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Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape (revised edition)
Copyright ©2017 by Andrew Stephen Damick

First edition—Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems
Through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith
Copyright ©2011 by Andrew Stephen Damick

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.

Published by:

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version, © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Ebook by Bright Wing Books (brightwing.ca)

For Nicole

and

in memory of
The Rev. Dr. Matthew J. Baker
(1977–2015)

Now I plead with you, brethren,
by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that you all speak the same thing,
and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be perfectly joined together
in the same mind and in the same judgment.
(1 Corinthians 1:10)

Foreword

Writing a foreword is always a great honor. It is a special joy, though, when the foreword is for a book written by one of the contributor’s former students. I have known Father Andrew for a long time—as an excellent writer, a sound theologian, and an ardent sharer of his faith.

We live in a society that is influenced by a myriad of different Christian denominations and non-Christian faith traditions. Such an array of religions often leaves us confused and perplexed. Unlike the majority of Orthodox Christians around the globe, who live in traditionally Orthodox countries, we living in the Western lands are faced with an experience that compares to none, except perhaps the experience of the early Christians. Those first followers of “the Way” found themselves in a Greco-Roman world full of numerous sects and religions. And like us, many Romans explored religions and practices that were not traditional—not held by their forebears. And just as in our world today, religious syncretism was common.

This is why Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy is a much-needed resource. It is valuable for Orthodox Christians and for the non-Orthodox, for the well-read and the novice. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick offers a book that can help remedy the ignorance to which many of us must admit with regard to other religious traditions. As Orthodox Christians, we need to familiarize ourselves with the beliefs and practices of others so that we can better share our own Faith.

A key to effective communication is not only knowing your subject matter, but knowing your audience as well. What is more, the exercise of learning about other faiths gives us a more refined context in which to better understand our own—a context that serves as the background from which the foreground can emerge all the more clearly.

The aim of this book is not triumphalistic, nor is it even an apologetic for the Orthodox faith. It is rather an expedition across the religious landscape of our society that holds our spiritual homeland—the Orthodox faith—as a touchstone to which we can compare and contrast all that we encounter. For this reason, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy can also be useful for that religious or self-identified “spiritual” friend who is interested in learning more about other faiths.

Father Andrew’s style is clear and readable. He is thorough in his survey of the religious landscape of this country, but not overly detailed. Enough history is covered for the reader to gain his bearings, and each tradition is allowed to speak for itself. The author keeps the reader in mind so that the distinctions particular to each confession remain accessible.

The author’s analysis of Roman Catholicism shows his ability to distill the primary differences between the Orthodox Faith and heterodox ones. Father Andrew goes on to address in detail the key issues usually cited as the reasons for the Great Schism between Rome and the Eastern Churches—papal infallibility and supremacy, and the filioque—and other doctrinal, liturgical, and ecclesiological points of divergence. However, his skill and precision in articulating the starting points from which these better-known differences emerge make his treatment of the divisions between the Eastern and Roman traditions particularly helpful for the reader wishing to understand them more deeply.

One of the primary concerns in this book is the consideration of the consequences that religious beliefs bring to bear upon the life of the adherent. Here we have a remedy to the unexamined rhetoric of the notion that “all religions are the same” and the ubiquitous and often unconscious assumption that what we believe, or the set of concepts we embrace as truth, does not make a difference in religious validity or practice.

The inclusion of a chapter on non-mainstream Christians such as Mormons, Unitarian Universalists, and Christian Scientists is also helpful. Many people do not understand how fundamentally different these groups are and why exactly the Orthodox Church and many other traditional Christian groups do not, properly speaking, consider them Christian.

Perhaps of even greater benefit for the reader is the chapter on non-Christian religions, a category to which increasing numbers of Americans adhere. We are often ill-informed about non-Christian faiths. Take the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. How many Christians are aware why such a division exists? Father Andrew gives a basic answer to this question and familiarizes us with many other aspects of Islam of which we are probably ignorant.

Many Americans are religiously unaffiliated and describe themselves as agnostics or atheists, or they adhere to a kind of New Age syncretism that heavily incorporates elements from Eastern religions or seeks to find the common “core” of all religions.

Addressing these non-Christian religions is helpful because many Americans are shifting away from Christianity. Moreover, as our world becomes more globalized and lesser-known religions are covered in the media or are encountered in visits to other parts of the world, this chapter equips the Christian with sufficient knowledge to begin to be informed and respectful, not fearful or ignorant.

Like Christ, who knew secrets about the woman at the well that astounded her, and who knew the inner thoughts of the Pharisees who opposed Him, we ought to take seriously the task of knowing the stories of others, including those who do not share our faith. Then we will be able to fulfill the command given us by the Apostle Peter to “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).

Father Andrew’s advice in his chapter on Roman Catholicism rings resoundingly through the whole spectrum of our attitude toward, and conversations with, persons who believe differently than we do: “Most of all, it is critical that we understand the theology of the person in front of us as well as our own.” This book, I am certain, will do a great service in equipping its readers to engage with confidence, yet with openness and humility, in those conversations.

It is with great joy that I recommend this volume, already a success in its first printing and now generously and conscientiously expanded by its author. It is with sincere gratitude to God for Father Andrew, and for his numerous accomplishments as pastor and scholar, speaker and writer, that I add my enthusiastic endorsement to this latest contribution by my former student to the growing body of inspiring and illumining literature available both to those who have “seen the true Light” of the apostolic Orthodox faith, and to those seeking to know more about “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

Finally, it is with fervent prayers that I entreat our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life toward whom all the highest promptings of the human heart direct us: May He pour out His choicest blessings on each and every reader who cherishes these chapters, granting all of you the good things that come from His hands.

+ M I C H A E L

The Most Reverend Michael G. Dahulich, Ph.D.

Archbishop of New York and the Diocese of New York and New Jersey

Orthodox Church in America

Preface to the Revised Edition

I am the kind of writer who is never satisfied with what he writes. Almost from the first delivery of the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy podcast in 2009 and the subsequent release of the book in 2011, I was aware that my text was not where I wanted it to be. That awareness has only been heightened in the years that followed, most especially because I learned that the text was being used in ways I didn’t foresee when I first wrote it.

My original intention was for O&H to be a basic-level parish educational series for Orthodox Christians. As a result, if the details on other religions’ teachings weren’t always entirely precise or thorough (or, as I learned later, correct), I still felt that it was an acceptable text. But I learned that non-Orthodox people were listening to the podcast or reading the book and using that as an introduction to the Orthodox Church, and in some cases, joining the Church. I became aware that I needed to do some work to make the way I represent non-Orthodox teachings much more recognizable to their adherents—and that, of course, is only fair.

As I received feedback for both the podcast and the book, I learned that the text was also not where some others wanted it to be. If you are one of the many people who wrote privately or publicly to offer up critiques for this work, I am grateful to you. Thank you!

Some of the criticism I received was based on the fact that we simply disagreed. There wasn’t much I could do about that. But I also learned that I got a few things wrong, whether because I had been misled by something I read, because I hadn’t researched as thoroughly as I should have, or because I subsequently learned more about the topics in the text. Part of the learning process was via people questioning what I had written (whether critically or just inquisitively). Part of it came through discussions with friends. Part of it was reading further on all these fascinating subjects. And part came from the fact that the religious situation on the ground has changed in some ways since I first began writing this work in the fall of 2008.

I also realized that some subjects to which I had previously devoted only a paragraph or so deserved a more thorough treatment. The most significant result of that realization in this new edition is the addition of a whole chapter on Pentecostalism, the Charismatic movement, and the Word of Faith movement. These movements represent some of the largest, fastest-growing, and most visible parts of Protestantism, and they are distinct enough that the Evangelicals and Revivalists with whom I grouped them in the previous edition see themselves as quite different from them. It is one thing for a Lutheran to see himself as different from a Presbyterian, but it is another, I believe, for a Baptist Evangelical to see himself as different from a Pentecostal. This grouping represents, I believe, a fourth form of Protestantism and so deserves its own chapter. For opening my eyes to the depth, complexity, and humanity of these movements, I am grateful to my two local friends “the Mikes,” Michael Landsman and Dr. Michael Petrow, who also offered useful corrections and insights for my comments on Evangelicalism. The new chapter on Pentecostalism really owes its existence to my friendship with these two fine men.

Along the journey that has been the production of multiple versions of this material, I’ve had the opportunity to think a good bit about apologetics, polemics, and ecumenism (for various definitions of each). The issue of Orthodox relations with other Christians and our assessment of their theology and practice is bound to come up when one writes a book like this. To that end, let me emphasize that I am neither an expert nor a professional in those fields. My purpose has always been to introduce the reader to the main issues involved and the most important views about them. I do not regard myself as an apologist or a polemicist. Nor am I an ecumenist—by any definition of that word (good or bad). But I do have some thoughts on those matters, so I discuss them in an expanded epilogue.

I have had it in the back of my mind for some time that I wanted to produce a revised, expanded edition of the book. In returning to my text, I found that I also wanted to clean up some expressions in the writing, to simplify, to expand, to update, and, overall, to make what I hope is a better—not just bigger—book in almost every way. That said, the book is much bigger, around 90 percent bigger, despite my having cut some material from the appendices (which is now readily available online). I especially wanted to adjust my tone in certain places, because, while I deliberately tried to be as restrained as possible in the original writing, I am aware that in some ways I wrote more polemically than was really warranted.

I can imagine that some astute readers may compare the original with the revised edition. They may notice a word or quotation excised here or there, something nuanced, and so forth, and they may wonder what exactly I meant by making a certain change. Most of the changes—which are to be found in nearly every paragraph—are merely the changes of a writer who does not like the way something sounds and wants to make it work better.

Some readers may conclude from a given change that I have softened my views on something, that I am trying to slip something in. Nothing could be further from the truth, I assure you. I still believe that the Orthodox Church is the one, true Church of Christ, that we cannot blur appropriate lines between it and other religious groups, and so on. But I also believe that if I got something wrong, I need to fix it, even if the way in which I got it wrong is a popular thing to do among some Orthodox. We should never be satisfied with repeating old polemics, especially when those polemics were never based on a true reading of what the other group is teaching, or when they have simply gone out of date because the other group is now teaching something different.

There is a movement, especially visible on the Internet, that delights in this repetition and thus only serves to drive people away from Christ’s Church—people who do not recognize their own beliefs in what is being said about them. The formulaic repetition of those polemics only serves to communicate to those who read them that the polemicist cannot be bothered to learn the truth about what other people believe. I have been guilty of that behavior myself at times, but it’s wrong, and I’m sorry. Other Christians and members of other religions are not our enemies, and we do no one any service if we do not seek to know them. I ask forgiveness for anything I have gotten wrong in the past and also for any new errors that may have made their way into this present text.

In this process, I have benefited from the help of many people who are not only smarter than I am but far more learned. In particular, I am grateful for the help of the “Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy Cabal,” a virtual (and occasionally literal) gathering of folks interested in all these questions, many of whom have written articles for the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy website. We have an ongoing discussion amongst ourselves about almost everything discussed in this book, as well as many related topics. The learning and wisdom of these people have expanded my own vision considerably, and several of them contributed directly to my understandings in writing this new edition. Among them I am grateful to Richard Barrett, Jamey Bennett, Fr. Lucas Christensen, Seraphim Danckaert, Prof. Cyril Jenkins, Fr. Stephen de Young, Dr. Eric Jobe, Fr. Joseph Lucas, Hieromonk Herman (Majkrzak), Gabe Martini, Samuel Noble, Dylan James O’Brien Pahman, and Fr. Esteban Julio Vázquez.

First among the Cabal, in terms of his ability to compel me to rethink things, was the late and untimely lost Rev. Dr. Matthew Baker, whose staggering theological, philosophical, and historical knowledge was exceeded perhaps only by his authentic brotherly love. Fr. Matthew especially showed me, particularly concerning Roman Catholicism and some forms of Protestantism, that I needed to learn more directly from Catholics and Protestants themselves and not to listen mainly to what others say about them. Although this book remains dedicated to my wife Nicole, I am secondarily dedicating this revised edition in memory of my friend and seminary neighbor Matt, whom we still mourn and whose loss we cannot replace. May his memory be eternal!

As I’ve tried to understand my subject better, and in keeping with the advice of Fr. Matthew, I’ve had many conversations over the years with people from outside the Orthodox tradition, trying as well as I can to understand what they believe and practice themselves, as well as with Orthodox people who have a history in other traditions. One who helped me a good deal when it came to Rome—including offering some good criticisms for things I had gotten wrong or overstated—is Dom Benedict Andersen, a Benedictine monk in Ireland. We obviously do not agree on everything (so don’t blame him for anything I get wrong), but I am grateful for his time. Some in the O&H Cabal also helped to correct me regarding Rome. For helping me to understand Lutheranism better, I am grateful to Fr. John Fenton, whose decades of experience and study in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod allowed him to give me many useful corrections, both on Lutheran theology and history and on the early Reformation in general. Fr. Gregory Hogg, another former Lutheran pastor, helped me better to understand Lutheran hermeneutics.

Fr. Stephen de Young and Prof. Jenkins especially helped me to understand the Reformed world far better, having long been part of it themselves. And as someone from within the Reformed tradition who is friendly to the Orthodox, Russell Vincent Warren also gave me many helpful comments.

On Anglicanism, I’m grateful to Fr. Nicholas Alford and Fr. Alban Waggener, both formerly part of that movement and now Orthodox priests. Fr. Alban had been a bishop in the Anglican Continuum.

In addition to the help I got from “the Mikes” on Pentecostalism and its children, I am also indebted to Fr. Barnabas Powell, a former Pentecostal pastor who described Pentecostals as having been his “tribe” for many years before he became an Orthodox Christian; as well as to Dr. David Ford, who also belonged to that movement before becoming Orthodox.

On the non-mainstream Christian groups, I received valuable help from Dn. Thomas Crowe, especially regarding the Mormons. On non-Christians, Samuel Noble used his extensive knowledge of Semitic language, culture, and religion to assist me with Near Eastern religions (as well as some of the Far Eastern ones), while Derick Mattern’s extensive experience in travel was brought to bear for Far Eastern religions. And ancient Semitic language and culture specialist Dr. Jobe helped me not only with the section on Judaism but with nearly anything else referencing ancient Israel.

My thanks again go to John Maddex of Ancient Faith Ministries, who was willing to take the risk on me initially and also agreed to this revised edition, including the new podcast based on it. I am grateful to all the staff of Ancient Faith Radio and Ancient Faith Publishing for the work they do.

The foreword written by my mentor and erstwhile confessor while in seminary, Archbishop Michael, is likewise a great gift. I thank God for the love and care shown to me by His Eminence during the challenging seminary years and for his continued friendship. I am grateful for the shepherding of my own hierarchs, Metropolitan Joseph and Bishop Thomas, who inspire their clergy always to do more and to be more. Likewise, I thank God for the late Metropolitan Philip, whose vision for bringing this Orthodox faith to ordinary Americans is bright in our memories.

I continue to be thankful for the faithful people of St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, who received these lectures in 2009–2010 and the new versions in 2015–2016. They are the primary audience for this work and the primary reason I am writing these texts. I said earlier that I was not an expert on these matters, but I do try to be a teacher. Teaching is one of the things I love most about the priesthood, and I am grateful that I can teach at St. Paul’s.

Thanks especially belong to my wife Nicole and my children, who sacrifice for their husband and father to follow these many religious rabbit trails. I am grateful also to my parents. My father Bill especially gave me his own great love for history, which is one of the great vehicles for learning the truth, and my late mother Sandy (along with my father) taught me to pursue truth no matter where it led me.

One final note for this preface: You may notice that the subtitle of the book has changed, from Exploring Belief Systems Through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith to the new Finding the Way to Christ in a Complicated Religious Landscape. That change is intended to signal my now-larger purpose for this work—instead of focusing solely on helping Orthodox Christians to understand and address other theologies, I am now explicitly intending this work also to be used by the non-Orthodox to help them learn about the Orthodox Church. I hope this work will contribute toward our getting to know one another better in forming relationships of genuine friendship.

All errors here are my own. And, if I may borrow a phrase from my Protestant friends—Soli Deo gloria.

Preface to the First Edition

This book did not start out as a book. It began its existence as a series of seven lectures first given for an adult education class at St. George Orthodox Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia, in answer to a question from a parishioner at the cathedral: “What’s the difference between Orthodoxy and other faiths?”

Those who are “professionals” (and I use the term quite loosely) in theological life may often be surprised to discover that what is so clearly and radically distinct to them may look fuzzy and undifferentiated to those who have not yet taken the time to peer more closely into the details of theology. I believe this surprise results from a modern situation in which theology is viewed as something only of interest to the so-called “professionals,” not something that could present any interest to anyone else.

What I have found, however, is that most people actually are interested in theology, once the details are brought out, and particularly when it becomes clear that theology really does touch our everyday lives, that its shape shapes us in everything we do. This discovery became clearest to me when I first delivered the lectures that form the basis of this book.

Now that this work in its lecture form has been delivered in other venues, both at St. Paul Orthodox Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania (my current parish), and via Ancient Faith Radio as the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy podcast, and most especially now that it’s appearing in print, my intent for it remains the same: to answer for Orthodox Christians the question of what the differences between the Orthodox faith and other faiths really are.

I want to stress that this book’s purpose is not to be used as a weapon against believers in other faiths, and shame on you who attempt it! This work was written to educate Orthodox Christians, and while I imagine it may be read by people who are not Orthodox, they should realize that this book is not “aimed” at them, nor can its broad but nevertheless limited scope permit full justice to be done to other faiths’ doctrines and traditions.

Although this book evaluates the content of other faiths’ teachings, it is not an exacting work of apologetics. True apologetics is carried on by people much more qualified and learned than I, and I have no doubt that such people may read this book and easily point out various areas where it is not up to proper apologetical standards, whether they agree with my conclusions or not. For those interested, there are plenty of places to find such debates.

The foundational affirmation behind this work is that the Orthodox Christian faith is uniquely true, that it alone is the fullness of the revelation of God to man, and that the Orthodox Church is the same Church community founded by Jesus Christ through His apostles. Because this much is assumed to be true, this book’s treatment of other doctrines will never be satisfactory to those whose loyalties lie with those doctrines. (After all, if we agreed, either they would be Orthodox, or I would be whatever they are!) I have nevertheless tried to be as fair as I could.

My hope for this book is to introduce to Orthodox Christians the major elements of doctrine and practice that make non-Orthodox faiths different from Orthodoxy. More detail and nuance than this introduction provides can be found in other works, and I encourage those who wish to pursue those questions to continue exploring them. For those who want a “handbook” to what separates other major faiths from Orthodox Christianity, this (I hope) is the book for you.

Those familiar with the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy podcast should note that this book is not merely a print edition of the same work. While much of the material is the same, this book represents a revision, expansion, and (in some cases) correction of the material from the podcast.

Especially in that last regard, I am indebted particularly to two men who helped clarify a number of issues for me—Dr. Cyril Jenkins and Matthew Baker. Their ruthless reading of my manuscript was precisely what I needed. I am also grateful to all the people who showed up at the original lectures (in both Charleston and Emmaus) and challenged what I said, forcing me to think through some things more carefully and research them more thoroughly. Thanks also go to John Maddex of Conciliar Media, who (inexplicably) accepted the podcast for Ancient Faith Radio, and to the folks at Conciliar Press who have helped to refine this work in its written form.

I am most especially grateful to my wife, the Khouriyeh Nicole, who somehow always sees her husband’s silly adventures as opportunities.

Introduction

Doctrine Matters

Most of the time, we are concerned with the truth. A cashier has to make sure he knows the exact change he’s giving. A nurse has to apply just the right amount of medication to a patient. A mathematician checks and rechecks his proofs. A jury listens closely to all the facts to sort out the truth in a trial. A history teacher has to get the names and dates right. A scientist publishes work for peer review to make sure everyone gets the same results. In all of these cases and more, what’s important is not opinion. What’s important is the truth.

Yet it seems that when it comes to questions of religion and spirituality and the accompanying moral questions, we suddenly become relativists. The truth doesn’t matter. Instead of asking who God really is, we say, “Who is God to you?” Instead of asking what it means that God became a man, we say that’s okay for some people to believe if they want. Instead of asking whether God expects something from us or has any divine commands for us, we judge religious expectations by what we want, by whether a religion fits into our lifestyle. The pursuit of objectivity goes out the window, and subjectivity reigns.

And usually it goes beyond subjectivity—which is trying to see a truth from different points of view—to the far more variable, trivial, and inconsequential world of opinion and preference. It’s not about truth any more. It’s about what I want.

This fundamental problem is compounded by the prevailing lack of familiarity with the traditional tools of spiritual knowledge. Most people are not doing what it takes in order to see what is true. If an astronomer refused to use a telescope or a biologist refused to use a microscope, we would regard such people as having, at best, incomplete knowledge in their fields.

From the Christian point of view, the tool that is lacking for spiritual knowledge is purity of heart, as Jesus said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). Purity of heart begins with humility. What is also lacking is proper guidance on how to attain that purity from those who have seen God and passed on this experience to the next generation.

Plato defined this same problem when he wrote The Republic and included the famous Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, prisoners chained in a cave for their whole lives believe that the world is defined by the shadows they see on the wall. If one of the prisoners should escape and find his way to the surface, and then see the sun and the world for what it is, how would he be able to describe that experience to people whose whole life is defined by shadows? And when he stumbled on his way back into the cave, trying to become reconditioned to life in darkness, those still chained to the wall would ridicule him as having been damaged by his experience in the light rather than enlightened. Such is the plight of many Christian believers today—the world sees them not as enlightened but as damaged by religion.

So I would like to suggest that the great spiritual battle of our time is not a struggle between believers and atheists. Rather, it is a struggle between pride and humility. We expect and even demand humility in most areas of life—what really matters is what is objectively true, not what any of us might think is true. Our opinions are not what is important. Yet when it comes to ultimate questions about ourselves and the nature of existence, about the meaning of life, we set aside humility and place ourselves at the center of the universe. Succumbing to the temptation to pride is common even among Christians.

One of the basic assumptions of this book is that Truth—and here I deliberately use the capital T—is not relative and that Orthodox Christianity represents the fullness of the Truth, the locus of the revelation of God in Christ. Why? For the Orthodox Christian, Jesus Christ is the Truth (John 14:6), and because the Truth is a Person, truth cannot be relativized. From that basic position we will be describing and analyzing various religious groups and their teachings, seeing what we share and where we differ.

Because Truth is not relative, we should be willing to set aside whatever we would prefer to be true and embrace only what really is true, changing ourselves, our attitudes, and our beliefs whenever necessary. If we come upon some truth we disagree with, yet we can see that it must be true, we should say not “I don’t believe it” but rather “I don’t believe it yet.”

THE TRUTH BUSINESS

It has become unfashionable to speak as though one particular doctrine is true and another is false. Yet if we were to look at the situation only one hundred years ago, we would see that most religious groups regarded their own doctrines as true and also came to the logical conclusion that contradicting doctrines must therefore be false. (That’s still true for most religions in the world.) Most churches practiced closed communion. Most churches would unhesitatingly have called other churches’ adherents by the name heretic. Most churches would likely say that only their own members could be saved. This is not to say that those were the “good old days,” but they were at least days in which believers took doctrine far more seriously.

Today, to come to the conclusion that some doctrines are true and others are false, and especially to speak publicly about it, is often regarded as not being “loving,” a word usually used to mean “nice.” A public disagreement over religion is usually considered offensive.

And so, living as we do in an age of political correctness and relativism, we have been given new points of cultural theology that we are supposed to profess. This theology can be expressed with statements like these:

“All religions are basically the same. What matters is that you live a good life.”

“We all worship the same ‘God.’”

“Religion is a private matter. Don’t try to ‘impose’ your beliefs on others.”

“I don’t think any religion has it all right. We’ll find out what’s true when we get to heaven.”

All of these statements are based on one common assumption: Teachings about God and the ultimate nature of reality are not very important. That’s why they should not be discussed publicly. That’s why their details don’t really matter. That’s why we should not try to win people over to our faith. There really is no such thing as Truth. Everything is relative—except perhaps for the statement that “everything is relative.”

For nearly everything else in life, whether it’s technology, health care, or even the Super Bowl record of your favorite football team, we demand seriousness, detail, and accuracy. Yet we as a culture are ignoring a basic yet obvious truth: If there really is a God, then who He is and what He might want from us are more important than anything else in the universe. It is on this basic assumption that this book rests. As believers, we are not in the “niceness” business. We are in the Truth business.

The purpose of this book is to examine the differences between the faith of the Orthodox Christian Church and the faiths of other Christian communions and of non-Christians. As an Orthodox Christian, I believe the Orthodox Christian faith is uniquely true. I would not be Orthodox if I did not believe it to be the true faith revealed by God in His Son Jesus Christ. If I encounter a teaching of my Church that makes no sense to me or that strikes me as incorrect, then it is I who need to be reformed, not the Church. This is the traditional view of almost all religions, as opposed to the modern consumer-style understanding of faith now popular: that each person is the arbiter of what is true and false, and that he is free to pick whatever bits of “spirituality” and belief he likes from a sort of religious buffet.

Just imagine, though, if we took that approach in other areas of life. What if we allowed doctors to pick whatever they wanted out of a smorgasbord of medical ideas and treatments? What if we ate whatever we wanted without regard to whether the food we choose is nutritious or even poisonous? What if we formed a government based not on equality and justice but rather on personal feelings and opinions? If a relentless pursuit of truth is necessary in all of these fields, how much more is it appropriate when it comes to questions of eternal significance?

The nature of Truth is that it is true no matter what anyone says about it. In the face of Truth, there is no opinion. Most people already believe that deep down, but they may not apply it to the question that matters most, namely, “Who is God and what does He want from me?” But we all know that there is good, and there is evil. There is truth, and there is falsehood. This knowledge, based on our own experience in everyday life, should inform all of our thoughts and actions regarding what is ultimately true.

THE GOAL OF RELIGION

The purpose of this book is not to “prove” that Orthodox Christianity is the one, true faith. I do not believe that it is possible to prove that, at least not by what can be written in a book. What we are seeking to do, however, proceeding from the position of the Orthodox Christian faith, is to show that the differences between Orthodoxy and other faiths are real and that they are important.

If you’ve ever visited the social media juggernaut Facebook, then you probably know that users of the site put together profiles of themselves, detailing various bits of information about who they are and what they do. One of the details you can choose is labeled as “Religious Views.” I use Facebook, and this feature has gotten me thinking several times. This is what most people think of when they think about religion, that it’s a question of “views.” Religion is an opinion you have, something you think. Notice that Facebook doesn’t even use the term beliefs.

But for most traditional religions, religion is not merely a set of “views.” Rather, religious faith is a whole way of life, a purposeful way of living with a set of goals at its heart that informs everything in that way of life. In its terminology, Facebook is representing a secularist philosophy, which is not so much an outright denial of spiritual reality as a compartmentalization of elements of life into neat categories that have nothing inherently to do with each other. In this box, I keep my views on economics. In this one are my views on cable television. In this one, I have my reading preferences, and in this one, I keep my religion.

But even the word religion itself (which some people don’t like to use in reference to Christianity) means something quite different. Religion means “reconnection,” to build and rebuild links. What you’re trying to link yourself to will vary from one religion to another. But the key is that there is something happening here. It’s not just something you think or agree with, and it’s not just about you. There is an “other” assumed by this process of reconnection. There’s something out there, whether you call it God, gods, Brahman, the Force, a “higher power,” or whatever. Religion is not merely something you think; it is something you do, something that engages you.

Here is a fundamental truth about all religious practice: What you believe and what you do make a difference. If that is true, and I think it’s obvious that it should be, then there is a corollary we have to accept: If you change what you believe and what you do, you will get different results. This is true of everything in life. My big brother is a chemical engineer. My little sister is a biochemist. They know these things to be true. But you don’t have to ask them. Ask a doctor. Ask a physicist, a psychologist, a bricklayer, a janitor. In their fields, they all will tell you that what you believe and what you do make a difference, and if you change those things, you’ll get different results. What bugs me is that we often don’t apply this basic principle to what matters most in human life.

In a religious context, this fundamental truth means that different religions, because they believe differently and practice differently, will yield different results. Sometimes, those various results are all put under one label, like salvation. But what does it mean to be “saved”? To a Hindu practicing traditional yoga, salvation means release from the physical body and absorption into the oblivion of the universe, the annihilation of individual personhood in Nirvana. That is not what salvation means to a Baptist. But what a Baptist means by that term and what an Orthodox Christian means by it aren’t the same thing, either. Members of each of those faiths have different methods of trying to get where they want to go. And where they want to go may well differ.

Further, though, because there is truth and there is falsehood, and because most religions have traditionally claimed that their faith is true and that others are, by implication, at least somewhat false, then that means that some religious believers are fundamentally mistaken about their beliefs and practices. They’re not going to get the results they think they will. We can’t all be right, because we’re making different claims about the nature of reality. In a room full of chemists all experimenting variously with the same chemicals, some will get useful products and others will get explosions in their faces.

THE NATURE OF TRUTH

In the Orthodox Christian faith, our purpose in life is to become more like Jesus Christ. The question of whether we “go to heaven” when we die is only one element in a larger picture. That picture, ultimately, is of communion with the Holy Trinity. An Orthodox Christian’s whole life has one goal: union with the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one God who created all things. The path to that union is Jesus Christ, the God-man, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. Salvation is the attainment of eternal life.

In John 17, in Jesus’ prayer to the Father before He went to His Crucifixion, He defines what this means: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (17:3). He later prays, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (17:22–23). Therefore, in the Orthodox Christian faith, being saved—having eternal life—means knowing God in Jesus Christ. It also means receiving from Jesus the glory which, as the Son of God, He has from His Father. And finally, it means doing so in oneness with other believers. Christianity is a religion expressed “in plural.”

For the Orthodox, salvation is far more than whether we get out of hell when we die. It is a deep, intimate knowledge of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in this deep knowledge—which is more than the intellectual accumulation of facts—those who are being saved receive the very glory of God. Aiming toward heaven or hell at the moment of death means that our experience of God in this life continues on after the resurrection to the next life, but amplified. If we love God and know Him deeply, then our experience in the resurrection will be endless and intense joy. If we reject God or simply ignore Him in this life, then our experience of His love in the next life will be alien to us and felt as suffering and punishment (John 5:29).

This is why doctrine matters. This is why heresy is dangerous. Christian doctrine is oriented toward an intimate knowledge of God, because it is the character of our knowledge of Him that determines our eternal path, our perpetual experience in the life to come. This knowledge will greatly depend on our adherence to correct doctrine and the living out of that doctrine in our daily lives.

Let me give an example I often use when talking about why what you believe matters. Imagine that you are a member of my parish, and you heard a rumor that I was a practicing homosexual. Now, this is not true, but if you believed it, it would affect your relationship with me, and because I am a clergyman in your church, it would probably affect the whole parish community.

Those who regard homosexual activity as a sin might distance themselves from me, and our relationship would break down. Those who see things differently might try to get closer to me, but that closeness would be based on a falsehood. Some might drift away from the parish entirely. Others currently outside might hear the rumor and never come for a visit, or instead might consider joining.

Those closest to me, my wife and my family, would have their lives disrupted if they believed the rumor. It would probably destroy our family life. And then the destruction of that family life would have reverberations not only in our extended family, but among our friends, the parish community, and so on. All because of a false belief about who I am.

Imagine the false belief were still serious but a little less extreme. Let’s say the rumor was that I had a drinking problem. The effects of that rumor would probably still be significant, though nowhere near as explosive as the other. In any case, all those relationships are affected not only by the moral actions of those involved—whether they have done good or evil to each other—but by what they believe about each other and how they act on those beliefs.

Now, magnify all of those effects in proportion to the importance of the worship and knowledge of the God of the universe. Some false doctrines about Him can have major spiritual and even political ramifications. (If, for instance, you believed that the ancient Jewish temple in the modern state of Israel had to be rebuilt before Jesus returned to earth, wouldn’t that affect not just your theology but also your politics?) Others are of lesser effect. But all of them, to one degree or another, divert us from a true, pure knowledge of the only true God, and that will affect whether and how we receive His glory and how we experience Him in the next life. Living a moral life according to the law of God is critical for the life in Christ, but it is not enough. We must also know God as He has actually revealed Himself. That is why doctrine matters.

SOME TECHNICAL TERMS

We have to be clear on what various words mean that are used throughout this book. Within the Orthodox tradition, these words have specific, technical meanings (even if they are sometimes used in non-technical ways), and we have to be careful how we use them. So here is a short list of terms you need to know when studying and discussing the question of Orthodoxy and heterodoxy.

Orthodoxy—Both “true teaching” (literally “straight doctrine”) and “true worship” (literally “straight glory”). Orthodox Christianity is the life in faith given by Jesus Christ to the apostles and then passed down within the Church from generation to generation. It is not possible to be Orthodox outside the historical community of the Orthodox Church.

Heterodoxy—“Other teaching” and “other worship.” Heterodoxy is anything that contradicts Orthodox Christian doctrine and worship. This term may also be used to refer to all non-Orthodox Christian groups.

Dogma—The unchangeable, non-negotiable teachings of the Church. Dogma comes from the Greek word for “seem,” used originally in the apostolic phrase “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us” (Acts 15:28). Dogma is usually expressed by the doctrinal decrees of the ecumenical councils.

Doctrine—How dogma is taught. This can change somewhat over time as the Church encounters new cultural and linguistic situations in which dogma needs to be explained. Doctrine and dogma are sometimes used interchangeably.

Theology—Reflections on the dogma and doctrine of the Church. Theology is much more variable over time but should not contradict dogma. Theology is sometimes also used interchangeably with dogma and doctrine.

Tradition—The faith “handed over” (the literal meaning of tradition) by the apostles to their disciples and then to each succeeding generation. Often described as “the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church.”

Heresy—Literally, “choosing.” Heresy is the act of choosing to be separate from Orthodoxy in doctrine and/or worship. The word may also be used to describe any heterodox teaching.

Heretic—One who was a follower of the Orthodox Christian faith and then consciously rejected it, especially having been given the choice by the proper authorities. Technically speaking, one who was never Orthodox cannot be a heretic. He may, however, believe in heretical teachings (i.e., heterodoxy). This word has also been used more broadly to refer to anyone who believes heresy.

Apostasy—Literally, “standing apart.” Apostasy is the act of deliberately leaving the Church. One who does so is an apostate. This word is sometimes reserved for those who leave to a non-Christian religion or to no religion at all.

Schism—Literally, “separation.” Schism is a separation of a group from the Church, which may not (but often does) include heresy on the part of the schismatics. Schism usually involves setting up a parallel hierarchy.

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY

Generally speaking, most Christians were all members of a single Church for roughly a thousand years from the time of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead until about the middle of the eleventh century. There were schisms here and there even from the time of the apostles, but with a few notable exceptions, there were no truly major competing Christian churches. Most Christians belonged to a single Church that traced its roots directly to, and whose leaders stood in a direct historical succession from, the apostles. They were focused in five great spiritual centers: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

These five great churches together were one Christian Church, and they shared the same dogma, the same beliefs, and the same spiritual life, without any changes in substance since the time of the apostles. These churches were led by bishops. Their worship life was liturgical, involving detailed, meaningful, and highly symbolic rituals whose sacraments were understood as truly conveying God’s grace to the believer.

It was during this period, specifically in the late fourth century, that the canon of the New Testament came to be finalized, first written down by the bishop of Alexandria in the year 367, St. Athanasius the Great. That list from 367 is the earliest list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as we now know it. The Christian Church functioned for more than three hundred years without the ability to ask itself, “What does the Bible say?”

In the eleventh century, issues that had been simmering for some time on the back burner between the churches of Rome and Constantinople came to a boil. Rome broke communion with Constantinople (meaning they could not receive the Eucharist together nor worship together), and then Constantinople returned the favor and broke communion with Rome. The primary matter at issue was whether Rome’s bishop, the Pope, should be considered the ruler of all bishops, rather than simply the most senior. Rome said yes, but Constantinople said no. Eventually, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem all clearly said no, too, so communion was also broken between them and Rome. From that time on, we can clearly see the independent formation of the Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope as its absolute head. The other churches that remained together and continued in the old way of seeing all bishops as essentially equal are now known as the Orthodox Church, sometimes also called the “Eastern Orthodox” or “Greek Orthodox” Church (“Greek Church” by itself was common in English writing prior to the twentieth century).

Later, in the sixteenth century, an Augustinian monk in Germany by the name of Martin Luther famously protested against various abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, most especially the sale of indulgences to get believers out of purgatory, but also against the absolute authority of the Pope and some other matters. His publication in 1517 of ninety-five theses against the claims of the Pope was the moment that began the Protestant Reformation, a major break-up of Christianity in Western Europe. Within a generation, there came to be multiple Protestant factions, all at odds with each other, but all at least united in their conviction that Rome was wrong.

Protestantism has continued to fracture in the five centuries since, and unlike the original Protestants, most now do not have bishops and do not worship liturgically with sacraments. Some estimates of the number of Protestant Christian denominations are as high as thirty thousand, though that number includes many single, independent congregations. Among them, you can find a bewildering array of different beliefs. And most of them claim to be “just going by the Bible.”

Thus, over the past thousand years, there were two great fractures in Christian history, and Christians are now divided roughly into three general groupings: Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and the many denominations of Protestantism.

ONE

Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, Heresy, and History

HOW THE ORTHODOX CHURCH VIEWS THE NON-ORTHODOX

It is fundamental to the character of Orthodox theology that we do not theologize outside the Church. That is, although we have very detailed theology of what it means to be an Orthodox Christian, we have no theology about what it means not to be one except in the sense that we have a general description of what it means to be damned. But damnation is not equal to being non-Orthodox. God has never told us the spiritual status of the non-Orthodox, except in only the most general terms that cannot be reliably applied to particular people. You can’t find it in the Scripture, in the writings of the Fathers, or in the divine services. All we have been given is the Way. (The Way is one of the most ancient terms for Christianity.)

We can therefore look at a given doctrine or practice and say, “That is not the Way.” But we cannot say, “All of you who have embraced that heresy are forever damned.” We don’t know that. We can say, “That doctrine leads to damnation,” but not, “Anyone who teaches that doctrine is certainly damned,” and especially not, “Because you teach that doctrine, you are damned.” Even the solemn conciliar anathemas (curses) pronounced against historical heretics do not go so far as to declare them damned.

Orthodox Christians believe that the Way is Jesus Christ (John 14:6), the God-man, and that He founded a concrete, historical community, the Church, in which His followers live out the life He gave them through the work of the apostles. Furthermore, we believe that the Orthodox Church is uniquely that one Church, that Christ did not found denominations or a movement called “Christianity,” and that the division of Christians is a sin against love and against God. Historically, nearly all Christian groups have believed something similar about themselves and have also believed that other Christians were wrong in at least some aspects of their doctrine and practice, so the Orthodox are not unique in believing that their Church is the one Church.

Religions are not all the same. They do not all worship the same “God.” This observation ought to be obvious to anyone who takes religious believers at their word when they describe their beliefs. Yet at the same time, we can recognize that there is truth in all religions and philosophies. St. Justin Martyr, in the second century, called this the spermatikos logos, the “Logos in seed form.” The Logos, or “Word,” is Jesus Christ (John 1:1–16), and St. Justin believed that all belief systems had within them the seeds of His revelation. Because all human beings are created according to the image of God, Jesus Christ, they are not capable of being wrong all the time.

When I discuss the differences between Orthodoxy and other religions I often prefer to refer to those other faiths as “incomplete” rather than “false.” Yes, they usually have false elements, but it is better to focus primarily on what is true and show how that leads to Orthodoxy, the fullness of God’s revelation to mankind.

This recognition of the truth in other religions is what has led to the traditional Orthodox approach to the reception of converts. Some are baptized and chrismated (confirmed), some are only chrismated, while some are received only by profession of faith and confession, all based on the similarity to Orthodoxy of the baptism and faith of the group in question. This variety in practice is attested to as early as the fourth century by St. Basil the Great, who goes on at some length in a letter to one Amphilochius about how different kinds of heterodox believers are to be received into the Church. This partial recognition of the Christianity of some non-Orthodox believers has been written into the canons of the Church and has become more or less standard in church history, but it comes into play mainly when people seek to join the Church.

A saying from the twentieth-century Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov has become familiar to many Orthodox: “We know where the Church is; it is not for us to judge and say where the Church is not.” This phrase is a helpful way of thinking about this question. From this saying, we can see that there are really two different questions when the Orthodox consider the non-Orthodox: the status of individual persons who hold to heterodox teachings, and the status of organizations that hold to heterodox teachings.

From the Orthodox point of view, all Christian and non-Christian bodies that are not Orthodox are not the Church. The Church is a concrete, historical community founded by Jesus Christ through His apostles, which has existed in a real community for roughly two millennia. That is why we can say where the Church is. In Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where I live, the Church gathers in one place with a particular address. And of course the Church in Emmaus consists of all those people who belong to that community. Where the Church is in this earthly life can be answered empirically.

The saying from Evdokimov also expresses the difficulty in applying ecclesiastical boundaries exactly, especially when there are breaks in communion. If there is a temporary break in communion (as sometimes happens between Orthodox churches), is one side the Church and the other side not? What if both sides remain in communion with others? Are breaks in communion possible within the Church or only from the Church? At what point does a schism mean that one side is truly outside the Church? We don’t have clear answers to those questions. We do tend to have consensus regarding certain groups, such as the Protestant churches, but the consensus is not as clear with others, such as the Roman Catholic Church. Concerning Rome in particular, you can find Orthodox who will say that Rome is definitely outside the Church. Others, however, will recognize that a schism exists but that it’s not clear whether that means exclusion from the Church.

The question becomes more subtle when we’re discussing individual persons. For any person, whether formally a member of the Orthodox Church in this life or not, the critical question is whether that person will be a member in the next life after the resurrection. I am sure there are people who are formally Orthodox today who will not be so when they enter into eternity. I am also sure there are people who are today outside those formal boundaries who will be inside them after the resurrection.

While it has not been dogmatized within the Orthodox Church, one view of Christians who are not Orthodox was adopted by the eminent twentieth century theologian Fr. Georges Florovsky. He said that all who hold faith in Jesus Christ as God and Savior have a true ontological bond (that is, a bond in our very being). But he also held that schism has an ontological quality, and that the sense that Christians are “separated brethren” must place equal emphasis on both our sense of separation and of being brethren. Though it does not solve the ambiguities, this view makes the most sense to me.

When it comes to individual persons, the only ones we know are Orthodox when it becomes permanent—in eternity—are the saints. The saints are the people we know “made it.” We live in hope, not in absolute rational certainty. (And it’s worth pointing out here that even churches that teach some kind of absolute certainty do not give perfect means for becoming certain. How does a Calvinist, for instance, certainly know that he is one of the elect? There are “marks of election,” but even those are a bit fuzzy. And how does he know those marks are the right ones?)

Describing Christian life as hope does not lead to a life of anxiety, wondering whether we can ever really “know” whether we’re “in” or “out.” It is like being married—the relationship is always changing and evolving, but built on a foundation. There are good days and bad days. There is always the possibility for greater depth and unity, but also for dissolution and separation. It is a dynamic relationship, not a static status. Just as we hope for ourselves, we also hope for the non-Orthodox that they would embrace life in the Orthodox Church in this life; but if they do not, we hope that when presented with the fullness of the revelation of Jesus Christ in the move into the next life, they will embrace Him in that transition. We affirm that there is no salvation outside the Church, but ultimately whether one is in the Church is a question deferred to the end of time. I have known more than one convert to the Orthodox faith who said of his heterodox Christian parents after they died, “I believe they’re Orthodox now.”

So, while we say with surety that heretical teachings are dangerous to the spiritual life, it is not up to us to judge any particular person in terms of how that danger affects him in particular. We do not know, because none of us can look into another’s heart. Nevertheless, because an Orthodox Christian believes that Orthodoxy represents the fullness of the Christian faith, he is called by God to share his faith with others, to invite them to experience that same fullness and be transformed by it.

It is essential that all these discussions, while standing firm on what is true and right, be conducted with humility. The Orthodox evangelist must not say, “I am right, and you are wrong,” because, after all, he refers to himself as the “chief of sinners” (see 1 Tim. 1:15) every time he takes Communion. That the Orthodox Christian faith is uniquely true is not to the credit of any Orthodox person. The Orthodox did not invent it, and we all fall short of living it as we should, because we are sinners. Thus, the Orthodox Church proclaims her heritage as the one, original Christian Church founded by Christ not in pride, but in humility as a historical experience. I sometimes like to say, “The Orthodox faith is true, but not because of me.”

ESSENTIALS OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

In order to be able to see heterodox doctrine clearly, we have to be clear on the essentials of Orthodox doctrine. What follows is a sort of expansion on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, a summary of what Orthodox Christians believe.

The Holy Trinity

There is one God, who created all things out of nothing.

God is uncreated, existing before all created things, even time itself.

God is three divine Persons (hypostases) who are one in essence, or consubstantial (homoousios).

The three Persons of the Trinity are all absolutely equal in deity, power, honor, and eternality.

Each Person of the Trinity shares all that it means to be God with the other two, but none of what it means to be that Person with the other two. There is nothing that two share without the third also sharing it.

The eternal source of the Godhead is the Father, from whom the Son is begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeds.

God is essence and energies. God is absolutely transcendent and unknowable in His essence, but immanent and knowable in His energies. Grace is another term for God’s energies.

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity.

Jesus Christ is fully divine by virtue of being the Son of God, begotten before all ages. He is of one essence, or consubstantial (homoousios), with the Father.

Jesus Christ is fully human by virtue of being the son of the Virgin Mary, begotten in time of her and incarnate of her and the Holy Spirit. He is of one essence, or consubstantial (homoousios), with all of mankind.

Jesus Christ is one Person (hypostasis) in two natures, the divine and the human. This union is the only hypostatic union in existence.

Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament).

Jesus Christ was born, grew up, taught and healed, was crucified and died on the Cross, and then rose from the dead on the third day.

Salvation and the Church

There is only one Church, the Orthodox Church.

The Church is the Body of Christ, a divine-human organism, of which Christ is the chief member and the sole Head.

Salvation is within and through the Church.

Salvation is theosis, becoming divinized/deified, which means union (but not fusion) with God and becoming ever more like Him, becoming by grace what Christ is by nature as adopted children of God. It is participation in the energies of God, becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4), but not participation in His essence. This process extends through all eternity, because God is infinite. Other models for understanding salvation are also in Scripture and the rest of the Orthodox tradition.

Salvation rescues us not only from the guilt of sin, but from the very power of sin and death. It is not merely a change in legal status, but a change in actual being.

Salvation is possible only by the power of God, with the cooperation of man—“by grace . . . through faith” (Eph. 2:8). This cooperation is called synergy. God honors the free will He granted to man, so if man ceases his cooperation, then God’s grace is rendered inoperative. Cooperation consists in repentance of sins, prayer, and participation in the sacraments.

The Holy Mysteries (sacraments) truly communicate grace by the action of God Himself through the clergy, who are the servants of the mysteries, not their masters. The clergy are, through the episcopacy, in the succession of the apostles, who were ordained by Christ.

Christ will return again to earth, which will be the end of time and of reality as we now know it. All those who remain alive in the earthly life will then be transitioned into the next life, where everyone else awaits them. All the dead will then rise again, reuniting their bodies with their souls eternally. Everyone will be judged according to what they did in this life.

MAJOR HISTORICAL HERESIES

Examining non-Orthodox religions is made easier not only by a knowledge of Orthodox doctrine but also by a knowledge of historical heresies that have been rejected by the Church as contradicting the revelation of God. Some still persist to this day, and some have revived anew, though sometimes in a different form. Following is a list of major heresies, grouped roughly in chronological order according to when they first arose. Note that the traditional names given to heresies may not be the same as what their adherents called them.

