and I probably see more open questions than when I started.
So I now plan, after some fear that it was being over-hyped, to read Jon Fosse’s Septology.
This is not unrelated to the preceding item.
Why intellectuals don’t convert to Evangelical Christianity
My social medium friend Kyle Essary engages Brad East’s speculation about why intellectuals who become Christian tend to become Roman Catholic or Orthodox rather than Evangelical:
But there’s one area that Brad doesn’t mention. And I think this reason keeps many intellectuals away from many Protestant traditions. Catholicism and Orthodoxy don’t have crazies. There may be a few here or there, but when you hear about a Christian group making fools of themselves publicly, you can be fairly certain that they are Protestant—and probably evangelical. Our low-church, anti-institutional biases breed these types. If you are an intellectual considering Christianity, you will not naturally move toward Christian groups that oppose science or higher education. But evangelical Protestants have groups that oppose both.
Kyle has distilled this aspect better than I ever had.
Certainty, Ferocity and Solidarity
[T]he true distinction between fundamentalism and mainstream beliefs isn’t what fundamentalists believe but how fundamentalists believe. As Richard Land, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, once told me, “Fundamentalism is far more a psychology than a theology.”
…
I’ve never encountered a fundamentalist culture that didn’t combine three key traits: certainty, ferocity and solidarity.
Certainty is the key building block. The fundamentalist mind isn’t clouded by doubt. In fact, when people are fully captured by the fundamentalist mind-set, they often can’t even conceive of good-faith disagreement …
That certainty breeds ferocity. Indeed, ferocity — not piety — is a principal trait of every truly fundamentalist movement I’ve ever encountered. Ferocity is so valuable to fundamentalism that it can cover a multitude of conventional Christian sins. Defending Trump in 2016, Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas, an evangelical megachurch, explained, “Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals.”
…
Yet certainty and ferocity are nothing without solidarity … I’m reminded of an infamous quote by Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, regarding the necessity of loyalty. Explaining Trump’s hostility toward Ron DeSantis, Huckabee said, “I think there are two virtues — loyalty and confidentiality. Be loyal to the people who helped you and learn how to keep your mouth shut.”
Again, that’s not piety. It’s solidarity.
David French, Why Fundamentalists Love Trump
I appreciate this dissection of what makes “fundamentalism” fundamentalist, and it rings true to my 75 years’ experience. That’s even more interesting to me than why fundamentalists love Florida Man.
Note three things, though:
- So described, fundamentalism is not merely distinct from “mainstream” beliefs, if by mainstream one means the Seven Sisters of American Protestantism, but also distinguishes it from non-fundamentalist evangelicalism. Indeed, there’s no major difference between Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists in theology (see J.I. Packer, ”Fundamentalism” and the Word of God), but there are evangelicals who are blessedly low on certainty, ferocity and solidarity.
- So described, it becomes clearer how there can be Islamic as well as Christian fundamentalists — even Orthodox Christian fundamentalists (though I strongly believe that such Orthodox fundamentalism is not very good Orthodoxy).
- [Fundamentalists] “can have a steamrolling effect in institutions because their opponents — almost by definition — have less certainty, less ferocity and less solidarity” (French again).
Not a Freudian slip
Victor I. Masters, the head of Home Missions from 1909 to 1921, reflected and influenced denominational thinking when he argued that the North had lost its religion to Romanism and rationalism, and that the SBC’s divine mission was to spread “the Anglo-Saxon evangelical faith.”
Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals
Interlude
Quanta
Quantum physics: Electrons moving, but photographing them affects path and speed. Why? How? Quantum theology: God’s mind doesn’t change, but he tells us to pray, and somehow our prayers affect the outcome.
Marvin Olasky, The Wonder of the Universe’s Weirdness
Theology
The classic Orthodox definition of a theologian is well known and frequently repeated in Orthodox circles: “A true theologian is one who prays,” or “One who prays is a true theologian.” This legendary saying reflects the Orthodox phronema and stands in stark contrast to the Western Christian phronema, which strongly emphasizes use of the mind for comprehension of theological truths and rational deduction as a theological method.
Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox
Gratitude
I am a millionaire.
My bedroom is full of gold
light, of the sun’s jewellery.
What shall I do with this wealth?
Buy happiness, buy gladness,
the wisdom that grows with the giving of thanks?
R.S. Thomas, Collected Later Poems 1988-2000
Postlude
Orthodox Teaching does not merely differ from Western Christianity in content, but the reason for the difference is equally important. After reading this book, Western Christians still may not understand our mentality, but perhaps they will begin to realize that the difference between Orthodoxy and Western Christianity is significant and more far-reaching than a few doctrines, ancient rituals, and a refusal to submit to the pope. The variance is deeper than appears on the surface, extending to how theology is conceived, conceptualized, taught, and approached. To complicate matters, often the same terminology is used in East and West, but basic terms or concepts do not have the same meaning at all. What is sin? What is salvation? What is forgiveness?
Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox
So walk on air against your better judgement
(Seamus Heaney)
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