Energetic Procession on Issues, Etc.

07 July 2009

I have mentioned before that usually the fare served up at Energetic Procession is way over my head. I am afraid that left to my own abilities I would have been a first class heretic at the time of Arias or Nestorius. Nonetheless, every once in a while Perry publishes an article that actually reaches down to my limited level of understanding and this one also had me cheering "Bravo!"

The Lutheran radio program, Issues Etc., ran shows on June 1, 2 and 3 against Eastern Orthodoxy and recently Perry published his counter-arguments to the Issues Etc. "howler" fest. I have heard all the Lutheran arguments before. My former Lutheran pastor and I discussed many of them as I was considering Orthodoxy. But in some cases Perry points out the non-substantive nature of these arguments, in others he points out the underlying contradictions. It is disappointing to see his comments go unchallenged by the Lutherans. I'd be interested in seeing where the discussion would go should the arguments be extended further.

Below I have captured just a few of the points which I thought were handled exceptionally well:

In the first broadcast that I heard, Strength and Weaknesses there is the usual attempt to tar Orthodoxy with something very much alien to it, namely the Charismatic movement. The criticism made by Webber is that Charismatics and the Orthodox go to worship for the same thing, namely the attainment of a mystical experience rather than to be slain by the law and revived by the gospel... Furthermore, he speaks of the purpose of worship to be slain by the law and resurrected by the gospel. And here seems to me to a case of the pot calling the kettle black. For all the disparagement of a therapeutic approach and a desire for “experience” the Lutheran approach is no less therapeutic and motivated by a recapturing of that “experience” of condemnation and liberation as fostered by their schema. Good Lutheran preaching should use the law to re-create the existential crisis of absolute condemnation by the law that demands all and gives nothing and then supplying the existential release with a gospel that gives all and demands nothing. The value of the gospel lies specifically in its cathartic nature. Here Reformation preaching is no different than what its advocates despise. It is there to create an experience and is evaluated on its ability to do so.

I never looked at the Law/Gospel paradigm in such a way before but it is a paradigm of experience!

To change gears, Webber’s main thrust in this particular broadcast is that Lutherans wouldn’t be seeing significant clergy convert to Orthodoxy if Lutherans were more faithful to their Lutheranism. It is due to an infiltration of happy clappy worship and anti-sacramentalism that is its cause. The problem with this approach is that while it may be sufficient to motivate people to look elsewhere it not only ignores and leaves unenganged any particular arguments for Orthodoxy but is insufficient to explain why people choose Orthodoxy.

This to me is not a particularly novel assessment. I have thought the same thing for a long time. Happy Clappy may cause some dissatisfaction with where one is but it doesn't necessarily cause one to choose Orthodoxy over the Church of Christ denomination over Roman Catholicism over Anglo-Catholicism over...you name it. Dissatisfaction initiates the search but it does not drive the wagon. Those of us who have actually converted know this firsthand. It isn't the Happy Clappy that makes Lutherans become Orthodox. That explanation is just not substantive. It sounds reasonable but it is not the full Truth.

What Webber is doing is being anachronistic in the extreme by reading back the Lutheran protest against the Neo-semi-pelagianism of the Ockhamists back into East/West relations. This move also shows that Webber really isn’t familiar with Orthodox theology since its main focus as determinative is Christology rather than the “soteriological sideshows” that Protestants obsess about.

OK, now we start getting to a point in the article that makes me yearn for the simplicity of 3rd year Calculus...but I included it because there is something said here that I think is valuable to keep in mind. Someone once said that Orthodox theology begins with the question "Who is God?" while Lutheran theology begins with the question "How can I be saved?" It is a perspective that really should be acknowledged to help gain understanding of the Orthodox.

As he [Webber] sees it, the East’s answer to Pelagianism was due to a lack of a clear understanding of sin which motivated them to just “skip over” sin and forgiveness an go straight to union with God in terms of some kind of absorption and loss of self in the deity... In any case, according to Webber the goal or salvation consisted in “contemplation.”... Then there is the obvious inconsistency in his criticism. He can’t have it both ways. Either the goal in Orthodoxy is escape from reason into a “mystical experience” (in which case the exact and exacting words of the liturgy shouldn’t matter at all) or the goal is rational contemplation. Which is it? This inconsistency never seems to dawn on Webber.