Docetism (first century)—The teaching that Jesus was indeed divine, but that He only “appeared” to be man. This heresy is mentioned in the New Testament (though not by name) and also in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch. One of the ramifications of this heresy is a denial of the involvement of physical matter in our salvation (called dualism, the opposition of the spiritual to the physical). The docetists would therefore abstain from the Eucharist, because they said it is not truly Christ’s flesh and blood.

Judaizing (first century)—The teaching that Gentiles first had to become Jews before becoming Christians and/or that Christians ought to adopt more Jewish teachings and practices than the Church already had included. Judaizing is dealt with in the New Testament, being the occasion for the Apostolic Council in Acts 15. The Apostle Peter was initially a Judaizer (or at least sympathetic to that party) but was opposed by Paul (Gal. 2:11–21), whose teachings prevailed at the council. Judaizing continued in various forms for some centuries, particularly among certain groups known as “Jewish Christians.” It is also addressed by St. Ignatius of Antioch and continues to be dealt with in subsequent centuries.

Gnosticism (first century)—A broad term for a large group of different teachings. Almost all were dualistic (like docetism) and included fanciful and complicated cosmological schema regarding the arrangement of the universe and everything in it. Most gnostic groups taught that a saving knowledge (gnosis) was what was necessary for salvation. They often also taught that only a select few were able to reach the highest spiritual plane and that most people could only function on a lower level. Those who ascended to this higher level had esoteric, “secret” teaching passed on from Jesus. Books like The Gospel of Thomas (a noncanonical work claiming to be from the apostle) are generally regarded as classic gnostic writings. The second century writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyons contain a detailed catalog and refutation of various gnostic teachings.

Marcionism (second century)—Marcion was a shipbuilder and semi-gnostic heretic who taught that the creator God of the Old Testament was not the Father of Jesus Christ; rather, they were two separate “gods.” To him, the Old Testament “god” was evil and capricious, while the New Testament God was loving and merciful. He was the first to put forward the idea of a Christian canon for the New Testament, rejecting the Old Testament. He included only books he regarded as fitting in with his ideas about God, including an edited version of Luke’s Gospel (attributed to St. Paul and called The Gospel of Christ), as well as versions of some of St. Paul’s letters and two texts attributed by his followers to Paul but not included in the Orthodox canon. He was excommunicated in 144 and established a parallel church hierarchy that persisted for some time.

Montanism (second century)—Followers of the “prophet” Montanus, who claimed to be the Paraclete (a traditional name in Christianity for the Holy Spirit, usually translated as “comforter” or “advocate,” from John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). Claiming to receive revelations directly from God that fulfilled and superseded the revelation given to the apostles, Montanus emphasized direct, ecstatic, and highly emotional spiritual experiences for all believers. Montanus was accompanied by two “prophetesses” named Prisca (or Priscilla) and Maximilla, who also claimed to receive visions from God, including the revelation of Christ in a female form. The Montanists did not claim to be messengers passing on the word from God but rather claimed that God “possessed” them and spoke directly through them. The early Christian writer Tertullian fell into this heresy, being drawn by the severe moralism and rigidity of Montanist teaching. Montanism continued into the eighth century.

Chiliasm (second century)—The teaching that Christ will reign for a literal one thousand years on earth after His Second Coming. Chiliasm existed in various forms before the fourth century (when a consensus emerged on definitions for a number of major theological issues) and was even taught in ignorance by some Orthodox writers. In our own day, the phrase “whose kingdom shall have no end” in the Creed is used to refute this heresy, though I could not find a primary source to confirm the idea that this was its original intention. Chiliasm was generally out of favor by the fourth century, when the Creed was composed, so it seems more likely that the phrase was meant to bolster Christ’s kingship and divinity.

Apokatastasis (second century)—Also called universalism, the teaching that all will eventually be saved, even if they reject God in the earthly life. Condemned in 543 at a council in Constantinople. There are various forms of apokatastasis (at least one of which may have been taught by St. Gregory of Nyssa), and the issue is complicated. The term itself refers to a “restoration” of all things.

Origenism (second century)—A complex set of teachings from the theologian Origen (second century). Origen’s main problems were cosmological and largely based on Greek pagan philosophical speculation (especially the works of Plato). Origen himself was never condemned in his lifetime, but his teachings later came to be such a problem that he was condemned by name in anathemas included in collections of the acts of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (553).

Manichaeism (third century)—Not strictly a heresy from Christianity, but rather a Persian gnostic religion begun by a “prophet” named Mani, which influenced a number of Christian groups and was the basis for several spin-off heresies. Manichaeism was dualistic, as most gnostic faiths were, positing the existence of an evil creator god and a good, merciful god. The physical world is inherently evil and full of darkness, while the spiritual world is good and full of light. St. Augustine was a member of the Manichaean religion before he converted to the Church. Manichaeism persisted in various forms until the ninth century.

Sabellianism (third century)—Also known as modalism or monarchianism, this is the teaching that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are merely “modes” of the one God. Sabellius (the founder of the movement) taught that Trinitarianism was wrong in saying there were three Persons who were all God. Rather, he saw them as “masks” worn by one divine Person. Besides Sabellius, another major proponent of modalism was Paul of Samosata. Sabellianism is also called patripassianism (“Father-suffering”), because it required that the Father suffered on the Cross (since the Father and Son are one Person).

Novatianism (third century)—A rigorist teaching that believers who fell away during persecution or otherwise into serious sin could never be absolved. Novatian himself was an “antipope” (a non-canonical claimant to the episcopacy of Rome) whose teaching was condemned in 251.

Donatism (fourth century)—The teaching that the moral unworthiness of a clergyman—especially if he had betrayed the faith, even if he later repented—nullifies the validity of the mysteries (sacraments) performed by him. Condemned by the Council of Arles in 314 and famously opposed by St. Augustine.

Arianism (fourth century)—The major heresy of the fourth century and the occasion for the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea (325), Arianism taught that Christ was a created being rather than God. Arius denied that the Son was of one essence (homoousios) with the Father. Founded by Arius (a priest of the Church of Alexandria), this heresy persisted for some time, even after it was condemned by the council in Nicea.

Semi-Arianism (fourth century)—Also denied that the Son was of one essence (homoousios) with the Father, but admitted that He was of a similar essence (homoiousios, a difference of one iota). Semi-Arianism persisted for some time after the Nicene Council but was effectively condemned by the confirmation of homoousios at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381.

Apollinarianism (fourth century)—The teaching by Apollinarius that Jesus did not have a human mind, though He had a human body and lower soul (the place of emotions). Rather, the divine Logos (Word) took the place of His mind. Condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council (381).

Pneumatomachianism (fourth century)—The teaching that the Holy Spirit is not divine, also called Macedonianism for its founder, Macedonius. The pneumatomachians were so named because they “fought against the Spirit,” saying that the Holy Spirit is not divine but a creature. Condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council with the expansion of the article on the Holy Spirit in the Creed.

Pelagianism (fourth century)—Attributed to the British monk Pelagius (though his actual views are disputed), Pelagianism taught that man was capable of salvation without the assistance of divine grace and was a reaction to moral laxity that supposedly resulted from an overemphasis on grace. The major opponent of Pelagianism was St. Augustine of Hippo. Condemned at the Council of Carthage (418) and the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus (431).

Nestorianism (fifth century)—Taught by Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorianism teaches that instead of one Person with two natures, Jesus Christ was rather two persons “conjoined” together by good will, one divine and one human. Nestorius thus refused to call the Virgin Mary Theotokos (“birth-giver to God”), but would only call her Christotokos, saying that she gave birth to Christ, but not to God. Condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council. The major opponent of Nestorianism was St. Cyril of Alexandria.

Monophysitism (fifth century)—Also called Eutychianism for its founder, Eutyches, monophysitism taught that Jesus Christ was not “in two natures” but rather only “from two natures” (a phrase from St. Cyril), forming a single nature, either divine only or a hybrid of divine and human. (This teaching is distinct from the miaphysitism taught today by the Oriental Orthodox churches [e.g., Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, etc.]. Although there is some disagreement between Orthodox writers as to whether miaphysitism is consistent and compatible with Orthodox Christology, the Oriental churches do condemn Eutyches.) Monophysitism was condemned at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon (451).

Monothelitism (seventh century)—The teaching that Christ has only one will, the divine will (rather than a human will as well). Taught by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and Pope Honorius of Rome, who were both explicitly condemned as heretics along with their teaching by the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (680–681). The major opponent of Monothelitism was St. Maximus the Confessor.

Monoenergism (seventh century)—Closely related to both monophysitism and monothelitism, this heresy taught that Christ has only one energy, the divine energy, in opposition to Orthodox doctrine that Christ has both divine and human energies. Monoenergism was taught by most of the proponents of monothelitism and also opposed by St. Maximus.

Iconoclasm (seventh century)—The teaching that icons are not permitted in churches and should not be venerated. This teaching was condemned at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in Nicea (787) and primarily opposed by St. John of Damascus. It was not until 843 that icons were publicly returned to churches on the first Sunday in Lent (the “Triumph of Orthodoxy”).

Filioquism (sixth century)—The teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally not only from the Father (as stated in the Creed and John 15:26), but from the Father “and the Son” (in Latin, filioque). The filioque was first inserted into the Creed at a council in Toledo, Spain, in 589, probably intended to emphasize the divinity of Jesus. It was again inserted into the Creed by the western emperor Charlemagne in 794 (who also rejected the Seventh Ecumenical Council). The addition was finally rejected at a pan-Orthodox council (including legates from Rome) in 879–880 in Constantinople, a council regarded at the time, and by some Orthodox writers later, as the Eighth Ecumenical Council. The filioque later was reinserted into the Creed by Rome and used as a charge of heresy against the Orthodox East in the Great Schism centered around the events of 1054.

Barlaamism (fourteenth century)—Taught by Barlaam of Calabria, who argued against St. Gregory Palamas. Barlaam taught that the hesychastic (from hesychia, “stillness”) practices of Athonite monks did not actually allow them to see the Uncreated Light of God (i.e., God manifest as light), but rather only a created light. He also argued that mental knowledge of God was the highest possible knowledge, and that the philosophers had higher knowledge than the prophets. He was opposed by St. Gregory Palamas, whose theology was upheld at a series of synods held in Constantinople in 1341, 1347, and 1351, collectively referred to by some Orthodox writers as the Ninth Ecumenical Council.

Ethnophyletism (nineteenth century)—The teaching that the ethnic character of church members should determine the administrative governance of parishes and dioceses, i.e., that certain parishes were only for Greeks or only for Bulgarians, etc. Condemned by a council in Constantinople in 1872 after the question came to a head in Constantinople, where the local Bulgarian community had established its own bishop for Bulgarians.

Remembering the details of all these heresies is not the most critical thing. We should recognize, however, that heterodoxy is nothing new in Christian history and that the Church has always had means of addressing it. The ecumenical councils were convoked primarily to give a pastoral answer to the uprisings of various heresies.

Having reviewed Christian history, the primary teachings of Orthodox doctrine, and the major heretical teachings in history, we will next address the largest and most tragic of all breaks in Christian history—the schism with Rome.

TWO

Roman Catholicism

DID THE GREAT SCHISM PRODUCE A NEW RELIGION?

A particularly close link already binds us. We have almost everything in common; and above all, we have in common the true longing for unity. (Pope John Paul II, Orientale Lumen, 1995)

The Latins are not only schismatics but heretics as well. However, the Church was silent on this because their race is large and more powerful than ours . . . and we wished not to fall into triumphalism over the Latins as heretics but to be accepting of their return and to cultivate brotherliness. . . . We did not separate from them for any other reason other than the fact that they are heretics. This is precisely why we must not unite with them unless they dismiss the addition from the Creed filioque and confess the Creed as we do. (St. Mark of Ephesus, 1439)

Assuredly our problem is neither geographical nor one of personal alienation. Neither is it a problem of organizational structures, nor jurisdictional arrangements. Neither is it a problem of external submission, nor absorption of individuals and groups. It is something deeper and more substantive. The manner in which we exist has become ontologically different. Unless our ontological transfiguration and transformation toward one common model of life is achieved, not only in form but also in substance, unity and its accompanying realization become impossible. No one ignores the fact that the model for all of us is the person of the Theanthropos (God-Man) Jesus Christ. But which model? No one ignores the fact that the incorporation in Him is achieved within His body, the Church. But whose church? (Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, speech at Georgetown University, Oct. 21, 1997)

Therefore, these separated Churches and communities as such [including the Orthodox], though we believe they suffer from defects, have by no means been deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church. (Joseph Ratzinger [later Pope Benedict XVI], Dominus Iesus, 2000)

The Spirit of God breathes in Roman Catholicism, and not even all the unclean fumes of pernicious human passions and perversions can disturb this. The Saving thread of Apostolic succession has not been broken. The sacraments are performed. The bloodless sacrifice is brought and offered. And he who would dare to have reservations and to say: but it is not accepted onto the heavenly sacrificial altar, into the smell of spiritual fragrance, must think carefully. . . . And the falsehood of Rome is also a human falsehood, for no other falsehood exists. . . . But in Rome there is also the truth of God. Rome is incorrect in faith and weak in love. But Rome is not without Grace, not outside of grace. Strange as it may seem, the schism of West and East is a schism and division in faith and scarcity of love, but it is not a schism in grace and sacraments, it is not a division of the Spirit. (Fr. Georges V. Florovsky, “The Problematic of Christian Reunion,” 1933, published as “Rome, the Reformation, and Orthodoxy” in Collected Works: Ecumenism II, 54-55)

THE GREAT SCHISM

On July 16 in the year 1054, just as prayer was beginning in the great church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, then the capital of the Roman Empire, three representatives of the Pope of Rome, led by Cardinal Humbert of Marmoutiers, entered the building. With Humbert were Archbishop Peter of Amalfi and Cardinal Deacon Frederick of Lotharingia (who in 1057 would become Pope Stephen IX). All three prelates were major leaders in the later reform that expanded papal power, freeing it from secular political domination (in what was called the “Investiture Controversy”) and preparing for its later flowering under Pope Gregory VII (reigned 1073–1089).

The three walked directly to the holy altar in the sanctuary and threw onto it a papal bull, a document excommunicating Michael Cerularius, the Patriarch of Constantinople. They exited immediately. Upon leaving the church, Humbert shook the dust off his feet and said, “Let God look and judge.” One of the deacons of the church ran after the papal legates and pleaded with them to change what they had done. The cardinal rejected his entreaties, and the bull was dropped in the street.

Ironically, the pope himself had died on April 19 of that year, thus technically rendering his legates’ authority null. But the deed had been done, and historians often point to these events in 1054 as a major marker in the Great Schism between the two groups of Christians who came to be identified as the Orthodox of the East and the Catholics of the West.

While the acts of that July day in eleventh-century Constantinople were not the sole or defining moment in the Great Schism, they have nonetheless become iconic in the most tragic and painful of all the breaks that have wracked Christendom. Centuries of developments led to that moment, and not until the early thirteenth century was the break recognizably complete, when the last known Latin was communed in Antioch. The centuries succeeding that day in 1054 have yielded two different visions of what it means to be Christian and what it means to be the Church. These differences are not only in terms of mindset and vision, but also in core doctrines that are taught as necessary to salvation itself.

DIFFERENCES IN VISION

There are three primary areas in which Roman Catholicism differs from Orthodoxy in terms of its overall vision, its theological and spiritual culture. These three areas are the development of doctrine, the relationship between faith and reason, and a different kind of spirituality.

Development of Doctrine

The Roman Catholic Church accepts development of doctrine. Its own understanding of what that means is that the Church progresses in its understanding and expression of doctrine, not that new dogmas are actually introduced.

The classic Catholic text on doctrinal development is John Henry Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Cardinal Newman, a nineteenth-century convert to Rome from the Anglican Church (and now on track for canonization by Rome), sought to defend his church against Anglican and Protestant attacks on Roman Catholic doctrines which were absent from the Scriptures and from the testimony of the ancient Church.

Newman himself would not have accepted the idea that truly new dogmas were being defined by his church, saying instead that all developed doctrines existed in a seminal form in the earliest traditions of the Church. His notion of the development of doctrine is similar to Orthodoxy’s, in which doctrinal expression develops, but its substance does not.

Where the Orthodox differ is that we believe that—despite its self-understanding—Rome actually has introduced new dogmas. As history progresses, dogmas appear that were absent in previous centuries (e.g. the immaculate conception or papal infallibility), and Newman’s formula leads to some rather anachronistic “proofs,” as history is searched for the seeds of later developments. The Roman Catholic faith is not “backwards compatible” (to borrow a software term), which means that a “good Catholic” from two hundred years ago could be in danger of excommunication were he alive today. For example, papal infallibility was denied by many Catholics, including bishops, until the official definition of the dogma in 1870 at the First Vatican Council. They all remained “good Catholics” before 1870. Now they would be excommunicated and under the anathema of the First Vatican Council.

While some of the early Fathers held beliefs that were later rejected as incompatible with Orthodoxy (such as the chiliasm that may be present in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons or Justin Martyr or apokatastasis in Gregory of Nyssa), those personal opinions (no matter how boldly stated) were never the faith of the whole Church. With Rome, it is clear that the faith of the whole Roman Catholic Church has changed, and even its catechism seems to suggest that such change is possible and proper: “Thanks to the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of faith is able to grow in the life of the Church.” Through contemplation, study, theological research, and even with an “intimate sense of spiritual realities which [believers] experience, the sacred Scriptures grow with the one who reads them” (Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 94, using quotations from Dei verbum from Vatican II).

The Orthodox Church practices the development of the expression of Christian dogma, but not of its meaning and substance, which is eternal, having been given by God in its wholeness to the apostles. I also find the language troubling that “the understanding of both the realities and the words of the heritage of faith is able to grow.” Is it really possible that, because I am further along the progress of history, I can understand the realities and words of the heritage of the faith better than the apostles?

Further, although it is often the starting point for further theological reflection, Orthodox dogmatic formulation, especially in its conciliar expression, is primarily a pastoral response to heresy, not an opportunity for codifying speculation or systematic imagination in doctrine. Orthodox dogma never claims to expound the whole truth about anything but only delineates the borders of the mystery.

Despite its official formulations, we have to conclude that, if the actual working out of Rome’s model is to be justified, Christ must have given only a “seed” of faith to the apostles, which has grown and changed over time. Therefore, the Roman Catholic Church of today supposedly better understands the truth and has a higher level of knowledge than the Church of yesteryear. Thus, the Apostolic Fathers (the Fathers immediately after the apostles) had a higher level of understanding than the apostles, the medieval Scholastics understood better than the Fathers, and so on. This theological background contributes to the framework for all the innovations in Roman Catholic doctrine that differ from Orthodoxy.

Faith and Reason

Development of doctrine is possible in part because of the relationship Rome sees between faith and reason, in which reason tends to be placed on a higher level in Christian life than it is for the Orthodox Church. Especially since the time of Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century), Rome has defined and redefined much of its doctrine (including new dogmas) in terms of reason.

Aquinas’s project was to merge Catholic dogma with the philosophical requirements of Aristotelian logic. To be fair, many Orthodox saints also used Aristotle, including John of Damascus (the beginning of his The Fountain of Wisdom, which is the first part in the larger work that includes his Exact Exposition, is essentially a commentary on Aristotle’s Categories). Many of the Church Fathers wrestled with the Greek philosophical heritage, and a kind of scholasticism existed in the East before it did in the West. Aquinas’s writings actually enjoyed some popularity in the East for a time, but it was accompanied by reservations—he takes the project further than many Orthodox are comfortable with. The Thomistic merger with Aristotle is the origin of many modern Christian attempts to “prove” God’s existence—which are based on the proposition that doctrine must be logical and scientific in order to be believable.

Pope John Paul II in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio puts faith and reason on the same level as means to the truth: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know Himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

This kind of language is the reason Orthodox critics of Roman Catholicism describe it as rationalist—not just rational, but subjected to the demands of human rationality. Human reason becomes not merely a tool but rather the very criterion of truth. It is also the reason much of Roman Catholic spiritual life is legalist, because it is often concerned more with satisfying legal, philosophical categories than with addressing and healing spiritual realities.

These are not hard characterizations of Rome, however, which also has its mysticism and so forth (not that mysticism should be placed in opposition to rationality). But the emphasis is clearly different than for the Orthodox. Nevertheless, we cannot press this difference too far. Newman, for instance, wrote in his An Essay in Aid of Grammar of Assent that strict “paper logic” was not enough for functioning in concrete life, including religious belief.

For the Orthodox, rational thought is a useful tool to support the means of knowing the truth: faith in cooperation with God’s grace. Reason, though useful, is not a necessary element in Christian life. The Orthodox Church is not anti-intellectual, but values reason and has a strong intellectual tradition. Theology in the sense of teaching and formulating doctrine takes study and intellectual ability, among other things—virtues very much in evidence among the Church Fathers who formulated Orthodox theological tradition. But you can be what the early Christian writer Evagrius considered a “true theologian” in the Orthodox Church and yet be intellectually disabled, because true theology is not defined by the acuity of the rational mind but by the quality of the prayer of the heart.

Spirituality

The overemphasis on reason may lead to an imbalanced spirituality (the everyday spiritual life of the Christian), in which the integral oneness of the body, mind, and soul that Orthodox spirituality nurtures becomes fragmented, and the carnality of the body, being in a sense disintegrated from the mind, may be too highly emphasized in spiritual life. Certain streams of Roman Catholic spirituality tend to be anthropocentric and materially focused. Instead of turning the eye of the soul away from this world, this kind of spirituality tends to focus on specifically earthy images and sensations.

In the religious arts, some visual examples of this kind of emphasis include Renaissance and Baroque art, with their highly sensual (and even erotic) character, and the realistic, three-dimensional statuary that is standard in church ornamentation. By contrast, Orthodox iconography is deliberately non-realistic to take the viewer away from this world and to the world beyond. While statuary exists in the Orthodox tradition, it tends to be in relief (flattened rather than three-dimensional) and much less realistic.

Roman Catholicism has also (at least before the introduction of Protestant-style pop and folk music in the 1970s) been home to a complicated musical style whose focus is not on the texts being delivered but on the ornateness of the harmonies and inventiveness of the composers, often turning worship into a performance. Orthodoxy also suffers from this problem in some quarters (often through influence from churches under Rome), though both the East and the West have traditions of ascetical, modal chant. (The primary traditional chant of the ancient West is Gregorian.) Students of church music history will recall that harmony was canonically forbidden in the early Church, precisely because of its emotionally manipulative appeal.

In private spiritual practice, we may think of the stigmata (bleeding on the body in the locations of Christ’s wounds), which were often prayed for desperately by figures such as Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscans. Or consider the imaginative spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits), self-flagellation, and other extreme forms of asceticism. All of these represent a fleshy, sensualistic approach to spiritual life. They are focused on the flesh and on the imagination.

To be fair, such an approach to spirituality is not universal in Catholicism (one thinks of the more austere and restrained monasticism of the Benedictines, for instance), but it is certainly there, and it finds expression in popular piety and even in film, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.

The popular Lenten devotion, the Stations of the Cross, is focused on imagining being present with Jesus at various points during His Passion. And devotional scapulars, little pieces of cloth, may be simply mnemonic tools to help the user remember to pray, but are often held to be much more—piously wearing the brown scapular is claimed to garner rescue by the Virgin Mary from purgatory on the first Saturday after the wearer’s death (the “Sabbatine Privilege”).

Roman Catholic spirituality in practice is often legalist, as well. For instance, it is held as a sin not to fast, whereas Orthodoxy recognizes fasting as simply a tool. One may also find detailed lists of how to obtain indulgences out of purgatory, quantitative penances (“Say ten Hail Marys and one Our Father”), and the annulment of marriages as a means of circumventing the prohibition against divorce.

This problem really struck home for me when I was once looking at the big, old Catholic Bible of a college girlfriend. Inside the front cover was a detailed chart listing how many years out of purgatory you could get if you read so many minutes in the Bible. While this kind of thing is not emphasized as much in our own day, it is nevertheless clear that the daily Christian life of the faithful Roman Catholic is not the same as it is for a faithful Orthodox Christian.

We’ve emphasized certain tendencies and streams in Catholic spirituality here that are especially problematic for the Orthodox, but it is a much broader field than we’ve represented. The different clerical orders of Catholicism can stress radically diverse approaches, with more highly mystical, contemplative sensibilities on the one hand and the more legalistic kinds on the other. Jesuits are not the same as Franciscans, nor are Trappists the same as Norbertines. And sometimes the views and practices of these groups contradict each other, all affecting the laity, as well. Yet even while there is more diversity to discuss in an examination of Catholic spiritual life, the elements we’ve mentioned are still part of what it means to be Catholic and what the Orthodox notice in encounters with Catholics.

Let us turn now to more clearly dogmatic issues.

THE PAPAL DOGMAS

These significant differences in theological and practical vision are bound up in a number of major differences in doctrine. Let’s begin with the most widely known issue between Rome and Orthodoxy, the papacy—an issue that goes to the very heart of ecclesiology, what the Church itself is. Orthodoxy’s objections to Rome’s teachings about the papacy come in two parts, papal supremacy and papal infallibility.

Papal Supremacy

Papal supremacy is the teaching that the Pope of Rome has supreme, immediate, ordinary, universal jurisdiction over every Christian, that he is the head of the Church. Rulings from the pope cannot be overturned, even by an ecumenical council. Rejection of papal supremacy endangers both faith and salvation itself.

This teaching found its most explicit definition at the First Vatican Council in 1870:

Wherefore we teach and declare that, by divine ordinance, the Roman church possesses a pre-eminence of ordinary power over every other church, and that this jurisdictional power of the Roman pontiff is both episcopal and immediate. Both clergy and faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, both singly and collectively, are bound to submit to this power by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience, and this not only in matters concerning faith and morals, but also in those which regard the discipline and government of the church throughout the world. . . . This is the teaching of the catholic truth, and no one can depart from it without endangering his faith and salvation. (Pastor aeternus, Vatican I, 1870)

While it was Vatican I that gave such a clear declaration of universal jurisdiction, its teaching was not new to Roman Catholics. In concern with the papal reforms that came to fruition under Gregory VII, for instance, it was claimed in a document called the Dictatus Papae (included in the pope’s register in the year 1075), among other things, that the pope is not only above judgment by anyone, but that he can depose emperors, release citizens from loyalty to their rulers, that the Roman church has never erred and can never err, that all princes should kiss his feet, and even that he is made a saint by virtue of his election as pope. This document has no current canonical standing and many of its stipulations are explicitly not taught by Rome today, but its contents give us a sense of the culture surrounding the papacy during the years immediately after the Great Schism.

This sense of the pope’s position is expressed in the words used to crown new popes with the papal tiara, which was used until 1962: “Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns and know that thou art father of princes and kings, the ruler of the world on earth, the vicar of our Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom is honour and glory through all ages.”

And in 1439, when the Council of Florence met in an attempt to reunite the Orthodox Church with Rome by means of Orthodox submission, the council declared, “The Roman pontiff is the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole church and the father and teacher of all Christians; and to him was committed in blessed Peter, by our lord Jesus Christ, the full power of tending, ruling and governing the whole church.” As we say, this kind of language goes further back, and one can even find echoes of it before the Great Schism between East and West, though such overweening was most often rejected by the East. Rome sometimes made these claims, but never without push-back from the other churches.

The teaching that the pope has universal jurisdiction is also sometimes called ultramontanism because it gives the pope jurisdictional power “beyond the mountains” (i.e., the Alps at the northern border of Italy). (The term ultramontane has historically had other meanings in church usage, mainly geographic, e.g., referring to a pope who came from beyond Italy.)

This dogma of papal supremacy puts the pope above any council, above any other human being, and anathematizes any who reject this teaching:

The sentence of the apostolic see [i.e., Rome] (than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon. And so they stray from the genuine path of truth who maintain that it is lawful to appeal from the judgments of the Roman pontiffs to an ecumenical council as if this were an authority superior to the Roman pontiff.

So, then, if anyone says that the Roman pontiff has merely an office of supervision and guidance, and not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole church, and this not only in matters of faith and morals, but also in those which concern the discipline and government of the church dispersed throughout the whole world; or that he has only the principal part, but not the absolute fullness, of this supreme power; or that this power of his is not ordinary and immediate both over all and each of the churches and over all and each of the pastors and faithful: let him be anathema. (Pastor aeternus, Vatican I, 1870)

These claims are still made in our time. Rome’s most recent officially ecumenical council, Vatican II, writes, “In this Church of Christ the Roman pontiff, as the successor of Peter, to whom Christ entrusted the feeding of His sheep and lambs, enjoys supreme, full, immediate, and universal authority over the care of souls by divine institution” (Vatican II, Christus Dominus, 1965). This teaching is still very much on the books, and it is still in practice to this day.

This authority is taught to come from St. Peter, the chief of the apostles, whose sole successor is the bishop of Rome. The universally supreme papacy is considered a necessary element for the constitution of the Church. Each local diocese is therefore only a portion of the Catholic Church and is not fully Catholic without submission to the pope. Supreme apostolic authority rests with one man.

Orthodoxy rejects papal supremacy on a number of grounds. First, we believe that Christ is the head of the Church, not any bishop (Eph. 1:22; 5:23; Col. 1:18). He also does not need a vicar (one of the pope’s titles is Vicar of Christ), because He is always present in His Church.

As for St. Peter, there are some who see a special role for him when Christ gives him the “keys” to the Kingdom of heaven to “bind” and to “loose” (Matthew 16:19), but those same keys are given with a plural subject to all the apostles in John 20:23. The Lord also describes Himself (not Peter) as having the “keys of hell and of death” in Revelation 1:18. The idea that Peter’s sole successor is the Roman pope, who has exclusive access to the “keys,” is not in Scripture.

It is true that Peter was the chief of the apostles, and the Orthodox Church honors him in that manner, but the honor of sitting on the “chair of Peter” does not descend only to the Pope of Rome, but to all Orthodox bishops. There is scant historical evidence that Peter was ever the bishop of Rome, though he is celebrated as the first bishop of Antioch (Rome even has a feast on February 22 dedicated to Peter’s episcopacy in Antioch). Peter’s association with Rome is rather through his being martyred there (along with Paul), which is broadly attested in Christian tradition. (There are some modern scholars who doubt whether he was ever in Rome.)

Peter is never called the head of the Church in any sense in the Bible, nor does he himself ever appeal to any supposed papal authority, even in his own epistles. St. Paul did not recognize such an authority when he “withstood [Peter] to his face” over Peter’s temporary acceptance of Judaizing (Gal. 2:11), nor did he seem to need Peter’s permission to write a pastoral epistle to the Roman Christians (and did not even mention him in it, while greeting fifty other people by name). And at the moment when we would imagine Peter would be at his most papal, the Apostolic Council in Acts 15, it is James (the local bishop in Jerusalem, whose territory they were in) who pronounces the sentence of the council (Acts 15:13–21), not Peter.

The Church’s history also shows that councils trump the papacy again and again. None of the ecumenical councils prior to the Great Schism ever recognized the supposed supremacy of the pope. Even at the Fourth Council in Chalcedon (451), Pope Leo’s Tome was not simply accepted but was rather reviewed and discussed first (and then it was said that Peter had “spoken through Leo”). The same council also defined Rome’s primacy as primarily of honor (not of supremacy) and said in Canon 28 that the honor adhered to Rome “because it was the imperial city” (neither Peter nor any divine institution is mentioned). There are also multiple ancient examples of various bishops standing up to Rome and not recognizing any supposed absolute and universal jurisdiction (e.g., St. Cyprian of Carthage against Pope Stephen over whether heretical baptism was efficacious).

One of the problems with the argument for papal supremacy is that it often relies on historical evidence for papal primacy, which is not the same thing. Primacy is a position of seniority which may include certain privileges, such as presiding at councils or serving as a last court of appeal, but supremacy goes much further and makes the pope the master of all. Thus, while the Orthodox would recognize the primacy of the pope in the early Church, they would argue that that does not equal supremacy.

Rome’s claims to supremacy also present some practical and theological problems. Realistically speaking, if the pope has immediate and absolute authority everywhere, then he is essentially the only real bishop in the Church. While other bishops are still taught to be successors from the apostles in their own right and not through the pope, they are effectively only vicars—all bishops everywhere in the world are both appointed and removed by the pope. (Papal appointment of all bishops is a policy that developed after Vatican I, though it was mentioned centuries before in the Dictatus Papae.)

St. Gregory the Great (Pope of Rome 590–604) recognized this as a theological problem when he spoke out against the new title Ecumenical Patriarch, which began in his time to be used by the archbishop of Constantinople: “Whoever calls himself universal bishop, or desires this title, is, by his pride, the precursor to the Antichrist.” He misunderstood what “ecumenical” was supposed to mean (it was a reference to Constantinople being the center of the Ecumeni, the Roman Empire), but he clearly rejected the idea of a universal bishop.

St. Cyprian of Carthage expresses similar sentiments in his dispute with Pope St. Stephen (r. 254–257):

No one among us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or by tyranny and terror forces his colleagues to compulsory obedience, seeing that every bishop in the freedom of his liberty and power possesses the right to his own mind and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. We must all await the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who singly and alone has power both to appoint us to the government of his Church and to judge our acts therein. (CSEL 3, 1, 436)

Another practical problem from this structure which has theological implications is that Catholicity is defined as submission to Rome, whose universality is the definition for true ecclesiology. But katholikos (the Greek word from which catholic comes) does not properly mean “universal” but rather, literally, “according to the whole.” For Orthodoxy, this wholeness resides in every diocese with its bishop as the president at the Eucharist, surrounded by his clergy and faithful. Orthodox parishes and dioceses are not merely parts of the Catholic Church, but rather manifest catholicity within themselves fully and locally.

The claim to papal supremacy is problematic even within Roman Catholicism, which has resorted and continues to resort (though in a limited way) to conciliar solutions. A major example is the series of events known in the West as the “Great Schism,” beginning in 1378 and ending in 1417. During this time, there were multiple competing claimants to the papacy—at one point, three. This problem was solved not by an appeal to papal power (after all, who was the real pope?) but rather by the Council of Constance (1414–18).

Constance not only solved the problem (by deposing two of the claimants, transferring one to another episcopal see, and then electing a new man as pope), but it also explicitly taught a doctrine of conciliarism, declaring that ecumenical councils were higher than popes: “Legitimately assembled in the holy Spirit, constituting a general council and representing the Catholic church militant, it has power immediately from Christ; and that everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith, the eradication of the said schism and the general reform of the said church of God in head and members” (emphasis added).

Ironically, this council is regarded as the Fifteenth Ecumenical Council by Rome, but it cannot be ecumenical by virtue of valid papal authority, since it was convoked by an anti-pope (John XXIII), a man whose papacy Rome rejects. So while Rome accepts the solution to the schism that the council decided upon in choosing a new pope, it ironically rejects as invalid the session that put forward the decree of conciliarism. Rome therefore distorts the council’s self-described basis for authority in order to preserve its doctrine of papal supremacy.

And if a divinely instituted papacy is necessary for the existence of the Church, what happens to the Church in the period between the death of the pope and the election of the next, which Rome calls sede vacante (“the see is vacant”)? Rome’s canonists say that episcopal powers revert to the cathedral chapter on the death of the bishop, which therefore puts papal power in the hands of the College of Cardinals—an ironically conciliar solution to such a problem.

Papal Infallibility

The second of the two papal dogmas (and the one probably best known) is papal infallibility. The pope is held to be infallible in questions of faith and morals when speaking ex cathedra (“from the throne”), a power held by the papacy since St. Peter. This dogma was solemnly defined by the First Vatican Council in 1870:

This see of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Saviour to the prince of his disciples. . . .

This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this see so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all. . . .

We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable. So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema. (Pastor aeternus, Vatican I, 1870)

The pope in his office is therefore held to have a gift from the Holy Spirit which protects him from teaching heresy. It does not mean that the pope is considered sinless or perfect in everything he says; this special gift is purely doctrinal in character. His pronouncements are also not subject to any review or consent by the Church. This issue of consent was later qualified at Vatican II in 1964 to mean that it is the infallibility of the Church that is expressed by the pope in his extraordinary magisterial pronouncements. The Holy Spirit would, in any event, see to it that such definitions also had the consent of the bishops and the faithful (Lumen gentium, III.25). As such, they never need to be reviewed or consented to, presumably because no one would ever try to object.

It is sometimes said that this limiting circumscription of papal infallibility at Vatican I represented a defeat for ultramontanism. The ultramontanists of the time wanted the pope’s every doctrinal utterance to be considered infallible. That is not what Vatican I decided, however, despite the popular misconceptions about papal infallibility that exist in our own time. In reality, it is very difficult for the pope to make an infallible pronouncement.

However, there is no single, agreed-upon Roman Catholic list of infallible statements made by the pope, thus rendering this dogma problematic in practice. While the pope and the Magisterium (the term used for the whole episcopacy in its teaching office) are fairly clear and unmistakable on most subjects, there is no official formula which all Roman Catholics agree indicates an infallible, ex cathedra statement.

Papal infallibility also suffers from historical problems, both in the Scripture and in subsequent Christian history. First, as mentioned above, St. Peter’s supposed infallibility was never appealed to during the Judaizing controversy; indeed, he himself was in the wrong until corrected by Paul. This infallibility is also mentioned nowhere in Scripture.

In the seventh century, Pope Honorius was anathematized as a Monothelite heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council. (Honorius supported Monothelitism in a letter he wrote to Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople.) This anathema was repeated by popes after the council, raising the question of who was infallible—Pope Honorius or the later popes who denounced him? Likewise, Pope John VIII in the ninth century condemned the addition of the filioque to the Nicene Creed, but he was overruled by his successors in the eleventh century. Which popes were infallible? Popes Liberius, Zosimus, and Vigilius also famously waffled on heresy—in which opinion were they infallible?

An infallible pope also makes councils deciding doctrinal questions unnecessary, yet Christian history is filled with councils. Rather than go to all the expense of transporting hundreds of bishops and using up months and sometimes years of their time, why did they not just write to the pope to ask him to decide the question? These many councils (which fill even the history of Roman Catholicism) often speak boldly without any sense that they are mere advisors to the pope.

By contrast, the Orthodox Church places infallibility in the whole body of the Church, not in the hands of one man, no matter how exalted his position, nor even in a magisterium of bishops together. At its base, papal infallibility may stem from a need for epistemological certainty (absolute mental surety) and is another expression of the legalism of Roman Catholic theology. The institution of the papacy appeals to a Western psychological desire for absolute assurance as well as to Roman Catholics who want a final answer from just one person. Things feel solid and sure as long as the pope is there in the Vatican.

One of the questions left unanswered by the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility is what is supposed to be done if a pope is in fact a heretic, something that Rome admits is possible. (The condemnation of Honorius was included in Catholic breviary lessons until the eighteenth century.) Can you depose a heretical pope? If so, who has the authority to call the question? These questions are unanswered. The Orthodox, on the other hand, have no problem deposing our primates when necessary. Ecumenical patriarchs have been deposed on a number of occasions, even after the Great Schism made the holder of this office the most senior prelate in the Orthodox Church.

A DIFFERENT GOD?

Orthodox Christians who look seriously at Roman Catholic dogma may question whether we believe in the same God. Such a suggestion is not made lightly. There are three Roman Catholic doctrines that may set the Vatican’s view of God apart from that of Orthodoxy: the filioque, absolute divine simplicity, and created grace. As we will explain later, for all three of these doctrines, there are Orthodox theologians who believe they can be understood in an Orthodox manner.

The Filioque

The filioque (Latin, “and the Son”), as we have already explained, is an addition to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that defines the eternal procession (origin) of the Holy Spirit as being not only from the Father (as is the wording of the original Creed and of John 15:26), but from the Father “and the Son.”

The procedit (“proceeds”) in the Latin translation of the Creed can be interpreted more broadly than the more narrowly technical original Greek ekporevetai, leading some theologians to redefine this doctrine to refer not to the Spirit’s eternal origin as a divine Person but only to His temporal mission. That is, the Spirit proceeds from the Father differently (eternally as a Person) than he proceeds from the Son (temporally for salvation). That definition is consistent with Orthodoxy and taught by some of the Fathers of the Latin West (even using the word filioque), as well as by the Fathers of the Greek East, though not using ekporevetai but proienai.

Such an interpretation is nevertheless inconsistent with Rome’s official doctrinal statements, which make it clear that they refer to the Spirit’s eternal origins:

We profess faithfully and devotedly that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but as from one principle; not by two spirations, but by one single spiration. This the holy Roman Church, mother and mistress of all the faithful, has till now professed, preached and taught; this she firmly holds, preaches, professes and teaches; this is the unchangeable and true belief of the orthodox fathers and doctors, Latin and Greek alike. (Council of Lyons, 1274)

This kind of language is likewise used in the current Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church:

The Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son; He has his nature and subsistence at once (simul) from the Father and the Son. He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and through one spiration. . . . And, since the Father has through generation given to the only-begotten Son everything that belongs to the Father, except being Father, the Son has also eternally from the Father, from whom he is eternally born, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. (CCC, 246, quoting the Council of Florence, 1438)

The filioque has been seen as the biggest strictly theological (in the sense of true theology—dogma about who God is) problem between the Orthodox and Rome, because it concerns the very heart of Christian theology, the Persons of the Holy Trinity. A lot of theological work has been done on this point, however, and some major currents of Catholic theology have tried to lead Rome in the direction of interpreting the filioque as temporal mission rather than eternal origin, despite the official statements to the contrary. Some theologians—both Catholic and Orthodox—now consider the matter essentially solved.

The Orthodox can agree with the interpretation of the filioque as the temporal mission of the Holy Spirit, though we reject the manner in which it was inserted into the Creed. There is also language in St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. Maximus the Confessor that the Spirit “rests in the Son,” which has been the basis for some agreement in talks between our churches. Our critiques from here forward, therefore, are for the sense of the filioque as referring to the eternal origin of the Spirit.

The most damning charge against the doctrine is that it changes the words of Christ Himself: “But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me” (John 15:26). Jesus did not say, “who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” but only, “who proceeds from the Father.”

The filioque also violates the perfect balance of Trinitarian theology: instead of any particular attribute belonging either to the divine Nature or the Person, the filioque grants an attribute to two Persons but not the other. For instance, unbegottenness belongs only to the Father, begottenness belongs to the Son, while procession belongs to the Spirit. Likewise, all divine characteristics (e.g., immortality, perfection, omniscience, etc.) belong to all three Persons. But if the eternal origin of the Spirit’s spiration belongs to both the Father and the Son, that subordinates the Spirit in that He does not possess something that the other two Persons do.

The addition of the filioque to the Creed, besides being heretical, was also uncanonical and a sin against the unity of the Church. The Creed as it now stands was professed and ecumenically ratified at the Second Ecumenical Council (381). The inviolability of the Creed was confirmed by several popes anathematizing any changes to it, most especially John VIII, whose legates were sent to Constantinople in 879–880 specifically to reinstate the deposed Patriarch St. Photius the Great and to reject the filioque. The council they participated in there leveled an anathema against any credal changes. Earlier, as the filioque first came to be used in Rome, Pope Leo III forbade its use and famously had the original Creed (without the addition) in both Greek and Latin inscribed on silver tablets at the tomb of St. Peter.

Some practical implications may be suggested from the theology inherent in the filioque. Because the Holy Spirit is subordinated by this theology, His ministries are “quenched” (see I Thess. 5:19) and replaced in certain practical ways in the prayer life of believers and the administration of church life. Orthodoxy teaches, for instance, that Church unity and infallibility are both the ministry of the Spirit, but Rome puts those in the hands of the papacy. Likewise, a dynamic spiritual life is replaced by legalism (“the letter [of the law] kills, but the Spirit gives life,” 2 Cor. 3:6), and balanced asceticism gives way to a fleshy, materialistic spirituality. Despite these suggested implications, however, it would be difficult to draw a direct causative relationship between the doctrine and these phenomena.

For a highly detailed refutation of the filioque, see St. Photius the Great’s On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, which includes a close study of how the teaching is not only heretical but even absurd (e.g., if the spiration of the Holy Spirit belongs to the Godhead and not the Person of the Father, then the Holy Spirit must spirate even Himself!).

Absolute Divine Simplicity

Even aside from the distortion of the Persons of the Godhead by means of the filioque, Rome may also distort the nature of God with the teaching of absolute divine simplicity. The Orthodox faith teaches that God is both unknowable essence and knowable energies, language that goes back at least to the fourth century. Roman Catholicism, while not explicitly rejecting the essence/energies distinction, emphasizes the doctrine of absolute divine simplicity, a requirement from Aristotelian philosophical categories, defining God as a “substance.” This view is not just another way of affirming that God is one; rather, it insists that His oneness is an undifferentiated singularity, with no facets, aspects, or distinctions.

Rome’s language affirming absolute divine simplicity can be found in a number of official sources:

We firmly believe and openly confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immense, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and ineffable, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three Persons indeed but one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple; the Father (proceeding) from no one, but the Son from the Father only, and the Holy Ghost equally from both, always without beginning and end. (Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, emphasis added)

The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of Heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection. Since He is one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, He must be declared to be in reality and in essence, distinct from the world, supremely happy in Himself and from Himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides Himself which either exists or can be imagined. (Dogmatic Constitution, Vatican I, 1870, emphasis added)

In this doctrine, the essence of God (who He is in Himself) is identical with the attributes of God (what can be said about Him). In Christianity, it was first put forward by St. Augustine, who gets it from the Neoplatonist Plotinus. Absolute divine simplicity is also expounded in detail in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the great synthesizer of Catholicism with Aristotle. But both St. Dionysius the Areopagite and St. John of Damascus say that the essence of the Father is beyond even the category of “being” itself and therefore it is beyond all logical affirmations, even one such as simplicity.

The Orthodox agree in a sense with divine simplicity, that God does not have “parts,” but with our emphasis on salvation as theosis and on God as Persons (rather than as a “substance”), it makes more sense to teach in terms of His unknowable essence and knowable energies than to dwell on a philosophical category like simplicity. If God is encountered as simple substance rather than as Persons who can be met and whose energies may be participated in, then His otherness imbalances out His approachability and nearness.

Some Roman Catholics point to the explicit formulation of the essence/energies distinction in the fourteenth-century writings of St. Gregory Palamas as evidence that the Orthodox believe in development of doctrine. (Gregory was even denounced as a heretic by some Catholics.) But careful students of the Fathers will see such language, using the same terms with essentially the same meanings, in the writings of St. Basil the Great, who wrote nearly a millennium before Gregory: “The energies are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His energies, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His energies come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach” (Letter 234).

This distinction is also in Scripture, though in other terms. Thinking of knowledge of God as in His energies, not His essence, helps to reconcile passages such as “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18; 1 John 4:12) with St. Peter’s insistence that we can become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4), who through purity of heart may “see God” (Matt. 5:8).

Absolute divine simplicity is also the basis for the Roman Catholic doctrine of the beatific vision, in which man may “behold” or “contemplate” God in heaven. With this model, the image has a certain distance between the Christian and God. Catholic theology does include the idea of participation in Christ, though does not usually make it explicit as theosis. Theosis is not completely absent from Roman Catholic theology, being included in Aquinas’s writings, but it does not define salvation for Rome the way it does for Orthodoxy.

Underlying this doctrine is a greater interest in defining God’s nature than in experiencing God as three Persons. Our concrete experience of God is as Persons, however, not as an independently existing nature. Absolute divine simplicity can do damage to the theology of the person, sometimes even conflating person with nature, which suggests a unitarian rather than Trinitarian God. God did not reveal Himself as a nature but as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We should be cautious here, though, because the question is mainly one of emphasis rather than absolute contradiction. If included as part of a full Orthodox Triadology, divine simplicity can be understood in an Orthodox manner, but Orthodoxy focuses more on God as three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—than as a “substance,” however defined, because that is how God has revealed Himself. The question for the Orthodox is not really, “What is God?” but rather, “Who is God?”

