Lex orandi, lex credendi
In the fifth century, Prosper of Aquitaine gave Western Christianity a principle the Orthodox East would recognize as its own: The law of prayer establishes the law of belief. We usually shorten it to lex orandi, lex credendi. How the church worships both reveals and governs what she believes. Many theologians, especially Catholics and Anglicans, have since added a third term: lex vivendi, the law of life. What we pray and believe should become how we live …
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At the altar, I say words I did not write, on a calendar I did not choose, in a rite designed to protect the congregation from my personality. Our celebration of the Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy is a prime example of a healthy institution: Its highly formal, ritualized structure and prescribed gestures leave no room for arbitrary innovation. But its anonymity is not cold. It forms us, because it puts the church’s common life ahead of anyone’s charisma.
It feels like years since I cited the maxim lex orandi, lex credendi, but it’s a terribly important principle that I thought about a lot until, I guess, it sank into my bones.
In the most blunt and personal terms, if I want a faith that is sober and balanced, I should avail myself of worship that is sober and balanced. And I can’t imagine wanting to have the kind of faith that seems like the eventuality of loud, adrenaline-generating services. That feels crypto-pagan to me, a better build-up for copulating with a temple prostitute than for receiving the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Like I said: blunt and personal. I am aware that there is non-Orthodox worship that doesn’t have that vibe, but there’s a lot that does.
Clanging gongs, crashing cymbals
Meekness is not a modern virtue. Our noisy world tends to notice the loudest and brashest voices, those whose demands are accompanied by whatever power can be leveraged. We value champions and winners, and, at best, offer pity to those who cannot overcome their meekness. I suspect that most people do not believe that God is meek. No doubt, some who are reading this are already preparing their challenges, citing the cleansing of the Temple or the plagues of Egypt. Such challenges are mere intellectual toys, not rooted in our actual experience of God.
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It is clear that the presence of God seems obvious to some, while remaining “hidden” to others. What seems clear to me is that God seeks to draw us to Him through (first) our desire. Though He has utterly poured Himself out for us on the altar of the Cross (and continues to do so), He nevertheless waits patiently for us to seek Him in return.
More than this, in His patience, He invites us into a life of meekness as well.…
When Christ cautioned the people not to make Him known (Matt. 12:17) it was, the gospel writer said, to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah (42:1-3):
“Behold! My Servant whom I have chosen,
My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased!
I will put My Spirit upon Him,
And He will declare justice to the Gentiles.
He will not quarrel nor cry out,
Nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets.
A bruised reed He will not break,
And a dimly burning wick He will not quench,
Till He sends forth justice to victory;
And in His name Gentiles will trust.” (Matt. 12:18-21)He is still “not known” by the mighty – and the rich He sends away empty – until they find Him among the meek.
“Pastors”
The Western World is quite literally dotted across it’s landscapes with a myriad of buildings that call themselves “church”, with pastor’s who preach from what they call the Bible, yet it is uncanny how few of these places actually know what their Bibles teach about discipleship and being a spiritual father.
Gentle reader, the vast majority of churches across the Western World look like classrooms; they have far more in common with a University lecture hall then they do with anything that Jesus and the Apostles were doing in the first century. They somehow think that by throwing in a few songs alongside their forty five minute lecture, they have somehow transformed themselves into a first century Christian church.
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It is rather shocking in a way that mega-church preachers call themselves “pastor”. A word that any first year greek student knows is rooted in the idea of shepherding. When exactly or where exactly is the shepherding of the mega church pastor’s 10,000 member congregation taking place?
I have had countless protestant pastors tell me that the shepherding of their congregation takes place during the Sunday sermon. I’m not making this up; they have told me this to my face, sitting across from me at coffee.
Have you ever wondered why the Western World has this crisis of absentee dads that psychologists have been talking about for decades? You need look no further than the local church down the street from your house where the pastor believes he is being a good father to his children by simply preaching at them on Sunday.
Why ecumenical dialog doesn’t quite work for us
[Fr. Alexander] Schmemann explains that the Orthodox representatives were continually forced to attach “separate Orthodox statements” to the “reports of virtually all major ecumenical conferences.” This illustrated the “often helpless” feeling they experienced “of being in a false position, which was almost always the feeling of the Orthodox delegates.” Non-Orthodox delegates at ecumenical dialogues never understood the Orthodox position, and the Orthodox could never clearly articulate their position because the foundational presuppositions and premises of Orthodoxy were never recognized. Instead, everything was framed in terms of the Catholic-Protestant dichotomy.
Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox: Understanding and Acquiring the Orthodox Christian Mind
Yearning for God
In the post-Christian world, people—especially young people—are not looking for powerful exegesis of papal encyclicals, erudite sermons about the mechanics of salvation, five killer apologetic arguments to use against atheists, or any other canned strategy. They want to know whether life has any meaning or this is all there is. They don’t want to know about God; they want to know God.