Whoops!

Then we have Webber using a scatter shot tactic of tossing out mess of different points. First he says that while under Islamic domination, there wasn’t any “creative theological work” going on. Apart from being ambiguous, this assumes that the purpose of theologians is to be creative, rather than faithfully preserving what he has received. So Webber measures Orthodoxy by an inappropriate standard. Theology is not a constructive practice in Orthodoxy to begin with.

This is another important point those wishing to learn about the Orthodox should know...preserving the faith as received is the intent, not a continual evolution of theological thought.

If the Lutherans can’t do any better than this, Orthodoxy is going to plunder what’s left of Lutheran gold.

And this is what I think sums up what Perry has to say...these kinds of arguments against Orthodoxy by Lutherans, which are straw men, half truths and insufficiently reasoned, are not going to stop the exodus of those Lutherans looking for something else. These are the things that damage credibility. I know because I have walked these very steps. I sincerely looked for my former denomination to give me some substantive reasons why Orthodoxy was false but what I got instead was an inaccurate caricature of Orthodoxy.

If this topic is of interest to you, read the whole article and feel free to comment where you agree or disagree.

Template Drama

05 July 2009

My blogger template had several odd breakdowns within the last couple of weeks. First my favicon was lost on the server hosting that service. The service finally sent me an email indicating they had some problems and I needed to reload my favicon.

Then I lost the parchment looking background which made reading the blog quite difficult. I finally figured out the problem--the template uses an image host and apparently the image which creates the parchment like background was lost from the host's server. Once I restored the image to another service and edited the code to point to the new image, I lost all my links! I can't explain that at all! But if the template is possessed then I will just have to post some Elder Paisios quotes...that will surely put an end to the funny business!

I only have one other issue left...the name on the Tab in Firefox...it reads the URL instead of From Athens to .... or Byzantine Dixie. I haven't figured out how to fix that yet. If anyone knows...let me know, otherwise I will live with it.

On Modern Life

21 June 2009

My dear friend, Emily, called my attention to the book, Diary of a Russian Priest by Fr. Alexander Elchaninov. It is not a book of lengthy developed theses but rather a book of snippets of wisdom. A perfect book to keep in one's purse or backpack to pull out while waiting in the doctor's office or for a plane or for a few quiet minutes during lunch hour.

I found this assessment quite sobering.

How difficult is our approach to God, especially in the case of some of us when everything - even nature, heredity, and the entire composition of man - builds up a wall between him and God.

The kind of man we most often encounter presents a combination of three traits: (1) pride - faith in his own strength, delight in his own creations; (2) a passionate love of earthly life; and (3) the absence of any sense of sin. How can such men approach God? As they are now, they are hopelessly isolated from God; they do not even feel the need of Him. And this is precisely the kind of personality that is developed in the conditions of modern life, through education, literature and so on. The idea of God is erased from the soul. What catastrophes are required, before such a man can be reborn!

- Fr. Alexander Elchaninov

An Email from Maria Khoury

18 June 2009

Our family is fairly comfortable. I have a job during these tough economic times. We have good shelter, plenty of food, good clothing and transportation. I have no checkpoints to go through to get to work. I almost never see an armed man unless I am getting a traffic ticket. When I first heard the story of Maria Khoury, the child of Greek immigrants to America, who went to college in Boston, fell in love, married maybe the only Arab Christian attending at the time, and moved back to his Palestinian homeland--a land his family has occupied since either 500 or 700AD--I was horrified that someone would actually choose to live in such oppressive conditions. I don't understand how someone could raise a family in an area where fears become reality when they have other options. But I also don't think everyone in the world should think like I do...probably better if they don't. I am a coward.

I recently received this email from my Presbytera and want to share it here. I don't claim to understand the politics. I don't even believe that Christianity will drop off the face of the earth if we lose our holy lands but I thought you might be interested in the letter and the article and also be prompted to pray for the Christians in Palestine.

Dear Friends of St. George Taybeh,

Many of you have been letting me know that you read the article about Christians in the Middle East in National Geographic.