Created Grace

Without the tradition of God as both essence and energies, problems arise in how one refers to both the presence of God in the believer and the effects that occur because of that presence. These problems find their expression in how Catholic theology talks about grace as being both uncreated and created. It’s important to note that while there are difficulties with this language, it is not a dogmatic teaching held by Rome and so could be worked out more easily in relations with the Orthodox.

Roman Catholic theology teaches that there is both uncreated grace (i.e., God) and created grace (although this precise term is not usually used). Created grace may be plural (i.e., “graces”) and designates created effects from God. Created grace resides in the human person and becomes a quality of his nature. It is “granted” or “conferred.” This grace can give “merit” or a “disposition” to the believer. Uncreated grace may therefore be thought of as a cause, while created grace is an effect.

In the classic sense from the Scholastics, created grace is used in an “analogical” sense rather than an absolute one, meaning that these “merits” given to man are understood as “grace” only by analogy to God’s work. Therefore, in a sense, “created grace” is not really grace at all in the classic sense but just a theological shorthand for the subjective state of the believer under the influence of God’s grace. The Orthodox should have no strong objection to that, though we might advise picking a different word than grace for the “analogical” effect. “Created grace” language is actually used in some of the Orthodox Fathers. In practice, however, this more balanced theological formulation is largely swallowed up in the Latin insistence on “merit,” especially from the Council of Trent (1545–63) until the twentieth century. “Created grace” language still finds its place in the current Catechism:

Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification. (CCC, 2000)

Sanctifying grace is the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.

Sanctifying grace makes us “pleasing to God.” Charisms, special graces of the Holy Spirit, are oriented to sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. God also acts through many actual graces, to be distinguished from habitual grace which is permanent in us. (CCC, 2023–24)

This approach contrasts with the main emphasis in Orthodox doctrine, in which divine grace is almost always described as uncreated and therefore represents the actual presence of God Himself in the believer—God’s energies. What sanctifies the believer, by synergy (God and man working together), is the energies of God. There is nothing in the believer’s person that sanctifies himself. Likewise, if the grace the believer experiences is simply an “effect,” “quality,” or “disposition,” then he remains separate from God. That is why it would be better not to refer to such created attributes as “grace.”

While the doctrine of created grace has the potential to be problematic, it has never been dogmatized by Rome nor conciliarly condemned by the Orthodox. And not all Roman Catholics accept the doctrine. The Franciscans never accepted it, and many Jesuits assert that Thomas Aquinas also did not teach it. In the modern era, Henri Cardinal de Lubac (one of the Ressourcement theologians, twentieth-century Catholics who urge a return to patristic sources) says that created grace and the accompanying strong emphasis on the division between grace and nature actually lead to secularism. So this is a matter for some debate even for Rome.

SALVATION

If differences in belief concerning the nature of the Church and the identity of God were not enough to separate Roman Catholicism from Orthodoxy, the theology of salvation itself is also markedly different. Rome, in recent years, has softened the stance it taught for centuries that submission to the papacy was required for salvation. That said, Rome’s essential understanding of what sin is, how it affects mankind, and how he is saved from it is still at variance with Orthodoxy.

Salvation of Non-Catholics

One question we are likely to ask is whether non-Catholics can be saved. The answer is unfortunately confusing, because Rome has changed its position on this question over the years. In the fourteenth century, we see this very strong language: “Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff” (Papal bull Unam Sanctam, 1302, Pope Boniface VIII). Clearly, anyone not submitting to Rome is damned. This same language is used in the sixteenth century: “It is of the necessity of salvation for all Christ’s faithful to be subject to the Roman pontiff” (Fifth Lateran Council, 1516).

Yet early twentieth-century Catholic theologians, while criticizing the Orthodox in strong terms, saw Rome’s relationship with the East as an actual division within Christendom, not as the East having left the Church and forfeited salvation:

It is not Latins, it is they [i.e., the Orthodox] who have left the Faith of their Fathers. There is no humiliation in retracing one’s steps when one has wandered down a mistaken road because of long-forgotten personal quarrels. They too must see how disastrous to the common cause is the scandal of the division. They too must wish to put an end to so crying an evil. And if they really wish it the way need not be difficult. For, indeed, after nine centuries of schism we may realize on both sides that it is not only the greatest it is also the most superfluous evil in Christendom. (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Eastern schism,” 1913)

By the time of the Second Vatican Council, Rome explicitly taught that non-Catholics have the possibility to be saved:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation. (Vatican II, Lumen gentium, 1965)

Therefore, while Orthodox Christians in the fourteenth century would be told by Rome that they were damned, they can now be covered by the “ignorance clause” of the language of the Second Vatican Council. Even apart from the question of which of these papal statements should be deemed infallible, such a shift leads one to wonder if Rome will change its stance in the future.

Original Sin

Following the teaching of St. Augustine of Hippo (whom the Orthodox Church venerates as a saint without endorsing all his doctrines), Roman Catholicism teaches that original sin is transmitted to the descendants of Adam and Eve by means of sexual reproduction:

Whenever it comes to the actual process of generation, the very embrace which is lawful and honourable cannot be effected without the ardour of lust. . . . [This lust] is the daughter of sin, as it were; and whenever it yields assent to the commission of shameful deeds, it becomes also the mother of many sins. . . . Now from this concupiscence whatever comes into being by natural birth is bound by original sin. (St. Augustine of Hippo, De bono coniugali)

In another place, in speaking of the “duty” of sexual intercourse, Augustine says that married couples should only “descend to it with regret” (Sermon on the Agreement of the Evangelists Matthew and Luke in the Generations of the Lord, 25). Augustine is not the source of this teaching but is following an earlier tradition that leads back at least to Origen. Augustine actually gives marriage a more positive view and is careful to say that sex itself is not sinful but that original sin is transmitted via the sexual act, because sin is always there with it via lust:

I have never censured the union of the two sexes if it is lawfully within the boundaries of marriage. There could be no generation of human beings without such union, even if no sin had preceded it. As to the second proposition you add is mine, that children are born of the union of bodies: this I do say indeed, but the conclusion you wish to draw as mine is not mine. I do not say that children, coming from an evil action, are evil, since I do not say that the activity in which married persons engage for the purpose of begetting children is evil. As a matter of fact, I assert that it is good, because it makes good use of the evil of lust, and through this good use, human beings, a good work of God, are generated. But the action is not performed without evil, and this is why the children must be regenerated in order to be delivered from evil. (Against Julian, III.VII.15)

The Council of Trent also made it clear that original sin is transmitted by sexual reproduction:

If anyone asserts that this sin of Adam, which in its origin is one, and by propagation, not by imitation, transfused into all, which is in each one as something that is his own, is taken away either by the forces of human nature or by a remedy other than the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who has reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification and redemption; or if he denies that that merit of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism rightly administered in the form of the Church, let him be anathema; for there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved. (Council of Trent, Decree on Original Sin, 1546, emphasis added)

If anyone denies that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted, or says that the whole of that which belongs to the essence of sin is not taken away, but says that it is only canceled or not imputed, let him be anathema. (ibid., emphasis added)

This same language is also used by the current Catechism:

How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man.” By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice. Still, the transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. (CCC, 404, emphasis added)

The idea that all sinned “in” Adam may stem from a mistranslation of Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” In Latin translations, the last phrase is in quo omnes peccaverunt, meaning “in whom all have sinned,” saying that in Adam (the “one man”) all sinned, making all guilty of Adam’s sin.

In Greek, it is eph’ o pantes himarton, “because all sinned,” which is not only the actual wording of the Scripture but the faith of the Orthodox Church. That is, while we all suffer the effects of Adam’s sin (being human), we are not guilty of any sins but our own. We did not sin in Adam, but we sin because Adam’s sin made us capable of sin. That is why some Orthodox writers prefer to use the term ancestral sin rather than original sin. Original sin is not unknown in the Greek Fathers, however, some of whom refer to the “first sin,” which is essentially synonymous.

Augustine’s teaching that sexual reproduction is inherently tainted (though necessary for the continuance of the human race) goes against the clear sense of Hebrews 13:4, which says that the marriage bed is “undefiled.” Some of the Fathers say that the current physical modality of sexual reproduction is a result of the Fall (just like the natural world’s chaotic state, e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes), but they do not say that sex is itself sinful and should be entered into only with regret.

All that said, Orthodox and Catholics are not necessarily on wholly different sides of this question. For instance, the Catholic Catechism has this to say about the inheritance of guilt in original sin: “And that is why original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’—a state and not an act. Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants” (CCC, 404–405). Interestingly, the Greek translation of this passage of the catechism uses the phrase propatoriki hamartia, “ancestral sin.” So we should not push this too far. A true inherited guilt is more characteristic of certain streams in Protestantism than it is of Rome. Yet the identification of original sin as inherited guilt in Catholic theology nevertheless persists in Orthodox polemics, based at least partly on less-nuanced articulations, such as in the Baltimore Catechism, which defines original sin this way: “This sin is called original because it comes down to us from our first parents, and we are brought into the world with its guilt on our soul” (Baltimore Catechism, question 266).

The Immaculate Conception

The original sin doctrine is also the origin of the Immaculate Conception teaching, which says that the Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin when she was conceived (declared as dogma in 1854, though rejected by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century). It was this purification from her conception that made it possible for her to assent to the Incarnation when it was announced by the Archangel Gabriel:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful. (Ineffabilis Deus, 1854; this is the document by which Pope Pius IX defined the doctrine)

To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace.” In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace. (CCC, 490)

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception reveals a more pessimistic view of the Fall than the Orthodox take. Rome holds that Mary had to be kept from the effects of original sin in order to be free enough to give assent to the Incarnation. Her holiness of life under Rome’s model is no credit to her. But the Orthodox believe that all of mankind, including the Virgin Mary, is free to choose God, even if that freedom is impaired and tends toward sin.

The Orthodox do hold to a pre-purification of the Virgin Mary, not at her conception but at the Annunciation. This teaching is expressed in the hymns of the Annunciation: “The coming of the Holy Spirit hath purified my soul and sanctified my body; and hath made it a temple able to contain God, a tabernacle divinely adorned, a living shrine, and the pure Mother of Life” (March Menaion, Ode 7 of the Canon of the Annunciation). It is our teaching that the sanctification that occurred at the Annunciation was both to make her womb prepared to bear God and also so that the human nature assumed by Christ would be prelapsarian (i.e., before the Fall of mankind). Speculating beyond this leads to problems.

In the homilies of St. John of Damascus on the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, he writes that she is indeed freed of corruption, but that freeing happens at the Annunciation (which contradicts Rome’s 1854 definition). She inherited corruption from Adam and Eve but overcame it by her pure life, which is part of what prepared her to become the Theotokos. He is also clear in his An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith that this purification came after her assent: “So then, after the assent of the Holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended on her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel spoke, purifying her, and granting her power to receive the divinity of the Word, and likewise power to bring forth” (Book 3, chapter 2, second paragraph).

Probably the clearest argument against the Immaculate Conception, however, is that the Virgin Mary died—involuntarily and by necessity. If she had been born without the effects of original sin, then she would have been incapable of death.

Christ, like His mother, suffered the effects of fallen human nature (such as hunger, fatigue, etc.), but did not commit any personal sins. He did all of this of His own free will, however, and not from necessity, because His human nature was prelapsarian. He was not fallen. Christ and the rest of mankind have the same human nature, but the mode of how that nature is expressed is different. His humanity is deified, while ours is fallen and therefore subject to death by necessity. Christ’s death was fully voluntary. Consider this detail in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death—He first bowed His head, then gave up the spirit. An involuntary death happens in the reverse order. The head bows because the spirit is gone.

Uncomfortable soteriological questions are also raised by the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception: If at her conception the Virgin Mary is preserved from the stain of original sin and therefore returned to the prelapsarian state by “a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God” (even “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ”), what need was there for the Incarnation? Why could not all of mankind have been saved by this same method?

Merit and Satisfaction

Because of its understanding of original sin in legal terms, sin and death are primarily conceived of in Roman Catholic doctrine as a debt or as a crime against God. Further, even if the believer is forgiven his sins, he still has to pay for them with temporal punishment. God is said to require satisfaction both for the guilt of the sin and for the debt that the believer owes God in payment, and the believer has to merit his salvation. He also has to pay the temporal punishment due for his sins in purgatory, the suffering of which may be lessened by gaining indulgences. The Catholic Encyclopedia puts it this way:

Sin, as an offence against God, demands satisfaction in the first sense; the temporal punishment due to sin calls for satisfaction in the second sense.

Christian faith teaches us that the Incarnate Son of God by His death on the cross has in our stead fully satisfied God’s anger at our sins, and thereby effected a reconciliation between the world and its Creator. . . . It is a defined article of the Catholic Faith that man before, in, and after justification derives his whole capability of meriting and satisfying, as well as his actual merits and satisfactions, solely from the infinite treasure of merits which Christ gained for us on the Cross.

The second kind of satisfaction, that namely by which temporal punishment is removed, consists in this, that the penitent after his justification gradually cancels the temporal punishments due to his sins, either ex opere operato, by conscientiously performing the penance imposed on him by his confessor, or ex opere operantis, by self-imposed penances (such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving, etc.) and by bearing patiently the sufferings and trials sent by God; if he neglects this, he will have to give full satisfaction (satispassio) in the pains of purgatory. (“Merit,” 1913)

While the Catholic Encyclopedia is not an official source, it essentially agrees with what is in the Catechism, which defines merit and satisfaction in this way (all emphasis in the original):

The term “merit” refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members, experienced either as beneficial or harmful, deserving reward or punishment. Merit is relative to the virtue of justice, in conformity with the principle of equality which governs it. (CCC, 2006)

Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God’s wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions. (CCC, 2010)

Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must “make satisfaction for” or “expiate” his sins. This satisfaction is also called “penance.” (CCC, 1459)

To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the “eternal punishment” of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the “temporal punishment” of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain. (CCC, 1472)

Therefore, salvation is primarily a matter of “satisfying” God and avoiding punishment. Emphasis on the healing and transformation of the human person can easily get lost in this system. The idea that the Son of God became man in order to satisfy the Father’s honor finds its fullest expression in Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus homo (“Why God became man”), such as when he writes:

It is impossible for God to lose his honor; for either the sinner pays his debt of his own accord, or, if he refuse, God takes it from him. For either man renders due submission to God of his own will, by avoiding sin or making payment, or else God subjects him to himself by torments, even against man’s will, and thus shows that he is the Lord of man, though man refuses to acknowledge it of his own accord. And here we must observe that as man in sinning takes away what belongs to God, so God in punishing gets in return what pertains to man. (Cur Deus homo, ch. XIV)

The Scriptures use the language of “debt” or “crime” in describing our sins against God, but it is not emphasized for the Orthodox as it has been for Rome, nor is there any complex system of satisfaction, merit, and indulgences. The Orthodox do not teach temporal punishment for sins that are forgiven, because forgiveness cancels out any kind of punishment. If God forgives someone, why would He still demand payment through satisfaction? This model denies the full power and implications of forgiveness in Christ’s death and resurrection. We agree that forgiveness of sins in absolution “does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused,” but what is needed is a reorientation of the human person so that he functions differently, not that he “make satisfaction for” his sins.

If God’s honor needs to be “satisfied,” then He is capricious for having permitted us to fall into sin: He made up the rules knowing full well that we would break them. The death of His Son then is necessary more as a matter of honor than as a victory over death. This sense of satisfying divine justice is later developed by the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer John Calvin so that it is about the appeasement of God’s wrath and vengeance, but it is not taken that far in Anselm.

Further, in focusing on the legal metaphor language of salvation used in the Scriptures, Roman Catholics may miss the more dominant understanding of salvation in the Scriptures, which is healing. The word sozein in the Greek Scriptures, which is translated “to save,” also literally means “to heal.” Salvation is healing by definition. With Rome’s legalistic emphasis, however, personal change is de-emphasized. The main goal is therefore to attain a certain status, that is, a “state of grace.”

While merit is a term that can be understood in an Orthodox sense (e.g., as a synonym for virtue or to refer to the rewards given by God to the saints), merit in Rome’s legal model is a concept foreign to the Orthodox faith. No one can “merit” salvation, not even the saints. It is not Christ’s legal “merit” that saves us, but rather our participation in Him.

The word merit was used in the ancient West, prior to the Great Schism, but it is the later concept of it as almost a kind of currency—with quantified systems of satisfaction—that is a problem for the Orthodox. In the west merit also took on the idea of being “supererogatory,” that it is what is generated by the saints because they go beyond the minimum required for their own salvation. So the “extra” merit can be used to help others.

Purgatory and Indulgences

In working out what temporal punishment must mean, Rome has put forward the doctrine of purgatory. Purgatory is a place of temporal punishment where a saved believer pays God what he owes by suffering in torment for a certain number of years (while also experiencing a joy not known on earth).

For Rome, the doctrine and practice of indulgences are “closely linked to the effects of the sacrament of penance” (CCC, 1471), which, as we saw above, is understood as synonymous with “satisfaction” (CCC, 1459). Indulgences are traditionally understood to be obtained in terms of a certain amount of time out of purgatory. While such strictly temporal definitions have been corrected in twentieth-century reforms to refer to the spiritual effect of a certain amount of time spent in penance, the quantification of indulgences still prevails, and the language of “temporal punishment” also still remains.

What’s changed is that the connection between indulgences and purgatory in terms of time has been made less direct. Indulgences function in terms of the time spent in penance to rid oneself of temporal punishment, and purgatory is a place of temporal punishment, but the precise “exchange rate,” so to speak, is not directly correlated any longer.

It’s not clear that there ever was any official direct correlation, but that was definitely the popular understanding among Catholics. (Henry VIII of England, for instance, owned a text which promised “52,712 years and 40 days of pardon” for reciting the Our Father and Ave Maria five times each, along with the Creed.) The initial development of the doctrine of purgatory was taught in the twelfth century to be in terms of “completing” penances that were still in process in the earthly life (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Third Edition, 1349).

The core problem is really the “temporal punishment” for sin that is still due to those who are forgiven. Until that teaching is let go, the “time out of purgatory” issue will haunt the purgatory/indulgences model.

In previous centuries, one could buy indulgences directly. This was one of the main complaints in the Protestant Reformation. It was mainly through the sale of indulgences that the building of the Basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican was funded. In many cases, masses are “bought” with a certain donation in order to help some friend or loved one out of purgatory.

Despite not being as well-known in our own day and having been expressed with less literalism, the system of indulgences very much remains in place and is spoken of in detail in the current Catechism:

An indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints.

An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due to sin. The faithful can gain indulgences for themselves or apply them to the dead. (CCC, 1471; see also 1472, quoted above)

It is because the temporal punishment for sins is understood in the legal category of “debt” that one can pay for such punishment for someone else:

The possibility of this transfer rests on the fact that the residual punishments for sin are in the nature of a debt, which may be legitimately paid to the creditor and thereby cancelled not only by the debtor himself but also by a friend of the debtor. This consideration is important for the proper understanding of the usefulness of suffrages for the souls in purgatory. (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Merit,” 1913)

Even Pope John Paul II (now a canonized Catholic saint), who was not known for stressing traditionalism in the Roman Catholic Church, issued a detailed document on how to gain indulgences in the year 2000:

The plenary indulgence of the Jubilee [i.e., the year 2000] can also be gained through actions which express in a practical and generous way the penitential spirit which is, as it were, the heart of the Jubilee. This would include abstaining for at least one whole day from unnecessary consumption (e.g., from smoking or alcohol, or fasting or practising abstinence according to the general rules of the Church and the norms laid down by the Bishops’ Conferences) and donating a proportionate sum of money to the poor; supporting by a significant contribution works of a religious or social nature (especially for the benefit of abandoned children, young people in trouble, the elderly in need, foreigners in various countries seeking better living conditions); devoting a suitable portion of personal free time to activities benefitting the community, or other similar forms of personal sacrifice. (Papal bull Incarnationis Mysterium, 1998)

In 2013 Pope Francis notably granted indulgences to those who participated in some way during the World Youth Day gathering in Rio de Janeiro, including following the event on social media, if accompanied with prayer, confession, and communion.

And why can the pope grant indulgences? It is because he has a particular access to the inexhaustible Treasury of Merit, the good effects of the work of Christ and the saints, and can declare specific acts to access this treasury. This papal (and, much earlier in history, episcopal) power comes from the ancient tradition of bishops sometimes reducing penances in light of special repentance shown by a believer—this is still the practice of Orthodoxy today, though it is not in terms of merits or indulgences. The question is what best contributes to salvation.

Orthodoxy agrees that there is a certain purgation needed for the souls of the departed destined for heaven, but that experience has never been codified with the temporal model of years of suffering employed by Rome in the purgatory doctrine. For one thing, we have no indication from the Scriptures or the Fathers that there is “time” as we know it in the hereafter. The idea of an intermediate stage of suffering is also problematic, since to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8).

Another problem with purgatory is that it divides salvation into two parts: getting to heaven and being “purged” or paying off the debt of sin. The emphasis in everyday spiritual life is then placed on externalized works in order to reduce time in purgatory rather than personal transformation in order to unite with God. Christ’s saving work only suffices to get believers to heaven, but they still have to work themselves to be really free from sin. In some sense, full forgiveness can only ever be bought, with money, with good deeds, or with suffering in purgatory.

For Orthodoxy, it is even more nonsensical to suggest that one may essentially “buy” another person’s spiritual advancement by gaining indulgences on their behalf. We may affect another person’s life by our prayers, but we cannot exercise critical control over their spiritual experience. Are spiritual realities so discrete and external to us that we can pay off the debt of punishment owed by another?

Perhaps most problematic is the model wherein sin is indulged. Indulging sin represents a fundamentally different orientation than in the Orthodox Church, where the emphasis is on healing rather than on paying debts or fulfilling requirements. We should note that this is mainly a question of emphasis—healing and transformation language for salvation is also very much present in Roman Catholicism.

SACRAMENTAL VALIDITY

Rome’s legalism also leads it to understand the sacraments in terms of the categories of validity. If certain requirements are met, then a sacrament is “valid,” even if it is otherwise removed from its traditional liturgical and ecclesial context. Sacraments are thus objectified and may be treated as independent events rather than organically integrated within church life, such as confirmation being removed from the context of baptism, ordination from the context of service in the Church, and the Eucharist from the context of communion. While the Orthodox also have requirements for sacraments to be properly performed, it is the objectification and near-reduction of the sacraments to such requirements that makes validity a problem for us.

Probably the most significant difference in Roman Catholic sacramental practice which separates it from Orthodoxy is the delay of two vital holy mysteries: Holy Communion and confirmation (chrismation). Holy Communion is not given to all baptized members, but only to those above a certain age (usually seven). Confirmation is also usually delayed until sometime in the teenage years. These delays have their roots in the idea that a believer needs rational understanding in order to receive these sacraments; the emphasis becomes individual—a rite of passage—rather than ecclesial, in which the Christian is initiated into the community.

Delaying communion is especially worrisome to the Orthodox. If a child is baptized and a member of the Church, why should he be denied the sacrament that unites all together as one body? He is somehow not really a member, since he is baptized yet immediately excommunicated.

The delay in confirmation originally arose from the practice of the sacrament being administered only by the bishop. Since he seldom visited local parishes, and since a steady stream of baptisms was needed when babies were born, confirmation was separated out from the baptismal rite. Confirmation eventually became delayed as a matter of principle, and now it waits typically until the teenage years, uniting those who receive it “more closely to the Church”:

In the Latin Rite, the ordinary minister of Confirmation is the bishop. If the need arises, the bishop may grant the faculty of administering Confirmation to priests, although it is fitting that he confer it himself, mindful that the celebration of Confirmation has been temporally separated from Baptism for this reason. Bishops are the successors of the apostles. They have received the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders. The administration of this sacrament by them demonstrates clearly that its effect is to unite those who receive it more closely to the Church, to her apostolic origins, and to her mission of bearing witness to Christ. (CCC, 1313)

But what does it mean to be united “more closely to the Church”? For the Orthodox, one is either a member of the Church or not. It has sometimes been said of Rome’s practice in delaying confirmation that it is a “sacrament in search of a theology.” Since it is delayed as a matter of course, it is not clear what it is actually supposed to do. Orthodoxy (and Eastern Catholicism) maintains the tradition of chrismation (confirmation) being part of baptism.

Another distortion of sacramental life comes in the adoration of the Eucharist outside of the context of the act of communion. Such adoration treats the Eucharist as an object rather than as an action:

Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. “The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession.” (CCC, 1378)

One can spend time in special “adoration chapels,” whose whole purpose is to allow the faithful to come into the presence of the Eucharist, to worship it and meditate on it. For the Orthodox, while we always respect the reserved sacrament (set aside in the tabernacle resting on the altar for the communion of the sick), we do not remove the Eucharist from the context of communion. The Lord said for us to eat and drink His flesh and blood (John 6:53–56). He said nothing about removing them from that context. (We should note here that some Western Rite Orthodox practice what is called the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, a rite wherein they are blessed with the reserved Eucharist. While this is not the same as having adoration chapels or encouraging worship of the Eucharist, this practice is somewhat controversial.)

The concept of validity also allows for ecclesiastical lines to be crossed by clergy, even if there is no communion between ecclesial bodies. It allows Rome to recognize “valid” sacraments even outside its own boundaries:

Eastern Christians who are in fact separated in good faith from the Catholic Church, if they ask of their own accord and have the right dispositions, may be admitted to the sacraments of Penance, the Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick. Further, Catholics may ask for these same sacraments from those non-Catholic ministers whose churches possess valid sacraments, as often as necessity or a genuine spiritual benefit recommends such a course and access to a Catholic priest is physically or morally impossible. (Vatican II, Orientalium Ecclesiarium, 1964)

For the Orthodox, receiving the sacraments is possible only within one ecclesiastical communion. Orthodox Christians may receive the sacraments only from Orthodox clergy. Likewise, Orthodox clergy may give the sacraments only to Orthodox Christians. (In cases of emergency, non-Orthodox are welcome to convert in order to receive the sacraments.)

Sacramental validity also allows for the possibility of ordination existing outside the community of the Church, because ordination is “indelible”:

As in the case of Baptism and Confirmation this share in Christ’s office is granted once for all. The sacrament of Holy Orders, like the other two, confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily.

It is true that someone validly ordained can, for grave reasons, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them; but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense, because the character imprinted by ordination is for ever. The vocation and mission received on the day of his ordination mark him permanently. (CCC, 1582–83)

It is because of the indelible mark of Roman Catholic ordination theology that its doctrine of apostolic succession is truncated. All that is needed for apostolic succession for Rome is that there be proof that an ordination can be traced through a valid line of bishops back to the apostles. For the Orthodox, however, that line is not enough. The apostolic faith and maintenance of communion within the Church are also required. Rome sees lines of “valid” bishops outside its own communion (episcopi vagantes), but Orthodoxy does not.

For the Orthodox, ordination exists within and for the Church. If a clergyman leaves the Church, he is no longer treated as a clergyman. Likewise, if he is removed from the ranks of the clergy by the Church, he is truly a layman once again.

We cannot take this distinction as absolute, however, because customs do exist within some Orthodox churches (i.e., Russia) of receiving certain non-Orthodox clergy (especially Catholics) as clergy “by vesting,” i.e., without baptism, chrismation, or an Orthodox ordination service. This practice is not universal in Orthodoxy, however, and it does not necessarily constitute recognition of non-Orthodox sacraments per se, only that there is “something to work with” when such people approach the Orthodox Church. Thus, this limited recognition is de facto and not de jure.

Sacramental validity is also what makes marriage annulment possible—one could be married for years and then discover a technicality that renders one not married, such as never having wanted children, intending to be unfaithful, or even having married in haste without due discretion. This possibility exists because the couple, not the priest, are regarded as the ministers of the sacrament (a marriage can be witnessed by a deacon instead). Marriage is primarily understood as a legal contract, and so it can be rendered invalid if some technical requirement is not fulfilled. These technicalities are usually invoked only in the case of a civil divorce having been attained, which makes annulment essentially divorce by another name.

Orthodoxy does have a kind of annulment, but not one based on intention or technicality—a man cannot marry his sister, for instance, even if he goes through the marriage rite with her. Therefore, such a “wedding” would automatically not be a marriage.

The existence of Eastern Catholic rites which still use Orthodox practices—such as immediate chrismation/confirmation at baptism and the theology of the priest as the minister of the marriage sacrament—is a contradiction given the standard Latin practice. For instance, if an Eastern Catholic marriage is annulled, then does that mean that the priest (probably without knowing it) acted invalidly?

CLOSER YET FURTHER APART: THEOLOGY, LITURGICS, AND REUNION

Having said all this, it is critical for Orthodox Christians to note that twentieth- and twenty-first–century Roman Catholicism has seen a number of developments that bring some theologians and practices closer to Orthodoxy and push others further away. In some ways, we are getting closer together, but in others, we are further apart. In terms of how we are becoming closer, there is much in the Ressourcement movement with its fresh emphasis on the Church Fathers that should encourage the Orthodox. And three popes in a row (John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis) have all indicated an interest in expressing papal primacy not in the absolute, supreme, and infallible terms that have prevailed in the West since the nineteenth century. Rather, Rome would hope that the East would accept the doctrine of primacy as was “formulated and was lived in the first millennium,” as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in 1987. He also hoped that the East would cease rejecting as heretical the post-Schism developments of the West, even if they did not accept them.

At the same time, certain disturbing distortions occurred in some sectors of the Roman Catholic Church in the twentieth century, such as liberation theology, an attempt to wed church dogma with Marxist politics. And there is also the problem of the liturgical developments after Vatican II, which we will discuss further below.

Because of these kinds of developments—as well as the ongoing problem of the gap between official Vatican teaching and what the average Roman Catholic personally believes or is taught from the pulpit—Orthodox believers should be careful when discussing theology with Roman Catholics. They may be closer to or further from Orthodoxy than what is officially taught by the Vatican. It is critical to discern what the person in front of you believes before launching into any sort of detailed refutation of Roman Catholic dogma and practice.

Much of modern Orthodox criticism of Roman Catholicism is based either on pre-twentieth-century models of Rome’s thought or on mischaracterizations and oversimplifications of its theology and practice. We also sometimes borrow from Protestant polemics against Rome, which may be based either in exaggerations or misunderstandings of Rome’s theology or may require accepting Protestant theology that is not consistent with Orthodoxy. (I have been guilty of this myself.)

We have just spent many pages discussing the similarities and differences of Catholic theology and traditional practice as compared to Orthodoxy. But we should also discuss Rome’s current liturgical practice, which is an area that a number of my Catholic friends wish the Orthodox would emphasize more when discussing Rome.

We mentioned several areas of traditional Catholic liturgics that we would like to see corrected, such as the delay of communion and confirmation, but something much larger has occurred that is genuinely distressing to the Orthodox and to many faithful Catholics—the reform of liturgics that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The reforms envisioned by the council were relatively modest and conformed much more to the patterns of history. But what the council decreed and what occurred—both in terms of official changes and how services were actually conducted—were not the same. While still a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger put it this way:

One cannot manufacture a liturgical movement . . . but one can help contribute to its development by striving to reassimilate the spirit of the liturgy and by defending publicly what one has thus received . . . What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it—as in a manufacturing process—with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product. (From the preface to the French edition of Msgr. Klaus Gamber’s book, The Modern Rite (St Michael’s Abbey Press, 2002))

Such a break with tradition was deplored by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, who wrote in a 1969 letter to the pope that the break was “grave,” leading to a “complete bewilderment on the part of the faithful” and that for “the best of the clergy the practical result is an agonizing crisis of conscience.”

The liturgical reforms were headed up by one Annibale Cardinal Bugnini, who strong-armed his own preferences into the new mass and even included Protestants in his reform committees. Non-Catholics who protested against basic Catholic doctrine were given a say over the future of worldwide Catholic worship. The new order of the mass (the Novus Ordo) was introduced in 1969.

The canon—the core of the mass—had been changed, as were many other elements. Some changes were things that the Orthodox would welcome, such as the use of local languages rather than Latin, and communion for the laity of both the Body and Blood (for centuries, laity had communed only of the Body). Others are problematic, such as the celebration of the mass versus populum (facing the people), rather than ad orientem (facing east). With the priest’s face to the people during most of the mass, his personality becomes much more the focus as a kind of master of ceremonies rather than one who is leading the people toward God, with all facing the same direction (ad orientem) for most of the service.

Ottaviani makes detailed criticisms of the Novus Ordo in his letter, and he even adds his belief that the new mass would alienate both Eastern Catholics and Orthodox Christians, because “the Novus Ordo would appear to have been deliberately shorn of everything which in the Liturgy of Rome came close to those of the East.” In the years that have followed the reforms, a number of Latin Catholics have moved into the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, whose liturgical traditions are much more similar (and in some cases, almost identical) with the Orthodox, fleeing the changes of the 1969 reform.

In addition to these official changes have come numerous abuses. A tour through videos on the Internet shows Catholic masses and other gatherings (both liturgical and non-liturgical) including “liturgical dancing,” enormous puppets, dressing up in costumes (I saw one with the priest dressed as the purple Barney the Dinosaur), and all kinds of showmanship that trivialize liturgical life.

These are indeed abuses and do not represent the official liturgical policy of Rome. They are, however, very common, and are even on display at major public events featuring high-ranking Catholic prelates. For instance, at the World Youth Day in 2013 which we mentioned earlier, the pope was greeted by dozens of Catholic bishops engaged in the kind of dancing that makes old men look like terrible dancers.

Disturbing to many Catholics, as well, is what is permitted in private discipline and devotion. Pope Francis said in 2015 that Catholics who feel in their conscience that they should be able to take communion are welcome to do so—even if they were living in grave sin. It has also been many decades since asceticism was truly expected of the laity—outside monasteries, fasting as something other than fish on Fridays in Lent (if that) is almost entirely unknown in the Catholic Church of today. Even among the monastics (whose numbers have been rapidly in decline for decades), one finds all kinds of problematic moral positions, not to mention that many of them no longer even dress as monastics.

These things present some of the biggest obstacles to the Orthodox countenancing union with Rome, and they are part of why I am not optimistic about the possibility. Yet, especially regarding these liturgical and pastoral issues, there are many Catholics who are nearly in agreement with the Orthodox. We can hope that they will act as leaven in their own church.

One thing that I have seen in most encounters between Roman Catholics and Orthodox is that their assessment of the size of the gap between us is different. As we saw in the quote at the start of this chapter from Pope John Paul II, many Catholics see the Orthodox as being almost the same, lacking perhaps only one thing—the papacy. The Orthodox tend to see the differences as more numerous and more serious.

What exacerbates this discrepancy is that the Orthodox are far more aware of Roman Catholicism than Catholics are of Orthodoxy, probably due at least in part to the relative size of the two churches. Orthodoxy remains invisible for most Catholics, and certain historical memories of Catholicism—such as the brutal sacking of Constantinople by Latin Crusaders in 1204—remain potent for many Orthodox. There is also not universal agreement within Orthodoxy over the effects of the schism: Are Catholics outside the Church? Do their sacraments convey grace? These things all hamper our ability even to have discussions about what truly divides us.

Having addressed what Fr. Georges Florovsky called our “chief ecumenical project” (Rome), let us next consider the major and first traditions of Protestantism, that Christian movement that began in the sixteenth century.

THREE

The Magisterial Reformation

THE END OF ROMAN CATHOLIC EUROPE

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason—for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves—I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one’s conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen. (Martin Luther, Response to the Inquisition at the Diet of Worms, 1521)

When that which professes to be the Word of God is acknowledged to be so, no person, unless devoid of common sense and the feelings of a man, will have the desperate hardihood to refuse credit to the speaker. But since no daily responses are given from heaven, and the Scriptures are the only records in which God has been pleased to consign his truth to perpetual remembrance, the full authority which they ought to possess with the faithful is not recognised, unless they are believed to have come from heaven, as directly as if God had been heard giving utterance to them. (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion I.7.1, 1536)

From the gospel we learn that the doctrines and traditions of men are of no use to salvation. (Huldrych Zwingli, The Sixty-Seven Articles, 1523)

The iconic moment that touched off the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was the nailing of ninety-five theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, by Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who had become desperate for the reform of the Roman Catholic Church. He never had any intention of forming a new church, but his insistence on the abolition of indulgences and their sale, as well as his affirmation of the supremacy of the Bible over the church hierarchy, provoked his excommunication by Rome in 1520.

Historians call the first wave of the Reformation the “Magisterial Reformation,” because it had the backing of the civil authorities (the magistracy), particularly in what is now Germany. These first Reformers had no problem with working together with the secular authorities for the good of their churches. With the help of this magistracy, the solid hold of Rome over the religious unity of Western Europe came to an end.

The denominations produced by the Magisterial Reformation, all of which differ from one another on major points of doctrine and practice, include: Lutherans, the Reformed churches (both Calvinists and Zwinglians, including Presbyterians, Puritans, Congregationalists, and Dutch Reformed), and Anglicans (usually called “Episcopalians” in the United States and Scotland). Although historically later (eighteenth century), Methodists and Wesleyans, which branched from the Anglicans, may be classified with these groups.

THE FIVE SOLAS

Although the Reformation quickly splintered along doctrinal lines, there were five “solas” (Latin for “alone”) that characterized most Reformation theology: sola scriptura (“scripture alone”), sola fide (“faith alone”), sola gratia (“grace alone”), solus Christus (“Christ alone”), and soli Deo gloria (“to God alone be glory”). (The first three are found in the sixteenth century, while the others are more explicitly articulated later.) These five doctrinal positions are the pillars of the Protestant Reformation. In one form or another, they continue to be believed by all the denominations of the Magisterial Reformation and deeply influence all Protestant churches. In some ways, Orthodoxy agrees with all of these “solas,” but also differs from them in important ways.

Sola Scriptura

In its basic form, sola scriptura means “by Scripture alone.” At the beginning of the Reformation, it did not mean a total abandonment of all church tradition, but simply attempted to elevate Scripture to the highest and most central point of Christian life. It was not long, however, before its at least implicit divorce from tradition—most especially hermeneutical tradition, that is, how one interprets the Bible—would lead to various doctrinal revolutions.

Under Luther, sola scriptura was especially defined in anti-ecclesial terms:

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it. . . . neither the Church nor the pope can establish articles of faith. These must come from Scripture. For the sake of Scripture we should reject pope and councils. (Debate at Leipzig, 1519)

Luther’s words have to be understood specifically in terms of their contemporary context: The Reformers were seeking to address what they saw as the abuses of Rome, most especially what they regarded as a vast accumulation of un-Christian doctrines and practices in the name of “Tradition” (such as the sale of indulgences, the use of relics, and teaching confirmation as a sacrament). Yet the new Reformation principle of authority bears within it the seeds of a whole new form of Christianity, especially apparent now that Protestants are no longer actively confronting Rome (except in occasional rhetoric from the pulpit).

That said, Luther’s insistence that the Bible is above councils and popes, that he rejects councils and popes for the sake of Scripture, leaves an important question unanswered: What if the pope or the councils are using Scripture in their pronouncements? The “simple layman” with his Bible in his hand is facing down a pope or a council that presumably also have Bibles. Who is right? The problem with saying that someone is “without” the Scripture is that it presumes that Scripture doesn’t need to be interpreted. The other party is wrong because they must not be using the Bible.

But most parties to Christian disputes are all using the Bible. Johann Eck, Luther’s Catholic opponent at the debate in Leipzig during which he uttered the above quote, knew this. He responded at Leipzig that Luther’s approach was “to attach more weight to one’s own interpretation of Scripture than to that of the popes and councils, the doctors and the universities.” Luther’s rejoinder to Eck just doubles down on his insistence:

I am bound, not only to assert, but to defend the truth with my blood and death. I want to believe freely and be a slave to the authority of no one, whether council, university, or pope. I will confidently confess what appears to me to be true, whether it has been asserted by a Catholic or a heretic, whether it has been approved or reproved by a council. (Quoted in Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950, p. 119)

In other words, for him, Luther’s interpretation of the Bible is self-evidently correct, no matter what anyone else has to say about it. But why is Luther’s interpretation authoritative? Does he really have that kind of authority?

So who does have the authority to interpret the Bible? The question keeps getting lost. Under the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli, sola scriptura came to mean more than it had for Luther, going so far as to claim that the Bible is the single, exclusive source of all Christian doctrine and practice, which led Zwingli to abolish every Christian ritual he couldn’t find in the Bible. Zwingli concluded that the “doctrines and traditions of men” (i.e., things he didn’t see in the Bible) were irrelevant to salvation. This view is the position of most Protestant denominations today, who have largely abandoned the notion of tradition entirely. Some differ on whether what is not mentioned in Scripture is forbidden or to be left to local custom to decide. Either way, authoritative tradition is rejected in this view.

Not all Protestants wholly reject tradition, however. For some Lutherans and Reformed Christians, certain confessional statements, creeds, or compilations of doctrine are considered authoritative, though their authority generally rests on their being seen as the correct way of interpreting the Bible. This adherence to Protestant traditions is called confessionalism, and while it is usually not described in terms of authoritative tradition, that is how it functions. One can, for instance, suffer excommunication if one disagrees with enough of a particular confessional document that has been approved by the denomination. Within this approach, Scripture is often referred to as a “supreme” authority.

The early Reformers’ dedication to sola scriptura served their goal of attempting to recover the early Church from under the layers they viewed the Roman Catholic Church as having accumulated on top of it. The Bible was the only certain, infallible witness to early Christianity that they knew of, a kind of tether to the apostolic Church. Thus, they adopted the motto ad fontes (“to the sources”).

For instance, the medieval Vulgate (the Latin Bible in use in the sixteenth century) showed signs of corruption—“repent” got replaced with “do penance.” This sense that true Christianity had become buried underneath layers of accumulated extras led the Reformers to do a kind of archaeology on other sources, too. They began look to early Christian history for a pure, pristine faith, represented by what they could plainly read in Scripture. They assumed anything else was a later and therefore illegitimate development. For instance, Calvin’s argument against iconography was that there were no icons prior to the sixth century (which was not true, but he presumably didn’t have the sources available to prove that to him).

Orthodoxy, by contrast, holds the Scripture in extremely high regard, but holds it to be a book written as part of the life of the Church. As such, reading it correctly requires the light of Holy Tradition, the faith given to the apostles by Christ via oral teaching and preserved within the Church. The Orthodox also don’t need “archaeology” when it comes to Christian life and faith. They hold that, for Orthodoxy, there never was a break from that continuity with the early Church. Certainly, the Orthodox would agree with the Reformers that Rome has added to the apostolic deposit, but not that recovering it means becoming suspicious of almost all Church tradition.

Sola scriptura is the most important defining and distinctive doctrine for all of Protestantism. With this principle, any doctrine or practice may be “proven” from Scripture, depending on how one reads it. On this principle all the Protestant denominations were founded. Without it, the question of ecclesiastical authority comes into play, and the believer finds that he has to be obedient to someone else’s interpretation of the Scripture.

Most Protestant denominations believe that all Christian doctrine may be derived from Scripture by means of the “plain sense” of the text, which is derived from the use of textual study, history, and reason. Its purpose is to find out what the writers “really meant” when they penned the books of the Bible. With this in mind, most sola scriptura believers regard their own interpretation of the Bible as right, while those who differ are wrong. Those who are wrong are so usually because of alleged flaws in their logic.

A notable exception is classical Anglicanism/Episcopalianism, which since the late sixteenth century has claimed to base its doctrine on three pillars: scripture, reason, and tradition. Most of modern Anglicanism has all but rejected all three in any meaningful sense. Some do this by adding a fourth pillar: experience (which is said to justify doctrinal revision). In the United States, the United Kingdom, and some other places, one can now teach and do almost anything at all and remain an Anglican in good standing. African Anglicans and their brethren in other parts of the Global South are much more conservative in their approach to doctrine. There are also significant conservative movements of Anglicans in the US and UK, though they are both fractured and in the minority.

The Orthodox have multiple objections to the doctrine of sola scriptura, on the grounds of reason, on practical grounds, and also from church history and tradition. First, sola scriptura fails its own test, since such an idea is found nowhere in the Bible. It is true that the Bible speaks very highly of the value of Scripture (e.g., 2 Tim. 3:16), but never does it say that it is exclusively authoritative, nor even that it is supremely so. Ironically, the Bible describes the Church (not itself) as the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

St. Paul also commands believers in Thessalonica not merely to read the Bible, but to “stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word [of mouth] or our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:15). That is, Paul expects them to hold to church tradition, whether it is written (Scripture) or passed on by oral teaching. Readers of the Protestant-made New International Version (NIV) translation will miss this, because the NIV translates the Greek word paradosis (“tradition”) as “teaching” when it is used in a good light but as “tradition” when used negatively. This approach distorts what the Bible actually says. The biblical text distinguishes between two different kinds of paradosis—the tradition of man and the tradition of God.

Another logical problem with making the Bible an exclusively or supremely authoritative source is that its very design does not lend itself to such usage. There is no systematic theology or catechism in the Bible. There is also no manual in it on important questions such as how to do a worship service. The Bible is a collection of documents of various genres written for various purposes: history, poetry, pastoral teaching, prophecy, and apocalypse. But nowhere do we find in it an exhaustive manual on Christian life.

A number of practical problems are introduced by sola scriptura, as well. The old Roman Catholic characterization of sola scriptura, “every man his own pope,” also seems apt to the Orthodox, though we see individual infallibility as the problem, no matter who claims it. Because every believer becomes an authority in interpreting the Scripture, we have to ask how we are to defend against heresy. If everyone is qualified to interpret Scripture, who can judge if someone is teaching heresy? And how can Protestants object to an infallible papacy while teaching their own personal infallibility? The pope is not infallible, but I am?

Ironically, in rejecting church tradition, Protestants still tend to interpret according to traditions, anyway. There is a certain consistency among most Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, and so on, because they are following their own teachers in the faith. Thus, they violate their own principle every time a sermon or Bible class is taught, because in all those cases, a teacher is presuming to tell someone else how to read the Bible.

As noted above, some Protestants do appeal to their own traditional texts, such as the Confessionalists. This is sometimes said to distinguish sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone,” that the Bible is supremely authoritative, making some tradition permissible) from solo scriptura (“Scripture alone,” that the Bible is exclusively authoritative, rejecting all tradition). Some may even admit that the ecclesial community is authoritative in interpreting Scripture. But then we have to raise the question: Why is the Westminster Confession (for instance) authoritative? Whose authority does it represent? Why choose it over Roman Catholic or Orthodox tradition? In the end, the problem is still the same—without an ecclesiology which puts one church in charge of doctrine, you’re left with competing opinions whose authority rests finally on their appeal to their listeners.

In terms of the actual working-out of the interpretation of Scripture, most sola scriptura believers will say that the Holy Spirit guides the individual reader. But if that is true, why is there such conflict within Protestantism over what the Bible means? If the text is clear on its own, why has this hermeneutic (interpretive principle) not united all Protestants together but instead continues to fracture them? How does the honest, but confused, believer decide between all the different people who insist that “the Bible clearly says” various things, yet all disagree with each other? How does he decide whose claim on the Holy Spirit’s guidance is the valid one? Does he just default to his own understanding? If so, it would seem there actually is no authority.

Some will say that parts of the Bible are less clear and that we should interpret the unclear passages by means of the clear ones. But who decides which passages are going to be defined as “clear”? Again, we are left with the problem of authority.