Rod Dreher, Living in Wonder
Within the last few days, I’ve heard some analysis that makes me think this may be right, though my first reaction was that it was too practiced. I guess “right” and “pat” aren’t necessarily incompatible.
Home
Close to home
It’s a big mistake to think of one’s church life as only receiving information about Jesus Christ and the Bible, and arranging your own thoughts and emotional reactions to it. Like I said, I was never Evangelical, but I pretty much lived that way as a Catholic — and I struggle not to live that way as an Orthodox. It’s the intellectual’s temptation: to live inside his head. The church is not the Disembodied Brain of Christ; we are the Body of Christ. Online church as a substitute for the gathering of the body forms Christian gnostics, whose minds are free from the prison of the body, from the “prison” of talking to their neighbors, from the “prison” of making an effort to get to church on Sunday morning, from the “prison” of coffee hour. Just you and Jesus, there on your sofa, with your coffee, and in your sweatpants. Download the sermon and listen to it in the afternoon, after you’ve gone golfing on Sunday morning. Optimize your consumer church experience.
Rod Dreher, The Disembodied Brain of Christ
Note my internet domain name: intellectualoid.com. What afflicts Rod afflicts me, too — which maybe is why I keep coming back to him despite a catastrophism I don’t share.
Far, far from home
Saint Gabriel’s First Warning
In the years of the Antichrist, people will expect salvation from space. This will be the devil’s greatest trick! Humanity will seek help from the aliens, not knowing that they are actually demons.
Saint Gabriel’s Second Warning
In the last days do not look at the sky — you may be lured with the miracles performed up there — you will believe them and perish. In antichristian times people will be waiting for salvation from outer space.
Saint Gabriel Urgebadze, Fool for Christ, Canonized Georgian Orthodox Saint († 1995). This is my proximate source, but I now acknowledge that this is the consensus of Orthodox Saints who have expressed a view.
It’s also the view of me, a sinner. I find it a more satisfying answer than conjectures about interstellar travel solutions and marginally more charitable than saying all the reporters of alien encounters are lunatics.
And now, having never experienced personal visitations from whatever they are, I have other business to take care of, thank you.
Debuted last Saturday, The Great Christian Divide: East & West:
I offer it really as a guide for the perplexed. For the Orthodox-curious, this provides an avenue for answering that question: What is this thing to which I am drawn? I’m curious about Orthodoxy, but what is it, and how does it differ from Christianity as I know it? I offer it also to the Orthodox convert, one who has said, “I’ve embraced Orthodoxy, but I’m not sure I fully understand it yet. I’m not convinced that I fully traded out my Western theology for a fully Orthodox worldview.” I also offer it to those who are on the outside and have no interest in Orthodoxy, but they are nonetheless perplexed because they’ve watched somebody else make this journey, and they want to understand: What is this thing that my son or my daughter, my husband or my wife has embraced? And so this offers a way of answering that question. And I even offer it to the apologist, the one who opposes Orthodoxy, in order that we might have more informed and fruitful dialogue about East-West differences.
Dr. Nathan Jacobs, explaining his purpose (should I say “target audiences”?) in creating The East West Series, now known as The Great Christian Divide: East & West (I guess it evolved during production, just as it grew from 24 episodes to 33).
Look at the “Episode Guide” and you’ll see why a long-ago convert with intellectual leanings found it irresistible, even at $199 (But wait! You also get a Turnip Twaddler and a Diaper Steamer!).
Dr. Jacobs has a very forbidding copyright notice on his material. As a retired lawyer, I think the law overrides such copyright claims insofar as someone makes “fair use” of material, but I respect the hundreds or thousands of hours that had to go into this series, so I’ll be quoting him rarely if at all.
But I suspect I’ll be reflecting what I learn from him from now until I cease blogging on matters of faith.
Shorts
- [F]or every far-left proponent of “postcolonial” theologies who is attempting to evacuate the faith of its historic substance, there is a neo-Confederate apologist who styles himself as fighting the incursion of “cultural Marxism” in Baptist seminaries. (John Ehrett, Book Review: “Live Not By Lies” – Conciliar Post)
- If you teach that sanctification consists of “letting go” and letting the Holy Spirit do all the work, then don’t blame me if you have no scholars! (Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind)
- Theology is not a cerebral knowledge but a living knowledge that is directly relevant to man and sustains and possesses the whole man. A cold, cerebral man cannot know and discourse on divine things, even if his head contains an entire patristic library. He who is not moved by a sunset, a tree, or a bird cannot be stirred even by the Creator of these things. In order to grasp God and be able to talk about Him to others you must be a poetic soul. (Fr. Stephen Freeman)
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on my favorite no-algorithm social medium.