In case you haven't seen it already, the article in June 2009 article in National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/arab-christians/belt-text

National Geographic has received complaints about the article. If you appreciate it, please send a message thanking the editor as I have done:

Mr. Chris Johns, Editor-in-Chief, ngsforum@ngm.com

The following words were spoken by President Obama in Egypt and it is a different tone than I have usually heard in the last few years feeling like a voice in the wilderness:
"It is undeniable that the Palestinian people- Muslim and Christians- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation, Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands of a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations- large and small that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation of the Palestinian people is intolerable."
As the USA called for an end to settlement expansion, we have seen several attacks in the last week by Israeli settlers assaulting two Palestinian young women (27 May) at the Tappuah checkpoint and another attack where four Palestinians were rushed to the Nablus Hospital after severely beaten on their way to work at 5:30 am (June 1).
The settlement in front of my kitchen window is getting bigger and bigger thus as Jimmy Carter said years ago these illegal settlements are a huge obstacle to peace.
On a happier note, we are finding creative ways to survive the closure and living in a prison with the Wall all around us thus inviting internationals to come to Taybeh and help us boost the economy on October 3 & 4, 2009 for the Taybeh Oktoberfest. We view this festival as our peaceful resistance and our non-violent action to the harsh conditions we live. It is so important to keep Christians in the Holy Land since we witness for Christ’s love and peace and every year on Holy Saturday with the True Light that comes from the Life Giving Tomb of Christ with God’s message of eternal life.
In Christ, maria

It Ain't Me, Babe

10 June 2009

The US census defines baby boomers as that segment of the population born between 1946 and 1964. As a “boomer” I am well aware of the deficiencies of my generation. We were the idiots who said “never trust anyone over thirty”…and now most of us are counting down to the days to our retirements thinking we are plenty trustworthy. We are the generation of free love and drugs. We had tuned in, turned on and dropped out. Woodstock…that was ours. And not something to be proud of. Flower Power, Peace, Groovy…blah, blah, blah. We were (and are) so consumed with ourselves.

And when it came to contemporary Protestant worship, I suppose even contemporary Roman Catholic worship, we have been told it was our fault The boomers wanted it. The younger folks weren't interested in contemporary mega-church worship. They want something more traditonal and reverent. But we were forcing it on them because we liked it. So, understandably I was ready to take more well deserved criticism for my generation. Even if that criticism didn’t jive with my reality.

In looking around my brother’s Life Teen Roman Catholic mass…there were plenty of boomers clapping away and one might jump to the conclusion that the boomers were to blame but that didn’t explain all the young folks there, nor my niece who said if it hadn’t been for Life Teen she would have left the church by now.

And I looked at my husband’s Lutheran church. It was the teens and young kids either begging their parents to take them to the local Baptist mega churches with their cool, contemporary services or going on their own once they were old enough to drive. His congregation wasn’t loosing boomers to the Baptist contemporary services but they were losing teens.

And then my under 40 former LCMS DCE friend who opted for Latte Lutheran Church when she moved to St. Louis.

Nonetheless, despite my anecdotal experience, I was prepared to take the hit. After all, the redeeming features of the boomer generation seem to be few and far between.

But the data is in and it doesn't support that conclusion. It appears the boomers, while a natural target, are not the ones flocking to the mega churches. It is, in fact, those younger ones...the ones we are told are interested in more traditional and reverent worship...they are the ones are making their homes in the world of contemporary mega worship. And they aren't anteing up either!

HERE is the skinny. (Boomers, this doesn't mean you can relax yet. We still have to gather up all the bell bottoms and burn them. We are responsible for that fashion disaster, too!)

O Lord I Have Cried Unto You...

25 May 2009

I keep lots of photos on our parish website so I am frequently getting submissions. This year the youth kept vigil at the tomb of Christ on Great and Holy Friday and one of the Sunday School teachers took some of the most beautiful candlelit photos as the psalter was prayed throughout the night. Inspired by the photos I captured them in a video and added some music. Below is the end product.



I used Roxio Creator 2009. It was very simple software to work with but the output is very basic--don't know if that is my limited vision or the software! (There was a loss of photo quality once the file was uploaded to Youtube...that's a disappointment.) I wonder...have you done something similar? What kind of software have you used?