Others with a high view of the academic world will turn to biblical scholars, using historical-critical methods of exegesis and textual criticism, to make clear what is not. Yet anyone even slightly familiar with the world of academic biblical scholarship will see its chaos and division. Academic biblical studies often yield denial of basic Christian truths such as the historical reality of Jesus or the Resurrection. Unity by this method is even further away.

And what happens when the next manuscript variant or archaeological find is uncovered? Should we (once again) revolutionize the Christian faith? Those who watch the media around Christmas and Easter with diligence will note that they somehow always come up with some startling “discovery” from the ancient world that is supposed to make believers question everything they’ve always affirmed—the “real” tomb of Jesus, the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” etc.

There are also several major historical problems with sola scriptura. First, this doctrine is absent from the writings of the Church Fathers. Whether one considers them authoritative or not, what it means is that, if the apostles taught sola scriptura (despite leaving it out of the New Testament), their disciples and those who followed them don’t seem to have learned that lesson. The Fathers definitely speak highly of Scripture and even sometimes use language that sounds like they make it supremely authoritative, but they’re always interpreting Scripture from within Orthodox Tradition.

Sola scriptura would also have been a practical impossibility for the early Church. After the Resurrection of Jesus, it was roughly twenty to forty years before the New Testament began to be written (some scholars put Paul’s First Thessalonians as the first book to be written, while others give that distinction to Galatians). The last of the New Testament documents, St. John’s Revelation (or Apocalypse), was probably written in the late first century (ca. AD 81–96). Christians therefore had to wait decades before it was finished.

When he finished Revelation, the Apostle John did not send his manuscript off to a publisher along with the rest of the New Testament books and get them published for distribution in the Church. These various books circulated separately for a long time, being read in church services and quoted by later Christian writers, often alongside other books that we would not now recognize as Scripture.

While there are earlier canonical lists (such as a list produced by Origen in the second century and the Muratorian Fragment, which has traditionally been dated to the second century but may be as late as the fourth), it was not until the year 367 that the earliest known exact list of the twenty-seven New Testament books as we now know them was written. In that year, St. Athanasius the Great, the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria (and the hero of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea in 325, though he was just a deacon at the time), wrote a letter to his churches instructing them on which books were to be considered canonical in terms of their use in church services.

This is the context in which the canon of the Scripture arose—what was being read out loud in liturgical services in church. At first, there were books included alongside the New Testament we know that were getting read in church, such as the Apocalypse of Peter or an epistle from the Corinthians to Paul. Over time, in their care for their churches, bishops began to compare notes and issue lists of what was permissible to be read aloud. Athanasius’s list in 367 is the first time we see the New Testament we recognize, but it was sometime in the fifth century before that same list was used everywhere in the Church.

From the time of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to when Christians could finally point to a canon for the New Testament was more than three hundred years and probably closer to four hundred. The question, “What does the Bible say?” could not be asked, because the question, “What is the Bible?” had not yet been answered. The Bible itself has a history—not just the details of the words in the texts, but which texts came to be seen as Scripture.

Ironically for the Reformers, “What is the Bible?” came to be asked again in the sixteenth century, because they proceeded to edit the actual canon to suit their own tastes, removing books from the Old Testament that had been considered canonical for centuries (e.g., the Maccabees, Tobit, etc.). What good is sola scriptura when you can change what constitutes Scripture? And where in the canon is the canon itself defined? That table of contents has to come from somewhere.

For the Orthodox, the Bible—its contents, canonization, and interpretation—have always been a matter for the Church community. Christ gave authority to His Church, and the Church used that authority to write, compile, and canonize the Bible. The Church still uses that authority to interpret it. Scripture therefore cannot be reliably interpreted outside the one Church.

Sola Fide

The doctrine of sola fide teaches that justification comes by faith alone. In classical Protestant doctrine, justification is being “declared righteous” by God, receiving “imputed” righteousness. The doctrine of imputed righteousness is in contrast with the Roman Catholic teaching of infused righteousness (that God puts righteousness into the believer and it becomes part of him through merit received in the spiritual life).

To have righteousness imputed is to be regarded or seen as righteous by God because He has “put on” (rather than “put into”) or clothed the believer with Christ’s righteousness; yet there is no sense in which the believer is actually righteous in himself. Imputation is a change in legal status, but not in personal holiness, not even a change effected by grace. In this, the doctrine directly descends from late medieval western theology based in a juridical view of sin with its emphasis on legal status (a view which has been de-emphasized in more recent Roman Catholic theology).

Especially in Luther, faith alone is specifically contrasted with good works. For him, good works have nothing to do with salvation other than being a sign or result of true faith. True faith will always lead to two things: justification and good works. Luther described sola fide as being the doctrine by which the church stands or collapses.

Sola fide finds its clearest formulations in both the Augsburg Confession and the Westminster Confession of Faith, which are authoritative doctrinal statements among Lutheran and Presbyterian Christians, respectively:

Our churches by common consent . . . teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. (Augsburg Confession, 1530)

Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1647)

Sola fide was formulated primarily in response to the Roman Catholic insistence on good works (and the whole system of merit, satisfaction, purgatory, and indulgences), which was interpreted by Luther as trying to earn one’s way to heaven. (That is not what Roman Catholicism officially taught, but it was a popular understanding of Catholic doctrine in the sixteenth century and was likely preached by those who sold indulgences.) From this comes the almost universal Protestant tradition about Roman Catholicism, that it teaches “works righteousness,” that Catholics believe that they “earn” salvation. The Reformers also viewed monasticism in this way, that it is an attempt to earn salvation. We should especially note here, however, that the language of “satisfaction” is retained from Roman Catholicism, continuing its legal emphasis in soteriology.

Luther was so insistent on this formulation of salvation coming by faith and not works that, when he was translating Romans 3:28 into German, he added the German word allein (“alone”), so that the verse would read: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith alone apart from the deeds of the law.” But the word alone is not present in the Greek text nor even suggested by the context.

Despite this opposition set up between faith and good works, Luther nevertheless engaged in an extended controversy against the Antinomians, who taught that morality was entirely irrelevant to Christian life. He did not see good works as irrelevant, but rather as the result of faith.

Luther was also so vexed by the apparent opposition to his sola fide doctrine in the Epistle of James that he questioned its apostolic authorship because it is “flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture, [since] it ascribes righteousness to works, and says that Abraham was justified by his works” (Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude). And so Luther concludes that, compared to other New Testament works, “St. James’ Epistle is really an epistle of straw . . . for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it” (Luther’s Works, 35:362). While Luther initially wanted to omit James from his canon, he eventually chose to leave the epistle in place.

He questioned the authority not only of James, but also of Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation—books which had also been questioned much earlier in church history but ultimately accepted by the Church. (In some Lutheran denominations, when a candidate for ordination signs the Oath of Subscription, he can actually opt out of accepting the canonicity of those books.) Ironically, the only place “faith alone” (or sometimes “faith only”) appears as a phrase in the New Testament is in James 2:24: “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” James also says, in 2:17: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” )

In some sectors of Protestantism since the Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century, sola fide came to be understood as meaning simple belief or agreement with certain doctrinal propositions, such as that salvation depends not on faithfulness but on a one-time assent, usually as part of a conversion experience.

Orthodoxy teaches with the Scripture that it is by grace through faith that we are saved, and not of works (Eph. 2:8–9). Where Orthodoxy differs from the doctrine of sola fide is in its understanding of faith, works, and justification. Faith for the Orthodox Christian includes good works, not because they earn salvation, but because they are a form of cooperation with divine grace, which does the work of transformation. Justification for the Orthodox is being made actually righteous, not simply declared so (“imputed”), and is effected by baptism. This is possible because of the presence of God in a person. Furthermore, Orthodoxy has a much broader view of justification (in Greek, dikaisyne), more in line with the use of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5—7), rather than the narrower, juridical notion advanced since the sixteenth century in Roman and Protestant theology.

Based on his Law/Gospel dialectic, Luther misunderstands “good works” in the Scripture as being identical to “the works of the law,” that is, the Mosaic Law of the Jews. Yet while St. Paul preaches against the efficacy of the Jewish law for salvation, he nowhere preaches against good works themselves nor opposes them to faith. “The works of the Law” that do not help us are Jewish tradition, but the good “works” without which faith is “dead” (James 2:17–26) constitute the righteous life of the believer.

Even then, these good works do not by themselves accomplish anything. It is God’s grace that makes the transformation happen. Good works are just part of opening the door to that transformation. It is our life of faith and good works that is our cooperation with divine grace, the free gift of God. The Orthodox believe in synergy, working together with God for our salvation (1 Cor. 3:9, 2 Cor. 6:1), a concept not entirely absent but misunderstood and effectively ignored in most Protestant theology.

Sola Gratia

The teaching of sola gratia is that it is only God’s grace that accomplishes salvation. No act of man contributes to salvation in any way. This doctrine is closely associated with sola fide, as faith is what activates saving grace. Sola gratia believers usually state their doctrine in terms opposed to Pelagianism (the doctrine that man may achieve salvation without divine help, because he is not subject to original/ancestral sin, i.e., his will remains unimpaired by the Fall). Anyone suggesting that man has any substantial role in his salvation is usually accused of being either Pelagian or semi-Pelagian.

The most extreme form of this doctrine is held by classical Predestinarianism (often associated with Calvinism, but with a prior history among Catholic Dominicans), which holds that man has absolutely no role in his salvation, not even assent. That is, God saves you whether you want it or not. He also damns you whether you want it or not. This view is called monergism (“one actor,” i.e., God). These two actions together are called double predestination—both the saved and the damned are predestined to their fates. In this case, both faith and grace are gifts from God and do not involve man’s will in any way. Grace is often termed “irresistible.” Most sola gratia believers are not this extreme, however; they believe that man must at least assent to salvation at some point, even if only once. Some Reformed theologians nuance this view with what is called “compatibilism,” allowing room in God’s irresistible decrees for man’s true assent—an assent he is incapable of giving unless God wills it. (Yes, it does seem like a contradiction.)

Orthodox can agree with sola gratia if it is understood to mean that it is God’s grace that does the transforming work of salvation. However, Orthodoxy believes in synergy, that God and man are co-workers (1 Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor. 6:1), that man must “work out [his] own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). The episode of the Annunciation actually illustrates quite well the Orthodox view—namely, that God did not impose His will on the Virgin Mary but desired her consent, which she gave in the fiat mihi (“Let it be unto me”).

One of the principal problems with sola gratia is that grace is understood as something other than God Himself. In Reformation theology, grace is “unmerited favor,” an attitude in God, often contrasted with His wrath. For Orthodoxy, grace is uncreated—that is, grace is God, His actual presence and activity—His energies. But if grace is merely “favor,” then union with God (theosis) is precluded. The distance from God sometimes found in Roman Catholic theology is retained in Protestantism.

Solus Christus

Solus Christus, the teaching that “Christ alone” is the means of salvation, was formulated in response to the strongly mediatorial understanding popular among sixteenth-century Roman Catholic clergy—that only through the clergy can man approach God. Protestants also tend to reject the intercession of saints, since “Christ alone” has anything to do with salvation. The fear is that a fallible human being would presume to stand between a believer and God, that a priest could actually prevent someone from having access to salvation or that a believer would think he couldn’t get to God without going through a saint.

The interpretation of Roman Catholic doctrine about the clergy as mediators finds its highest expression in the teaching that the pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, the notion of meritorious works done by the saints, and most especially the idea that the pope can dispense those merits as he chooses. Although Roman Catholicism often emphasizes the mediatorial role of clergy, in our own day, at least, it is not as extreme as the Reformers characterized it. This Reformation attitude is a sort of Donatism, but instead of a denial of the efficacy of sacraments from a particular wicked priest, it is a denial of the priesthood altogether because of the fallibility of the clergy.

In the sense that the Reformers usually meant it, that salvation is possible only in and through Christ, solus Christus is acceptable to Orthodoxy. However, the accompanying rejection of the clerical role, most especially in serving the sacraments, which some Reformers interpreted this doctrine to include, is not acceptable to Orthodoxy. They emphasized the “priesthood of all believers” to the exclusion of the sacerdotal priesthood, thereby pitting the laity against the clergy. Orthodoxy also believes in the priesthood of all believers, but not in the eldership (the meaning of the presbyterate) of all believers. Ancient Israel had a similar notion for all believers (Ex. 19:6) yet still retained a sacrificial priesthood to conduct the temple worship. The Orthodox Church has never emphasized the clergy primarily as mediators, because there is only one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5). They are, however, intercessors, just as the saints are. The Orthodox don’t see saints as people who speak to God because we can’t. They are fellow believers whom we call alongside us to pray with us and for us. And clergy also have a role to play in salvation as the ministers of the sacraments, as the ones who are icons of Christ in offering up the sacrifice, but it is not an absolute role. God may save someone in spite of the wickedness of a priest, and we regard all believers as icons of Christ and members of the royal priesthood.

The greatest weakness of solus Christus is that it subtracts from the fullness of Christ in His Body, the Church, not only by pitting the clergy against the laity and ignoring the role of the departed members of the Church (the saints), but by suggesting a disjunction even between the Head (Christ) and the Body (the Church). If we isolate Christ “alone” and pay no attention to how He saves us through and with other members of the Body, then we are in essence discarding ecclesiology, or at least greatly reducing it.

Soli Deo Gloria

Soli Deo gloria is the teaching that to God alone is due glory. This doctrine is a rejection of the veneration of saints and other holy objects or persons. It is a reaction to the ostentatious earthly glory of sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism. In some ways, soli Deo gloria may be regarded as redundant with solus Christus, since it emphasizes salvation as being only from God; but it adds the idea that human beings should not seek out their own glory (in other words, it preaches humility).

Soli Deo gloria also conflates worship with veneration, thus teaching that God alone is both worshiped and venerated. This conflation may be why many Protestants, when seeing the veneration practiced in Orthodox Christianity, mistake it for worship and thereby conclude that the Orthodox Christian kissing an icon or bowing before a cross is committing idolatry.

Orthodoxy agrees with the essence of this doctrine, that God alone is worthy of our worship. However, it is a rejection of His Incarnation and of His work in human beings in history to deny honor to those people and places, because we see the holiness that entered matter in the Incarnation as extending everywhere that Christ’s blessing is given.

In Orthodoxy, worship is a total self-giving and union with God primarily through sacrifice. Therefore, it makes no sense that we would worship saints or holy objects. Veneration, by contrast, is showing the respect and honor due where God has worked, whether in a person (such as a saint) or even inanimate objects (such as the tomb of Christ).

Veneration is given to saints only because of the work of Christ in them. It in no way detracts from the worship due to God alone. We should of course never seek our own glory, but there is nothing wrong with showing respect and veneration to God’s saints, who show forth His glory. Protestants often show veneration of a sort to people in their own traditions they admire, though they usually stop short of the sort of piety that is normal in Orthodox veneration practices, such as kissing icons or singing hymns. They may name churches or even entire denominations after their heroes, however, and there is a tradition of telling the stories of Protestant martyrs or missionaries which in some ways parallels Orthodox hagiography.

Soli Deo gloria, while attempting to preserve the exclusive worship of God, in fact detracts from His saving work in His creation, because it denies the fullest sense of recognition for the work that God does in His saints. Underneath it is the sensibility that there can be no true union between the Uncreated and the created, only a bestowal of “favor.” When applied to Christology, this is a form of Nestorianism.

An interesting note: In its emphasis on humility, the phrase soli Deo gloria has been used as a way of giving thanks to God for a particular work of art. The great Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach, for instance, wrote “SDG” on many of his musical manuscripts.

MAGISTERIAL REFORMATION DENOMINATIONS

Aside from the general inheritance of the five solas from the Magisterial Reformation, the various denominations that arose from the first wave of the Reformation also have their own distinctives.

Lutheranism

Views of scriptural interpretation now vary within Lutheranism and have diversified since the time of Luther himself. Some are influenced by eighteenth-century rationalism, which questioned the authority of the Bible itself. Some Lutherans follow a nineteenth-century approach which emphasized biblical inerrancy, a reaction to rationalism, emphasizing the correctness of the Bible in most details (and for some on the extreme, in every detail). The nineteenth century also saw a renewed interest in confessionalism, placing authority in early Lutheran texts (e.g., the Book of Concord, the Augsburg Confession, etc.)—essentially an appeal to Lutheran tradition.

Orthodoxy regards all Scripture as being reliably interpreted only within the Orthodox Church. Rationalism has no place within Orthodoxy, because human reason is notoriously fallible. Biblical inerrancy is also problematic for the Orthodox, in that it isolates the Scripture as a standard from the Church that produced it. If we might adopt some sense of inerrancy or infallibility, it would be in an unbroken continuum between Christ and His Church and the Scripture, not in isolating any of them from each other.

Orthodoxy lauds calls to return to tradition, but in the case of Lutheran confessionalism, it’s a tradition that is divorced from Holy Tradition and therefore incomplete or incorrect in various ways. Nevertheless, the confessional Lutheran respect for tradition is something that appeals to the Orthodox, and we share common ground especially when Lutherans reference the Church Fathers, though in many cases we read them differently.

Lutherans in general regard the hermeneutic of Scripture as being divided into Law and Gospel. Law is obedience to God’s commands, while Gospel is the merciful work of God in Christ that grants salvation. Only Gospel is truly necessary for salvation (see above on sola fide and sola gratia), but the Law can help bring us to salvation in that it shows us our sins. While there is something to this arrangement that we can appreciate as a shorthand, Orthodoxy does not divide the Scriptures this way.

In contrast to Orthodoxy, Lutherans recognize only two sacraments, baptism and Holy Communion, though there is no official enumeration. Confession was practiced for the first century of Lutheranism (and was initially seen by Luther as a sacrament) and is seeing a small comeback in our time. Lutherans vary as to whether anything “real” happens in the sacraments, depending largely on their divisions according to the above-described hermeneutical camps.

Lutherans traditionally believe that baptism is a saving work of God (though they differ on what that means), and they administer it to infants. In this, they are similar to the Orthodox.

For Lutherans, Holy Communion traditionally includes a belief in the real presence of Christ, but not in terms of the bread and wine being changed into the Body and Blood of Christ in the Aristotelian terms adopted by Rome. Rome teaches transubstantiation, that the “substance” of the bread and wine are changed, but that their “accidents” remain, which is why they still look the same. Luther believed rather that Christ’s Body and Blood were “in, with and under” the bread and wine (though he does not settle on a specific formulation for this until his Small Catechism, which uses “under”), language used to expand the theology in a more mystical direction.

Lutherans point out that both Christ and Paul continue to use the terms bread and wine for what has been changed—this means that the bread and wine are still present even while Christ’s Body and Blood are now present. This view is sometimes called consubstantiation by non-Lutherans, but that term is usually rejected by Lutherans as too philosophical and suggesting something too “carnal,” i.e., that they believe in “impanation” (that Christ becomes incarnate as bread). In terms of what they actually believe, most Lutherans are now consubstantiationists of some sort even if they do not use the term.

Orthodoxy has always shied away from such speculation or definition and says simply that the bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood. How this happens, whether the bread and wine are still in some way present, whether continuing to refer to them as bread and wine means something about the nature of that presence, and so forth, are not treated as dogmatic concerns. Luther’s “in, with and under” language may also be understood in an essentially Orthodox manner.

Luther himself also taught a doctrine of theosis (in German, vergoettlichung), but it is not well known among most modern Lutherans. A number of Finnish Lutherans have done work to reveal this as part of Lutheran tradition, though their work is mostly known only in European scholarly circles. In Finland, this common ground with the Orthodox has served as the basis for theological dialogue.

In the second generation of Lutheranism, a correspondence was held between the theologians at Tübingen and Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople. The Lutherans were convinced that the Orthodox would turn out to be like themselves, since they also rejected papal supremacy. The dialogue ultimately faltered along lines that still exist today—the rejection by Lutherans of monasticism, the views on good works, etc. Jeremiah finally broke off the correspondence himself, saying that the Lutherans should write to him again only for the sake of friendship. (We will mention more about this below.)

The major Lutheran denominations in America are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA, which was a 1988 merger of three denominations), the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). The Evangelical Free Church, which also has a presence in the US, is a split from the state Lutheran churches of Europe.

In general, the ELCA, the largest, is regarded as the most liberal. It ordains women, accepts homosexual unions and ministers, and is the least confessional of all Lutherans. The LCMS and WELS are much more conservative, do not ordain women, and are more likely to be confessional. There are many smaller Lutheran denominations in the United States, including the recently formed (as of 2010) North American Lutheran Church (NALC), which is a breakaway body from the ELCA and describes itself as representing the “theological center” of Lutheranism in America. The NALC retains the ordination of women but is less likely to hold to liberal moral positions on issues such as homosexuality or abortion.

The more conservative denominations are more likely to have a liturgical type of worship, coming from the western tradition of the mass—a handful may even use the word mass and sometimes call their clergy “Father.” This worship is still relatively informal in comparison with the more catholic traditions, however, with a higher emphasis on preaching than in most liturgical churches. Most WELS churches are non-liturgical, which is also common in the LCMS. Traditional styles are sometimes also offered alongside the contemporary-style services. A few Lutheran denominations, such as Swedish Lutherans, maintain a theology of apostolic succession for their bishops, though it is merely in terms of succession of ordination, not maintenance of apostolic faith. Not all Lutherans have bishops. For those that do, however, the bishop is primarily an administrative rather than sacramental office.

In other countries, Lutherans are often simply called “Evangelicals” (the original term), which has a meaning different from its meaning within the US. In Germany, Evangelische refers to Protestantism in general. In its original usage in Germany, Evangelical meant “of the Gospel” and referred to the Law/Gospel hermeneutic.

The Reformed Churches

Calvinism

Calvinism, named for the teachings of John Calvin (a lawyer from Geneva), strongly influenced a number of Protestant groups. Calvinism is often identified with Predestinarianism, but that is one part of a much larger tradition. A better place to locate Calvinism’s key distinctiveness is in its teaching on imputed righteousness within a covenant framework.

The covenant framework, as reflected in the biblical covenants, is the paradigm for how God has acted through humanity, e.g., the covenants of creation, with Noah, with Abraham, or with Moses. (This covenant framework should not be confused with Dispensationalism, which we will discuss later. The core difference for our purposes is that Dispensationalists see a discontinuity between the Old and New Covenants, whereas the Reformed tradition sees a continuity between them.)

All covenants are founded on conditionality—God is the sovereign king who issues the covenantal blessings (e.g., eternal life), but receiving them is conditional, varying based on the terms of the covenant. For instance, the covenant with Adam had but one command (don’t eat from the tree), while the covenant with Moses was a whole system of law. The recipient of the covenant has a period within which to fulfill his part of the bargain (a “probationary period”). The two covenants which are especially key in the Old Testament are the ones with Adam and Moses.

Adam fails to keep his covenant, resulting in exile from Eden. Israel fails to keep the covenant with Moses, resulting in exile from the Promised Land. God, knowing they would fail, had already prepared a new covenant, the Covenant of Redemption—a covenant between the Father and Son. (Views vary as to whether God’s decree of predestination either causes or is caused by His decree of man’s Fall—supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, respectively.)

When the Son fulfills the conditions of the covenant, He receives a people for Himself. Both Adam and Israel fail to become that people, so Christ Himself is both the New Adam and the New Israel, and He succeeds where they failed (e.g., by resisting temptation from Satan which Adam could not and by keeping the Law of Moses). The new covenant with Christ should not be understood as a “Plan B” that God institutes because the earlier covenants failed, because predestination is involved—God knew about and is active in all stages.

There is a condition on mankind in the new covenant in addition to the conditions set on Christ—faith. This is where Calvinism draws on the general Reformation principle of sola fide. Paul, therefore, is read as making the new covenant analogous with the Abrahamic covenant—based on faith—rather than the Mosaic covenant, which was based in works.

Within this covenant framework comes Calvinism’s version of imputed righteousness. In this view, the conditions set on mankind are actually met by Christ. Christ obeys the Father both passively and actively. His passive obedience—His suffering on the Cross—satisfies God’s justice, because the sin of the elect is imputed to Christ and then punished in Christ on the Cross. His active obedience—His keeping of the Law of Moses—is imputed to the elect through their faith. And how do you get faith? The Holy Spirit grants it to you, but only if you are already one of the elect, predestined by God.

The Predestinarian stream within Calvinism is a tightly argued, highly rationalistic view of the relationship between God’s foreknowledge, His sovereignty, and man’s free will. While Calvinism itself is often defined by Predestinarianism (especially by its critics and by those who import certain elements of Calvinism into other traditions), the set of doctrines that usually define that view were actually a formulation of the Synod of Dort in 1618–19, more than half a century after the death of Calvin.

The five Canons of Dort condemned Jacobus Arminius and his Remonstrance Movement, and it is these canons which are the basis of “five-point Calvinism.” The Canons of Dort, along with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession, are the Three Forms of Unity forming the doctrinal standards of the continental Reformed churches. The Reformed in the British Isles use the Westminster Standards.

The five points are:

total depravity (the Fall of mankind utterly obliterated any goodness in man, rendering him incapable of choosing God);

unconditional election (God’s choice to save certain people is not based on anything they have done and was made before even creation itself);

limited atonement (Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice on the Cross is salvific for the elect only, because only the elect’s sin is imputed to Christ);

irresistible grace (when God chooses to save someone, he has no choice but to be saved; free will is in no way involved);

perseverance of the saints (once God has saved someone, he will never fall away; those who seem to fall away were never really saved).

The first initials of these doctrines form the acronym TULIP, which is a useful mnemonic device for remembering them all: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints. (The order of the Canons of Dort is different, however, and would form the acronym ULTIP instead.)

Implied in these points (and taught by Calvin) is the corollary that if man has no choice in being saved and if God saves only some, then that means that He has deliberately chosen some for damnation—all whether anyone desires it or not, whether they want to follow God or not (though a reprobate person would never want to follow Him; those who are damned are not among the elect and are instead said to be “reprobate”). This view is called double predestination, and it has its origins in some of the errors of St. Augustine. In essence, before all time, God wrote two lists, the elect and the reprobate, and there is nothing anyone can do to get his name moved from one list to the other.

Orthodoxy rejects all five points, which are mainly predicated on a denial of man’s free will. As the famous Protestant preacher John Wesley once pointed out, “But if this be so, then is all preaching vain. It is needless to them that are elected; for they, whether with preaching or without, will infallibly be saved.” Likewise, the reprobate, “whether with preaching or without, will infallibly be damned” (Sermon 128, “Free Grace”). For Orthodoxy, although man’s will is infected by the Fall, his ability to choose God has not been destroyed but only impaired.

Orthodox Christians see Calvinism as monstrous, most especially because it depicts a God who arbitrarily saves some people and damns others, but also because God actually decrees the Fall of mankind. Such a “God” is not the God of a loving relationship, the gentle Christ who woos His bride, the Church. Rather, this is a capricious, erratic, vengeful “God,” who saves some men and damns others “for His glory” (a phrase used often by Calvin and turned into something of a slogan by Calvinists). Further, Christ did not die on the Cross in order to punish the imputed sins of the elect, but rather so that He might enter into death and destroy its power.

Calvin is consistent in his low view of man’s nature and his commitment to double predestination, and he uses strong language to express it:

Hence, even infants bringing their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, suffer not for another’s, but for their own defect. For although they have not yet produced the fruits of their own unrighteousness, they have the seed implanted in them. Nay, their whole nature is, as it were, a seed-bed of sin, and therefore cannot but be odious and abominable to God. . . . Those who term it concupiscence use a word not very inappropriate, provided it were added . . . that everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, is defiled and pervaded with this concupiscence; or, to express it more briefly, that the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence. (Institutes of the Christian Religion II.1.8)

Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which He has determined in Himself what would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but eternal life is fore-ordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death. (Institutes III.21.5)

We may rest assured that God would never have suffered any infants to be slain except those who were already damned and predestined for eternal death. (Commentary on Deuteronomy 13:15)

The Eucharist is also central for Calvin—so central, in fact, that he taught his schism was justified because Rome had effectively “abolished” the Eucharist by its distortions. And the Heidelberg Catechism similarly says that mass is “an accursed idolatry”(Question 80). Calvin’s doctrine of the Eucharist emphasizes that believers are in a sense transported into heaven and there feed spiritually on Christ, but that Christ is fed on by faith only and not with the mouth. Thus, receiving Christ in the Eucharist is not centered in bread and wine but in the celebration of the sacrament as a whole.

This approach contrasts with Orthodoxy, which believes that Christ’s Body and Blood are objectively what is being received by the communicant in the mouth, which is why receiving can be to one’s damnation: “For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body” (1 Cor. 11:29). While the Orthodox would agree with much of what Calvin emphasizes in the Eucharist, it is what he rejects that is the problem.

Calvinists after Calvin are extremely diverse in their eucharistic theology—what they share is the teaching that Christ is not objectively present in the bread and wine. If He is present at all, it is only when the believer has faith (an ironic predication of grace upon faith; Calvinism usually goes the other way, that faith is a product of grace). A handful of Calvinist historical figures (such as the Puritan Richard Baxter) also taught a doctrine of eucharistic receptionism—Christ becomes locally present in the bread and wine only when the believer has faith.

Calvin himself also taught theocracy, subjecting the government to the Church, which led to the burning of one heretic in Geneva and to the overthrow of the English king by Oliver Cromwell (it was during Cromwell’s reign that the Westminster Standards were produced). But this is no longer a part of most Calvinist belief. There is, however, a movement within Presbyterianism called Theonomy (also called Dominionism or Christian Reconstruction), which teaches that the Old Testament law should be instituted in modern societies.

In fairness, it should be noted that the one heretic who was burned, Michael Servetus (Miguel de Serveto), was strongly heretical, rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity and calling for the violent overthrow of both Catholic and Protestant societies. Also, his execution occurred in 1533, before Calvin himself had much influence in the Geneva government. Calvin even interceded with him several times to try to get him to recant. So Calvin was not a violent theocrat himself. Yet in contrast with all this, the Orthodox do not teach the theocracy that allows heretics to be burned, kings overthrown in theological revolution, or the Old Testament law reinstituted.

Among Reformed churches, church government tends to take the form of regional governance by a council of presbyters (elders) rather than bishops. There is usually a distinction between teaching and ruling presbyters—in some denominations, this distinction is just one of function, while others hold them to be truly different offices. In a handful of contexts, the teaching presbyter is called a “bishop” or “superintendent.” He may also be known as a “minister of the word.” There are also deacons, who mainly take care of functions not related to teaching or governance.

Most Reformed denominations no longer hold to historic Calvinist doctrine. A handful still do. Many denominations will ordain women. The United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Reformed Church in America have embraced a highly liberal approach to theology and morality.

Zwinglianism

Zwinglianism, based in the teachings of Huldrych Zwingli of Switzerland (who predated Calvin in the Swiss Reformation), is not represented by any specific denomination in our own time, because his movement gets absorbed into the larger Reformed movement. Nevertheless, Zwingli profoundly influenced a number of Reformed groups, including those otherwise regarded as Calvinist. There is no agreed-upon definition of “Zwinglianism” per se, but Zwingli is most remembered for his teaching that the sacraments are purely symbolic.

Zwingli and Luther agreed on a number of important points but diverged on others, most especially the Eucharist, which Zwingli regarded as being solely symbolic. For Zwingli, it was not a present reality but a mere sign of God’s past acts. He also regarded the teaching that baptism actually accomplished anything salvific as superstition. He had an essentially dualistic view of the universe, that material reality had no part to play in salvation.

Zwingli’s version of sola scriptura was more radical than Luther’s. Instead of its being merely the highest authority for Christian life, Zwingli taught that Scripture had exclusive, independent authority. He also taught that Scripture was “perspicacious,” meaning that any believer can pick up the Bible and understand it, aided only by the Holy Spirit. He was largely responsible for the unmooring of Scripture from all sense of tradition. Scripture was to be read in exclusive isolation and all meaning derived from that method. (He nevertheless selectively quoted from the Church Fathers in an attempt to prove that his views were not exclusively his own.)

Reformed churches previously worshiped in a liturgical manner, as the Lutherans did, but now virtually all of them—especially the Dutch Reformed—have abandoned liturgical worship in favor of the worship styles inherited from the revivalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The primary focus in the worship of these churches is the sermon.

Arminianism

The five points of Calvinism were formulated in reaction to Arminianism, first elucidated in the seventeenth century by Jacobus Arminius and intended to correct what he was seeing in Reformed teaching. Arminius, unlike Calvin, taught that man’s free will was real and effective in salvation or damnation, and in this he is in agreement with Orthodoxy. The Wesleyan form of Arminianism taught that any predestination on the part of God is according to God’s foreknowledge—that is, because God knew that certain people would freely choose to be saved, He acted in accordance with that choice. This is also essentially Orthodox. Regarding predestination, Arminius himself simply rejected it. Much of what is thought of as Arminianism today is really the Wesleyan version of it, taught by John Wesley.

Calvin taught that man is totally depraved, and so all choosing of God is the result of the direct action of divine grace. Arminius taught, however, that enough of the human will remains intact that man can choose God. He also taught that Christ died for the sins of all mankind. In this, his thinking is very much like Orthodoxy. Like most Western theologians, he also taught the “satisfaction of divine justice” theory of salvation. Like Orthodoxy, however, he taught that it was possible to fall away from God. Unlike Orthodoxy, he may have believed that it was impossible to return from such apostasy.

Arminianism in one form or another has profoundly influenced much of modern Protestantism.

The major Reformed denominations in America are the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), Reformed Church in America (RCA, “Dutch Reformed”), Christian Reformed Church (CRC, “Dutch Reformed”), United Reformed Church (URC, “Dutch Reformed”), and the United Church of Christ (UCC). Of these, the PCUSA, UCC, and the RCA are largely liberalized in their moral theology; they also de-emphasize questions of personal salvation in favor of social issues.

Like the Lutherans, the mainline Presbyterians (PCUSA) have also recently suffered a second group of breaks in America, largely along the same lines—ordination of women is retained by the new denominations, but liberal moral positions on sexuality are rejected. The two largest of the breakaway Presbyterian denominations are the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, which are largely made up of former PCUSA churches. The PCA broke away in 1973 when it rejected women’s ordination. The OPC is a much older break, formed in 1936.

Anglicanism and its Heirs

Anglicanism, represented in America primarily by the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) and secondarily by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), originated in a sixteenth-century schism from the Roman Catholic Church in England. The initial schism occurred not over doctrine, but over politics—mainly the pope’s refusal to grant King Henry VIII a divorce so he could remarry. A disavowal of the pope’s powers over the Church naturally soon followed, along with an affirmation that the monarch of England was the “Supreme Governor” of the Church there, outranking even the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Ironically, Henry had received the title Defender of the Faith from the pope before the schism, in reward for a writing defending the sacraments and the supremacy of the pope against early Protestant Reformers.)

Immediately after the schism from Rome in the 1530s, Anglican theology remained virtually unchanged from its Roman Catholic origins, apart from its rejection of papal supremacy. Soon, however, it began to vacillate between the conservative theology of Rome and the more radical theology of the Reformers on the continent. This vacillation often followed changes in the ecclesiastical sympathies of whoever occupied the English throne.

Beginning with the Elizabethan Religious Settlement in 1559, the Church of England began to form what it called a via media, that is, a “middle way” between Catholicism and Protestantism (though it was strongly Calvinistic until around 1660, owing to Queen Elizabeth I’s church being dominated by men from Zurich after she officially switched England’s religion back to Protestantism in 1559).

Despite the desire for a via media, however, Anglicanism eventually drifted more and more toward Protestantism while retaining some of the outward forms of Rome’s liturgical worship. This ultimately became the definition of the via media—mostly Catholic liturgical worship but allowing Protestant theology. With this Elizabethan “compromise,” Anglicans could all say the same words in worship while holding either Catholic or Protestant beliefs.

With the strong influence of Calvinism on Anglicanism, Britain saw the rise of the Puritans, Presbyterians, Separatists, and Congregationalists, many of whom were persecuted in England and headed for America (the famous Pilgrims of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts among them).

The nineteenth-century Oxford Movement led many Anglicans to recover Catholic faith and practice. Scholars translated the writings of the Church Fathers (and English speakers who read the Fathers owe much to this movement), which in turn showed the separation between Protestantism and the early Church. A number of catholic-minded Anglicans were received into the Roman Church, though some began to look to the East.

In our own time, conservative, “catholic” Anglicanism exists primarily in the Global South (though many of these may be more Evangelical in worship style), with small pockets in the North (usually calling themselves “Anglo-Catholics”) whose theology is in some respects quite close to Orthodoxy. These Anglo-Catholics may belong to various small groupings referred to collectively as the “Anglican Continuum.” The Continuum groups are usually not in communion with the mainstream Anglican churches.

The majority of Anglicans and Episcopalians in the Global North are highly theologically liberal, however. They not only ordain women and openly practicing homosexuals, but they often may be found denying central truths common to almost all other Christians, such as the divinity of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the reality of the Resurrection—Bishop John Shelby Spong, the former bishop of Newark, is among the most famous of these.

Many among the more liberal wing will even incorporate non-Christian elements into their worship, such as paganism, witchcraft, and Buddhism. (I was once particularly grieved at seeing a statue of Buddha in the Episcopal chapel on the ancient holy island of Iona in Scotland, directly facing an Orthodox icon of the Resurrection.) Because of this theological chaos, a number of more conservative parishes and whole dioceses have broken away from their ecclesiastical provinces and are aligning themselves with Global South provinces, which are even now on the brink of excommunicating the Global North provinces. The ACNA is the most significant of these realigned groups.

Given this situation, the differences that Orthodox in America and Europe have with most Anglicans they may meet are so numerous that it may be almost impossible to find any common ground. This extreme liberalism in Anglicanism is of only relatively recent development, however, beginning in the twentieth century. Before that time, there were actually ongoing talks about establishing communion between Anglicanism and the Orthodox Church. As the Anglican and Episcopal churches have slid further into theological liberalism, their numbers have drastically fallen, and a number of their clergy and faithful have become either Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Even some Anglo-Catholics have gone in this direction, including one bishop who became an Orthodox priest, my friend Fr. Alban (formerly Robert) Waggener in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Methodism

Methodists began as an eighteenth-century movement within the Anglican church but eventually broke off to form a new denomination, originally called Methodist Episcopalians. The brothers John and Charles Wesley, the movement’s founders, along with their followers, earned the nickname Methodist due to espousing a “method” of Christian life, including ascetical elements. The Wesleys were clergy of the Church of England, but their followers eventually broke away from Anglicanism, much to the Wesleys’ chagrin. The Wesleys read the Orthodox Fathers of the East and based some theology on them, including the notion of “entire sanctification,” which is similar in some ways to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis.

Like most mainline denominations, modern Methodism has moved away from the Wesleys’ emphasis on personal salvation and toward an emphasis on social justice, also referred to as the social gospel. There is also a great deal of theological liberalism in Methodism, and the largest Methodist denomination in the United States, the United Methodist Church, was founded explicitly on an agreement to accept doctrinal pluralism.

Most Methodists ordain women (including as bishops) and generally subscribe to a purely symbolic view of the Eucharist. Like most of the churches of the Magisterial Reformation, they will baptize infants, though they do not have any strong sacramental theology attached to the act.

The Wesleyans (formerly called “Wesleyan Methodists”) are essentially an offshoot of Methodism, though because they came out of the Holiness movement (which will be discussed in chapters five and six), their theology remains more focused on personal salvation than social justice, following more closely the theology of the Wesley brothers. (Three volumes were published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press comparing Orthodox and Wesleyan theology: Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality, Orthodox and Wesleyan Scriptural Understanding and Practice, and Orthodox and Wesleyan Ecclesiology.)

The major Methodist and Wesleyan denominations in America are the United Methodist Church (UMC), the Free Methodist Church (originally so named because you didn’t have to pay for your seat!), the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion), and the Wesleyan Church.

COMMON GROUND: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Almost as soon as it had begun, the Protestant Reformation began to divide into factions, all with differences on major issues of theology. The major sticking points were the issues of (1) whether free will had any role to play in man’s salvation and (2) the true nature of the Eucharist. Many Luther scholars, noting the shift in the theology of a “young Luther” compared to a “later Luther,” acknowledge that the father of the Reformation altered his own theological views on ecclesiology and the sacraments as time went by.

In the generation after Luther, when several theological factions of Protestants had formed, a theological correspondence began between several second-generation Lutheran theologians in Tübingen and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, whose patriarchate had been under Ottoman Turkish rule for over a century.

The Lutherans, it seemed, had hoped to find in the Orthodox East an ally against their common enemy in the Roman papacy. Because the Reformers understood themselves not as innovating in doctrine but rather as purging the Western church of innovations, and because it was believed that the East had retained its purity against the papacy, these Lutherans clearly expected that the Orthodox (“the Greek Church”) were in fact theologically Lutheran.

Over the course of eight years, letters were exchanged between the university theological faculty at Tübingen and Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople, discussing theology and practice within their respective communions. To the Lutherans’ dismay, however, the patriarch eventually asked them to stop writing to him about theological matters, because it was clear to him that they would never be able to agree.

There was, of course, much that they had in common, but there was much on which they differed, some being inheritance from medieval Rome (such as the filioque, justification, unleavened bread in the Eucharist, denying infants communion) and others being distinctly Lutheran positions (including the role of tradition, monasticism, the place of good works, free will, the number of sacraments, how and when baptism and chrismation were to be administered, the nature of the Eucharist, whether the Church and the ecumenical councils could be infallible, the veneration of saints and their icons and relics, and the celebration of feast days). Some areas of common ground included predestination, the Eucharist (for early Lutherans), and Christology.

In short, while there was commonality on a number of subjects, there remained two types of substantial disagreement: the theological inheritance from Rome, and innovations on the part of the Reformers. In particular, the Reformers continued, with Rome, to look at salvation while primarily emphasizing legal terms rather than personal transformation and communion with God. Both emphases were present for medieval Catholicism and early Lutherans, but the legal model predominated.

The linchpin of all the innovations of Protestantism was the doctrine of sola scriptura. Because the Reformers believed they could read the Bible and derive all theology from it without reliance on authoritative Church tradition, or at least without having to be obedient to that tradition, they were bound to make mistakes. Every person brings some tradition to reading the Bible—we all have lenses and biases through which we read. The error is in denying that this is true and also in rejecting that there is the tradition, i.e., the Holy Tradition handed down from the apostles.

The only way to make sure you read the Bible correctly is to make sure that you’re functioning within the succession of tradition begun by the apostles. Because the Reformers accepted without question many of the theological presuppositions of a schismatic Roman church, it was no surprise that they would depart further from the tradition as they departed from Rome.

That said, the Reformers largely conceived of tradition in terms of what they saw in Rome. It was probably not clear to them that the Orthodox represented an unbroken continuity of tradition free of the changes made by Rome.

Without sola scriptura, all of Protestantism’s distinctive doctrines are called into question. With it, however, one can go in nearly any theological direction and claim to be basing it in the Bible. For the Orthodox, however, the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).

One has to wonder how Western Christian history might have turned out differently if those second-generation Lutherans had read the letters of the Ecumenical Patriarch in a spirit of humility and true dialogue; or if other theologians, such Martin Chemnitz (who in many ways echoed the Church Fathers), had been able to join the conversation. Perhaps then their contact with the Eastern Church would have moved in a more favorable direction. Their respect for the purity of the “Greek Church,” however, was not greater than their devotion to their own doctrine, derived from their presuppositions in isolation from Orthodox tradition.

Unfortunately, this desire on the part of some Lutherans to connect with Orthodoxy quickly disappeared, and the various denominations of Protestantism continued their evolution. Today, most Methodists would not be recognizable to John and Charles Wesley, nor would most Lutherans be recognizable to Martin Luther, nor most Calvinists to John Calvin.

All that being said, the great love of traditional Protestants for the Scripture, and in many cases their devotion to history and tradition (albeit a much younger tradition), are points of contact between the churches of the Magisterial Reformation and the Orthodox Church. That contact has led many formed in those churches to find a home in Orthodoxy, even in the modern era. These converts include at least one who became a martyr for the Orthodox faith, St. Elizabeth the New Martyr (1918; she was raised Lutheran), and the greatest writer of our time in the field of church history in English, Professor Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale University (formerly a Lutheran cleric). There are also many former Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, and Methodists among the Orthodox clergy.

Much work remains in terms of contact between these various traditions and the Orthodox tradition. Today, most Protestants are unaware that Orthodoxy even exists, and many Orthodox who might know Christians from those traditions have little to no knowledge of what they believe.

Let’s move now to the next major phase of the beginning of Protestantism, the Radical Reformation.

FOUR

The Radical Reformation

THE END OF ECCLESIOLOGY

One should emphasize that the divine means of Word and sacrament are concerned with the inner man. Hence it is not enough that we hear the Word with our outward ear, but we must let it penetrate to our heart, so that we may hear the Holy Spirit speak there, that is, with vibrant emotion and comfort feel the sealing of the Spirit and the power of the Word. . . . Nor, again, is it enough to worship God in an external temple, but the inner man worships God best in his own temple, whether or not he is in an external temple at the time. (Philipp Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria, trans. Theodore G. Tappert, 117)

Those who did not rightly confess Christ, but sought their righteousness and placed their trust in outward ceremonies, got the upper hand of the world; and therefore it was not necessary that this infant baptism should be confirmed by any papal decree or council, as it gradually and of its own accord stole its way into all classes, nations and tongues and took its full sway; for the whole church, after the demise of the apostles, through the ignorant teachings of the bishops, gradually degenerated from the trust in Jesus Christ to the trust in outward ceremonies, as may be plainly seen. (Menno Simons, “An Explanation of Christian Baptism in the Water, from the Word of God,” in The Complete Works of Menno Simon [sic], 211)

In the year 1817, King Frederick William III of Prussia was still upset. He was a member of the Reformed Church, and his late wife Louise had been a Lutheran. It was not their different church memberships itself that upset him. What bugged him was that he and his queen could not receive communion in each other’s churches. Even though she had been dead for seven years (and he would not remarry for another three), the question was still on his mind, and of course the divided religious loyalties of his subjects also concerned him.

The division of Prussians into two Protestant churches had existed for some two hundred years, when in 1617 Prince-Elector John Sigismund declared his conversion from Lutheranism to Calvinism. Most of his subjects remained Lutheran at the time, but the Reformed faith grew in Prussia after its monarch’s conversion, especially with the reception of many Calvinist refugees fleeing religious persecution in other parts of western Europe. Over time, the descendants of those refugees formed a significant minority in Prussia.

One year after he became king, Frederick issued a new liturgical service book which was to be used in common between both the Reformed and Lutheran Christians in Prussia. It was 1799, Louise was still living, and this would set them and their country on the path to a common religious life.

Frederick’s final solution to this problem in 1817 was to urge that the Reformed and Lutheran churches in Prussia unite into a single denominational administration in a legal act known as the Prussian Union of Churches. It began with the union of two congregations in Potsdam on October 31, 1817, the three hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. Other congregations soon followed. The king’s order actually did not have absolute legal force in itself, because of how the congregations were governed, but many voluntarily chose to become Union churches.

The new, united denomination, which in 1821 took the name The Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian Lands, was founded on the notion of doctrinal pluralism—members were not required to adhere to the classic confessions of either Lutheranism or the Reformed churches—with a common liturgical and parish life. In 1829, the king required all Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prussia to give up their respective names and be renamed Evangelical. The denomination, which suffered various dissensions and schisms over the years in fully implementing the union, eventually became the largest independent church in the German Empire.

What laid the groundwork for the Prussian Union was a movement begun in the sixteenth century, initiated shortly after the Magisterial Reformation, known to historians as the Radical Reformation. This movement had a number of influences, such as pietism, which was begun by a Lutheran pastor but was trans-denominational, and millenarianism, a focus on the coming end of the world.

What characterizes the Radical Reform most, however, is that it was not so much focused on church bodies as organizations; rather, it was a movement within and between various groups of theologians who belonged to different communions. The Radical Reformers reacted not only against the perceived corruption and apostasy of the Roman Catholic Church, but also against the Magisterial Reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, who enjoyed state support for their churches.

The Radicals felt that Luther and Calvin had not gone far enough in their reform, so they took the basic doctrinal presuppositions of the Reformation and carried their logic further. In this revolution within the revolution, the Radicals changed how Scripture was to be read, how church membership was understood, the meaning and practice of baptism, and in some cases, even the traditional doctrines about the identity of God.

In some ways, the Radical Reformers merely took the doctrines of the first Reformers to their logical conclusions. Perhaps the most significant current within the Radical Reformation, however, was the growing notion that Christianity was a sort of private contract between the believer and God, which did not depend on membership in any specific church or confession of any specific doctrinal tradition.

The Radical Reform did eventually produce various denominations, but because its theology crossed denominational lines, in this chapter we will mainly focus our discussions on the movements and their doctrines.

Pietism

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a movement sprang up primarily within German Protestantism known as pietism. Pietism, a reaction against a perception of the mainstream Reformers as focusing too much on doctrine and institutions, sought to refocus the life of the individual believer on personal piety and commitment.

The father of the pietist movement was Philipp Jacob Spener, a German Lutheran theologian and pastor in Frankfurt, who later served as a court chaplain in Dresden and then pastor in Berlin. It was during his time in Frankfurt (1666–1686) that he published his two major works (Pia Desideria in 1675 and Allgemeine Gottesgelehrtheit in 1680) and began the style of pastoral work that would become known as pietism, beginning with small gatherings of believers at his house, where he would read his sermons and host discussions on the Bible and other religious topics. Spener insisted that Christianity be focused on a vigorously strict moral life and sincere love for God. The Christian should be more “practical” than “theological.”

In Pia Desideria (“Earnest desire”), Spener urged the reform and renewal of Lutheran church life through six proposals: (1) private Bible studies of small groups of “churches within churches”; (2) fully congregationalist governance, since the laity were part of the universal priesthood; (3) knowledge of Christianity expressed through daily practice; (4) irenic, kindly treatment of heretics and unbelievers; (5) retooling of university training for clergy, emphasizing the devotional life; and (6) making preaching more practical and focused on the inner life of the believer.

These proposals were controversial but adopted by a good many Lutheran pastors in Germany at the time. The movement came to be called pietism from the Pia (“earnest”) of Spener’s work. In the style of Protestantism that emerged from pietism, what was important was not adherence to the beliefs of the Reformers’ confessions of faith, or membership in a particular church body—rather, individual experience and earnestness came to be the defining characteristic of Christian life.

Pietism originally did not involve any break from the mainstream denominations forming in the seventeenth century—most of the first pietists were Lutherans. What it did, however, was form little “churches within churches,” small gatherings of believers for private devotions, Bible study, and so forth, as Spener had suggested. This activity served to disconnect believers from a strong commitment to their local church as the formal community of worshipers and fellow-communicants.

While the basic motivation for pietism is something Orthodoxy can agree with—a personal commitment to the life in Christ—the practices and results of the pietistic movement are not something the Orthodox Church can laud. Pietism ultimately led to a general feeling that doctrine doesn’t matter very much and that the concrete life of the church as a community is of only secondary importance. But for the Orthodox, personal piety is the expression of the truths of Christian doctrine, and that piety only makes sense within the liturgical community.

The Orthodox theologian and philosopher Christos Yannaras wrote a chapter critiquing pietism in his book The Freedom of Morality, calling the movement (which he observed among some Orthodox in Greece) an “ecclesiological heresy”:

Pietism undermines the ontological truth of Church unity and personal communion, if it does not deny it completely; it approaches man’s salvation in Christ as an individual event, an individual possibility of life. It is individual piety and the subjective process of “appropriating salvation” made absolute and autonomous, and it transfers the possibility of man’s salvation to the realm of individual moral endeavor.

For pietism, salvation is not primarily the fact of the Church, the theanthropic “new creation” of the body of Christ, the mode of existence of its trinitarian prototype and the unity of the communion of persons. It is not man’s dynamic, personal participation in the body of the Church’s communion which saves him despite his individual unworthiness, restoring him safe and whole to the existential possibility of personal universality, and transforming even his sin, through repentance, into the possibility of receiving God’s grace and love. Rather it is primarily man’s individual attainments, the way he as an individual lives up to religious duties and moral commandments and imitates the “virtues” of Christ, that ensure him a justification which can be objectively verified. For pietism, the Church is a phenomenon dependent upon individual justification; it is the assembly of morally “reborn” individuals, a gathering of the “pure,” a complement and an aid to individual religious feeling. (The Freedom of Morality, 121–122, emphasis in original)

Pietism in its more conservative form directly influenced the formation of the Methodist movement within the Anglican church (as well as the subsequent Holiness movement), and it helped to prepare Europe for the individualism of the Enlightenment. In its more radical forms, pietism is one of the most significant influences on all of modern-day Protestantism, especially Evangelicalism with its emphasis on a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and its believers’ tendency to change denominational or congregational allegiances several times in life.

Pietism in one form or another affects nearly all Christians in the modern age, independent of their church membership. Even though it is not the tradition of the Orthodox Church, many individual Orthodox Christians themselves function in terms of pietism. My experience as a pastor has included helping people to heal from the damage caused by this movement. Christians who make sincerity the key to spiritual life often fall away when they feel that the flame of their zeal has cooled, that they don’t feel God’s presence, or that following the communal traditions of the Church no longer feels satisfying.

The individualism of pietism is also one of the currents that has affected the whole culture of the United States, which was founded in large part by English and German immigrants deeply influenced by this form of Christianity. It is not only in the realm of church life but also in politics, literature, music, marriage, parenting, and so forth that pietism holds sway—the cultural measure of authenticity is how deeply you feel something for yourself, not whether you measure up to timeless truths or how you serve the larger community.

Antinomianism

One of the outgrowths of the pietist movement’s emphasis on individualism, particularly in its more radical sectors, came from a focus on the Reformation doctrine of sola fide. This theological phenomenon is called antinomianism, a term from Greek which means “against law.” Antinomianism is a deduction from the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In antinomian thinking, if the believer is justified before God by his faith alone, then whether or not he lives a moral life is not critical and therefore optional.

Antinomianism existed in early forms in Christian history, especially among some gnostics, whose loathsome regard for the material world helped them conclude that what one did with one’s body was irrelevant. (Other gnostics went the other direction entirely, insisting on a strict asceticism.)

The term antinomian was coined by Martin Luther, who saw this interpretation of his sola fide doctrine of justification as a distortion of his intended message. It was especially during his controversies with the Antinomians (1538–1539) that Luther refined his Law/Gospel distinction in hermeneutics. He insisted that true faith cannot help but produce good works. The Lutheran Book of Concord would eventually include explicit rejections of antinomianism.

Paired with the doctrine of eternal security—the teaching that it is impossible to lose salvation once you have it—antinomianism leads the Christian to believe that, because he’s “been saved,” he will go to heaven after death, even if he leads a life of selfishness and evil after his conversion to Christ.

While very few Christians explicitly teach antinomianism, one finds it expressed, for instance, when moral exhortation is met with a rejoinder that Christians are now “under grace” and “not under law.” The rejection of legalism by many Protestants is often accompanied by antinomian-sounding rhetoric.

The Orthodox Church also rejects legalism—which is the sense that merely fulfilling requirements or rules is enough for salvation—but it also rejects antinomianism. The moral life has a purpose in salvation, which is cooperation with God’s grace. If we do not live morally, then we are deflecting grace away from us and damning ourselves. Repentance is always possible in this life, but repentance is not real if it’s being cynically used as a “cover” for moral failings.

Scripture and Tradition

While the first Reformers believed in the doctrine of sola scriptura, their interpretations of the Scripture tended to remain in many respects similar to the traditional interpretations of their Roman Catholic forebears. Even though they did not strongly acknowledge the place of tradition in interpreting the Scripture, men like Luther were so influenced by tradition that they continued to make use of it in their theology. The Radical Reformers, however, especially those in the second generation of Protestantism, took sola scriptura to its logical extremes.

Tradition of nearly any kind was rejected. The Radicals taught that Scripture was not merely the highest authority for Christians but the exclusive authority. Anything that appeared to contradict the Scriptures had to be “purified” from the church. For many of the Radicals, if the Scripture was silent on a subject, this meant that its practice was not merely optional but outright forbidden.

The now common understanding of Scripture reading as something requiring possession of the Holy Spirit found an extreme expression by the radical Anabaptist Hans Denck. Denck insisted that anyone without the Spirit would find the Scripture only to be darkness rather than light, and in 1526 he even went so far as to say that someone who had the Spirit did not actually need the Scripture at all: “anyone who genuinely has the truth can take account of it without any Scripture” (as quoted in Jaroslav Pelikan’s Reformation of Church and Dogma [1300–1700], 320). This view was part of a larger program of rejection of any traditional structures for understanding the truth, whether apostolic succession or conventional biblical hermeneutics.

This approach to the Bible raised the question of how one was to read the Scripture. For instance, most Christians throughout time who had read the Bible concluded that it taught that the bread and wine in the Eucharist were really changed to become the Body and Blood of Christ. But the Radicals taught that you should not believe that; you should instead read the Bible their way.

Thus, while the Radical Reformation claimed to be rejecting tradition entirely, what it was actually doing was simply rejecting old tradition and replacing it with a new one. Without any continuous, authoritative tradition to inform and shape biblical interpretation, anyone may claim to be “just teaching the Bible.” But, again, why do people who make this claim all disagree with each other?

Some of the communities that arose from the Radical Reformation (especially certain Baptists) profess the doctrine of soul competency. In this doctrine, each individual soul is ultimately responsible before God for its salvation. While the Orthodox can agree with this teaching in its essence (personal responsibility), these Baptists and others also hold it to mean that each believer has the full authority to interpret the Scripture for himself without correction from some other authority. The soul competency doctrine makes “every man his own pope” into a dogma.

The Radicals’ approach to Scripture also led to congregationalism, that each local congregation is completely autonomous and may not be corrected by any authority outside itself. In some cases, this makes the local pastor a sort of “pope” in his own right, but in most congregations, it means that democratic rule controls not only the “business” side of the church, but even questions of doctrine and the hiring and firing of clergy.

In Orthodoxy, by contrast, the bishop stands in succession from the apostles and exercises authority given by Christ, making him the center of local church unity and sacramental life. This tradition from the apostles not only gives the bishop administrative authority but, most especially, it makes him the president at the celebration of the Eucharist, which is the center of the Church’s whole life. As St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John who died in the second century, put it: “Wherever the bishop appears, the whole congregation is to be present, just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the whole Church” (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 8:2).

In the fourth century, St. Basil the Great, the archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote of the relationship between Scripture and tradition, expressed in terms of written and unwritten tradition:

Of the doctrines and injunctions kept by the Church, some we have from instruction. But some we have received, from Apostolic Tradition, by succession in private [i.e., unwritten tradition]. Both the former and the latter have one and the same force for piety, and this will be contradicted by no one who has ever so little knowledge in the ordinances of the Church; for were we to dare to reject unwritten customs, as if they had no great importance, we should insensibly mutilate the Gospel, even in the most essential points, or, rather, for the teaching of the Apostles leave but an empty name. (On the Holy Spirit, 66)

Basil’s contemporary, St. John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, wrote similarly when explicating 2 Thessalonians 2:15: “Hence it is manifest, that they [the apostles] did not deliver all things by epistle, but many things also unwritten, and in like manner both the one and the other are worthy of credit. Therefore let us think the tradition of the Church also worthy of credit. It is a tradition, seek no farther” (Homily IV on II Thessalonians).

The whole church gathered around the bishop is the proper context of scriptural interpretation, and this holy gathering is the locus of Holy Tradition, the life in faith given by Christ to His apostles and then passed down through the generations.

Anti-Clericalism and Anti-Sacramentalism

With the anti-traditionalism and congregationalism the Radicals promoted in their reading of Scripture and in church life in general, it was not long before a rejection of ordained ministry itself came about. After all, if the Roman Catholic hierarchy with all its layers of clergy was the locus of so much corruption, and if the Lutherans and Calvinists were corrupt for leveraging the state, then perhaps the problem was the clergy itself.

Anti-clericalist feeling was exacerbated by the Zwinglian doctrines of the sacraments as pure symbol. The first Reformers reduced the sacraments in number to only two, baptism and the Eucharist. Zwingli and those who followed him, especially the Radical Reformers, further reduced the sacramental life by teaching that those two sacraments were only symbols, outward signs that represented God’s grace but did not actually communicate it. Therefore, if these ceremonies were really just symbols, then why was it necessary for them to be administered by an ordained clergy in linear succession from the apostles?

Most of the Radical Reformers continued to have clergy leading their churches, but they were understood mainly as preachers and administrators, not as priests who offered up the sacrifice to God on behalf of the people. They certainly were not a necessary element for church life. If need be, any group of believers could form themselves into their own congregation and appoint a pastor. Thus, if the rituals of Christianity are nothing special, then the priest is also nothing special.

The Radicals who rejected a sacramental priesthood regarded those who believed in it as superstitious believers in magic conducted by a class of tribal witch doctors. For a number of centuries up to that time, Latin theology had regarded the words spoken by the priest, hoc est corpus meum (“this is My Body”), as being the key moment in the Mass, when the bread was changed into Christ’s Body. It is likely that hoc est corpus meum eventually came to be slurred into “hocus pocus” by the Radicals, who held the Catholic Eucharist in contempt.

Beyond a rejection of sacrament, the Radicals also tended to look with disdain upon church art. Statues and paintings were destroyed in many churches. The Reformers had such a strong emphasis on reason and bare language as well as on private piety and sincerity as the key to church life that a fierce iconoclasm broke out throughout Europe. The overemphasis on reason inherited from Rome that had disconnected the mind and body, leading to excesses in each, was now being turned against anything physical. The mind and heart were now ascendant, and thus churches were desecrated, statues torn down, and anything regarded as ostentatious or “carnal” was denounced as idolatry.

Such was the anti-materialism of the Radicals that their preferred church service came to be described with the motto, “four bare walls and a sermon.” What was being rejected was finally the traditional emphasis on the physical side of being spiritual. Physical matter could not be the locus for the presence of God.

For the Orthodox, this whole approach is deeply misguided. Man himself is composed of both immaterial and material aspects, and so his salvation involves the material world. The Son of God became incarnate as a real, concrete human being, and so it makes sense that we should physically eat His Body and drink His Blood, that icons can be made depicting Him and His saints, that churches should be made beautiful to glorify God, and that church services should be adorned richly to connect us with the splendor of heaven itself.

A rejection of the material world in the Christian life is essentially an embrace of pagan philosophical dualism or of the fifth-century heresy of Nestorius, who taught that the “spiritual” Son of God and the “physical” Jesus Christ were two separate persons. For the Orthodox, the Incarnation’s effects are pervasive. Contact between the uncreated divine and created matter does not end with the flesh of Jesus.

Believers’ Baptism

Before the Radical Reformation, most Christians still baptized infants in order to bring them into the Christian community. To this day, most of the Magisterial Reformation denominations baptize infants. Although theology varied as to what baptism actually accomplished, there was still a general agreement that it accomplished something, even if that something was merely church membership and not a contribution to salvation. But the Radicals saw baptism as purely symbolic, merely an outward sign of God’s spiritual work.

As the Radicals turned their anti-sacramental eye upon the Scripture, they could see baptism in several places in the New Testament. They could see that baptism always seemed to follow a profession of faith. They could also see that there is no unequivocally clear passage in which an infant is baptized. Thus, they reasoned that baptism should be only for those who make a clear profession of faith in Christ. And since they did not believe in a sacramental efficacy for baptism, they regarded it primarily as an act of obedience on the part of the believer, not as an act of grace on the part of God. This is called believers’ baptism or sometimes credobaptism.

There was a precedent in western Christian history for this view, and it was found in Roman Catholic practice. Rome baptized infants, of course, but for centuries (and to this day) denied them communion until the “age of reason,” usually around seven or eight years old, when they would also have their first confession heard. This concept of an “age of reason” continued in most of Protestantism, and for those who taught believers’ baptism, it delayed baptism as well.

In our own day, many who practice believers’ baptism do not regard it as a work of God, but rather merely as an obedience to His command to be baptized. In baptism, it is the believer who is making a statement about himself, not God effecting a change in the believer. Anecdotally, at nearly every baptism I’ve attended where this doctrine is believed, the sermon from the pastor performing it always made the point that baptism doesn’t actually do anything at all.

Some of the Radical Reformers even rejected the infant baptism that believers had received while members of other churches—because they had not attained the age of reason, the baptism didn’t count. They expected that those Christians would be baptized again after making a profession of faith. Thus, some gained the name Anabaptists, which means “those who baptize again.”

While it is true that there is no explicit passage in the New Testament in which infants are baptized (though it is hinted at in Acts 10 and 16 and 1 Cor. 1:16, where whole households were baptized, almost certainly including small children), there is also no prohibition in the New Testament against it. Further, St. Paul connects New Testament baptism with Old Testament circumcision (Col. 2:11–12), which was administered to eight-day-old Jewish infants. The most explicit evidence for infant baptism lies in its practice throughout the whole history of the Church after the apostolic period. Radical Reformation theology is in some sense a rejection of history, however, and so the Radicals rejected arguments from the history of the Church that lacked explicit, undeniable reference in Scripture.

But why would Christians, who give food, clothing, and shelter to their children, deny them the essentials of spiritual growth? We don’t expect rational agreement when we feed them, so why should we expect rational agreement for them to be incorporated into Christ and His Church? After all, baptism contributes to our salvation (Mark 16:16; 1 Peter 3:21). In baptism, we put on Christ (Gal. 3:27), who commanded that children should be allowed to come to Him (Matt. 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16).

The Orthodox see other problems with this teaching. Because baptism cannot be administered to those who do not make a rational profession of faith, it is not only denied to infants, but must logically be denied also to those with severe intellectual disability or mental illness. It is thus conceivable that some permanent members of Christian communities would never be baptized.

That said, within the churches that practice believers’ baptism, the act of being baptized is usually considered optional as it pertains to salvation. It does not grant justification or contribute to salvation and is simply an act of obedience on the part of the believer, making a public statement about his own faith. God commands it, but despite baptism’s prominence in the New Testament Church, it would seem that He gives no reasons for His commandment.

The Great Apostasy

As the Radical Reformers looked around and saw those who claimed to be Christians but who by the Radicals’ definition were most certainly not, it was only natural that they started to wonder what had become of the pure, primitive Church of the apostles. How was it that true Christianity was absent for so long and that it had only recently been rediscovered during the Reformation?

One of the most influential elements to come out of the Radical Reformation is the concept of the Great Apostasy. Those who believe in this teaching profess that at some point after the apostles—whether immediately upon their death or later, such as at the time of Emperor St. Constantine the Great in the fourth century—the Church fell completely away and ceased to exist.

The Great Apostasy defined as the falling away of the Church early in its history is not found in Scripture. There are references to a major apostasy in 1 Timothy 4:1 and Matthew 24:10–11, but the Scripture associates that apostasy with the end of the world. Even if one views the centuries since the apostles as all in some sense “the end of the world,” the Scriptural passages give no exact dates and do not provide a specific key for applying their meaning in the way that the Radicals did.

Calvinists teach something like the Great Apostasy doctrine, but it is modified in that the Church itself, not just individual believers, must always be reforming (ecclesia semper reformanda) and repenting of error. Thus, the Magisterial Reformers saw themselves not as rediscovering the Church but as helping to repair it and bring it back to primitive Christianity.

Another modification of the Great Apostasy doctrine is taught by a minority of Calvinists in our own day who follow the Mercersburg Theology of the nineteenth century. In that version, the Church is still ecclesia semper reformanda, but it actually evolves throughout the centuries. Thus, Rome and the Orthodox represent “earlier” but “childish” forms of the Church, with the Reformation churches being not a restoration of primitive Christianity, but rather an improvement on everything that came before. And who knows what might come next?

But the Radicals saw things in a much more extreme light. Sebastian Franck, a sixteenth-century Bavarian, put it in stark terms:

I believe that the outward church of Christ, including all its gifts and sacraments, because of the breaking in and laying waste of Antichrist right after the death of the apostles, went up into heaven and lies concealed in the Spirit and in truth. I am thus quite certain that for fourteen hundred years now there has existed no gathered church nor any sacrament. (Epistle, ca. 1530s)

This view is essential for those who follow the teachings of the Reformation, whether in its Magisterial or Radical forms, if they examine Christian history closely. After all, whether you pick the death of the apostles or the time of Constantine as the end point of original, pure Christianity, it is clear that the vast majority of Christian history includes bishops, a belief in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, infant baptism, and so on. These many centuries of Christian history that are not in accord with the Radicals’ views have to be explained somehow. The doctrine of the Great Apostasy is an attempt to explain it.

From the Orthodox point of view, there are many problems with this teaching. For one thing, it is a denial of Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. It is also an implicit denial of His headship of the Church, because how can the whole Church apostatize if He is a member? It also denies the place of the Church as the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Would God leave us without the “pillar and ground of the truth”?

This teaching also raises this question: If the Church has been lost for all these years, how can you be sure that you are the one who has truly found it again? There are many competing claims for the restoration of the lost Church. How do we know which one is the correct one?

One variant of the Great Apostasy doctrine taught by a minority of Baptists is called the Trail of Blood theory, which is also called Landmarkism (from Prov. 22:28, “Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set”). In this theory, it is taught that the institutional Church all fell away, but a remnant of true believers continued throughout the centuries, persecuted by the official Church (thus, Trail of Blood, the title of a book by J. M. Carroll).

“True” Baptists are traced through the centuries by identifying with various heretical groups, such as the Donatists, Novatianists, and Montanists, all of whom have little in common with each other except that they opposed the mainstream Church, which Landmarkists identify as the Roman Catholic Church (apparently ignorant of the separate existence of Orthodoxy). All these groups did exist, but there is nothing that links them historically in succession with each other.

With this theory, Landmarkists claim an unbroken historical connection to the apostles, but the path by which it’s claimed is rather bizarre. One would also have to wonder what Landmarkist Baptists would think if they were transported back in time to meet their imagined Baptist forebears, such as the Donatists, who argued for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; or the Novatianists, who had set up their own bishop in Rome; or the Montanists, who claimed that their leader Montanus (not the Holy Spirit) was the promised Comforter from Christ.

In any event, most of the Radical Reformers, and indeed, now most Protestants of any stripe accept some form of the Great Apostasy doctrine, even if only implicitly. The true Church must have disappeared entirely at some point, or else there would be no point in reinventing it or rediscovering it. Those who accept this doctrine must also accept the implication that the apostles fundamentally failed in their mission. Although the apostles practiced pure Christianity, they failed to pass it on to their disciples.

The Orthodox Church teaches, however, that the apostolic mission did not fail. One need only look at the writings of someone like St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was a disciple of the Apostle John, to see that it was Orthodox Christianity, not Radical Reformation Protestantism, that was practiced by those who learned at the feet of the apostles. Indeed, throughout the first few centuries of the Church’s history, even before the time of Constantine, one of the marks of a church being trustworthy was that it could trace itself historically back to the apostles (this was explicitly witnessed to even in the second century by St. Irenaeus of Lyons). Apostolic succession was always defined by two elements: the continuity of the succession of the laying on of hands, and maintenance of the same apostolic faith. Orthodoxy has kept both up to the present time.

Finally, one has to ask this question: If, as the Radical Reformers taught, we should not trust apostolic succession as a safeguard against heresy, then why should we trust someone whose authority extends only as far as his private reading room? Again, how is one to judge between many different teachers who all claim to be led by the Holy Spirit to restore the Church?

The Invisible Church

Having rejected historical continuity through the centuries stretching back to the apostles, and also having rejected the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutherans, and other state-backed Reformed churches, it was only logical that the Radicals should ask themselves whether the outward organization of the Christian community had any theological value at all. Does the “visible” Church have any status in God’s eyes?

With the pietistic emphasis on individualism, the Radicals’ answer to this question was “no.” While the outward organization of churches might be useful in terms of helping believers live with one another and organize their efforts, eternal salvation depended only on one thing: the believer’s private relationship with God.

And since the Radicals had rejected sacraments and the priesthood, there was nothing anyone could offer the believer that he could not get for himself directly. Thus, the “invisible” Church, composed of all true believers, wherever they may be found, was the only one that mattered. This teaching was further bolstered by the Radicals’ de-emphasis on adherence to correct doctrine—one could be a “true Christian” whether one was Lutheran, Reformed, Zwinglian, or whatever else. Non-Protestants may be more in doubt, but some would still say things like, “There are probably some true Christians in the Catholic Church.”

The Radicals were understandably reacting against a strong Western Christian emphasis on institution and organization, especially since their experience of such things was tainted by the corruption that almost inevitably comes with state sponsorship, including being persecuted by the state churches. When a church wields not only the Word but also the sword, temptations to abuse are many.

It is true that in ancient times, some theological writers had drawn a distinction between the “visible” and “invisible” Church. The visible Church was recognizable in terms of concrete communities. It was a normal, traditional part of Christian life. But because there was never any guarantee that formal membership in the visible Church would grant one salvation, the idea was put forward of the “invisible” Church, whose true membership was known only to God. The tension between these two concepts was particularly explored by St. Augustine. In this ancient view, the visible and invisible aspects of the Church are not opposed to one another but rather simply distinguished from one another.

Orthodoxy makes no sharp distinction between the visible and invisible Church. While we agree that only God knows who will enjoy eternal salvation, whether they are canonically part of the Orthodox Church in this life or not, we also know that the final answer to that question must be deferred to the end of time. It is only in the eschaton, the age to come, that the fullness of the membership of the Church will be revealed. Until that time, the Church’s mission is not yet complete.

Further, Orthodoxy does not regard the visible Church as an organization or institution, although it has those aspects. Rather, the Church is an organism, which has both exterior, visible elements and interior, invisible elements, all governed by the Head, who is Christ. Christ did not found a philosophical or ideological movement called “Christianity,” but rather a concrete, historical community called the Church.

Repudiation of Core Dogma

Perhaps one of the most shocking elements of the anti-traditionalism of the Radicals came in the form of changes in some of the core doctrines of Christian belief by certain theologians. As some of the Radicals attempted to read the Bible divorced from prior tradition, they began to revive some of the ancient heresies. Known as unitarians, certain of the Radical theologians even in the time of Luther rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and reasserted (as the heretic Sabellius did in the ancient Church) that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were simply names, modes, or masks for a single divine Person. One unitarian theologian referred to traditional Trinitarianism as “that monstrosity of three realities,” that “imaginary Trinity, three beings in one nature,” saying that it was tritheism (Michael Servetus, On the Errors of the Trinity).

This return to the heresies of the early centuries of the Church was denounced by the Magisterial Reformers such as Luther and Calvin, but their defense of the traditional creeds ultimately fell flat in the face of the common doctrine they all shared, sola scriptura. Since all the Reformers, whether the more traditional or the radical, shared a rejection of the authority of Church tradition, and since all shared an allegiance to sola scriptura, there was no authoritative way to answer the charge that one theologian’s reading of the Bible was incorrect while another’s was consistent with God’s revelation.

While the Lutherans and Calvinists criticized these writers, claiming that they were departing from the Scripture by rejecting the traditional confessions, the unitarians claimed to be defending “the older traditions of the Apostles” (Servetus, ibid.). They claimed that if the classic dogmas were truly consistent with the Scripture, it “would certain [sic] have taught them somewhere in a manner that is clear, obvious, and free of verbal complications and ambiguities” (Faustus Socinus, Explanation of the Prologue of the Gospel of John).

Some of the unitarians and other revolutionaries in dogma believed that they were the first to see the true meaning of Scripture. Faustus Socinus, in referring to the Prologue of the first chapter of the Gospel of John (John 1:1–18), which speaks about the nature of God, claimed that it “has, as far as I know, never until now been correctly expounded by anyone” (Socinus, ibid.). He went on to read this passage as clearly stating that Jesus Christ is not God and therefore not worthy of worship.

Those among the Radicals who repudiated traditional Trinitarian doctrine also rejected the various historic creeds of Christian history, most especially the Nicene Creed, which was regarded as a product of the “fall of the church” and engineered by Satan. St. Athanasius of Alexandria, whose profound writings on the Incarnation deeply influenced the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea, was called by Socinus “the Antichrist” (Socinus, Jesus Christ the Savior).

Another Radical Reformation theologian set forth a Christology that said the Son of God became man not “of the womb” of Mary, but rather “in the womb” (Menno Simons, Confession Against Jan Laski), which means that Jesus’ humanity is a new creation, not an assumption of the humanity created in Adam. Mary becomes a kind of surrogate mother, and Jesus is not truly a member of our race.

These attacks on Triadology and Christology are truly grave, far more grave than almost all other differences the Orthodox have with other Christians. Why? It is because they strike at the very heart of how we believe and worship. If eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom He sent (John 17:3), what happens when you get God’s character so wrong? Or if the created (and not divine) Christ is the “true” one, then how are we to become one with God? Jesus isn’t the bridge between God and man any more. Our access is cut off.

All that said, the majority of the Radical Reformers did not reject the traditional doctrines of Triadology and Christology that were formulated in the early centuries of the Church—they would agree with most or even all of what is in the Nicene Creed. But sola scriptura nevertheless made possible these departures from traditional dogma.

DENOMINATIONAL FAMILIES AND MOVEMENTS

Anabaptists

The Anabaptists were so named because of their practice of insisting on believers’ baptism, even for those who had been baptized before as infants. Anabaptism means “to be baptized again.” Scholars disagree about the precise origin of the Anabaptist movements, but they mainly appeared in the sixteenth century in northern Europe, especially Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in what is now the Czech Republic. Anabaptists are often called Brethren, a term which comes into a number of Anabaptist denominational names.

Mennonites

The Mennonites, named for their founder Menno Simons (a former Catholic priest who joined the Anabaptist movement after the death of his pacifist Anabaptist brother), exist in multiple denominations in North America. Among the major denominations of the Radical Reformation, the Mennonites are usually among the most conservative and most closely following the theology of the original Anabaptists—a number of them have, however, begun to liberalize on moral questions, such as homosexual unions. Among other distinctives, Mennonites, like most Anabaptists, tend to be pacifists.

Amish

Closely related to the Mennonites are the Amish, who exist in several small denominations in the United States. Named for their founder Jakob Ammann, the Amish were originally part of a movement to reform the Swiss Mennonites. Prior to Ammann, Anabaptism in Switzerland traced itself to the work of theologians Felix Manz and Conrad Grebel, who were both originally part of the Zwinglian movement in Switzerland.

Ammann believed that his fellow Mennonites had been drifting away from the teachings of the revered Menno Simons. He wanted to include the practice of shunning, social avoidance of those who had been baptized into the church but subsequently left. He also wanted to hold communion more often. Eventually, the Amish tended to withdraw themselves almost entirely from society at large, based on the biblical call to be separate from “the world.” In 1693, Ammann’s strict literalism led to a break of his followers from the rest of the Swiss Mennonites.

The Amish insist on simple living as part of the spiritual life, which usually includes a rejection of most modern technology. Their commitment to this principle is such that there are often dissensions over apparently trivial issues, such as how many buttons on one’s shirt constitutes vanity. The Amish now exist almost entirely in the United States and Canada, and while most speak English, they also speak a dialect of Old German that is often called “Pennsylvania Dutch.”

A group similar to the Amish who do not practice the same sort of deliberate separatism are the Hutterites. Hutterites are also committed to simple living but, unlike the Amish, they will often wear vibrant colors. Although they are unlikely to own televisions or most entertainment devices, they do not reject most modern technology as the Amish do. Like the Amish, the Hutterites speak their own dialect of German among themselves and live in communal colonies.

The Brethren (which is a traditional term used by all the Anabaptist groups) are represented by numerous denominations both in the United States and abroad. Their theology is conservatively Anabaptist, and they have a number of distinctive practices. When they baptize, they do so by triple immersion (which is what the Orthodox do, as well). They also will accompany the reception of communion by a love feast, a common meal, a practice in the ancient Church that may have originally been connected with the Eucharist. They practice a ritual footwashing before receiving communion. In most respects, the Brethren denominations are quite similar to mainstream conservative Protestants.

The Orthodox can appreciate the pacifism of the Anabaptists, though we don’t adopt a doctrinaire position on it. And the simplicity of life that is the norm among a number of their communities is reminiscent of the ascetical teachings of Orthodoxy. The Amish separation from the world is problematic in light of the Lord’s command to evangelize, though it is similar in some ways to Orthodox monastic practice.

Moravians

The Moravians as a distinct community predate even the Magisterial Reformation, having their genesis in the teachings of Jan Hus, a fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Catholic priest and reformer in Bohemia and Moravia who wanted the church to conduct services in the local language (Czech), give the laity communion in both kinds (both the Body and Blood—practice at the time was to give the laity the Body only), and eliminate the teachings on purgatory and indulgences. (Those supporting communion in both kinds were also called Utraquists, from Latin sub utraque specie, “in both kinds.”) In those respects, Hus’s theology is compatible with Orthodoxy. The Moravians, quite notably for the Orthodox, also do not use the filioque in the Nicene Creed.

Hus himself was eventually burned at the stake for heresy in 1415, in an earlier session of the Council of Constance (which ended the Great Western Schism with its three popes). Within about fifty years after his death, his followers organized themselves into a group called the Unitas Fratrum (“Unity of the Brethren,” also “Bohemian Brethren”), who operated at first within the Roman Catholic Church.

Although Luther is usually regarded as the “Father of the Reformation,” the fifteenth-century origins of the Moravians with Jan Hus actually make them the world’s oldest Protestant denomination. Hus parallels in some ways the English Reformer John Wycliffe (1331–1384), who was a generation older. There is no surviving Wycliffite denomination, however (though the Wycliffe Bible Translators organization is named in honor of him).

The name Moravian was not used for the Hussites until the early eighteenth century, when a number of them fled religious persecution in their homelands for safety in Saxony. The local Saxons referred to them by the name of their homeland, Moravia, which is now within the Czech Republic.

After the onset of the Reformation in Germany, the Hussites began to interact with Reformation theology and came to be similar to most believers in the Anabaptist movement. They both influenced and were influenced by the Anabaptist groups that became the Brethren.

The immigration of Moravians to the New World in the eighteenth century began an emphasis on mission and ecumenism, expressed primarily as good relations with both the Lutherans and the Reformed. Many of the early Moravians in America were formally members of one of those other churches. In this, Moravianism saw itself at first more as a movement and less as a denomination. In time, however, they became a distinct denomination. Their vigorous mission work converted a number of Native American Indians and helped them to spread throughout the world.

In our own day, the Moravians have theologically come to resemble other mainline Protestant denominations in that they have de-emphasized concerns about personal salvation and instead focus more on social questions. They have also liberalized in issues such as women’s ordination and sexual morality. They retain many of their worship and cultural traditions, however, and especially draw attention from the curious around Christmas, when they may set up a miniature village scene called a Christmas putz (from the German putzen, “to decorate”), often around the base of a Christmas tree, and hold well-attended services for the holiday.

There are about 750,000 Moravians in the world, with about 60,000 in the United States. The traditional center of the American Moravians is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (The nearby town in which I live, Emmaus, was founded as a Moravian community in 1759.) The Salem settlement in North Carolina was founded by a group from Bethlehem and was originally named “Wachovia.”

Puritans

The Anglican Communion gave birth to several dissenting groups—and most of those who left the Church of England were collectively known as Dissenters. Most notable among them were the Methodists discussed in the previous chapter, who were heavily influenced by pietism. The Presbyterians (mostly Scottish Calvinists) are also classified as dissenters, but like the Methodists were theologically and structurally more closely connected with the Magisterial Reformation.

Aside from the Methodists, however, the largest group of dissenters from the English church are the Puritans. The Puritans, who flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were strongly Calvinist in their theology and urged the English to purify all “popery” from church life—they wanted anything that looked like Roman Catholicism removed from Anglicanism.

Puritanism was the religion of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth. The Puritans who settled Plymouth, Massachusetts were known as Separatists and were different from most Puritans in that they advocated dividing from the official Church of England. There were several Separatist movements among the Puritans in England, as well. A number of Non-Separating Puritans also settled in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England.

The Puritans, like the Methodists who came much later, were essentially pietistic in their basic outlook. Puritanism also included a powerful work ethic, founded on the Calvinistic understanding of the predestination of the elect. It was believed that the elect would be materially successful in this life, and so Puritans and other Calvinists always worked hard out of a desire to prove their election to themselves and others.

This sense of being part of the elect is also what led the Puritans to be so confident in their condemnations of those they believed were demonstrably among the damned. Their strong emphasis on personal morality being enforced by public condemnation led in America to the well-known witch trials in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, and is also memorably depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, in which an adulteress is forced to wear a red letter “A” in public. (The Puritans were not unique in their fear of witches; during the breakup of Christianity throughout Europe in the period, an increase of witch trials occurred generally.)

The strong work ethic of Calvinism is examined by the German economist and sociologist Max Weber in his classic work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1905. In a very real sense, it was the Puritans’ need for assurance of their eternal election which led to the building of America.

Quakers and Shakers

The Puritans themselves suffered schisms, and one of the more significant was the Quakers, officially called the Religious Society of Friends. Their founder George Fox believed that God had been speaking directly to him, and he began to preach in 1647 that this was possible for everyone. Initially, he intended only to influence his fellow English Christians rather than found a new denomination, but eventually separate communities formed, and Quakers became subject to persecution in England. Later in the seventeenth century, Quaker communities formed in the New World, drawn by the promise of religious freedom. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, was famously a Quaker.

It is said that Fox’s followers came to be nicknamed “Quakers” because of the physical “quaking” they exhibited in moments of mysticism, though some place the origin of the nickname in Fox’s admonitions that his opponents would tremble at the word of the Lord. In any event, Quakers believe that each Christian can and should experience God directly. Their mysticism tends to be practiced in group form rather than individually and typically occurs during meetings.

Quaker meetings have no clergy, and members speak “as the Spirit moves them” within the meeting. Quakers believe that baptism is experienced as an inward reality and so do not undergo a physical baptism ritual. Quakers also do not officially hold to sola scriptura, because they believe that the Holy Spirit would never lead them astray in their interpretation of the Bible. Over time, however, this belief led to divisions among Quakers when they disagreed over where God was leading them.

Most modern Quakers, however, are not very concerned with theology as a normative set of doctrines and practices; instead, what they believe is most important is how God leads them in the moment. In this, they are clearly pietistic in their outlook. There are about 359,000 adult members of the Quaker movement in our time.

One group that broke off from the Quakers was the Shakers (officially The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming), who practiced a similar way of life and set of beliefs, though they tended to organize into separatist communes. The Shakers dwindled over time, however, as some members were attracted back into cities for work, and also because Shaker doctrine taught celibacy for all members. The Shakers began in the middle of the eighteenth century in England and peaked with about six thousand members in 1840. As of 2010, there were only three members still alive, living together in southern Maine.

Baptists

There are contradicting theories as to the origin of Baptists. They may be either an offshoot of the Anabaptist movement or possibly may have been founded by Puritans. (Anabaptists in England were known to have been called “Baptists” as early as 1569.) Whatever the case, the first Baptists as a distinct community appeared sometime in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.

Early Baptists were divided into two general camps, based on whether they accepted Calvinist or Arminian views on salvation. The Particular Baptists were generally Calvinistic, believing that God had a predestined elect set aside from before creation, while the General Baptists were Arminian, believing that the individual believer could choose to be saved.

In our own time, Baptists may hold either view or often hold to a sort of hybrid view, in which the believer is responsible for choosing God initially, but then his free will is bound forever after that moment—he cannot again become “unsaved” once he is “saved”; this view is often referred to by the shorthand “once saved, always saved.”

Baptists who believe that salvation can be gained and then lost again are called Free Will Baptists. For most Baptists, however, salvation is a one-time event based on making a personal “decision for Christ,” which, if made sincerely, makes a person “saved.”

Most Baptists hold firmly to sola scriptura, but because every congregation has the right to decide its own doctrine, they do not all agree on what the Bible means. Nevertheless, because they share a common tradition, Baptists tend to share a common set of distinctive doctrines. They strongly believe in the individual believer’s responsibility before God without any reference to the church community (this is called soul competency or soul liberty). They reject sacramental theology, regarding baptism and “the Lord’s Supper” (they do not usually use the term Eucharist) as “ordinances” commanded by Christ but not contributing to salvation.

They also believe that the local congregation is the highest authority in church government. If a congregation does belong to a denomination, it is usually understood simply as an association or affiliation. The denomination holds no direct power over a local congregation. Ordination is usually for men only, but confers no special sacramental or priestly role. It merely acts as a sort of accreditation of a man’s ability to lead and most especially to preach.

In most respects, Baptists in America are grouped with Evangelicals (whom we will discuss in the next chapter). They are especially known among Evangelicals for their conservatism, which may be expressed in political terms as part of the “culture wars.” Their informal style of worship, with a strong emphasis on preaching, is directly derived from the revivalist movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Southern Baptist Conference is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with about 16 million members and 42,000 churches. There are several other major denominations of Baptists in the United States, such as the General Association of Regular Baptists.

COMMON GROUND

The Radical Reformation in most respects was simply an expansion on the theological presuppositions of the Magisterial Reformation. With the doctrine of sola scriptura firmly in place, and informed by the anti-authoritarian streak that characterized the Radicals, the division into numerous factions and movements, all with different theology and practices, proceeded rapidly. More than anything else, the acceptance of the doctrine of the Great Apostasy led to the insistence from each new group that it had at last discovered or restored the true New Testament Church.

Like the Reformers before them, the Radicals did not understand themselves as innovating in doctrine or in practice. Rather, they believed they were returning Christians to ancient, pure, primitive Christianity. But without either tradition or hierarchy to guide them, their movements quickly split into a multitude of divisions, all claiming to have the corner on truth but without any historical or traditional evidence to authenticate their claims.

Because of their rejection of apostolic succession, the Radicals could give their followers no assurance that their doctrines were true outside of whether they seemed to be true to their listeners. All common ground was based almost solely on mutual agreement over how the Bible was to be read. Almost every time there was a disagreement led by a charismatic theologian, a new denomination was formed.

At its heart, the Radical Reformation is a rejection of the Incarnation, especially in terms of its implications for worship and ecclesiology. Most of the Radicals would of course adhere conceptually to the traditional dogmas about the Son of God becoming a man, but their theology and practice fail to reflect all the implications of the Incarnation.

For the Orthodox, because God became a physical, material man, the Church has a concrete, historical reality. Ordination requires a physical act of laying on of hands. The Eucharist has a physical component to its spiritual reality. The physical act of baptism really accomplishes something spiritual. Icons are a witness to the Incarnation and an integral part of church life. All of these material elements in the ongoing salvific life of the Christian are rejected by the Radicals, which suggests that their theology of the Incarnation is lacking something. What was rejected in the Radical Reformation was materiality in spiritual life.

There is much that the Orthodox have in common with various sectors of the Radical Reformation, most especially the insistence that the individual believer is accountable to God for his own salvation. But Orthodoxy sees and practices that accountability within the community of the Church, not as a private contract the Christian has with God independently of any community. Orthodoxy shares the pietists’ emphasis on living a life of devotion to God and His moral teachings. But at the same time, we believe that such a life is only possible if formed by the saving dogmas God has revealed to the Church through the apostles in the community of the Church.

Despite these differences and perhaps because of our commonalities, many of those who are converting to the Orthodox faith are coming from the churches descended from the Radical Reformation. “Four bare walls and a sermon” can often leave one longing for something more, leading some eventually to reach out to the God who can truly be touched.

Having discussed the second major development in the history of Protestantism, let’s now turn to the third, the group of movements initially called revivalism but in our own day known mainly as Evangelicalism.

FIVE

Evangelicalism and Revivalism

THE END OF LITURGY

There are some who out of custome and formality, go and pray; there are others, who go in the bitterness of their spirit: The one he prayes out of bare notion, and naked knowledge; the other hath his words forced from him by the anguish of his soul. Surely, that is the man that God will look at. (John Bunyan, I Will Pray with the Spirit, 66, 1663)

Almost all the religion in the world has been produced by revivals. God has found it necessary to take advantage of the excitability there is in mankind, to produce powerful excitements among them, before he can lead them to obey. . . . The will is, in a sense, enslaved by the carnal and worldly desires. Hence it is necessary to awaken men to a sense of guilt and danger, and thus produce an excitement of counter feeling and desire which will break the power of carnal and worldly desire and leave the will free to obey God. (Charles G. Finney, What a Revival of Religion Is, 1834)

[T]he worship under the Christian dispensation which God ordains, and which he accepts through Christ Jesus, is a worship distinguished by an inward vitality from the outward worship of the carnal mind. It is the worship of a child towards a father, feeling within himself a kinship with the divine; it is a worship wrought in us by God the Holy Ghost, because the Father has sought us out and taught us how to worship him. It is a worship which is not outward, but of the inner man, and occupies not hand, eye, and foot, but heart and soul and spirit: and it is a worship which is not professional and formal, but real, hearty, earnest, and so acceptable before God. (Charles H. Spurgeon, The Axe at the Root: A Sermon Against Puseyite Idolatry, 1866)

The dissolution of ecclesiology marked the Radical Reformation, with its inter-confessional and inter-denominational movements and its “viral” theology that easily jumped from one sect to another. This dissolution permitted the sense that almost “anything goes” when it comes to theology, though in most cases, theologians attempted to confine themselves to what they could derive from Scriptural hermeneutics. While sola scriptura did eventually lead to significant excesses, along with the now-implicit influence of tradition (such as the persistence of Trinitarian theology) it still served as a check on unlimited theological experimentation, especially for the first few centuries after the Reformation.

What had been introduced in the place of tradition, ecclesiology, and confessionalism as the new “canon of faith” was pietism, that sense that sincerity—not doctrinal or liturgical continuity—was the key to true Christianity. And what came alongside that new “canon” was a feeling that sincerity could be proved by spontaneity and the conversion experience.

Christians had been liturgical worshipers for centuries prior to the Reformation, without any sense that liturgy was dead formalism, and the initial Reformers showed no signs of wanting to change that:

When the earliest rumbles of the Reformation sounded among the Wycliffites, Lollards, and Hussites in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England and Bohemia, Christianity in both the East and West had been a liturgical religion for nearly a millennium and a half. A rich practice and literature of worship had blossomed from Sarum to Kiev with no hint of the coming critique of ritual and the ethos of spontaneity that would remake Christian worship entirely. (Lori Branch, Rituals of Spontaneity: Sentiment and Secularism from Free Prayer to Wordsworth, 36)

But pietist emphasis on sincerity and spontaneity, coupled with other cultural changes, gave rise to the critique of ritual as being inherently insincere:

Reformation controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries accompanied what has been called a crisis of representation, in which the term ceremony, for instance, first began to acquire negative connotations of hollowness and superstition, and in which interrogations of the power of signs, “in particular the communal, repetitive, formal, performative sign,” led the Reformers to develop an “anti-magical semiotics” defined against a “mystical, sacral, essentialist” understanding of signs. In this Erasmus and Calvin led the way, and it is apparently to Calvin that we owe our abiding association of “superstition” with any form of ritualized behavior. (Ibid., 37)

The feeling that religion had become “dead” spread like a virus through the churches of the Reformation. At first, the critique was mainly aimed at the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, but in time, it came to be applied to almost anything that seemed formal, institutional, or traditional. The last generation’s revolutionaries could become the next generation’s establishment. And so into the impassioned heart of the new Protestantism came the yearning for revival.

THE GREAT AWAKENINGS

Revivalism as a movement within Protestantism has no clear historical starting point, though one might point especially to seventeenth-century itinerant preachers among the Scottish Presbyterians as the first of the revivalist preachers of the Reformation. Revival as a concept is as old as Christianity itself, but in terms of revivalism as a movement with the ability to reshape whole communities of Christians, probably the most convenient starting point is the Great Awakenings. There were two movements in Anglo-American history referred to as the “Great Awakenings.”

The First Great Awakening is associated with preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, of Puritan Calvinist roots, as well as the Anglican George Whitefield and the Presbyterian Samuel Davies. All three emphasized personal conversion as a major element of their typically extemporaneous preaching, including graphic depictions of the joys of salvation and the horrors of damnation. In the 1730s and 1740s this phenomenon swept through the British colonies in America, drawing large crowds to revival meetings that appealed to unbelievers and to members of all the local denominations alike.

If in revivalism there was no discrimination between the denominations, there also was often no discrimination between social classes or races. Davies, who later would become the president of Princeton University, came to be known as a converter of African slaves in America. The crisis of conscience, leading to a direct sense of encounter with God, of “rebirth” and change of life, came to be the hallmark of how the believer knew he had attained eternal salvation, the mark of true religion.

The First Great Awakening brought increased church membership and religious activity, but it also brought schism within the denominations between those who supported the new movement and the establishment that often was suspicious of it.

The Second Great Awakening, roughly 1790–1850, was similar to the First in that it emphasized emotionalism and conversion in revival meetings, but it also brought something else with it—an expectation of the supernatural. This was the beginning of frequent claims of miracles in revivalism, as well as the rising fortunes of both the Baptists and Methodists in America. There also came to be an expectation that the Second Coming of Christ might be soon, though that expectation did not blossom fully until Pentecostalism arose out of the Holiness movement of the late nineteenth century (which we will discuss in the next chapter).

Probably the best-known figure of the Second Great Awakening is Charles G. Finney, an anti-Calvinist Congregationalist and Presbyterian who is sometimes known as “the Father of Modern Revivalism.” Along with other clerics of his time, Finney was active in abolitionism, as well as promoting the equal education of women and non-whites. Social reform was characteristic of the Second Great Awakening, stemming from a belief that the world had to be purified for the Second Coming.

Finney was also crucial in creating what is now known as the “altar call,” a deliberate attempt to elicit an emotional crisis from listeners to lead to conversion. He set up the “anxious bench,” a seat near the preacher where someone who was especially concerned about his spiritual condition could be seated, receive prayer, and even enter into conversation with the preacher. The public pressure of such an arrangement provoked strong feelings in those who participated and those who witnessed it.

Revivalist meetings were an occasional occurrence, but they eventually left their mark on even the regular Sunday worship of those whom they affected. The popular style of Sunday morning service now seen throughout Evangelicalism, with emotional music, emphatic calls to conversion, and a sermon as the primary feature of the service, has its origins in revivalism.

With this new “liturgy” for Evangelicals, liturgy as it had been known for centuries, focusing especially on receiving communion together, was now effectively ended in that sector of Protestantism. The specific form no longer mattered—did God really care which prayer book you used or if you used one at all? Now, it was the sincerity of the heart, expressed in spontaneity and in the feeling of conversion, that was the mark of the true Christian.

THE NEW GNOSTICS?

If the child given birth to by the Radical Reformation was the idea that one could be a true Christian without church membership, then revivalism and its modern incarnation—Evangelicalism—is what that idea looks like fully grown. We are defining revivalism here in fairly broad terms to refer to the characteristic Christian life and worship that finds its origins in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Awakenings, mainly occurring in the United States, the tradition in which Evangelicalism arose (some historians also place Evangelicalism’s origins with Moravianism in Europe). Thus, we will use revivalism and Evangelicalism interchangeably here, though they’re not exactly synonyms.

While the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Radicals reacted against the dry confessionalism of the magisterial churches with an emphasis on personal piety, their heirs in the revivalist movements turned that pietism into a truly popular movement that could be embraced by the masses, retaining nearly all of the doctrinal positions of the Radicals.

We saw in the previous chapter how the Radicals distanced themselves from all the material elements of traditional Christianity. They retained no priesthood, no sacraments, no holy places, no asceticism, no place for visual beauty in worship. They did, however, retain a sense of community, if not really church as it had been understood for centuries. With all of those traditional defining elements of the sacred Christian community removed by the Radicals, revivalism took the next logical step and dispensed with the necessity for community altogether. Instead of a church, a concrete, historical community governed by structure and dogma, revivalism was a movement, a popular current defined by enthusiasm, emotion, and personal charisma.

Revivalism has had different levels of influence on American Christianity, but there is virtually no Christian in America who has not been touched by the culture revivalism created. With the advent of revivalist religious culture, the peculiar character of American Christianity finally came into its own. This movement is often called Evangelicalism, but that term itself is hard to define these days, especially since it has been taken up by the popular media. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the vast majority of Protestants in the United States are revivalists to some extent.

One definition for Evangelicalism that has recently been put forward is in terms of four doctrinal affirmations, and this may be a useful shorthand, if thinking mainly in terms of doctrine. These four affirmations are (as reported by the National Association of Evangelicals, in collaboration with LifeWay Research in 2015):

1. The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.

2. It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

3. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.

4. Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.

As we have already seen, however, revivalism/Evangelicalism is not defined only by particular doctrinal affirmations, but especially by a style of spiritual life, particularly including the conversion experience and characteristic worship. A similar but broader definition for Evangelicalism is given by historian David Bebbington in his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989):

1. Biblicism—all essential spiritual truth is found in the Bible.

2. Crucicentrism—salvation is found in the atoning work of Christ on the cross.

3. Conversionism—every person needs to be converted.

4. Activism—the Gospel must be expressed with human effort.

We saw in chapter one how the ancient gnostics were the first heretics in the Church. Gnosticism was sharply marked by individualism, the belief that salvation was ultimately a private matter rather than a communal experience. The gnostics also stressed that salvation was obtained by saving knowledge rather than by faithful participation in sacramental church life. The gnostic religious system was strongly dualistic, believing that “spiritual” things were good, while the physical world was evil or at best unimportant. In its understanding of salvation and of culture in general, gnosticism was also profoundly escapist, seeking to withdraw from the world. Gnosticism placed a heavy emphasis on personal ecstatic experience contrasted with the “ordinary” ritual and sacramental life of most Christian believers.

Although there is no direct historical link with ancient gnosticism—revivalists were inspired by their reading of the Bible and their forebears in the Reformation, not by the influence of pagan esoteric speculation—the parallels between Evangelicalism and that ancient movement are striking enough that more than one person has commented on them, in particular the focus on the believer’s personal salvation. Presbyterian pastor Philip J. Lee even dedicated a whole book to this view, entitled Against the Protestant Gnostics, in which he wrote:

If the Gospels were written “that you might know the reliability of the words concerning which you were instructed,” then perhaps it could be said that the gnostic texts were written so that the gnostikoi could know the truth, not concerning words, but concerning their own salvation. In gnosticism, there was not that extra step of going to a sacred literature which existed quite apart from the self and finding in it, as a fringe benefit, a truth that could be applied to the self. In gnosticism, the Scripture was sacred insofar as it saved the self. Again, what was known in gnostic circles was personal. If it was not personal, it was not gnostic. (Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics, 4)

We will be using gnosticism in this chapter as one way to group together some of the distinctive teachings and practices of Evangelicalism, but this is not to say that Evangelicals are actually gnostics—there was a lot more to historical gnosticism than just these parallels.

As we describe various attitudes, doctrines, and behaviors, we should understand that any given believer or church influenced by the revivalist movement may subscribe to only a selection of the many elements that together make up the characteristics of the movement. There is no “generic” Evangelical person or denomination.

Individualism

When I was in college, one of the courses I took covered the early centuries of Christianity, studying the writings of the Christians who followed immediately in the footsteps of the apostles. After a few weeks of study, one student in the class raised his hand, apparently a bit frustrated. When the professor called on him, he said, “You know, I don’t see anything in here about accepting Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.”

That moment underlined for me how alien the character of Christianity at the time of its origins must seem to Evangelicals. There is nothing in the writings of the early Church Fathers about “accepting Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior,” because at the time such a formulation had nothing to do with becoming a Christian. But that formula so defines Christianity for many believers in our own time that they find the writings of the disciples of the apostles and their immediate successors to be missing something critical.

For some of the spirit of what drives this approach to Christian life, let’s look at an example of how it’s preached. On July 8, 1741, in the town of Enfield, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards stood up and preached a sermon that has now become a classic in revivalism. (As an interesting aside for the Orthodox, though Edwards is best known for this fiery sermon, he also taught a doctrine of theosis.) This sermon, the well-known “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which probably took close to an hour to preach, includes such words as these:

And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God’s word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, a day of such great favour to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others. . . . God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great out-pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles’ days; the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded. If this should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day, and will curse the day that ever you was born, to see such a season of the pouring out of God’s Spirit, and will wish that you had died and gone to hell before you had seen it. . . . Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let every one fly out of Sodom: “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”

The stereotypical “fire and brimstone” style of preaching originates in revivalism. The purpose of this kind of sermon is to make the listener strongly aware of his personal guilt before God, usually illustrated with graphic depictions of the damned suffering eternally in hell. With the listener in a sufficient state of fear for his eternal life, he is then led by the preacher to make a “personal commitment to Christ.”

He may be directed to pray the “sinner’s prayer,” which typically includes an acknowledgment of personal sin, a sincere statement of repentance, a statement of belief that only Jesus can save him (possibly including belief in His death and Resurrection), followed by a request for Jesus to “come into my heart” and grant him salvation from sin. The sinner’s prayer may also include an acknowledgment of Jesus as “Lord of my life.” It is absolutely necessary that this prayer must be prayed with utmost sincerity.

You may have some experience of this tactic yourself if you have ever had anyone approach you and ask, “If you were to die tonight, do you know beyond all shadow of a doubt where you would spend eternity?” Those who submit to this whole process are then told that they are now Christians and bound for heaven, and usually (though not always) they are also told that they will go to heaven no matter what they do from now on. They are now among a special group called the “saved,” and everyone who does not belong to it is “unsaved” or “lost.” Your salvation is ultimately between you and God, and the “church” consists of everyone who is “saved,” whether they belong to a church community or not. This may be called “making a decision for Christ.”

Such a strong emphasis is laid on a one-time personal conversion as a critical element of salvation that those raised as Christians from birth may sometimes be at a loss to find that moment in their lives—if they have never had such a moment, they may be directed to go through the act in order to ensure their salvation. Even those who do experience such a moment may wonder whether that moment was “real” or not, since a sincerity that was felt as a child (for instance) may be doubted later as an adult. And one has to wonder if profoundly intellectually disabled people can get “saved.”

What happens in these conversion experiences is quite different from the corresponding process in traditional Christianity in general and Orthodoxy in particular. Nowhere in any of this is there a reference to entering the Church, the Body of Christ. Baptism is not necessarily involved. There is no sense that salvation itself critically involves anything other than escaping from hell after death. The only thing you are “saved” from is hell—the wrath of God. The whole process is essentially private, mental, and emotional. It is not required that there be an ongoing life of struggle against the sinful passions.

Contrast this model of conversion and salvation with the one experienced by St. Paul. His conversion certainly included a change of heart (Acts 9:3–9). But his conversion is also communal, in that God told him to go and listen to Ananias to learn what he must do (9:6). It is ascetical, as he fasts for three days (9:9). It is finally sacramental, for Ananias also baptizes him (Acts 9:18). In this most iconic of New Testament conversions we do not see salvation defined in the limited terms of the “sinner’s prayer” model. At no point is Paul urged to “accept Jesus into his heart.”

The basic religious impulse behind the individualism of revivalism is a good one, that the believer has to decide for himself to do what is right and good before God, to change his life. But where this attitude differs from Orthodoxy is that the Orthodox Church says that making this decision is only the beginning. Realizing you are a sinner is good, and repenting of your sins is good, but we will probably never be truly aware in a single moment of the depth of sin that most of us hide in our hearts. And of course we also keep sinning, even after conversion. We need to repent throughout our whole lives, not because that earns salvation, but because repentance is a cooperation with God so that He may bring salvation and personal transformation into every part of our humanity.

The most problematic part of revivalist individualism is that, while it functions communally, it removes the critical character of communal church life. Many believers in this tradition belong to Evangelical church communities. But that belonging is usually in terms of fellowship or help for the Christian life rather than a participation in the Body of Christ regarded as necessary for salvation. Corporate worship is important and may even facilitate a spiritual encounter with God, but it is not really critical to salvation. And because of the non-sacramental approach to Christianity of revivalism, if most of the emphasis is placed on conversion, there is ultimately nothing available at church that is not also available at home or out in the woods. You can be saved without church. You would not want to be, but you could. Church is ultimately optional—though still normal.

The church-optional spirituality that came from pietism and flourished in revivalism is the root of the “spiritual but not religious” attitude. If there is nothing critical to salvation available only in the church community, isn’t it easier to be “spiritual” without all those other sinful, flawed believers getting in the way? Having been told or having learned through culture that personal salvation (or enlightenment, fulfillment, inner peace) is a private matter between them and God, they find they are much more comfortable obeying only their own interpretations of Scripture or spiritual experience rather than having a pastor, confessor, or teacher. Tradition—which is the normal functioning of a community over time—is not needed, because the private individual is the measure of everything.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth-century hero of individualists, once wrote, “A true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events” (from his essay “Self-reliance”). The inner heresy of individualism is the rejection of communion. The “sinner’s prayer” approach to salvation, being focused on the self, damages the communion of the people of God both with each other and with God Himself in Jesus Christ.

The twentieth-century Orthodox saint Silouan the Athonite famously said, “My brother is my life.” For him, community life was critical to his own salvation. But with the individualism of Evangelicalism, one could ask in all seriousness, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

In the Orthodox Church, there is a common saying: “We are saved together, but damned alone.” From the ancient Church comes a Latin saying: unus Christianus, nullus Christianus (“one Christian is no Christian”). Salvation is not a private matter. It is a communion of persons becoming one with God in Christ’s Body, the Church. And that Church is not just the sum of all who believe in Christ, but an actively cohesive organism that functions together.

I am reminded especially of St. Paul’s description of the gift of Christ, that it is

for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. (Eph. 4:12–16, emphasis added)

We should emphasize that Evangelicals believe what Paul says here. But what he says is undermined by their individualistic model for salvation, and that model is the source of all the variability in Evangelical worship and practice, constantly pressing onward for innovation. If the Church is not an integral part of what it means to be saved, then the shape that church life takes is reduced to a matter of personal taste or expedience. That variability makes Evangelicalism much more susceptible to being “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.”

It is perhaps no coincidence that Emerson, once a minister in the Unitarian Church, eventually rejected all forms of Christianity altogether because of his hatred of the ritual of Holy Communion. His individualism chafed at the idea of communing with other believers. Most Evangelicals of course would not follow Emerson away from Christ, but there is always within the individualism of Evangelicalism the seed of disunity.

Faith as Knowledge

We made reference earlier to that prototypical question asked by those “witnessing” for Evangelical Christianity: “Do you know where you will spend eternity?” One of the marks of the revivalist understanding of salvation is the quest for absolute certainty, knowing beyond all doubt that heaven is your eternal destination. This epistemological certainty is called “faith,” but it is not the understanding of faith the Orthodox see in the New Testament and throughout their whole tradition.

The early gnostics were not satisfied with the ordinary trust and faith of the average believer in the early Church, and so they sought gnosis, “knowledge” of their salvation, an absolute inner assurance and certainty that they were saved. The problem with this approach is that it is not faith! Having faith or trust in something is not the same as knowing something for certain.

The Greek word for “faith” is pistis, which, like almost any word ending in -is, refers to a progressive, ongoing, dynamic reality. A more accurate, though perhaps clumsier, translation might be “faithing.” Or perhaps we may translate it as “faithfulness.” In historic Christianity, faith is not understood as a single, absolute certainty, based on a one-time experience of salvation. It is an active, ongoing movement toward and with God.

Those who define faith as absolute knowledge are not following in the tradition of the apostles but rather in the tradition of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in Europe and America, which elevated human reason and sought to give mankind perfect assurance of whatever he might try to know. While the Enlightenment led many to abandon religion, because religion was seen as irrational, many more applied the Enlightenment’s principles to religion, redefining the experience of dynamic faith as a mental surety of knowledge. Absolute knowledge became the definition of faith.

Those who preach the doctrine of faith as knowledge will often quote verses like 1 John 5:13 to back up their claims: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God” (emphasis added). However, the word in that verse for “know” is not the Greek term for rational, mental certainty, epistemi. Rather, it is eidite, which is a knowledge based on something one sees and experiences, not something one is mentally certain of.

Faith is not reducible to an inner, mental knowledge or even a feeling. Faith is rather an ongoing, dynamic relationship of trust and cooperation of the believer with God. Faith is a life of communion. Just as a marriage is not made by the wedding ceremony or the exchange of rings, salvation is not made by making a single decision for Christ. It is begun by that act, and like marriage, which St. Paul uses as a metaphor for salvation in Ephesians 5, salvation must be maintained and nurtured in order to come to full fruition.

Evangelicals often speak of the Christian life as being a “relationship with Jesus Christ,” but the relationship is largely about what happens after salvation has already been acquired. This is a byproduct of the Reformation division of justification from sanctification, which makes justification the truly critical part of salvation. You should still have a relationship with Jesus Christ, but it is not about salvation itself.

This mistaking of faith for knowledge leads to the aforementioned error of eternal security, popularly known as “once saved, always saved.” Because the believer thinks he has absolute certainty of his salvation, he has been led to believe that no matter what he now does for the rest of his life, he is “saved.”

But in the Scripture, there is language that makes no sense if salvation were a single, past event that is absolutely certain (e.g., the progressive “being saved” in Acts 2:47, 1 Cor. 1:18, and 2 Cor. 2:15). Nor is there any indication from Scripture that God will honor our free will for one moment to save us and then violate it for the rest of our lives to keep us from falling away. It should be enough, however, to quote the words of Christ in Matthew 10:22; 24:13; and Mark 13:13: “He who endures to the end will be saved.”

Even in life’s other struggles, the understanding of faith as knowledge leads people to think that if only they can convince themselves of something they otherwise would believe not to be true, then miracles can be performed. If they have cancer, they can be cured if they have enough faith. But this isn’t faith. It’s just a psychological exercise in self-assurance. Faith in such a circumstance is trusting God and drawing closer to Him no matter what He might choose to permit.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the transmutation of faith into knowledge is that some believers whose Christian life is defined by this sense of absolute certainty can begin to regard themselves as prophets. What in traditional Christian terms might be described with language such as “I believe that perhaps I should . . . ,” “Maybe God is leading us to . . . ,” or “It could be that God is showing me . . .” may be put in these sorts of terms instead: “This is what the Lord wants me to do,” “God’s plan for us is . . .,” or “God is telling me to . . .” This kind of talk is especially common in Pentecostal circles, where it is often assumed that frequent supernatural interventions by God (such as speaking in tongues) are a mark that one is saved.

We can say with certainty what God has revealed to mankind: that He wants all of us to be saved, that He wants all of us to repent of our sins, that He wants all of us to bring the Gospel to those around us. The danger comes when the believer starts to see himself as God’s mouthpiece of specific, new revelation. People may say that God has given them “a word” for someone else, and they express it in direct and certain terms. They believe they speak for God, not just in the prophetic ministry we all have in preaching the Gospel, but also with detailed, direct instructions, usually for other people. In this, they not only claim to be a spiritual father or mother for another but also to be clairvoyant. (We will discuss these issues more in the next chapter.)

Although this behavior may be sincere and arise from a desire to serve God, it should be carefully checked, because it is spiritual delusion to presume a prophetic role, especially over other people. True clairvoyance is rare even among the saints, and those with that gift usually try to flee from it rather than enthusiastically bringing it to others. In any case, a spirituality divorced from the stabilizing community life of the Church, apart from the context of obedience to an experienced father-confessor, will always tend toward deviation.

Dualism

In the revivalist religious system, just as with the gnostics, eternal salvation does not include the material world. Most Christians influenced by revivalism believe that morality has a material component—that what you do with your body, for instance, is important, because you can sin with it—but this moral outlook is uninformed by the traditional Christian understanding of the role of creation in salvation and man’s place in creation. Therefore, revivalist Christianity can tend to be strongly dualistic.

Christians who preach that material reality has a role in salvation are usually regarded by those in the Evangelical tradition as superstitious or even idolatrous, an attitude that is derived especially from comments by John Calvin. (In modern Calvinism, almost everything a Calvinist disagrees with may be called “idolatry.”)

With this dualistic worldview, revivalist Christianity does not practice a truly sacramental Christianity. If a believer gets baptized or takes communion, such acts are understood as mere obedience, “ordinances,” or symbols of a “spiritual” reality, signs of an absent presence. In some cases, the word sacrament may still be used, but what is happening does not convey a spiritual presence or contribute to salvation. Baptism does not save, and communion does not save, despite scriptural indications to the contrary (1 Peter 3:21; Mark 16:16; John 6:53).

Like ancient gnosticism, the dualism of revivalist Christianity effectively denies the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, that God became a man. But if God became a man and invites us to eat and drink His Body and Blood, then the sacraments as a physical experience make sense. This is why receiving Communion in an unworthy manner can be damning (1 Cor. 11:29). If the bread and wine do not truly become Christ’s Body and Blood, then how could receiving mere symbols ever be so dangerous? Yet the Scripture says otherwise.

Because Evangelicals do affirm the Incarnation, we have to regard their dualism as an implicit denial of the Incarnation rather than an explicit one. They see the involvement of the material creation in salvation as ending with the flesh of Jesus, whereas the Orthodox see the Incarnation as a cosmic act—locally in fullness in Jesus Christ, but with implications for all creation and especially for daily Christian life.

So while most revivalists would certainly not deny the Incarnation, that God became man, they do deny what Christians historically saw as the results of the Incarnation—the sacraments, the priesthood, the holy icons, and all the physical components of Christian life throughout history. These physical expressions and extensions of Christ’s enfleshment are the means by which Christians participate in it. He is now touchable, so we touch Him in the sacraments. He became our high priest and ordained apostles, so we have a sacramental priesthood. And He became visible, so we have icons. For most Christians, both across time and across cultures, this way of life was normal, both for those who sat at the apostles’ feet and then for their own disciples. Only through ignorance of history or a denial of its authority can one miss the traditionally physical side of being spiritual.

The dualism of Evangelicalism extends beyond the sacramental life. Without a sense of the essential physical element of spiritual life, Christian anthropology suffers—we’re dealing with only part of what it means to be human. If your body doesn’t really matter, there is no need for asceticism. (Eat, drink, and be merry!) How could fasting, vigils, and specific periods of sexual chastity have any effect on the spiritual life? All of these kinds of practices, which are evident in Holy Scripture, are rendered meaningless in the dualistic worldview. While some discussion or observance of these practices does exist among Evangelicals, they are normally absent. If they are present at all, they are regarded as occasional acts of extraordinary piety rather than as a regulative lifestyle that trains the body to be submissive to the soul and thus brings salvation even to the body.

The dualism of Evangelicalism even has an environmental impact. Traditional Christian anthropology teaches that man is not merely the steward of creation but its priest. But with no sacraments, no altar, and no worldview that sees the physical as holy, creation is simply something to be exploited, something to be used—even if used wisely. Environmentalists are right in criticizing this approach to our world, though they may do so for the wrong reasons. While environmentalists often elevate “Mother Nature” over mankind, the Orthodox Christian sees mankind as a priest and creation as the church he worships in. How could a priest ever desecrate his own church? A true priest sees creation as God’s gift to him, to be offered up on the altar, sanctified by grace, and then returned to him for his salvation.

Anti-materialism has further ramifications. For most Evangelicals, history also makes no difference for the Christian life. Yet what is Christian history but the continuous extension of the Incarnation? The Church can have no concrete reality to it, either, and no actual boundaries.

Dualism has an effect on morality, as well, especially those areas that involve the body. Some ancient gnostics taught that bodily morality was irrelevant, and they would give themselves over to debauchery. And many believers in our time, even serious Christians, have a hard time understanding why it could be wrong to give oneself sexually to another without being joined in Christian marriage—the moral teachings are still there, because they are obviously in Scripture, but their inner purpose is obscured. This obscurity is what has allowed some Evangelicals to begin accepting the surrounding culture’s revisions of sexual morality. If you’ve ever tried to teach sexual morality to a teenager, you know it’s a tough sell, even on rational grounds. But Orthodox tradition teaches us that there is a spiritual union that occurs along with the physical union, because we have a definite sense that spirituality is closely associated with physicality. It is also why God’s designed context for sexuality—one man and one woman joined in marriage for life—bears a gravity and dignity for the Orthodox that are becoming less obvious to the world.

There is even a spiritual reality to the food we eat, which is why we ask God to bless it before eating it, don’t eat too much of it, and then thank Him for it afterward. It’s why eating together is one of the most profound expressions of human community.

The moral theology of the body is not merely a matter of obedience to the divine command and fear of reprisal for disobedience—it stems from an understanding of the mystical reality of the creation itself. If God is in every atom and molecule of every thing because He is omnipresent, then holiness is everywhere, especially in those places and things He has particularly blessed by His presence in the Incarnation. His commands are therefore not arbitrary, but rather reveal something about the inner spiritual reality of the material creation.

So what can we conclude regarding a spiritual outlook that denies history, liturgy, sacrament, icon, asceticism, concrete Church community, and a profound sense of the holiness of all creation? It can only be regarded as an implicit denial of Christ’s Incarnation.

A daily spiritual life detached from the material part of who we are is unsustainable. The spiritual man, though he cannot live by bread alone, also cannot live without bread. He needs physical activity in his spiritual life. He needs a church building to go to. He needs songs to sing. He needs books to read and spiritual images to put in front of his eyes. Christian dualism cannot suppress the basic spiritual need that mankind has for physical elements in the spiritual life.

Because of the divorce from the historic Church, Evangelicalism has sought for a new way to satisfy the need for materiality. This is why such believers have welcomed pop music and rock-n-roll into their churches. It is why emotion is mistaken for spirituality. It is why sentiment is substituted for holiness. Sincere feeling is the authenticator. Instead of icons of Christ, whose piercing stare calls you to repentance, the Evangelical can go to a Christian bookstore and buy a soft-focus, long-haired picture of Jesus. He’s a “nice” Jesus, but it is hard to believe that He is God.

All of this amounts to a kind of pseudo-incarnational approach to the physical side of being spiritual. When the world looks at this and is told that it is “Christianity,” it easily turns away. After all, the world’s rock-n-roll is better rock-n-roll. (I was a stagehand at the time I discovered Orthodoxy, and it was on a Sunday morning at an Evangelical church that it occurred to me that the rock-n-roll at my job was higher quality music than that at my church.) Rather than transforming and transfiguring culture, as the Church has traditionally done, Evangelicalism has instead been transformed by culture.

Evangelicals would say that the medium doesn’t matter if the message is true. But while it’s true that the medium is not identical to the message, the medium is part of the message. The way one worships is not neutral. A flashy, entertainment-style worship service communicates something that traditional liturgy does not. And that liturgy communicates something that the theatrical service cannot. The eternality, majesty, and incarnate touchability of God are present in traditional Christian liturgy in a way that they simply are not in contemporary-style worship.

This whole problem of medium and message is exacerbated when examining a newer development in Evangelical worship—the “multi-site” church. Multi-site churches are typically non-denominational churches that (perhaps ironically) form multiple congregations all belonging to a single structure. What ties them together is not only administrative or doctrinal, but technological. A multi-site church usually has a single preacher who is present in one of the “campuses” and connected via video feed to other locations. Music may be wholly local to a single campus, or the local musicians may be playing along with a video feed of the musicians at the main location. Thus, the experience of worship is literally digitized and made even more disincarnate.

Evangelicalism has to keep changing, seeking after the latest new means of attracting church attendance, always looking for innovation. Churches in the Evangelical tradition—especially non-denominational ones—may change doctrine every time they change pastors. On the other hand, if you attend an Orthodox service anywhere in the world, you will hear the same faith preached, witness the same faith in the liturgy, and see the same faith lived by serious believers—both across geography and time. There is consistency in parts of the Evangelical world, but it is more in terms of a common spiritual culture and style than in dogma, theology, and liturgy—and it does not remain the same over time. And there is change in Orthodox worship, but the change that occurs in liturgical tradition is generally very slow and not dependent on secular culture’s tastes. Finally, it should be clear that Orthodox dogma does not change under new church leadership.

Escapism

The dualistic worldview of Evangelicalism has a strong escapist streak. Because this world is not something holy that needs to be rescued and re-offered to God, the believer ultimately desires to withdraw himself from it. Escape is one of the classic gnostic themes, and the Orthodox Church rejects it because the redemption brought by Christ is a restoration of the whole creation with man at its center, rather than a removal of man from a hopelessly corrupt creation.

Escapism in Evangelicalism manifests itself in several ways.

One of the most obvious is the attempt to create an Evangelical subculture with its own lingo, branding, and niche markets. Instead of watching “worldly” movies, you can watch “Christian” ones. Instead of listening to “the devil’s music” (rock-n-roll), you can listen to “Christian” rock. There are even Christian romance novels. If you go into a Christian bookstore, you can find not only Christian media, but also Christian toys, Christian games, Christian T-shirts, and even Christian breath mints.

Perhaps the most successful part of this attempt to creative Christian cultural alternatives was in popular music. The birth of contemporary Christian music (CCM) in particular was in the 1960s with the Jesus Movement, but the 1980s saw an explosion of Christian record labels and recording artists. In time, CCM came to so dominate American Evangelical culture that now most non-denominational churches use it almost exclusively in their services.

This escapism also feeds into the general revivalist approach to the physical world itself. Philip J. Lee, in his book Against the Protestant Gnostics, details an interesting account regarding American Secretary of the Interior James Watt. The Wall Street Journal asked the secretary in the early 1980s, when he had just taken steps to permit massive exploitation of planetary resources, often including strip mining, the sell-off of National Park land, and so forth, whether he was worried about future generations and their ability to live in and enjoy the land. Mr. Watt, no doubt a Christian of revivalist background, replied, “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns” (Lee, 190). Because Evangelicals expect to escape from the world, it does not matter much how they treat it.

But what is perhaps the most striking element of the escapism in this belief system is a powerful fascination with the end of the world. This period of history is perhaps the only one that really interests revivalists. I can recall from my own youth how a number of the Evangelical churches my family attended seemed to base the vast majority of sermons on the Book of Revelation.

There is something titillating about the idea of looking into the future, and even though the Bible explicitly warns against making any predictions of when the Second Coming of Christ will occur (Matt. 25:13), there have been various Evangelical leaders who have given exact dates when the end of the world would come, often included in the pages of bestselling books. Even without making specific predictions, revivalist Christianity has a strong orientation toward eschatological expectation, believing that the eschaton, the end of the world, is nigh. Perhaps the most popular event in this expectation is what is commonly called “the Rapture.”

The most basic version of the Rapture doctrine goes something like this: When the end of the world is approaching, Jesus will appear in the sky and hover there. All true believers will then be “raptured” up into the air to follow Jesus back to heaven. What happens after that is a matter for some debate, whether there are seven literal years of a “Great Tribulation” or whether that will have already been happening for a while or be ending at that moment. Armageddon may happen before or after, as well. There is also some debate over whether anyone will notice the Rapture is occurring (some believe in a “secret Rapture”). In any case, this Rapture takes place before the final Second Coming of Christ.

This belief is cobbled together from several biblical passages, but most especially from 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17:

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

But this passage nowhere talks about Jesus hovering. For the Orthodox, these verses are about the end of the world. When Christ comes back, the general resurrection will occur, and time as we know it will end. In a moment, it will all be over.

What many Rapturists do not know is that their particular form of belief is less than two hundred years old. Some historians trace this belief to the supposed visions of a Scottish teenager named Maggie MacDonald, whose influence was eventually felt by Cyrus Scofield, whose Scofield Reference Bible included Rapturist doctrine and was wildly popular among revivalists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially after the onset of World War I suggested to many that the end of the world was near. Others point to different sources of origin, and there were various Rapture doctrines put forth before MacDonald and Scofield.

Whatever may be the case, it is generally agreed that it was not until about the nineteenth century that many people started believing in the Rapture as it is now commonly taught. This doctrine is pervasive, and one may find people who believe in it across many denominations and independent churches. It is so common that Rapture believers who encounter those who disagree with them are often taken aback, as though their interlocutors were denying belief in the divinity of Jesus. But the majority of the world’s Christians, including Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, traditional Anglicans, and many in the Reformed denominations, have never believed in Rapture doctrine.

The Rapture is so popular that it is represented in novels and movies (such as the popular Left Behind series starring Kirk Cameron and later Nicolas Cage) and even video games. There’s even a website you can send money to that will send an email to all your “unsaved” friends after you get raptured, letting them know what’s happened to you and that they should repent soon (YouveBeenLeftBehind.com). One popular Rapture bumper sticker says, “In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned.” And one somewhat less popular bumper sticker replies with, “In case of Rapture, can I have your car?”

Far from being simply a quaint and fanciful set of teachings about the end of the world, however, this variety of eschatology is spiritually dangerous. Those who believe in it are waiting for the Rapture and rest assured that if it hasn’t yet occurred, they still have time to live however they want. This especially holds true for those who believe that the Rapture will save them from the Antichrist. But what if an actual Antichrist comes and the Rapture hasn’t happened? Will such believers follow him, thinking he can’t be the real Antichrist?

Coupled with Rapture belief is often the return of an ancient heresy called chiliasm (from Greek chiliasmos, “thousand”), the belief that Christ’s Second Coming will be followed by a literal thousand years of His rule here on earth. Though this belief was held by some early Christian writers, it was eventually rejected by the Church as inconsistent with apostolic tradition. Rather, we are now living in the “thousand years” (a metaphor for a very long time) of the age of the Church.

Experience and Enthusiasm

Ancient gnosticism, with its focus on the individual, found its sense of fulfillment in the pursuit of personal spiritual experience. Likewise, the strong individualism of Evangelicalism, because it is detached from the traditional sacramental community life of the historic Church, came to lack something else to tie its communities together, some way for the individual believer to have some assurance of his salvation. The sense of belonging is generally strong for those who participate in liturgical Christianity, but for those whose worship includes no liturgy, there has to be something else to connect the believer to God and to his fellow Christians. For revivalism, this something can be described in two terms—experience and enthusiasm.

With their emphasis on individual conversion, revivalists love few things better than a good conversion story. The best ones are those told by “dirty” sinners who have reformed. Liars, cheats, and those who harbor hatred, gluttony, envy, and judgment in their hearts are less interesting than those with more “spectacular” sins such as murder, alcohol and drug addiction, and sexual depravity. Conversion stories are especially prized from those who used to belong to non-Christian religions. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, there was a rise in those claiming to have converted from Satanism (the most famous of these was Christian comedian Mike Warnke, whose story was later debunked).

The key in all these stories is a personal experience that can be passed on, especially one with strong emotional content. This passing on is usually referred to as “testifying.” These personal conversion stories inspire listeners to have a similar experience. Believers are encouraged to develop their own personal salvation narratives, called “testimonies,” to aid them in recruiting others for the faith. Preaching in revivalist churches is marked by this tendency toward enthusiastic emotionalism and insistence on a personal experience.

This desire for an enthusiastic experience can often become so intense that believers begin to lay great stress on seeing miraculous manifestations of the work of the Holy Spirit, usually accompanied by rousing, emotionally stirring music and frenetic preaching. This phenomenon is usually associated with Pentecostalism and those churches affected by the Charismatic movement. There is often also an anti-intellectualist streak in the religious culture of revivalist congregations. Especially in many rural congregations, if the preacher never went to any seminary or even to college, it is to his credit, because such things just confuse you and rob you of true faith. This is the fruit of pietism with its insistence on personal spiritual experience rather than adherence to doctrine and participation in sacramental life. Anti-intellectualism fits in well with a denial of the importance of history for Christian life, as well as bolstering the doctrine of sola scriptura, where it’s just “me and my Bible,” without any interference from academics or authoritarian clergy.

Besides Pentecostalism, the desire for personal experience coupled with individualism has birthed another strain in revivalist religion, the shift toward making Christianity into a self-help program. This approach is particularly seen in many modern mega-churches, which try to appeal to “seekers,” giving them whatever they might want to bring them through the door. This kind of religion, informed and shaped by market research, offers dozens of carefully tailored programs to meet the “needs” of individual believers.

Being consumer-oriented and consumer-driven, Christianity as self-help appeals to the selfishness of believers and caters to the cafeteria mentality of most American Christians. Instead of the Church transforming them, they are defining and transforming their churches, so that many of them appear not as houses of worship but as theaters, coffeehouses, and shopping malls. It is not unusual to walk into the lobby of an Evangelical megachurch and see exactly these features. In consumerist Christianity, Christ is not there so that I may enter into His Crucifixion and die and rise with Him, being transfigured into His likeness and becoming a partaker of the divine nature. He is there to “help” me with what I want.

This kind of religion, which is focused on self-fulfillment rather than repentance, has also been successfully removed from the explicitly religious context and remarketed with great success. Perhaps the most successful example of this kind of religion is the spirituality offered by people like Oprah Winfrey, which is almost indistinguishable from what is sold by many televangelists and other megachurch pastors like Joel Osteen, whose books are bestsellers and whose church is packed with hordes of people looking to “feel better.”

Orthodoxy is marked by sobriety, not by emotional enthusiasm. It is also marked by a quite “ordinary” persistence in living the humble, consistent life of Christ, not by seeking out extraordinary experiences, especially supernatural ones. To the true believer, those experiences sometimes do come, but they are rare, and the saints are often suspicious of them. It is better accidentally to reject an angel by being overly vigilant than to embrace a demon through undiscerning enthusiasm.

That does not mean that Orthodox Christians are dour, joyless people (though I have known some who were that way). It simply means that we do not place a premium on the emotional content of Christianity. The Christian faith should be just as edifying in moments of low or even no emotion as it is when we feel an immediate awareness of joy. One of the dangers of teaching emotional enthusiasm as a mark of true faith is that those who are not feeling that way may begin to question whether they truly belong to Christ. Orthodoxy doesn’t expect you to feel any particular way in order to live the Christian life well.

DENOMINATIONAL FAMILIES AND MOVEMENTS

Many of the attitudes, doctrines, and practices we’ve discussed may broadly be included under the label Evangelicalism, but there is probably no one denomination, congregation, or even person who holds to all of them. Some may have only one or two elements of what we have described. Nevertheless, Evangelical Protestantism represents the second largest Christian grouping in America, second in size only to the Roman Catholic Church, and it is strongly influential throughout the world.

What almost all Evangelicals share is an emphasis on a “personal relationship with Christ.” For most, the conversion that began this relationship has one goal: getting to heaven after death. For some, it may include other kinds of goals, such as earthly wealth, entertainment, or a sort of religious therapy. Evangelicals and revivalists in general also share a commitment to evangelism, which, while laudable in itself, is probably largely the result of their lacking much in the way of a detailed spiritual life for the already converted believer—there are activities to participate in, of course, but they are not critical to salvation. Thus, the convert, having been “saved,” lacks much of eternal significance to do except to go out and help other people get saved.

Now that we’ve looked at revivalism in general, let’s take a closer look at a few specific movements and denominational families that have their roots in revivalism. The first two, Restorationism and Adventism, have their origins in the eighteenth century and took contrasting approaches to the central doctrine at issue in the Radical Reformation, ecclesiology.

Restorationism

Restorationism came out of the Second Great Awakening revivalist movements in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in the United States, following the teachings of leaders Barton W. Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell. Those following Stone (calling themselves simply “Christians”) and the members of the Campbell movement (known as “Disciples of Christ”) eventually merged, and Restorationism is therefore also known as the Stone-Campbellite Movement.

Barton Stone was initially a Presbyterian minister but eventually led his own presbytery to dissolve itself and pursue unity with other Christians. Thomas Campbell had also been a Presbyterian but later associated with Baptists. Both men were committed to a restoration of apostolic Christianity through a process of rational reconstruction, which would in turn hasten the coming millennial rule of Christ. Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander eventually sent a representative to merge with Stone’s movement in 1832, with the deal settled through a handshake.

The central idea of Restorationism is that there should be only one Church and that all Christians should be part of it. The movement seeks to restore that one Church, which was lost at some point in history. Restorationists therefore believe in the Great Apostasy, though they chart it as occurring over many centuries rather than shortly after the death of the apostles.

Restorationists believe that they are working toward the renewal and restoration of the New Testament Church and that the traditional creeds of historic Christianity only serve to divide rather than unite believers. They have been described as the “earliest ecumenical movement,” since their founders sought for all Christian churches to merge and therefore prove to be the Church of the New Testament. They teach that all denominational labels should be abandoned, as such terms are divisive, instead using only explicitly biblical terms for the followers of Jesus. Unity is found by emphasizing Christian commonalities and focusing on the practice of the early Church as read in the Bible.

Ironically, Restorationism itself divided in the late nineteenth century after a period of unity following the 1832 merger, with lines roughly between those whose emphasis was on Christian unity and those who sought to restore the early Church. Initial divisions were over whether musical instruments should be used in church, and then in the early twentieth century over whether there ought to be denominational structures. It was in the latter break that the large movement of fully independent but affiliated Churches of Christ came to exist. In the 1990s, a further break gave birth to the International Churches of Christ, based on an emphasis in the “discipling” movement.

Like the Orthodox, Restorationists regard themselves as being identical with the New Testament Church. However, the Churches of Christ have no apostolic succession to back up this belief, which also contradicts their belief in the Great Apostasy. How can the Churches of Christ be the original New Testament Church if that New Testament Church completely fell away at some point in history? And if the New Testament Church has truly been restored after being lost (something claimed by many movements), why do the Restorationists have the best claim?

Ecclesiology for Restorationists is primarily understood in terms of organization and practices rather than theology. Unity is a major theme, and this goal is to be accomplished through a common set of doctrines and practices, but usually without a strong hierarchy or denomination beyond the local congregation. Without the context of corrective authority or tradition, it is easy to see why Restorationism split early on and remains divided. What was supposed to unite all Christians together divided even those in the movement.

Restorationists do have a number of things in common with the Orthodox, such as a belief in the necessity of baptism (although they do not baptize infants or believe that baptism accomplishes something in itself), holding communion frequently (though without a belief in the real presence), and (in many cases) a cappella music in church (the Disciples of Christ use musical instruments).

Despite these similarities, however, Restorationists generally hold to a view of the Bible in which silence is regarded as prohibition. Thus, many do not use instruments in music because they do not see them in the New Testament. In the early years of the movement, the Stone wing taught that only an ordained minister could officiate at communion; but now they do not have ordained clergy, though they are served by paid pastors. Congregations do have elders and deacons, but these are administrative roles and have no special theological or sacramental significance.

Finally, the most significant criticism Orthodoxy has of the Restorationist movement is the same it has of all the children and grandchildren of the Radical Reformation: If the true Church was really lost at some point, how can you know that your version of it is a true restoration? Falling back on sola scriptura does not solve this problem, since all the descendants of the Reformation, divided into hundreds of denominations and tens of thousands of independent congregations, all claim to be simply teaching the Bible.

There are two major Restorationist denominations in the United States—the Churches of Christ (the largest) and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (which has liberalized over the years and is about half the size as the Churches of Christ). Almost as large as the Churches of Christ denomination is a loosely affiliated non-denominational network of Restorationist tradition churches which may use the name Christian Church or Church of Christ. These are often called the “non-institutional” Church of Christ.

Adventism

The Adventist churches, the largest of which is the Seventh-day Adventist Church, are the spiritual heirs of the Millerites of the 1840s, one of the many millennialist movements of the nineteenth century that focused on the imminent return of Jesus to earth. The Millerites, like the pietists and those who led the revivalist movements, drew followers from across denominational lines, including Baptists like their leader William Miller, as well as Presbyterians, Methodists, and members of the Restorationist churches.

William Miller was a Baptist preacher from Low Hampton, New York, who calculated that Jesus Christ would return to earth on October 22, 1844. The Millerites had a handful of doctrines that made them distinct from their various denominational affiliations, but what united them was the common belief in the truth of Miller’s calculation, which he claimed to have derived from prophetic passages in the Book of Daniel. Because Miller shared the common belief in a rejection of tradition and church authority, he believed that his method for reading the Bible was beyond question.

October 22, 1844, came and went, however, and there was no clear indication that Jesus had returned to earth. This came to be known as the “Great Disappointment,” and most Millerites disbanded and returned to their various churches. Some, however, believed that Miller’s calculations were correct but that his reading of Daniel was flawed. Instead of Christ returning to earth in 1844, He entered into an “inner sanctuary” in heaven, signaling the beginning of an “investigative judgment” of professed believers. Some believed that the October date in 1844 marked a “shut door” after which no true conversions to Christ could occur, although that has since been rejected (presumably since later followers, all born after 1844, regarded themselves as true converts).

It is out of this reorganized group of Millerites that the present-day Adventist churches were formed. They still believe the Second Coming is imminent, though they no longer set specific dates. One of the Adventist groups in particular believes that Christian worship should follow the Jewish pattern, and so they worship on Saturdays and are called Seventh-day Adventists, the largest of the Adventist denominations. Not all Adventists share identical theology.

Besides the belief in the investigative judgment and observance of Saturday as the Christian holy day (Sabbatarianism), some of the peculiar doctrines of Seventh-day Adventists include “soul sleep,” in which the human soul “sleeps” unconsciously from physical death until the final judgment. They also teach “conditional immortality,” which means the wicked do not suffer eternally in the afterlife but are completely annihilated. Immortality is conditioned on being saved. Neither of these doctrines are taught by the Orthodox.

Adventists are traditionally teetotalers, rejecting alcohol and tobacco use. They also encourage vegetarianism and avoidance of caffeine. Many fellow Protestants regard these emphases as legalistic, but the Orthodox see in them at least an echo of traditional Christian asceticism, which includes fasting from certain kinds of foods at set times.

Seventh-day Adventist ecclesiology teaches that a remnant of true believers will be saved in the end. The true Church is therefore spread throughout all the world and probably across many denominations. Seventh-day Adventists accept the “invisible Church” ecclesiology of the Radical Reformation, that the true Church has no visible boundaries.

They also believe, however, that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the true “visible Church,” as elucidated in the writings of early-twentieth-century Adventist Ellen G. White, who is regarded as a prophet by many Adventists. Thus, the true Church is invisible, but its exclusive visible representative is the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Adventist ecclesiology therefore represents something of a refinement of Radical Reformation ecclesiology. Other Protestants may regard Adventists as exclusivist because of this belief.

Seventh-day Adventists, like most Sabbatarians, date the Great Apostasy to about AD 135. St. Justin Martyr’s description in AD 160 of liturgical worship on Sunday, rather than lending authority to Sunday worship for Christians because of its early date, is looked upon as evidence for a very early apostasy from the true faith.

The Holiness Movement

The Holiness movement grew out of the Methodist Church in the mid-nineteenth century and represented another pietistic revival, especially stressing the need for personal moral purity. Its central doctrine is entire sanctification, which is the idea that the Christian has the possibility for moral perfection in the earthly life, becoming free from all sinful desires. This “second work of grace” (or second blessing) is separate from the conversion experience and grants the believer the possibility of no longer sinning.

Followers believed that John Wesley’s original teachings on Christian perfection had been eroded in the Methodist Church, and so they combined those teachings with the revivalist techniques of the nineteenth century to create a new movement. Aside from its genesis in the Methodist Church, the movement also found success among some Congregationalists through the preaching of Charles G. Finney and Dwight L. Moody. Moody did not join the movement himself, but his preaching nevertheless roughly aligned with it.

Although Wesley had taught that the Christian life was more of a process (as does Orthodoxy), the Holiness movement stressed revivalist themes such as personal conversion and decision, with an increasing insistence on visible evidence of conversion, particularly the subsequent second blessing. Through a series of revivalist camp meetings, the movement began spreading throughout both North America and Great Britain. Tensions with Methodist leadership in the final decades of the nineteenth century eventually led to schism and the formation of new denominations. Holiness believers also were among the first to ordain women as clergy.

The Orthodox can laud the Holiness movement’s desire for moral rigor, but not its belief in the second blessing as a standardized event that grants sinlessness. Moral purity is the fruit of theosis, which is a lifelong process of union with God. The focus on purity can also devolve into a kind of puritanism, a condemnational attitude inconsistent with the Orthodox pursuit of healing for all mankind.

With a strong emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit, the Holiness movement eventually split into roughly two general groupings. The more traditional followers formed such denominations as the Wesleyans, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Another well-known Holiness denomination is the Salvation Army, who are especially recognizable through their bell-ringing donation efforts around Christmas. The Salvation Army especially emphasizes social action along with moral conversion, but they are set apart from the rest of the Holiness movement by their rejection of both baptism and communion.

The more radical followers of the movement, those who placed a stronger emphasis on miraculous experiences (attaching speaking in tongues, for instance, to the second blessing), would go on to form the Pentecostal movement. A few Pentecostal groups, called Oneness Pentecostals, embraced the heresy of modalism (also called Sabellianism in the ancient Church), the teaching that God is not three Persons, but rather one Person with three “modes.” (We will discuss the Holiness movement more in the next chapter in terms of the rise of Pentecostalism.)

Dispensationalism

One of the theological movements arising out of the nineteenth century is Dispensationalism. The central idea behind this theology is that God divided history into various segments called dispensations. In each of these dispensations, man’s relationship with God is practiced differently. Thus, the means of salvation for the ancient Jews is different from the means for Christians today. Dispensationalists would probably not put it that way, however, instead saying that each dispensation is rather an emphasis on some particular aspect of obedience to God. They teach that all people are saved only by grace through faith, although what that looks like differs with each dispensation. The rules set by God are different in each one.

Dispensationalism is very much interested in the end times, as it sees all of history as a series of prophecies leading to those final days. Theological manuals on Dispensationalism typically include vast series of charts and drawings, usually incorporating apocalyptic imagery from the Books of Daniel and Revelation. A number of Dispensationalists have tried their hand at predicting the date of the end of the world.

For many of these believers, Judaism is still a legitimate religion and grants salvation to Jews. This theology has strongly influenced American Evangelicalism and has had an influence on American foreign policy. Some of these Christians regard the formation of the modern secular state of Israel in 1948 as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and thus believe that America should do everything it can to support the state of Israel against its enemies and in its domestic policies—a position which effectively often pits American Christians against Middle Eastern Christians.

From the Orthodox point of view, any attempt to superimpose a complex system onto history will lead to false conclusions. Rather, what we see revealed in every time and place is Christ. The Old Testament itself is to be read in the light of Christ. While there is an Old Covenant and a New Covenant, we can see a gradual process of God revealing Himself throughout the Old Testament, finally being fully revealed and fulfilled in Christ. The Bible itself, the apostles, and the tradition they taught do not include a system of discrete historical periods.

Further, Judaism as it is now practiced is essentially synagogue Pharisaism, the one sect that survived the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70. It is not a direct successor to ancient Judaism, since the priesthood with its sacrifices did not survive. Orthodoxy has always taught that all of God’s promises to Israel now belong to the Church, which is the New Israel.

Some believers influenced by Dispensationalism have formed groups known as Messianic Judaism, which hold to Christian beliefs but also practice some Jewish rituals. They may often reinterpret classic Christian doctrine in Jewish terms. Instead of reading the Old Testament in light of the New, they tend to read the New Testament in light of the Old. This movement is essentially a revival of the ancient Judaizing heresy. A handful have rejected Trinitarianism, and some even believe that Jesus’ return to earth will involve restoring the animal sacrifices in the Jewish Temple.

Interestingly, though, some Messianic Jews have become Orthodox Christians, such as Fr. James Bernstein, author of Surprised by Christ (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2008), who was once a prominent member of Jews for Jesus. These converts find in Orthodoxy the answer to their longing for historical roots.

Liberalism and Fundamentalism

It is common in our own time to hear the words liberalism and fundamentalism used in discussions of religion. What is usually not known, however, is that these words have historical bases. Liberalism in Protestantism (historically called Modernism) is characteristic of the mainline denominations (Methodists, Episcopalians, some Presbyterians and Lutherans, etc.), and it is the result of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century rationalism.

With rationalism’s emphasis on human reason, coupled with archaeology and studies of the variant textual manuscripts of the Bible, many Christians in these denominations came to doubt the authenticity and authority of the Scripture itself. This doubt had a devastating effect for many believers, since their faith was based on sola scriptura. If Christian faith is derived exclusively from the Bible, and if the Bible is shown to be lacking or mistaken, then why should I believe in Christ at all? This dynamic is still at play in our own day with various academic attempts to undermine the Bible.

For some believers, this question led to a loss of faith. For others, their faith radically changed. The Bible came to be understood as an interesting ancient text with many good teachings, but it wasn’t to be taken too seriously. What really mattered was primarily societal reform, a view which is often called the Social Gospel. (The Social Gospel arose prior to this suspicion toward the Bible’s authenticity, but it remained as the primary emphasis for the mainline churches.) Traditional doctrines, especially those depending on miracles such as the Virgin Birth, were to be held perhaps with suspicion or in some cases discarded entirely.

Fundamentalism was a reaction against Modernism, begun in the early-twentieth-century Presbyterian Church in the United States. The Fundamentalists taught that there were certain “fundamentals” of faith that had to be believed in order for a believer to be a legitimate Christian. After a series of heresy trials, the Fundamentalists eventually broke with the Modernists and formed a new denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The name Fundamentalist was used until at least the late 1970s by many Protestant Christians, not just Presbyterians, who believed that you had to profess certain doctrines in order to be a real Christian. Thus, while Fundamentalism originally referred to the formation of a Presbyterian (and later Evangelical) orthodoxy, nowadays it means something entirely different. It’s typically quite vague in usage but usually seems to mean “anyone who is more serious than I am about religion.”

The Mega-Church Movement

The twentieth century in particular saw the growth in America of “non-denominationalism,” which is essentially the most logical outcome of the commitment to congregationalism in church government. Non-denominational churches pride themselves on being completely autonomous organizations that answer to no one outside the local community. This independence from denominations and hierarchy often devolves into an authoritarian pastorate in the mega-churches, where the leadership is not even answerable to a congregational board.

As the marketing approach to church growth took hold, especially in the 1980s, many believers left their old-fashioned churches to become part of what are now known as the “mega-churches,” whose membership is largely made up of transfers from smaller, denominational churches.

The largest and most influential of these mega-churches in our own time is Willow Creek Community Church, located near Chicago. Willow Creek and churches like it practice a form of Evangelicalism deeply influenced by revivalism. Worship music is typically upbeat and exciting contemporary Christian music, usually pop or rock-n-roll in style, often mixed with music from the Black Gospel tradition.

There are typically dozens of programs to cater to the demographics that such churches are trying to attract. The whole church is designed with help from market research, making it consumer-driven. Often, this “seeker-sensitive” marketing looks at the dominant demographic in an area and works to cater to them, which may make such congregations demographically imbalanced, filled for instance with many thirty-somethings but not very many elderly.

In 2007 Willow Creek itself came out with a study of its success over the years, and they discovered that the most dissatisfied members of their congregation were not those who were the most disengaged. Rather, the dissatisfied were those who were most involved. Those whom they regarded by their own measures as spiritually mature were those most likely to begin to move away from the church.

While Willow Creek is busy retooling its programs to try to address this need, the problem is inherent to revivalism itself—it has a strong emphasis on personal conversion, but without any historical Christian tradition, it has very little to offer for the long haul. All it can do is keep adding new programs to help believers manage every part of life. Willow Creek’s solution was finally a throwback to pietism, mostly just teaching people how to feed themselves spiritually rather than asking harder questions about what it means to be the Church.

What Orthodoxy offers, by contrast, is participation in the divine energies of God. That’s not very “seeker-sensitive,” but it is the path to Christlikeness, communion with the Holy Trinity, and it also offers a lifetime of exploration and spiritual depth.

THE FUTURE OF EVANGELICALISM

In the Dune science fiction series by Frank Herbert, there is a saying which accurately describes a repeated storyline within the books: “Every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.” In each of the books, a revolution of the whole society comes to fruition at the end. In the book that follows, that revolution has become the “establishment,” and a new revolution begins to form which overthrows the new establishment. This same dynamic seems to be at work in much of Protestantism, especially in Evangelicalism.

In 2009, the late Evangelical writer Michael Spencer (popularly known online as “the Internet Monk”) published an essay in the Christian Science Monitor called “The Coming Evangelical Collapse” (an earlier, extended version appeared in several parts on his blog, The Internet Monk). In this piece, he predicted that within two generations, Evangelicalism would be reduced to roughly half its current size:

In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close. (The Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2009)

This influential essay, which still circulates on social media, said that Evangelicalism as a distinct Christian culture would fail in an increasingly hostile world, owing primarily to seven factors: (1) identification with the culture war and political conservatism, (2) lack of basic catechism in orthodox doctrine, (3) churches based on pragmatic consumerism, (4) a badly developed Christian education system, (5) social work by Evangelicals will become less identifiably Christian, (6) traditional Evangelical strongholds (such as the American South) will become inhospitable to Christianity, and (7) money will dry up.

While his essay was controversial in Evangelical circles, it has served as a touchstone for a lot of discussion about where Evangelicalism is going. Presbyterian pastor Peter Leithart even predicted an “end of Protestantism” (“The End of Protestantism,” First Things, Nov. 11, 2013).

In the past several years, another set of movements has begun. What began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a new, exciting, unconventional movement has now become the Evangelical establishment, and new theological revolutionaries are beginning to set the stage for the next set of doctrinal and worship innovations. Will they survive Spencer’s “coming Evangelical collapse”? We will briefly examine some of these developments here.

The Emerging Church

In response to establishment Evangelicalism, a “conversation” emerged among a number of Christians, based on the lineaments of postmodern philosophy and cultural sensibilities. This movement often refers to itself as the emerging (or emergent) church. They may also be known as Post-Evangelical, Post-Protestant, or by other similar names. Some writers make a distinction between emerging (a more conservative wing) and emergent (a liberalizing, progressive approach).

It is difficult to pin down what emergents believe and do, and this is largely by design. There is no unified theological vision that goes along with this label. Even when looking at the writings of individual believers, it is almost impossible to figure out what each person believes.

As an example, consider a book by emergent author Brian D. McLaren. His book A Generous Orthodoxy (which has nothing to do with the Orthodox Church) has this for its subtitle: “Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed-yet-hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian.”

Another name strongly associated with the movement is Rob Bell, whose flirtation with universalism has earned him criticism from traditional Evangelicals but whose actual teachings are difficult to determine, since, as he has said, he is more interested in asking questions than giving answers. He came out in favor of homosexual unions and resigned the pastorate of his church, eventually becoming associated with Oprah Winfrey as a kind of independent spiritual consultant.

We can say a few things about the emergent movement. It is strongly anti-establishment. Emergents have been leaving established church communities, often setting up new communities in people’s homes. They tend to value being “on the edge,” not just in terms of their theology but also in their worship. Emergent worship may include liturgical elements that a believer found in a book, and it may also include in the same service a bewildering electric light show and emotionally charged, “mystical” music.

Mainstream Evangelicals often look at emergents as heretical, especially as new theological ideas are gaining currency in such circles. One such idea is called open theism, which is at its core the teaching that not even God can know the future, because the future doesn’t exist yet. This doctrine is based on the erroneous assumption that God experiences time the same way we do. Theology and Christian life are usually not expressed in terms of creed or tradition, but rather of “conversation.” Whether that conversation will ever come to any conclusions has yet to be seen—conclusions themselves are often seen as limiting. The movement started out as controversial, but without any defining distinctives, it has not as yet gone much of anywhere.

Dedication to doctrine among emergents is typically weak, and emergents see themselves as more of a “movement” than a denomination, often crossing denominational lines like their pietist forebears. Emergent Christians are even more oriented toward the smorgasbord approach to religion than the established churches from which they came. They are often quite interested in tradition, but almost never willing to adopt a tradition in its wholeness, preferring rather to select certain elements of tradition to incorporate into their hybrid spirituality. Emergents are, interestingly, more open to physical and mystical elements in worship than would normally be acceptable in the generally dualistic pietist world.

This movement is an indication that there is a dissatisfaction with the Evangelical mainstream, particularly its perceived commercial aspect. There is an opportunity here for the Orthodox to meet these believers where they are, to discuss with them their criticisms of mainstream Evangelicalism, and then to show them how different Orthodoxy is and how it answers their deepest longings.

The Missional Movement

The missional movement (or “missional living”) which arose at the end of the twentieth century has gained notice within Evangelicalism, though it is difficult to define. It seems not to have any clear characteristic boundaries. At best, missional may be defined as a renewal movement among Evangelicals that emphasizes evangelism with particular sensitivity to existing culture, particularly focusing on the biblical narrative read as God’s mission to the world. At worst, missional functions as a buzzword signaling authenticity or trendiness.

In their 1995 book Incarnational Ministry, Paul Hiebert and Eloise Hiebert Meneses describe missional living as both “contextualization” and “inculturation,” saying that such an approach to evangelism is not just about communication but rather about forming new communities. There is thus a kind of theology of culture at play here. It may be seen as a merging of Evangelical revivalist sensibilities focusing on individual salvation with the concerns of the Social Gospel movements that sought to reform society and eventually largely took over the mainline Protestant denominations. In a sense, these Evangelicals are rediscovering the social aspect of the Gospel—Christians should be focused not only on saving souls but also ministering to the poor, addressing popular culture, etc.

The actual practical work of the missional movement does not look much different from the kinds of social work that churches have traditionally done. The distinctive sense of the movement is more attitudinal—seeing church as more about being “sent” than about attracting membership. There is thus a renewed emphasis on all church members participating in the work of evangelism and social outreach rather than relying on religious professionals.

Without adopting whatever implications missional as a buzzword might bear within the movement, it is probably not incorrect to say that the Orthodox Church has always been missional in the sense that it sees itself as sent into the world for the purpose of transforming culture and establishing community, and that it makes use of active love as one of the means of doing so. Individual parishes may be better or worse at doing this, but at least as described briefly here, living “missionally” mostly sounds like an emphasis on certain parts of the historic Christian tradition and is basically compatible with Orthodoxy.

New Calvinism: The Young, Restless, and Reformed

A movement has arisen recently within Evangelical circles to adopt the soteriology of Calvinism but largely leave the rest of its theological system behind—New Calvinism. Though there are influences among other denominations, many of its leading proponents are Baptists (usually Southern Baptists) who are otherwise Evangelical in their theology but hold to the predestinarian tenets of five-point Calvinism (TULIP) originally formulated as the five canons of the Synod of Dort. New Calvinism has been the subject of much controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination.

New Calvinists are known popularly as the “Young, Restless, and Reformed.” (This movement should not be confused with the “Neo-Calvinism” movement within the Dutch Reformed initiated by the theologian Abraham Kuyper, which is largely focused on Christian approaches to culture and society.) Many of the New Calvinists are involved in the “seeker-sensitive” mega-church model of church growth and development.

The New Calvinists, whose most prominent leaders are men like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, and Al Mohler, are often in the public eye and frequently comment on modern cultural problems. Mohler, as the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, Kentucky), writes often on “culture war” issues such as sexuality. Driscoll, sometimes called the “cussing preacher,” especially emphasized his views on Christian marriage, especially subservience of wives to their husbands, and he has been known to speak frankly on sexuality in marriage. His pastoral career at Mars Hill Church in Seattle took a downturn in 2014 with his resignation after several public scandals. Piper’s commitment to Calvinism is quite publicly pronounced, and he has been known to use social media to ascribe natural disasters to God’s punishment for the reprobate.

Although situated within Evangelicalism, New Calvinists often find themselves compared with the “Old” Calvinists of the traditionally Reformed denominations (such as Presbyterians and the continental Reformed). Mark Driscoll at one point drew four distinctions between “New” and “Old” Calvinism: (1) New Calvinism is “missional,” (2) New Calvinism has an urban appeal, (3) New Calvinism is more open to miraculous gifts (e.g., speaking in tongues, prophecy), and (4) New Calvinism is more open to dialogue with other Christian groups. “Old” Calvinists tend to regard the New Calvinists as not truly Calvinist because they do not adhere to the traditional Reformed confessions, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Three Forms of Unity (the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism). Thus, their similarity with traditional Calvinism is mainly that they have adopted only one piece of the Calvinist tradition, its soteriology.

One of the areas of the New Calvinism that has attracted attention is its approach to church discipline. Church members may often sign covenants (essentially contracts) with the congregation which could subject them to a harrowing process if they are caught to be in sin, especially sexual sin. Someone who is accused under these protocols may find himself in front of a panel of church elders who will demand repentance and may threaten consequences if not obeyed. Church members who leave the congregation as a result of these processes may be subject to shunning by members who remain.

This approach to discipline comes from a rather wooden reading of the passages of the New Testament that speak on how to deal with sin within the congregation. The descriptions of gathering witnesses and “tell[ing] it to the church,” treating someone as “a heathen and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:15–17), are all literalized and systematized into a kind of legal process. The experience of this type of discipline may be severe, demanding, and uncompromising, with church discipline turned into an ideological system with demands on its adherents rather than a process for the healing of sin.

In the Orthodox Church, while there are canons dealing with publicly disruptive sins, most sins—including serious ones such as adultery, fornication, or violence—are treated within the private relationship of the believer with his father-confessor. Even if someone has to be excommunicated for a time, he is not shunned by the church. The anathema which defines actually expelling someone from the Church is reserved only for the most unrepentant heretics who actively seek to undermine the Church and lead the faithful astray—and it is very rarely applied.

Orthodox differences with the New Calvinists are roughly the same where they agree with traditional Calvinism and where they function as part of the larger Evangelical movement. The “personality” of New Calvinism often comes across as angry and severe, and while Orthodoxy can be uncompromising when needed (such as on dogma), its goal is the salvation of all mankind. Predestinarian Calvinism’s belief that some (perhaps even most) of mankind is predestined by God for damnation produces a very different posture. If the reprobate are cast aside while defending Calvinist ideology, why should that matter very much?

Ancient Future: Evangelical Appropriation of Tradition

One of the phenomena I’ve noticed in the past several years is that some Evangelicals—often those who might describe themselves as “Post-Evangelical” or even “emergent” (the terms are not necessarily interchangeable)—have begun to form an appreciation for historic Christian theology and worship.

I’ve read about or personally known of mega-churches observing Lent (even celebrating ritualized Holy Week services), charismatic churches lighting Advent wreaths, and Baptists fasting or quoting the Church Fathers. I’ve had more than one Evangelical friend who describes himself as “Ortho-curious,” and I know of a Presbyterian church that uses snippets from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in its services. Some Evangelicals have begun using the Jesus Prayer (an ancient meditative prayer from the Orthodox Church). The phrase “Evangelical ressourcement” (referencing the Catholic Ressourcement movement) is appearing here and there. Although this movement within Evangelicalism is not very large, it is of special interest to the Orthodox because of its interaction with the theologians whom we hold most dear.

Several books introducing Evangelicals to historic Christian tradition are being published by authors such as Robert E. Webber and Daniel H. Williams. InterVarsity Press—the publishing arm of a bastion of Evangelical college ministry—has published the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, a large series of selections from the Church Fathers commenting on the Bible, under the leadership of Thomas Oden (a Methodist and former theological liberal who read the Fathers and became more orthodox). Christianity Today, the leading Evangelical periodical, has featured articles on this concept.

The phrase “ancient future” has been employed by a few different Evangelical conferences and networks, all aimed at connecting Evangelicals with the resources of Christian history. The Ancient Evangelical Future Conference is now an annual event, and the Ancient Future Faith Network holds convocations every year. Wheaton College, another major Evangelical institution, is now home to the Wheaton Center for Early Christian Studies.

One of the things I’ve observed in all this flurry of interest among some Evangelicals is that it is rare (though there are exceptions) that Orthodox Christians are included in the speaker lists at conferences or are invited to author articles or books—an oddity considering how openly the Orthodox express their dedication to patristic theology. Roman Catholics and Anglicans are somewhat more visible, but still in the decided minority. This phenomenon is largely about Evangelicals reading the Fathers and then talking to each other about what they’ve read.

First, I think this is a delightful development, and not just because it has led to conversions to Orthodoxy from Evangelicalism (though probably more have embraced Anglicanism or Catholicism). The Church Fathers are almost entirely unknown among most Evangelicals, and indeed, even among members of the older Protestant denominations. That Protestants would be exposed to their teachings is most welcome. There is a richness, depth, and breadth in patristic theology and biblical commentary, as well as in traditional liturgical worship, that one rarely finds in the Evangelical world, and inasmuch as any Christian aligns himself more closely with the witness of the Fathers of Orthodox tradition, he is living a fuller, more authentic Christian experience.

However, the appropriation of Christian tradition by Evangelicals is precisely that—an appropriation. Most of the Evangelicals who encounter the Fathers do so in a manner not unlike the way they might encounter C. S. Lewis—as writers of stature who can be heeded or ignored without betraying anything fundamental. (Most Evangelicals, for instance, who may revere Lewis are probably not keen on his belief in purgatory.) Thus, the matrix in which they encounter Christian tradition is basically the same as that used for any other extra-biblical writing. Nothing is specifically authoritative or must be obeyed, except insofar as it seems to the reader to be a good explication of Scripture. The individual’s own hermeneutic remains supreme. But why read the Church Fathers if they do not represent a tradition that calls forth obedience?

The Fathers also have a sense of belonging to something together. They don’t view each other like modern Evangelical writers do—belonging to different denominations and movements, still roughly in the same culture but with no one actually in charge or accountable to each other. The Fathers are precisely all in the same Church—worshiping, believing, and practicing in essentially the same ways, part of the same ecclesial community.

For the Orthodox, the Church Fathers are not merely resources to be used, but rather actual leaders in a real community—a community that Evangelicals would probably not feel comfortable in so long as they remain truly Evangelical. While agreeing with Chrysostom on his exegesis of some passage in Paul’s epistles, wouldn’t most Evangelicals feel out of place in the liturgical context in which he was preaching it? A thorough exploration of even the first few centuries of Christian history would leave most Evangelicals with the feeling of looking from the outside at a Church that does not resemble their own.

There is also the problem of Evangelicals having no united sense of what tradition actually means. Rob Bell, for instance, in his hints toward universalism, will say that it’s “in the tradition.” But Orthodox Christians certainly would disagree. Now, such teachings may well be in Christian history, but not everything extant from Christian history qualifies as being the tradition. If tradition is that which is “handed down” by the Church, then that involves a selection process that rules out certain teachings and writers from being part of the tradition.

The problem is finally ecclesiological—who gets to do the selecting and handing down? For the Orthodox (and for Catholics), there is a definite “who” expressing the tradition. In Orthodoxy, it is the whole body of the Church as guided by the episcopacy, while for Catholics, it finally resolves on the pope leading the Magisterium. The Catholic approach is more tidy, but even in the more complicated context of Orthodoxy’s approach to authority, there are still boundaries that keep the tradition defined, even across history and culture.

The challenge for Evangelicals who appropriate elements of Christian tradition is similar to the one facing them as they interpret Scripture—who gets to decide? In this case, who decides not only which texts to read but how to interpret and apply them? Is there some portion of history that is more acceptable than others? Why use parts of Chrysostom’s liturgy but not the whole thing? Can the Church Fathers be safely ignored on a teaching even when they are nearly unanimous? Without a clear ecclesiology—especially without the reliable witness of apostolic succession—there are no clear answers to these questions.

CONCLUSIONS

Many of the converts to the Orthodox Church in recent years have come from Evangelicalism. When these folks begin to consider that spiritual life can be expressed bodily, and also if they begin to consider the implications of Christian history, they are naturally led to ask certain kinds of questions: What is the Church? Where is it? Does it have authority?

We can also observe in recent years a revival of interest in Christian history—even if those interested are as yet in the minority. The success of books like The Da Vinci Code (a work of fiction, not fact, as any first-semester student of church history could tell you) is testament to this interest. The newness of the American frontier has worn off over the past century, as have the promises of the Modernist project to build a civilization on purely rational principles, and many Christians are now cultivating a desire for rootedness and steadfastness. While change and novelty as perpetual constants still hold sway in popular culture, the human heart still has a desire for what is deeply authentic.

The highest rates of growth in American Christianity are among the groups that have a strong sense of unchanging doctrine, while those that embrace theological liberalism and pluralism are seeing the biggest defections (Terry Mattingly, “Canadian researchers find that doctrine really does matter, in terms of church growth,” On Religion, December 12, 2016). We are also seeing a falling away of nominal Christians from the institutions of church life—they are accepting that they aren’t Christians even in name.

This means that there is an opportunity for those who love Christ and believe in unchanging truth to examine anew the history of Christianity, especially its beginning, and to ask tough questions about what the Church actually is.

Now that we have looked at the Evangelical movement as a whole, let’s examine what may be a subset of it or may well be a new kind of Christianity distinct from it—Pentecostalism.

SIX

Pentecostalism

THE LATTER RAIN

He distinctly made it clear to me that He raised me up and trained me to declare this mighty truth to the world, and if I was willing to stand for it, with all the persecutions, hardships, trials, slander, scandal that it would entail, He would give me the blessing. And I said, “Lord, I will, if You will just give me this blessing.” Right then there came a slight twist in my throat, a glory fell over me and I began to worship God in the Sweedish [sic] tongue, which later changed to other languages and continued so until the morning. (Charles F. Parham, “The Latter Rain” [1900–1901], in The Life of Charles F. Parham: Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement [compiled by Sarah Thistlethwaite Parham], 1930, p. 54)

Proud, well-dressed preachers come in to “investigate”. Soon their high looks are replaced with wonder, then conviction comes, and very often you will find them in a short time wallowing on the dirty floor, asking God to forgive them and make them as little children. It would be impossible to state how many have been converted, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost. They have been and are daily going out to all points of the compass to spread this wonderful gospel. (The Apostolic Faith, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1906)

Then the Lord Jesus Himself appeared to me. I saw him as clearly as I would see you. He stood within three feet of me. He discussed things concerning my ministry and finances, and He even discussed things concerning our United States government. All of these things came to pass just as He said they would. He concluded by exhorting me, “Be faithful and fulfil thy ministry, my son, for the time is short.” (Kenneth Hagin, How to Write Your Own Ticket with God, 1979)

Pentecostalism is more about religious experience than about specific doctrinal developments, though it does of course have its peculiar doctrines. (I will be using Pentecostalism to refer not only to the early Pentecostals or to denominations that use the word in their name, but also to the movements and offshoots related to it.) We will therefore be giving more weight to the history of the movement than perhaps any other group we cover in this book. I am doing this here because, even though Pentecostalism is generally regarded as a Protestant movement, I believe that it may represent a new kind of Christianity, perhaps even a “fourth” variety (after Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism).

If we spend more time on history in this chapter, we should also remember that we had the previous three chapters to develop the history of the mainstream Protestant movements, as well as noting that Pentecostalism’s history and inner character are fairly unknown to most Christians. So I hope you will forgive me for spending more time on narrative here and bear with me before we get to the specifically comparative portions of this chapter.

ORIGINS IN THE HOLINESS MOVEMENT

The beginnings of Pentecostalism lie in the Holiness movement which arose mainly out of nineteenth-century Methodism. Understanding the Holiness background of Pentecostalism, especially in terms of its historical journey, is critical to understanding Pentecostalism itself, so even though we covered the movement in the previous chapter, we will return to some of its themes here as a kind of prologue, especially those that point toward Pentecostalism. (I am especially indebted in this chapter to Robert Mapes Anderson’s Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism and will be citing it frequently.)

It was in the Holiness movement that personal experience of the Holy Spirit came to be especially emphasized, and those experiences coalesced into the doctrine of the “second work of grace,” or the “second blessing” (the first blessing being conversion to Christ). This second blessing experience enabled Holiness believers to live out their desire for a return to strict moral teaching in keeping with revivalist themes of Christian renewal. The experience was identified with the “entire sanctification” doctrine that had been taught by Methodist founder John Wesley (a doctrine similar in some ways to the Orthodox teaching on theosis). Wesley’s doctrine was especially concerned with the removal of sin from the Christian.

Two of the founders of the Holiness movement, Phoebe Palmer and her husband Dr. Walter Palmer, began to hold meetings in Phoebe’s sister’s home in New York City. It was during one of those meetings in 1837 that Phoebe Palmer claimed to experience entire sanctification, and she emerged as a leader in the movement. In time, her meetings were attended by Methodist bishops and hundreds of clergy and laity. She especially spoke of placing “our all on the altar,” making a total commitment to God while believing that He would sanctify what is placed on His altar.

In parallel to Phoebe Palmer’s experience, in 1836 Asa Mahan, a Calvinist and then president of Oberlin College, said that he experienced a “baptism with the Holy Spirit,” which took away all his desire and tendency toward sin. Charles G. Finney, who taught at Oberlin and later became its president, recognized in this teaching the solution to a practical problem he had seen in revival meetings—a genuine conversion experience followed by a lapse back into sinful ways of living. Finney’s strand of revivalism interpreted the doctrine of entire sanctification to include a total consecration to a life of action, including emphases on social reform (such as the abolition of slavery), while most Holiness preachers were primarily concerned with the possibilities for actual sinlessness during the earthly life (Anderson, 28–29).

Finney preached sinlessness, but he also taught that sanctification came after the renunciation of sin. And while he saw sanctification as steady growth, the more common Holiness view saw it as the result of the dramatic second blessing experience and as more closely associated with sinlessness itself. Finney spoke of an “enduement of power from on high,” often associated with evangelism.

Throughout the middle of the nineteenth century, similar experiences of a second blessing were also reported among other Protestant denominations. Thus, the fervor of revivalism’s emphasis on conversion came also to be attached to the second blessing. Conversion to Christ was not enough. There needed to be another major spiritual moment for the believer—receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Holiness preachers thus came to teach the necessity for a second blessing given to Christians. This experience was taught to grant a full purification from sin, including the tendency to sin, enabling the believer theoretically to live a sinless life. The doctrine was defined as follows by the First General Holiness Assembly in Chicago in May 1885:

Entire Sanctification more commonly designated as “sanctification,” “holiness,” “Christian perfection,” or “perfect love,” represents that second definite stage in Christian experience wherein, by baptism with the Holy Spirit, administered by Jesus Christ, and received instantaneously by faith, the justified believer is delivered from inbred sin, and consequently is saved from all unholy tempers, cleansed from all moral defilement, made perfect in love and introduced into full and abiding fellowship with God. (quoted in Anderson, 39)

The belief in the second blessing is what especially characterized the Holiness movement, but the movement also carried with it a literal-minded focus on the Scripture, emotionalist fervor in piety and worship, strict moralism expressed especially as separatism from the world, and an enmity for the traditional institutions of religion. All of these features were inherited in Pentecostalism and remain integral to it (ibid., 28).

In addition to these characteristics, the Holiness movement also was the context for the devotion to supernatural wonders that had emerged during the Second Great Awakening. Although it is Pentecostalism that is most associated in our own day with strong emotional fervor and the belief in frequent supernatural signs from God, it was not unusual during the late nineteenth century to see scenes like these in the Holiness movement, described by Mary B. Woodworth-Etter in her memoirs:

Men, women and children were struck down in their homes, in their places of business, on the highways, and lay as dead. They had wonderful visions, and arose converted, giving glory to God . . . .

The power of God fell on the multitude . . . . Many fell to the ground. Others stood with their faces and hands raised to heaven. The Holy Ghost sat upon them. Others shouted, some talked, others wept aloud. Sinners were converted, and began to testify and praise God. I was overpowered and carried to my tent . . . .

Several spake very intelligently in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance. (quoted in Anderson, 34–35)

The movement initially proved to be a boon to the Methodist church, whose leaders sought to tap into the new enthusiasm. In the decades that followed, however, many Holiness believers left the denomination (and others) because of its perceived compromise with the world, particularly in its dedication to the temporal reforms of the Social Gospel. Methodism had grown too affluent, established, and focused on social reform to remain a natural home for those focused on achieving sinless perfection in opposition to the world. Various Holiness denominations emerged, though many independent congregations also formed, all motivated by the desire to “come out” from “the world” (a phrase often associated with the established denominations).

The feeling that the established denominations had embraced apostasy and “worldliness” grew. And, perhaps in response to that feeling, within the Holiness movement, a powerful millenarianism began to emerge. Perhaps this was the great “falling away” that had been predicted in Scripture that would precede the end of the world. Believers thought that Jesus was going to return to earth soon—not just the “soon” that Christians had always held to in a sense, but “soon” in a sense of nearly any minute. Eschatological expectation heightened. The end of the world was coming, or at least the end of the order Christians had been accustomed to for centuries. The rapid changes brought on by the industrial revolution, the population shifts from rural areas into the cities, and various wars throughout the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries all contributed to the feeling among Holiness revivalists that the end was truly near. God was about to do something big.

That “something big” found its voice especially in a variant on the Holiness movement that pointed toward an imminent end of the current age. Most Holiness believers believed that supernatural manifestations were a normal part of the Christian life, and so what they were experiencing was in some sense a restoration of what was seen in the New Testament. But a movement arose strongly influenced by revival meetings held in Keswick, England, that suggested that something bigger was happening.

The well-known American revivalist Dwight L. Moody visited England and spoke at revivals in Keswick, where those assembled generally accepted the Dispensationalist framework of John Nelson Darby (see the previous chapter), particularly his assertion that God set up different historical dispensations under which the rules for mankind’s relationship with God differed. Not only did they accept this framework, but they had a sense that a new dispensation was about to begin—and the proof of this would be a worldwide outbreak of revival, making it finally possible for every living person to have the opportunity to convert to Christ (Anderson, 40–41).

Another of the proponents of the Keswick teachings—which came to be known as the “Higher Life” movement—was C. I. Scofield, author of the famous Scofield Reference Bible, which left the mark of Dispensationalism deeply on Pentecostalism (the Dake Study Bible also did this). Scofield believed that an age of the Holy Spirit was beginning to dawn:

We are in the midst of a marked revival of interest in the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. More books, booklets and tracts upon that subject have issued from the press during the last 80 years than in all previous time since the invention of printing. Indeed, within the last 20 years more has been written and said upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit than in the preceding 1800 years. . . . [Many of these works] speak of new Pentecosts. (quoted in Anderson, 41–42)

The prophecy of Joel 2:28 that predicted a pouring out of the Spirit, accompanied by miraculous prophecies, dreams, and visions, was being reapplied. Not only did it refer to the first Pentecost (as interpreted in Acts 2:17), but this act of outpouring was being repeated with a second. (We see this being done again in “Third Wave” Pentecostalism, which began in the 1980s.)

Combined with the Oberlin teachings that entire sanctification was about the total consecration of the human powers, an “enduement of power from on high,” the influence of the Keswick movement now set the stage for the belief that not only was a page of history about to turn, but God was about to give a new blessing of power to Christians for the purpose of a final worldwide evangelistic revival. The Keswick group

rejected the “orthodox” Holiness contention that sanctification and Baptism in the Holy Spirit were one and the same experience. Rather, they believed sanctification to be a life-long process of increasing growth in grace that began at conversion but was never completed, and held that Baptism in the Spirit was a separate “enduement of power.” (Anderson, 41)

Some began to speak of a blessing beyond the second blessing—a third blessing that granted supernatural power. Others held that it was the second blessing that granted this power. The stage was now set for a religious movement driven by the experience of the “latter rain,” a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Christians—a new Pentecost.

“A MIGHTY WAVE OF SALVATION”

In its first edition, dated September 1906, The Apostolic Faith, with a story headlined “Pentecost Has Come,” declared of Los Angeles, California:

The power of God now has this city agitated as never before. Pentecost has surely come and with it the Bible evidences are following, many being converted and sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking in tongues as they did on the day of Pentecost. The scenes that are daily enacted in the building on Azusa street and at Missions and churches in other parts of the city are beyond description, and the real revival has only started, as God has been working with His children mostly, getting them through to Pentecost, and laying the foundation for a mighty wave of salvation among the unconverted. (The Apostolic Faith, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1906)

The periodical was speaking of the famous Azusa Street revival that began April 9, 1906, and continued for some nine years following. This revival is widely regarded as the beginning of Pentecostalism, but as we have seen, most of the basic ingredients were in place for the rise of Pentecostalism in the Holiness movement prior to the Azusa mission. The culture of the movement made for fertile ground for the cultivation of this new kind of Christianity—an intense, emotional Christianity filled with the sense of the supernatural:

To the absolutist mentality of many Holiness people, all compromise was “sin,” organization was “ecclesiasticism” or “churchianity,” and any restraint in worship was “quenching the Spirit.” None of this could be countenanced by the true believer. Thus, within the Holiness movement was lodged a growing body of discontented true believers, some in the Holiness denominations, most in tiny associations or independent churches and missions, all determined to press on for still newer horizons of spiritual experience. For them, only a dramatic Christianity of intense emotion could be satisfying. (Anderson, 46)

Those who have studied the history of Pentecostalism usually know something about the Azusa revival, but what is perhaps less well known is what came immediately before it. The man who sparked the Azusa revival was William Seymour, but Seymour was actually not the originator of the experience that began in the spring of 1906 in Los Angeles. Seymour was in fact presenting a simplified version of the doctrines and practices he had learned in Houston, Texas, from a man named Charles Fox Parham.

The Apostolic Faith Movement

Parham’s critical role in the early history of Pentecostalism was obscured for decades for most of his fellow Pentecostals because of personal failings and scandals that undermined his credibility. He was, for instance, arrested in 1907 on charges of sodomy (which were later dropped), exhibited racism (even becoming involved with the Ku Klux Klan; his racism was ironic, considering that his most successful student was black), and was also accused of financial improprieties.

Furthermore, the complexity and novelty of some of his teachings made them difficult to pass on. For example, he taught that God had created two human races, the “Sons of God” and the Adamic race. Cain was a member of the latter but married one of the former (interracial marriage was thus condemned by Parham). Noah was spared from the flood because he was a pure descendant of Adam. Parham also taught a form of British Israelism—the belief that the people of the British Isles are direct descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Despite these problems, however, Parham’s influence in Pentecostalism’s beginnings through Seymour was profound. His most significant contribution to the genesis of Pentecostalism was the teaching that speaking in tongues was the “Bible evidence” of the second blessing experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. In 1900, Parham set up a small school called the College of Bethel on the outskirts of Topeka, Kansas, where he aimed to teach the Bible and search for the “true” baptism in the Spirit, which he believed that no one in the Holiness movement had yet found. Several rooms at the school were also set up as a healing home where the sick could come for faith healing.

The students at his school were largely former ministers or religious workers from a variety of denominational or independent church backgrounds. All shared Parham’s association with the Holiness movement and, like Parham, sought a new experience of the Holy Spirit, a new power for the purposes of evangelism. They shared all things in common, maintained a continuous prayer vigil with three-hour shifts, prayed and fasted together, held services at night, and conducted door-to-door canvassing of homes in the area during the day. While there, Parham taught his students that the second blessing they had likely experienced before was merely a form of sanctification or “the anointing that abideth,” and that they still should seek for the “true” baptism in the Spirit (Anderson, 51–52).

It was during his time in Topeka that Parham presided over a moment that is one of the traditional historical markers for the beginning of Pentecostalism. Before departing for three days of preaching in Kansas City in late December 1900, Parham directed his students to spend time alone studying Acts 2, telling them:

The gifts are in the Holy Spirit and with the baptism of the Holy Spirit the gifts, as well as the graces, should be manifested. Now, students, while I am gone, see if there is not some evidence given of the baptism so there may be no doubt on the subject. (Charles F. Parham, “The Latter Rain” [1900–1901], in The Life of Charles F. Parham: Founder of the Apostolic Faith Movement, compiled by Sarah Thistlethwaite Parham, 1930, p. 58–59)

It’s clear from his directions how he intended his students to be thinking, that the miraculous signs seen in Acts 2 would properly accompany the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It would not be surprising if they all reported similar results on his return. And, sure enough, Parham said that that’s what happened:

To my astonishment they all had the same story, that while there were different things occurred when the Pentecostal blessing fell, that the indisputable proof on each occasion was, that they spake with other tongues. (ibid., 52)

A close examination of the testimonies of Parham and two other students who kept diaries of their own suggests that the traditional story of multiple, simultaneous independent experiences of tongue-speaking was not what actually happened. Parham himself had probably believed for some time that speaking in tongues was evidence of the baptism of the Spirit, and accounts of other eyewitnesses to the events around the turn of that new year strongly suggest that it was an experience passed on from one student to another rather than something that happened independently. One student, Howard Stanley, bore witness to this: “Agnes Ozman was the one that made clear to me that when we were filled with the Holy Spirit that we would speak in other tongues” (Anderson, 52–57). In other words, they learned this from each other.

Parham claimed an ecstatic experience of speaking Swedish, while Agnes Ozman both spoke and wrote in Chinese and other languages after Parham laid hands on her. Stanley wrote that he saw “clovend tonges as of fire (sic)” come into the meeting room, descending and enabling him to speak another language, something he saw others doing, as well. Those assembled all sang “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” in at least six different languages while surrounded by a miraculous glow of white light. Parham’s telling of the story is very much reminiscent of the narrative in Acts 2. It was January 3, 1901. Their second Pentecost had come.

The defection a week later of one of their members, S. J. Higgins, who told a local newspaper that the school was “a fake,” introduced the movement to the press. Soon, reporters arrived from Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other cities, all writing about the curious religious movement near Topeka. One article even included a transcript of the tongue-speaking of Parham’s sister-in-law Lillian Thistlethwaite. With the public eye on the “Parham School of Tongues,” despite some initial setbacks, the movement began planning campaigns across the country.

It’s important that we note here that the precise character of speaking in tongues at this early stage of Pentecostalism is not what it is today. What was supposedly experienced here was xenoglossia, that is, the miraculous ability to speak in foreign languages. This is roughly what occurs in Acts 2, where the disciples of Jesus, after having received the Holy Spirit, begin to preach publicly, and everyone heard in his own language:

And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “Whatever could this mean?” (Acts 2:5–12)

It’s not precisely clear how this works in Acts 2. Are the apostles actually speaking in foreign languages? Or are they speaking and the miracle is in the hearing of those present—an effect like Star Trek’s Universal Translator, where technology enables multiple species to converse while speaking and hearing in their own language?

It may be reasonable to interpret the apostles’ miracle as speaking foreign languages, rather than the miracle being in the hearing. In any event, this is what the first Pentecostals—who referred to themselves as the Apostolic Faith Movement—were claiming, that at their second Pentecost they were given the gift identical to the one given to the apostles at the first Pentecost. Its purpose was the same as the apostles’—evangelism.

By 1905, Parham eventually found his way to Houston along with other members of his movement, and they successfully claimed a local Holiness congregation for their headquarters. He opened a new school in Houston which was similar to the one near Topeka, but with the addition of a new emphasis—God was giving direct instructions to the faithful through prophetic inspiration and through messages delivered via the gift of speaking in tongues along with the gift of interpretation.

It was at the Houston school that Parham met Baptist preacher William Seymour, a Holiness believer who had been born a slave in Louisiana. Seymour was visiting Houston and heard someone speaking in tongues at one of the black churches in the area, likely someone associated with Parham. Seymour showed up to Parham’s school, asking for admission. Parham hesitated initially, since he had as yet not worked directly with anyone but whites, and he didn’t want to provoke opposition from racist quarters. He finally capitulated to Seymour’s requests, however, and Seymour accepted his teaching on speaking in tongues, though he did not have the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit while in Houston.

While studying at the Houston school, Seymour met a woman from Los Angeles who told him about a black mission in her hometown. She eventually returned to California and convinced her church to invite Seymour to be their associate pastor. An invitation was sent. When Seymour received it, he talked it over with Parham, and the latter tried to convince him to stay in Houston until the Spirit fell upon him. But Seymour had made his mind up, and he asked Parham to lay hands on him in January 1906. He boarded the train for the West Coast:

It was a turning point. As he laid hands on the kneeling Seymour, Parham was unknowingly passing on the leadership of the movement to others. He would continue to have a following in the Midwest, but would never achieve prominence among Pentecostals nationally. What had been under Parham a relatively small, localized movement, was to assume international proportions through the Los Angeles ministry of the obscure, chunky black man who sat gazing out the sooted train window, lost in prayer and meditation as the Texas plains slid behind him. (Anderson, 61)

Parham’s authority in the movement suffered soon after, but only partly because of the earlier mentioned problems. With the focus on the movement now on Seymour, Parham also began attacking the emerging leadership out of resentment. The enemies he made as a result would use the legal accusations against him to discredit him for years to come.

The Azusa Street Revival: The Spread of Pentecostalism

The Los Angeles at which Seymour arrived was already bustling with Holiness activity, especially centered among poor racial and ethnic minorities in the city. In the opening years of the twentieth century, the established Protestant denominations often were unwelcoming not only to blacks but also to various poor immigrant communities. It was in such groups that the Holiness experience particularly caught on, with the ecstatic nature of worship services often providing an outlet for frustrations due to social injustice and marginalization that those communities felt.

Even though Seymour himself had not yet experienced tongue-speaking, his first Sunday morning sermon at the mission on Santa Fe Avenue carried the forceful insistence that no one had received the baptism in the Spirit unless he spoke in tongues. The congregation largely believed they had received that baptism experience, but they associated it primarily with sanctification instead. They had heard of speaking in tongues, but it was to them only one of the possible gifts of the Spirit given after the baptism in the Spirit. When Seymour returned for the afternoon service, he found that he had been locked out of the building.

With his single-day career at the Santa Fe Avenue mission ended, Seymour nevertheless believed that God had called him to work in Los Angeles. So he began visiting black homes throughout the city. During this time, he still had not spoken in tongues and could not, as Parham had, provoke it in others. With this limited success, Seymour wrote to Parham for help, and Lucy Farrow and J. A. Warren came from Houston that spring. Farrow was especially known for her ability to cause speaking in tongues by simply touching people with her hands, and she soon touched off the experience on April 9, 1906, and multiple people began to speak in tongues, including William Seymour (Anderson, 65). She had brought “the full gospel” (The Apostolic Faith, ibid.).

With word getting out about the Pentecostal experience, Seymour found a small space to rent on Azusa Street, a disused African Methodist Episcopal church whose lower floor had been converted into a stable but which had an “upper room” that was available for meetings. It was there during the summer of 1906 that the Pentecostal movement finally began to explode in popularity. The local press were not impressed, however:

Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street, near San Pedro Street, and the devotees of the weird doctrine practice the most fanatical rites, preach the wildest theories and work themselves into a state of mad excitement in their peculiar zeal. Colored people and a sprinkling of whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howling of the worshipers, who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve-racking attitude of prayer and supplication. They claim to have the “gift of tongues” and to be able to understand the babel. (Los Angeles Daily Times, April 18, 1906, p. 1)

In his preaching, Seymour predicted great calamity would soon come, a sign the end times were near. Sure enough, just a few days after the revival began, on April 18, San Francisco was rocked by the Great Earthquake, felt as far away as Los Angeles. God was said to be pouring out His Spirit in a new Pentecost, preparing His faithful with gifts of power, especially xenoglossia, for a final world evangelism before the Millennial Age arrived, as had been promised in Dispensationalist theology. Miraculous healings were reported to accompany the sign of tongues, all authenticating the message: Jesus is coming soon.

As Pentecostalism gained ground in the Holiness movement, eventually resources were gathered together to begin sending missionaries to foreign lands so that they could use the gift of tongues to convert the locals to Christ. Jesus was coming soon, so the work had an urgency to it. The world needed to hear the Gospel, and since the established denominations had failed to bring the Gospel to the world, it would be those baptized in the Spirit who would do it:

Parham’s belief that the primary purpose of speaking in tongues was to make possible the fulfillment of the last sign of the end—the miraculous propagation of the gospel in the languages of all the peoples of the world—was not, like some of his ideas, an idiosyncrasy merely. Nor was it, as Pentecostal apologists would have us believe, an aberration entertained only by a few extremists. It was, rather, a fundamental and nearly universal notion during the first few years of the movement. (Anderson, 90)

The Azusa Street mission, where Pentecostalism began its real spread, taught this:

A minister says that God showed him twenty years ago that the divine plan for missionaries was that they might receive the gift of tongues either before going to the foreign field or on the way. It should be a sign to the heathen that the message is of God. The gift of tongues can only be used as the Spirit gives utterance. It cannot be learned like the native tongues, but the Lord takes control of the organs of speech at will. It is emphatically, God’s message. (The Apostolic Faith, ibid.)

Missionaries were soon sent, dispatched to places such as Japan, China, and India. At the time, the more mainstream Bible Missionary Society investigated eighteen Pentecostal missionaries to see how they were faring. Not one of them reported being able to communicate successfully with those to whom they were sent. Tongue-speaking evangelism wasn’t working.

But the demoralizing failure of tongue-speaking as an evangelistic gift did not effectively debunk the claims of Pentecostals. Instead, the movement soon changed its theology of the nature of tongues. Speaking in tongues was now understood as glossolalia, an ecstatic utterance of prayer while being possessed by divine power. Xenoglossia was still admitted as a spontaneous gift, but no longer was speaking foreign languages at will identified with the gift of tongues. Glossolalia had been admitted prior to this change, especially paired with the gift of interpretation of tongues (an explanation in common language), but it had not been the standard theology for tongue-speaking.

Very quickly, however, glossolalia became the standard theology, and it persisted in the decades that followed. The initial emphasis on foreign languages for the purpose of evangelism—which had been the dominant understanding at first—was essentially swept under the rug as the belief of a few misguided, exceptional individuals. Such a shift was probably inevitable, as it was only a matter of time before the gift would actually be tested on real foreigners.

Divisions within the movement arose over various issues, including racial segregation and a major doctrinal question. Some Pentecostals noticed the reference to water baptism in Jesus’ name (Acts 2:38) and took it literally, saying that the earlier command to baptize “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19) referred to baptism in only one name. The “Name” intended was Jesus. From there, they reasoned that God is not three Persons but only one. A minority of Pentecostals embraced a unitarian doctrine of God, rejecting the Trinity. They came to be known as Oneness Pentecostals. Most Pentecostals remained Trinitarian, however.

Despite these problems, Pentecostals did have success in growth and in mission work, both domestically and abroad. In the United States, missionaries soon fanned out from the Azusa Street mission and began taking the Pentecostal Gospel throughout the Holiness movement, effectively splitting it and providing the basis for the formation of Pentecostal denominations, though many congregations remained fully independent. Early Pentecostalism was one of the most racially diverse religious movements in American history, though with the formation of established denominations, it eventually began to segregate.

Internationally, Pentecostalism found its success by working through already established mission organizations and functioning in the traditional way, by actually learning local languages. In various forms, Pentecostalism is now one of the most widespread and fastest growing varieties of Christianity in the world, with particular success in developing nations.

Over time, denominations emerged, such as the Assemblies of God (the largest and most stable of Pentecostal denominations) and the Church of God in Christ. There are many smaller denominations, as well as numerous independent congregations. There may be as many as 280 million Pentecostal Christians worldwide (some estimates add in Charismatics and place the total over 500 million), which, if counted as a single movement, makes them the second largest group of Christians in the world. The single largest denomination, the Assemblies of God, has about 67 million members.

With the establishment of the Pentecostal movement, something new was being claimed. Up to this point, Protestants had been largely focused on a restoration of true Christianity according to their interpretation of the apostolic model they read in the New Testament. Most of the denominations formed from the Reformation are variations on this same theme. What Pentecostalism was claiming, however, was something very different.

Pentecostals certainly looked to the apostles’ Church for inspiration and authority. But there was a new historical event that was being proclaimed—the second Pentecost, the new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. God had established His Church in the first century, but now, He was beginning a new era in history, an era of power and wonder. What had happened in the first century was not just continuing—it was happening again.

And with it came not only the power to speak in tongues and work miraculous healings, but also new revelation. God was speaking directly through a new band of prophets and apostles, whose authority was effectively (if not explicitly) on the same level as the biblical saints of old. The apostles and prophets of the Bible still held a unique place in Christian revelation, but the new outpouring of the Spirit was granting a very similar kind of power and access to revelation.

It is this historical claim that I believe sets Pentecostalism apart as a fourth kind of Christian movement. And it is the appeal of this idea, that God is doing something new, that in the 1960s helped the Pentecostal phenomenon to spread outside its usual boundaries.

THE CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT

Prior to the 1960s, Pentecostals were essentially on their own, isolated even from the wider revivalist tradition. Most Protestants regarded them as strange, heretical, and possibly not even Christian. Most Protestants were “cessationists,” regarding the miraculous gifts in the New Testament to have ceased soon after their appearance. But Pentecostal practices were nonetheless compelling to some onlookers, who believed that they were connecting directly with God in an immediate, mystical experience of the divine presence. And with the trans-denominational character of the movement inherited from the pietistic background of revivalism, it was not long before some of its spirit made its way into other Protestant groups.

On April 3, 1960, Episcopal priest Dennis J. Bennett declared in a sermon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, that he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. His proclamation attracted coverage in Newsweek and Time magazines, and he was eventually asked to resign from St. Mark’s. He did so but continued his ministry in Seattle, spreading the news of the “charismatic” gifts available through the experience of the baptism in the Spirit.

Bennett’s experience and the news coverage it received spread awareness of the Pentecostal experience, and it suggested that that experience need not be limited to the traditional denominations and independent churches of the Pentecostal movement itself. Baptism in the Spirit was jumping from its accustomed Pentecostal and Holiness contexts. Pentecostalism was about to “go viral.”

Soon, various ministers from the old mainline Protestant denominations—Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Lutherans—began to declare their experience of being baptized in the Spirit. Some were speaking in tongues. Some would interpret those tongues. Some were practicing faith healing. Prophecies were claimed. Worship services started to resemble the more enthusiastic character of Pentecostalism.

In 1967, a group of Roman Catholic professors from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, who had been studying Pentecostal literature, began to seek for an experience of the Holy Spirit. In January of that year, two of them, Ralph Keifer and Patrick Bourgeois, attended a prayer meeting where they experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Soon, Keifer began laying hands on other professors, and many Catholics began speaking in tongues. Word was sent to Notre Dame University, where similar phenomena soon occurred.

The Charismatic Movement—also called the Charismatic Renewal or Neo-Pentecostalism—had emerged, emphasizing the nine charismata (“gifts”) of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:8–10) that had been practiced by Pentecostals for more than half a century. Curiously, even though Pentecostals more resembled Evangelicals in terms of their style of worship and history in revivalism, the Charismatic Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was centered primarily in the mainline Protestant churches and in the American Catholic Church. The irony should not be overlooked here—it was precisely in the established churches that practiced the “churchianity” that Holiness and Pentecostal believers so criticized as worldly and apostate that Pentecostal ideas began to take root.

Charismatics (we will use this term as distinct from Pentecostal here, though there is sometimes overlap) adopted many of the individual practices and teachings of Pentecostals, though they did not tend to resemble Pentecostals in every way. In the process, some of those teachings were slightly altered. Glossolalia, for instance, was not firmly attached to the experience of the baptism in the Spirit, whereas some classical Pentecostals insisted that one was not even Christian without the baptism with tongues. (We recall how Charles Parham saw it as the true “Bible evidence” of receiving that experience.) Likewise, the extreme enthusiasm and doctrinal experimentation of Pentecostalism was soon tempered by Charismatics as their movement adapted to the normal strictures of denominational church life.

Early Pentecostals so emphasized the spontaneous movement of the Holy Spirit such that, for instance, the Azusa Street mission initially refused even to put up signs advertising their presence for fear of “quenching” the Spirit who would bring people to them miraculously. But Charismatics engaged in a process of appropriation of certain features of Pentecostalism. They retained the general structure of their existing churches but began to include some Pentecostal elements in an attempt to renew church life.

Perhaps the most significant shift in the appropriation of Pentecostalism by Charismatics was a distancing of the charismatic gifts from the idea that Jesus was truly coming soon. To be sure, His return was still considered imminent, but the direct linkage between that imminent return and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was gone. If early Pentecostals had seen their power as being the herald of the end of the world, while there were some exceptions, most Charismatics instead saw their experience as serving the existing norms of church life. (The rhetoric of being the final generation to demonstrate God’s power still persisted in some groups, however.) While Pentecostalism had at first seemed set to usher in the Millennium, Charismatics were more concerned with bringing new life to an existing order. What had been empowerment for evangelism often turned into a kind of spiritual therapy.

Another significant difference between the culture of the Charismatic Movement and Pentecostalism was their relationship with other Christians. Pentecostals saw themselves as prophetically calling the established denominations to repentance through condemnation of their apostasy. But Charismatics, who were situated within those denominations, instead saw their doctrinally flexible, experience-based renewal movement as the means that would unite all Christians together.

The ecumenical movement had been gaining momentum since the middle of the twentieth century, and some Charismatics believed that they could serve as a cross-denominational influence that would bring Christians together and finally unite all into one church, setting doctrinal differences aside as all shared the one experience of the Holy Spirit. If a Charismatic Catholic began speaking in tongues during a Marian devotion, Charismatic Protestants who would otherwise criticize such devotions as idolatry might be willing to set their traditional objections aside. What was important was that they all spoke in tongues.

Ironically, instead of serving to unite, the Charismatic movement instead created more division, both within the affected denominations and across Evangelicalism. Some Christians had the Holy Spirit and others just didn’t. An almost gnostic caste of Christians had been established. You could be an ordinary Christian, or you could be a Spirit-filled one.

Gone was the Holiness moral separatism that marked early Pentecostalism—the traditional condemnation of drinking, dancing, smoking, and immodest dress were too extreme for the mainline ecclesiastical circles in which Charismatics moved. For some Pentecostals, this provoked an identity crisis—if Charismatics really were Spirit-filled (as evidenced by, for instance, speaking in tongues), were these traditional taboos really necessary? But other classical Pentecostals instead looked on the Charismatics with suspicion—could their spiritual gifts be authentic if they were not morally upright? The more mainstream appeal of the Charismatic Movement also helped to gain the older Pentecostal denominations a broader acceptability, whose half century of existence by that point was also accompanied by increasing stability and affluence.

THIRD WAVE PENTECOSTALISM

Beginning in the late 1970s and picking up steam in the 1980s, the Pentecostal variety of emphasis on the Holy Spirit finally made its way into Evangelicalism. What marked this “Third Wave of the Holy Spirit” is that its adherents wanted the experiences of miraculous power seen in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, but they did not agree that the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a separate, subsequent event after conversion. In other words, they collapsed the traditional Holiness teaching of the second blessing back into the conversion experience.

Probably the most famous proponent of this theology was John Wimber, who had been a pastor of a church associated with the Calvary Chapel movement, a Charismatic Evangelical denomination. Wimber’s emphasis on faith healing and the Holy Spirit eventually led him out of that denomination and into the newly formed Vineyard Movement, whose origins in the mid-1970s included meetings at the home of early Christian rock singer Larry Norman. Wimber was not the founder of the Vineyard, but he soon became its leading spokesman.

Vineyard churches are especially known for their “come as you are” atmosphere. (I was once told by someone from that movement that pastors wearing blue jeans was almost their “uniform.”) Overt dogma is frowned upon, though the Vineyard does have definite beliefs. In most ways, they are essentially like mainstream Evangelicals but for the inclusion of the charismatic gifts. But unlike Pentecostals, they do not regard these gifts as being utterly central to Christian life.

One of Wimber’s peculiar additions to the practice of faith healing was its “democratization.” That is, instead of healing being offered only from the hands of church leaders, all believers were invited to practice this gift. He taught this at Fuller Seminary to students as one of the techniques of church growth. Such wondrous signs were necessary for effective evangelism, and Wimber pointed to Mark 16:20, which describes how the apostles’ preaching was marked by these miracles. The Third Wave is thus also referred to as the “Signs and Wonders movement.”

The Vineyard was one of the first Evangelical groups to use contemporary Christian music (CCM) in their services rather than traditional Protestant hymns, a practice which is now the norm for most Evangelicals. They also do not expect clergy to attend seminary—rather, church leaders are drawn from those experienced in the denomination.

Alongside the Vineyard movement (and related non-denominational churches) is another group that is part of the Third Wave, called the New Apostolic Reformation. The chief theologian in this group is C. Peter Wagner (who coined the phrase Third Wave of the Holy Spirit), who lays stress on the “gifts of power” that mark Pentecostalism, but also especially focuses on a restoration of divinely appointed leadership in churches. Thus, there are now new apostles and prophets arising to lead God’s people, offices that were restored, he says, in 2001. Wagner quite self-consciously believes that his movement—which he says spans across Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement—constitutes a true fourth variety of Christianity.

While it is common for those within or influenced by Pentecostalism to believe in prophecy and new revelations to believers, it is relatively rarer to hear someone actually claiming to be a prophet or an apostle. In a sense, the New Apostolic Reformation is an attempt to take the more mainstream variety of the Charismatic movement making its way into Evangelicalism and to bring it even closer to traditional Pentecostalism with its strong emphasis on seeing signs and wonders confirming the message of its preachers.

Despite their differences in terms of style, in the early 1980s Wimber and Wagner actually teamed up at Fuller Theological Seminary in California to teach a popular course on church growth in terms of signs and wonders. Wagner helped to define their common goals when he described the Third Wave:

I see historically that we’re now in the third wave. The first wave of the moving of the Holy Spirit began at the beginning of the century with the Pentecostal movement. The second wave was the charismatic movement which began in the fifties in the major denominations. Both of those waves continue today. I see the third wave of the eighties as an opening of the straight-line evangelicals and other Christians to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that the Pentecostals and charismatics have experienced, but without becoming either charismatic or Pentecostal. I think we are in a new wave of something that now has lasted almost through our whole century. (C. Peter Wagner, “The Third Wave?” Pastoral Renewal, July–August 1983, pp. 1–5)

Like the Charismatic movement, the Third Wave is thus another appropriation of elements of Pentecostalism, but tailored this time for the Evangelical context. But unlike Pentecostals or Charismatics, adherents to the Third Wave are much less likely to give themselves a clearly identifying label. Although those aligned with the New Apostolic Reformation stand out for their claims of having restored the divinely appointed offices of apostle and prophet, most Third Wave believers blend in well with the broader Evangelical movement. They are Evangelicals who practice some of the charismatic gifts but don’t define themselves by them.

One of the more curious phenomena of the Third Wave is an event that began in 1994 at the Toronto Airport Vineyard church, referred to as the “Toronto Blessing.” During revival meetings that began in January of that year, believers would fall on the floor (being “slain in the spirit”), shaking and crying, sometimes making animal sounds. The most characteristic feature was “holy laughter,” an uncontrollable laughing that overcame participants. All these things were said to come by the direct action of the Holy Spirit. In 1995, the Vineyard denomination withdrew its affiliation from the church (which since 2010 is known as Catch the Fire Toronto). The Toronto Blessing affected other churches and seemed to peak in the late 1990s.

Although its visibility and institutional existence “flamed out” fairly quickly, the lasting influence of the Third Wave on Evangelicalism is significant. The mainstreaming of CCM, both in church services and for popular consumption, came through this movement. There is also a style of spiritual life and speaking that is now nearly ubiquitous in Evangelicalism—it is common, for instance, to hear average believers say with confidence that God is speaking directly to them. Most mainstream Evangelicals are probably relatively unaware of this influence, because it has mainly occurred without also including the practice of miraculous charismatic gifts.

THE WORD OF FAITH MOVEMENT

A theology that developed alongside the Charismatic movement in the middle of the twentieth century, with some cross-pollination both with Pentecostals and Charismatics, is the Word of Faith teaching. This movement is also called “Word-Faith,” “Faith,” the “health and wealth gospel” (usually used derogatorily), or the “prosperity gospel” (though this last label is sometimes used as distinct from the rest). This movement is based on the theological idea that the words that believers speak carry power within them. Through the power of “positive confession,” specific effects can be expected—especially physical healing and financial success.

This movement is, in comparison to the larger Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, relatively on the fringes. Yet it is one of the most visible forms of Christianity in America because of its presence in media. It is also one of the fastest-growing sectors of Pentecostalism, especially in the developing world. Many of the indigenous churches in Africa have adopted this theology. Thus, while many Christians may be tempted to write Word-Faith off as a weird (and even ridiculous) curiosity not worth their attention, it is likely to continue to have growing influence in the religious world. Its followers find it to be a meaningful form of faith that answers their questions and gives them a sense of identity and spirituality.

The teaching that power comes from believers speaking in faith was expressed most fully by pastor and itinerant preacher Kenneth E. Hagin, founder of the Rhema Bible Institute in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma (near Tulsa), which is the center of the Word-Faith movement. The region is also home to several well-known teachers in this movement. Kenneth Copeland is based in Fort Worth, Texas. Nearby Dallas was home for a long time to the ministry of Robert Tilton. John Osteen was based in Houston, and his son Joel has found success with a milder form of Word-Faith teaching, inheriting his father’s pastorate. More flamboyant Word-Faith teachers include Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, and Joyce Meyer (who doesn’t use the label but preaches the theology). All of these preachers are known through their television programs and publishing ventures.

The “Grandfather” of Word-Faith

Though Hagin developed the Word-Faith teaching, he did not invent it. His own teacher was E. W. Kenyon, who is sometimes called the “grandfather” of the Word-Faith movement. Kenyon spread his teachings through the radio. Exposed to the New Thought movement (which gave birth to Christian Science) in the 1890s, Kenyon started out as a Baptist pastor. But he had influence among Pentecostals, often speaking in the 1920s at the evangelistic meetings of popular Pentecostal preacher Aimee Semple McPherson.

Kenyon’s theological contributions to what became the Word-Faith movement are the following:

Human nature is spirit, soul, and body, but is most fundamentally spirit.

God created the world by speaking words of faith and does everything else by faith, and we are intended to exercise the same kind of faith.

In the fall human beings took on Satan’s nature and forfeited to Satan their divine dominion, making him the legal god of this world.

Jesus died spiritually as well as physically, taking on Satan’s nature and suffering in hell to redeem us, and then was born again.

By our positive confession with the God kind of faith we may overcome sickness and poverty. (Robert M. Bowman Jr., The Word-Faith Controversy: Understanding the Health and Wealth Gospel, 37)

Hagin’s primary development of Kenyon’s teachings was to bring them deliberately into a Pentecostal frame, with the baptism in the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues as part of the normal Christian life. Hagin and his followers also made the believer’s identification with God much more explicit, speaking of human beings as “gods,” “little gods,” “exact duplicates of God,” etc. He did not focus nearly as much on material prosperity (Bowman, 38).

There is controversy over the origins of Kenyon’s teachings. Are they simply an outgrowth of Pentecostalism? Or are they a reiteration of New Thought optimism, with its teachings on all true reality being spiritual? (New Thought will be discussed in chapter seven, in the section on Christian Science.) Or what about the Higher Life faith-cure traditions from the Keswick movement of the late nineteenth century (which, as we saw earlier, contributed to the formation of early Pentecostalism)? All of these theological currents were swirling around Kenyon, so it should be no surprise that his theology might reflect something from all of them.

Although Hagin is in some sense the theological bottleneck through which Kenyon’s teachings were popularized, he was not the first to latch onto Kenyon’s message. In his The Word-Faith Controversy, Robert M. Bowman Jr. identifies two prior “fathers” of the Word-Faith movement who developed Kenyon’s teachings before Hagin did.

Faith Healing Goes Mainstream

In the late 1940s, the Latter-Rain movement (not to be confused with the term as used in early Pentecostalism) arose within the Assemblies of God, spurred by a series of revivals beginning in Saskatchewan, Canada. The inspiration for the movement was Franklin Hall’s 1946 book Atomic Power with God through Fasting and Prayer, which taught that miraculous powers (especially of healing) could be granted through long fasts (one disciple supposedly fasted for eighty-three days).

He taught some less popular ideas as well, such as that the Holy Spirit could keep people from exuding body odor and that man once redeemed could achieve weightlessness and fly through outer space. He also taught that man could achieve immortality even before the return of Christ. Most Pentecostals were not on board with these ideas, but the message of miraculous healing revivals made possible by prayer and fasting was persuasive, and one of those associated with Hall was faith-healing evangelist William Branham.

The popularization of faith healing in modern Pentecostalism is generally attributed to Branham, as well as to Oral Roberts. Branham was influenced not only by Hall but also by Kenyon, and like him was a Baptist comfortable with Pentecostals. Branham picked up Hall’s message of fasting as well as Kenyon’s teachings on positive confession and set out on healing crusades. He was also a unitarian theologically, teaching that Jesus was also the Father (though he avoided the Oneness label). Like Hall, he had some bizarre teachings, such as that the original sin of Eve was having sexual relations with Satan in the form of the serpent, spawning a race of humans descended from that union. He believed that he was a prophet proclaiming the final age of the Church.

The Latter-Rain movement, inspired by Hall’s book and Branham’s revival meetings, became convinced that a new outpouring of the Spirit was occurring, and the gift of healing was being restored by God. It largely left off the stranger teachings of both men and remained Trinitarian (Bowman, 86–89).

Branham’s influence on modern Pentecostalism—especially the Word-Faith variant—was significant, though like Charles Parham before him, his legacy has largely been marginalized within the movement because of personal failings. Kenneth Hagin supposedly prophesied Branham’s death, attributed to his trying to be a teacher without the “anointing” to be one (Bowman, 93).

The other major figure in bringing faith healing into mainstream Pentecostalism is Oral Roberts. Roberts was raised in a Pentecostal background and established friendly relations with the Latter-Rain movement without actually joining it. He helped to establish the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, which welcomed Branham and other healing evangelists.

Roberts’s primary contribution to Word-Faith, even while he differed from many of its teachings, was bringing faith healing to the masses through televangelism. He also coined a number of characteristic phrases used by the movement, such as God is a good God (meaning that God allows only good things for those who have faith), expect a miracle (a key component of the practice of positive confession), and seed-faith (give expecting something in return) (Bowman, 89–91).

Word-Faith Takes Shape

With the influence of the teachings of Kenyon, Branham, and Roberts, Kenneth Hagin brought all these elements together and gave Word-Faith its current shape. Born in 1917, Hagin had been raised a Southern Baptist but became convinced that speaking in tongues was necessary for Christians when he read 1 Cor. 14:18 (“I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all”).

Hagin was born prematurely with a deformed heart and lived a subdued childhood as a result of this weakness. In 1933, at the age of fifteen, he was struck by illness and came close to death when his heart stopped beating. He felt himself “leap” out of his body and said that he began to descend:

The farther down I went, the darker it became—and the hotter it became—until finally, way down beneath me, I could see fingers of light playing on the wall of darkness. And I came to the bottom of the pit. . . . Out in front of me, beyond the gates or the entrance into hell, I saw giant, great orange flames with a white crest. (Kenneth Hagin, I Went to Hell, 5)

Hagin reports that he had gone to hell, and soon after his arrival, someone pulled him away while a voice spoke that shook everything deeply. Then he found himself back in his body—he “seemed to leap inside [his] body like a man would slip his foot inside his boot in the morning time” (ibid., 7).

After speaking with his grandmother, who was at his bedside, his heart stopped a second time, and he again went to hell and experienced the same presence of a creature leading him away, the same voice, and then the same “suction” upward that pulled him back into his body, though not before he had the chance to stand and look at his body. Then he had the same experience a third time, but this time he began to call out for help from God. He returned to his body the third and final time, but this time, he had been born again (ibid., 12–17).

He was bound to his bed another sixteen months, and then he was miraculously healed. In the process of that final healing, Hagin said that his bedroom “lit up with the glory of God,” and he again left his body. This time he “ascended” but was stopped from going all the way when a voice (which he thinks may have been Jesus) said to him, “Go back! Go back! Go back to earth! Your work is not done!” (ibid., 19–21).

During his long time in bed, Hagin began reading through the New Testament and came to Mark 11:24: “Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (in another account, he says he came to Acts 10:38, which speaks of Jesus healing with the Spirit resting upon Him). Hagin took this to mean that he simply had to accept that God had healed him, even in the face of actual symptoms to the contrary. Until his death in 2003, Hagin said that since that moment in August 1933, he never again had a headache—though he did say that he experienced attacks of the devil as pain, which went away when he positively confessed “In the name of Jesus . . . I do not have a headache” (Bowman, 92).

He began to preach faith healing and to associate with Pentecostals, who taught him about speaking in tongues. He began to speak in tongues by simply “claiming” the gift of the baptism in the Spirit as he had his healing—in contrast with the “tarrying” that Pentecostals usually urged, waiting on God to grant the gift spontaneously. He pastored at Assemblies of God churches from 1939 to 1949, and in 1943, he suddenly experienced the gift to teach, something that happened to him progressively in several stages over his life, each time with a new revelation. In 1949, he began a career of itinerant teaching (Bowman, 92–93).

In 1950, God appeared to him again, as Hagin reports, and told him that the “claiming” approach he had used for healing and for tongues would also work for finances, and he began to preach that prosperity was also God’s constant will for believers, in addition to their physical healing. He also said that God told him that Adam was the first god of this world, but that his sin betrayed God, transferring the legal right to this world to Satan. Despite Hagin’s claim to receiving these teachings by direct revelation, this was also the year that he began to read Kenyon, who, as we saw above, taught exactly the same thing about Adam’s loss of power to Satan (ibid., 93).

From this, the basic shape of Word-Faith as it now exists was formed. It is always God’s will that believers be both physically healthy and materially prosperous, and God has already provided these things. If we lack them, it is because we do not actually believe that God has given them, or it may be because we have sin blocking the reception of the blessings. So we must positively confess that we have them, and they will become actualized for us. This model is based on Christ’s example of healing and the beneficial power of His atonement.

I once asked a friend with a background in the Word-Faith movement about how this works, and he mentioned that he knew someone in the movement with long-term, chronic pain. How did he pray to be delivered from the pain? Most Christians would put their prayers in contingent language: “Lord, if it is your will, please heal me” or something like that. But this person would instead pray, “Thank you, Lord, that my pain has already been healed,” and follow with a scriptural citation, repeating this process even in the face of a long-term lack of results. God’s will to heal readily is shown repeatedly in the Bible, which shows that healing is His will for us. So if you do not truly believe that you already have the healing, then you will not receive it. This is how positive confession works.

Jesus reportedly appeared to Hagin several times (something which Bowman notes seems to be standard fare for Word-Faith preachers). On one of those occasions, He is said to have revealed to Hagin the basic four-step formula for how positive confession is supposed to work, a process he calls “writing your own ticket with God”: (1) say it, (2) do it, (3) receive it, and (4) tell it.

Thus, a believer can’t just say that he has received his blessing; he also has to get up and live as though he’s received it, perhaps even giving immediate evidence of miraculous healing. Then the believer has to receive it, feeling in himself the experience of the blessing, and then go and proclaim it to the world. Hagin gives the example of the woman healed of the issue of blood in Mark 5:25-34, noting how she followed all four steps.

Hagin then says that Jesus told him that all these same steps could be followed by someone who sought out “the infilling of the Holy Spirit,” victory over “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” and even casting out demons (Kenneth Hagin, How to Write Your Own Ticket with God, 1–32).

The sending of God’s word, His creative act of speaking, is what created the universe initially, and since we are created in the image of God, we can also speak God’s word and thus create reality ourselves. Reality is created by words, and the word of faith participates in God’s own creative acts. Words are, in a sense, containers for the power of God. Scriptural promises are claimed when we speak God’s words.

Faith is therefore a force, a spiritual “substance” identified from a literal reading of Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” With this kind of “faith,” the believer is able to make things happen. After all, didn’t Jesus say that believers by faith could move mountains (Matt. 17:20)?

In 1966, Hagin set up his ministry in Tulsa, and eight years later, he founded the Rhema Bible Training College in nearby Broken Arrow. (Rhema is a Greek word used in the New Testament for “[spoken] word.” The “word” here refers to the positive confession of faith in terms of a spoken word.) In 1979, together with other televangelists, Hagin founded the International Convention of Faith Churches and Ministers, “which functions as a virtual denomination for the Word-Faith movement” (Bowman, 93). Hagin’s ministry continues after his death in 2003 with his quasi-denomination, ministry training schools in multiple countries, publications, and radio and television broadcasts, now headed by his son Kenneth W. Hagin.

The Prosperity Gospel

In our time, the Word-Faith movement is mostly visible via the many televangelists who preach its message, who all looked to Hagin as “Dad Hagin” while he was alive. One development which disturbed Hagin was the growing emphasis on material wealth by the younger generation of leaders like Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar. In 1999, Hagin repeatedly summoned Copeland, Dollar, and others to Tulsa to discuss with them his concerns about their preaching. A year later, he published a book summarizing his five essential points, entitled The Midas Touch:

1. Financial prosperity is not by itself a sign of God’s blessings. If it were, then rich drug dealers and other criminals are just as blessed as rich prosperity preachers. He wrote: “Material wealth can be connected to the blessings of God or it can be totally disconnected from the blessings of God. Certainly, financial prosperity is not an infallible gauge of a person’s spirituality” (Kenneth E. Hagin, The Midas Touch, 117–118).

2. People should not give to ministries expecting to get greater wealth back from God: “There is no spiritual formula to sow a Ford and reap a Mercedes” (ibid., 119).

3. It’s wrong for believers to “name their seed” when giving an offering; that is, they should not be offering up a wishlist to God, focusing on what is desired by the believer. This practice apparently had become popular at Word-Faith conferences in the 1980s (ibid., 120).

4. Literalizing a “hundredfold return” on giving is not biblical. If it were true, “we would have Christians walking around with not billions or trillions of dollars, but quadrillions of dollars!” (ibid., 126).

5. Preachers who claim the ability to give “supernatural debt cancellation” are false teachers: “There is not one bit of Scripture I know about that validates such a practice. I’m afraid it is simply a scheme to raise money for the preacher, and ultimately it can turn out to be dangerous and destructive for all involved” (ibid., 128). (This list was enumerated in: J. Lee Grady, “Kenneth Hagin’s Forgotten Warning,” Charisma Magazine, http://www.charismamag.com/fireinmybones/Columns/030708.html)

Hagin’s warnings have essentially gone unheeded, and from this list of rebukes, we can ascertain a general shape for the work of the prosperity preachers. Such preachers often make sensational claims, such as Creflo Dollar’s 2015 call for his followers to give to him to fund a $70 million jet or Leroy Thompson’s refrain of “Money cometh!” The ostentatious display of preachers’ wealth is taken to be a sign of God’s favor.

One prominent preacher, Joel Osteen, has successfully altered the Word-Faith teaching to be focused more on self-help encouragement than on physical healing or material prosperity. He also avoids the distinctive Christology and anthropology of Word-Faith. In his 2015 book I Am, his followers are urged to say good things about themselves such as “I am strong” or “I am talented.” He will sometimes reference healing and finances, but his emphasis is more general, and his use of Word-Faith formulas is simplified.

Yet not everyone who belongs to this movement is in perfect health or has abundant wealth—most do not. So how is it that this style of spirituality answers the day-to-day struggles of believers? The answer is that any small success in life is ascribed to this theology. Thus, even if that big pay-off in terms of healing or finances has not yet come, if a believer has a minor windfall, gets a new job, experiences relief through medicine, etc., then it is chalked up as a success for the Word-Faith technique. And if anyone does have a spectacular result in his life, he is put on full display for the faithful so that they may also see and believe, hoping that their turn may come next. Their breakthrough is always just around the corner.

The focus on material wealth is diametrically opposed to Orthodox spirituality, which focuses instead on asceticism, giving up what we do not need in order to lighten ourselves for spiritual struggle against the passions. Earnestly seeking after possessions is detrimental to the soul. And while there is nothing wrong with asking God to alleviate poverty, we humbly accept our lot, whatever it may be. We cannot believe that it is always God’s will that we be healthy or prosperous—after all, such things are temporary anyway, and suffering with patience in this world often prepares us for the life of the age to come.

PRACTICES, CONCEPTS, AND CHARACTERISTICS OF PENTECOSTALISM

As we began this chapter, we noted that Pentecostalism is much more about spiritual experience than about doctrine. But of course as we have seen, doctrine informs experiences and practices. The Holiness belief in the second blessing, for instance, is highly significant in this whole history and in most of its expressions. And the general Pentecostal belief in the second (or sometimes third or fourth) Pentecost is likewise strongly formative.

In this section, we will examine a number of practices and beliefs which are common throughout the Pentecostal movement—and here I am referring to all the various denominations, movements, and groups that have origins in or associations with Pentecostalism. As we set up a kind of catalog here of these practices and beliefs, we should note that not every Pentecostal group practices them or follows them, or they may not regard them in the same way. So we are generalizing here. When considering any particular part of the movement, make adjustments as needed.

I’d like to make one final comment before we begin this list, and that is on the nature of how Pentecostalism works as a movement. Even though we’ve sketched out a history and a sort of family tree of Pentecostal groups, it is very difficult to track the origins of particular teachings or practices. Why is this? I believe that it is because of how authority works in Pentecostalism.

Even though Pentecostals tend to be very dedicated to the words of Scripture, their kind of religion is not really textual like most of its Protestant forebears—that is, Pentecostalism’s distinctive faith and praxis are not derived directly from the Scripture itself. Rather, they are based in a common experience, and then the Scripture is used as a warrant for its practices—an irony considering the strong literal biblicism of the movement. Therefore, I see Pentecostalism as not so much textual as viral. In some ways, it functions as a tradition, but without the usual limits placed by tradition. Ideas and practices are not propagated through historical processes or hierarchical determinations, but rather they function as communicable, memetic experiences.

The Second Pentecost

As we described earlier, the key historical claim of Pentecostalism is that a new Pentecost has occurred. The prophecy of Joel 2:28, which traditionally Christians take as a prediction of the apostolic Pentecost in Acts 2, is reapplied to refer to an additional event. In most cases, it is the event that happened at the beginning of the twentieth century with the founding of Pentecostalism, though this repeated Pentecost may be associated with subsequent moments, as well. In this new Pentecost, miraculous gifts of power are reclaimed by Christians, perhaps after having lain dormant for centuries. There is a parallel here to the second blessing teaching, except it is on the scale of history itself. The conversion of the Church came already, but now the Holy Spirit is descending for an empowerment of believers. Pentecostals may not use the term second Pentecost, but they do generally share the sense that something new started happening around the turn of the twentieth century.

For the Orthodox Church, just as we do not teach a specific and formal second blessing, there is also only one Pentecost, the one described in Acts 2. There is no indication of more than one in Joel’s prophecy. Further, what is accomplished at Pentecost is the constitution of the Church in its fullness on earth, not just a powering up of believers for evangelism. Just like the death and Resurrection of Jesus, it is unrepeatable. And the Church has always believed that Jesus is coming “soon,” but we do not know the day or hour (Matt. 24:36), not even such that we can say that it’s truly imminent. Maybe it is, but we don’t know.

Doubts about additional Pentecosts can be framed in terms of a common objection to all new revelations—on what basis should the new revelation be trusted? Pentecostals would say the proof is in the miracles, but the Orthodox see things differently. Unlike many Protestant churches, the Orthodox Church is not cessationist. Orthodoxy has never taught that miraculous gifts of healing and other gifts were ever removed from the Church. In that, we are similar to Pentecostals. Where we differ in this, however, is that such gifts are almost exclusively associated with people whose spiritual maturity is very advanced—something that is rare.

There are the “normal” miracles that occur such as the change of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, but the more unusual miraculous gifts are typically practiced only by saints. The ability to heal spectacularly through prayer or to know the future, etc., are usually gifts given by God only to those who have spent a lot of time in asceticism and repentance, which make them humble and more likely to avoid the spiritual pride that so often affects modern-day “miracle workers.” Even in the New Testament, we do not see all believers working miracles. It is mostly just the apostles. There’s no indication that the kind of gifts God gives them are normal for everyone.

Miraculous gifts do continue within the Church, but they are not the norm, and they are also not regarded as being the proof of Orthodoxy’s authenticity. Miracles are often not widely advertised but taken rather to be normal in the sense of not being sensational.

While Orthodoxy does not teach a second blessing as a specific event normal (and perhaps required) for every believer, we do believe that individual Christians may experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a new way, especially after genuine, deep cooperation with divine grace. This experience can happen many times in the life of the believer as he progresses in repentance.

We can also point out that every Orthodox Christian receives his own application of the one Pentecost when he is received into the Church, by virtue of his chrismation after baptism—the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is not a second Pentecost, however, but simply a participation in the one Pentecost. Likewise, the baptism of the Holy Spirit mentioned in Scripture (Luke 3:16) is not a second experience but rather the one baptism which brings the person into the Church.

Speaking in Tongues

The most characteristic feature of Pentecostalism is the practice of speaking in tongues. As we have already said, the first Pentecostals focused on xenoglossia, the miraculous ability to speak foreign languages, but soon shifted to glossolalia, tongues as a divine prayer language, when it became clear that, for instance, Chinese people couldn’t understand the “Chinese” being spoken by Pentecostal tongue-speaking missionaries. That historical experience alone might shake some Pentecostals’ faith in this phenomenon, if they learned about it.

But some may not care and simply say that those first Pentecostals were mistaken or had not yet received the full revelation of God intended for them, a claim not extraordinary in a movement that frequently claims new revelation (though with the caveat of always including some parallel in Scripture). And the actual experience of the ecstasy of tongue-speaking is very compelling. What is going on here?

It is very difficult to know what exactly is going on when a Pentecostal speaks in tongues. He will say that it is a gift from God, a prayer language given to him for his spiritual edification. Readings of 1 Corinthians 14 may suggest that such a thing happened in the New Testament and perhaps even later. But what is especially notable in that passage is that Paul downplays the importance of this act, whatever it is, saying that prophecy is greater (1 Cor. 14:5).

He goes on to say that tongues are a problem for both believers and unbelievers; it is far better to speak in prophecy so that those who listen may be convicted and convinced. (Prophecy here is not necessarily to tell the future or to receive a new revelation, but rather to speak on behalf of God. Preaching may thus in a sense be considered prophecy.) His comments in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that tongues “will cease” could indicate that, even if such things did happen, they are now over (this verse is the standard cessationist proof text). Even if it is true that tongue-speaking in the New Testament is as Pentecostals describe, it is never given the prominence that Pentecostalism gives it. It is certainly not, as some of them hold, an absolute requirement for salvation. And none of the Church Fathers mention it as part of the authentic Christian life.

I have read that some scientific studies have looked at the brains of tongue-speakers when they are engaged in the practice (Benedict Carey, “A Neuroscientific Look at Speaking in Tongues,” New York Times, Nov. 7, 2006). These scientists say that the language center of the brain is not engaged when this happens. Tongue-speakers may point to this as proof that their tongues are animated by the Holy Spirit. But this is not proof in itself, since such ecstatic utterances existed in paganism and in heretical groups that broke off from the Church (such as the Montanists in the late second century).

Further, we may rightly ask whether human beings simply do not have this ability in a purely natural, psychological sense, even perhaps accompanied by an altered state of consciousness. The human brain is a mysterious organ, and its capabilities are only partly understood. That the mouth may make sounds that are not generated by the language centers of the brain does not mean that they can only be speaking a divine language.

One thing that I have noticed myself in listening to tongue-speakers is that the phonemes—the particular sets of sounds, vowels and consonants—that they use in their utterances are almost invariably a subset of their natural, normal language. That is, they are making sounds that they already know. But why should the set of tongue-speaking sounds made by someone who normally speaks English be restricted to the set of sounds English normally makes? Why not one of the deep H sounds or difficult vowels of Arabic, the clicking sounds from one of the African languages that uses them, the liquid consonants from Asia that are somewhere between L and R, or perhaps something otherwise unknown in human language? Although this is not an airtight argument against glossolalia, it is suggestive. One would expect that a divine stimulus to the tongue would make it capable of what it is not normally used for. Why does their divine language sound so much like their everyday language?

It is observable that there is some level of human agency when it comes to initiating glossolalia. We recall how certain Pentecostal preachers are able to induce the act in others. And Pentecostal revival services may include one or more tongue-speakers gathering around and laying hands on someone to try to induce tongues in them. I have spoken with more than one current or former Pentecostal who said that he was encouraged to practice uttering nonsense syllables to “prime the pump,” so to speak, for the Holy Spirit to begin His work. And some will say that one’s prayer language can grow and develop over time.

As with other claimed miracles, we may ask whether this is indeed a manifestation of some power outside normal human ability. In the 1970s, the Russian Orthodox hieromonk Fr. Seraphim Rose famously said that he believed that there was a spirit in the Charismatic movement (which was then having a small impact in a handful of places in Orthodoxy), but that he believed that it was not the Holy Spirit. That is, he suggested that its origins were demonic:

The “charismatic” texts themselves make it quite clear that what is involved in these experiences—when they are genuine and not merely the product of suggestion—is not merely the development of some mediumistic ability, but actual possession by a spirit. These people would seem to be correct in calling themselves “spirit-filled”—but it is certainly not the Holy Spirit with which they are filled! (Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, 157)

Fr. Seraphim’s analysis is worth reading, but I do not know whether he was right or, if he was right, whether his evaluation applies to every Pentecostal tongue-speaker. His comments do reference this helpful passage from St. Augustine:

In the earliest times, the Holy Spirit fell upon them that believed: and they spoke with tongues, which they had not learned, as the Spirit gave them utterance. These were signs adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to show that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away. In the laying on of hands now, that persons may receive the Holy Spirit, do we look that they should speak with tongues? Or when we laid the hand on these infants, did each one of you look to see whether they would speak with tongues, and, when he saw that they did not speak with tongues, was any of you so wrong-minded as to say, These have not received the Holy Spirit; for, had they received, they would speak with tongues as was the case in those times? If then the witness of the presence of the Holy Spirit be not now given through these miracles, by what is it given, by what does one get to know that he has received the Holy Spirit? Let him question his own heart. If he love his brother the Spirit of God dwells in him. (Augustine of Hippo, Homilies on 1 John, 6.10)

My own conclusion regarding speaking in tongues is that we should be extremely cautious. I do know that it is not the norm within Orthodox tradition. Even if it is a genuine phenomenon among Pentecostals—and I have every reason to believe that most of them are practicing it in good faith and with sincerity of belief—it is certainly not congruent with what one sees in the New Testament. I am not confident enough to make the claim that Fr. Seraphim Rose did, but I do see the practice as deeply problematic. That said, some former Pentecostals and Charismatics who have become Orthodox have seen a natural replacement of their prayer language with the meditative Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”).

Faith Healing

Second only to tongue-speaking as an identifying characteristic feature of the Pentecostal movement is faith healing. We saw its history both in the Holiness movement and then as it was mainstreamed as a frequent part of Pentecostal practice by the early Word-Faith preachers. There are some parts of Pentecostalism where this is an unusual practice and others where it is done nearly every time a church gathers or an itinerant preacher speaks.

In this practice, the preacher typically will approach (as with Kenneth Hagin’s technique) or be approached by (as is more frequent these days) someone seeking physical healing. He may place one hand behind their neck and another on their forehead while praying. A tap to the forehead may bring the person to fall backwards, something which is sometimes called being “slain in the spirit” (though that can happen even outside the practice of being touched for healing).

When Hagin did this, it was often fairly low-key and not showy; even when it was more enthusiastic, it was not a grand spectacle. But many modern faith healers make a great show of it, usually accompanied by stirring music that may build up to an emotional climax just at the moment that the healer pushes the believer over. The person who has had this experience may weep, shake, laugh uncontrollably, dance, run around, etc.

Some faith healers can be extreme in their healing techniques. Smith Wigglesworth, an early Pentecostal who claimed that many diseases were the result of Satanic or demonic activity (a common claim in faith healing circles), would actually slap or punch the afflicted part of the body. He claimed that his violent approach was actually combat with demons. He is legendary in Pentecostalism as having actually raised the dead. In our own day, faith healer Todd Bentley has been recorded on video kicking people in the stomach, head-butting, and violently shaking their heads. Benny Hinn will take his suit jacket off and swing it into people’s faces. Such practices are rare, however. Most faith healers simply touch people on the forehead.

Faith healing is often associated with an almost animistic view of the world. There is a demon of cancer, a demon of heart disease, a demon of migraines, and so forth. Diseases are the direct result of demonic influence, and so battle must be done with demons in order to cure the sickness. (There are also demons of doubt, laziness, anger, etc.) Almost everything becomes an exorcism.

Many people report immediately feeling better from their ailments. Most faith healers usually have a personal story of their own of being healed from some chronic or incurable disease. All of this is done very publicly, with whole congregations watching or even thousands of people attending revival meetings. Those who are healed are often encouraged to show immediate evidence of the healing—someone who had a leg problem may be compelled to begin running around the stage, for instance. Some churches have been known to take crutches and wheelchairs and hang them from the wall as trophies from successful healings—their owners no longer needed them. (This practice actually predates the Pentecostal movement. One can find such displays in some Orthodox and Catholic churches, as well.)

But what about the people who don’t get healed? Or what about those who feel better right away but suffer a relapse? This is not often brought up publicly in the healing movement, but it has been addressed by some preachers. It is often said that a person’s faith must be active in order for the healing to work, and also that it must continue to be active in order for the person to keep their healing. This teaching has no precedent in Scripture.

This struggle is not what is placed in the spotlight, but it is an existential problem for those involved in the movement. Especially in the Word-Faith movement, which teaches that it is always God’s will that you experience physical healing, this can be truly difficult. If you’re not experiencing healing or keeping your healing, then what does that say about your faith? In essence, the blame is placed on the person suffering. They must be sinning or have weak faith. The historic Christian tradition’s theology of suffering is absent, and in the face of unanswered prayers for healing, confused believers may simply double down on their commitment or become discouraged and leave altogether. The idea that God’s will might include their suffering is not taught:

The prosperity gospel holds to this illusion of control until the very end. If a believer gets sick and dies, shame compounds the grief. Those who are loved and lost are just that—those who have lost the test of faith. In my work, I have heard countless stories of refusing to acknowledge that the end had finally come. An emaciated man was pushed about a megachurch in a wheelchair as churchgoers declared that he was already healed. A woman danced around her sister’s deathbed shouting to horrified family members that the body can yet live. There is no graceful death, no ars moriendi, in the prosperity gospel. There are only jarring disappointments after fevered attempts to deny its inevitability. (Kate Bowler, “Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me,” New York Times, Feb. 13, 2016)

Miraculous healing exists within Orthodoxy, both now and also throughout the history of the Church. But its character and purpose are very different. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that it is rarely public. This is in keeping with a pattern set by Jesus, who often sent people out of the room before He healed and also frequently told those He had healed not to tell anyone about what had happened.

We remember the incident when Jesus heals a man born blind (John 9:1–12). In that account, the question is raised as to why he was born blind—for his own sins or for those of his parents? Jesus explicitly says that it was not the result of anyone’s sin but rather so that he would manifest the work of God (John 9:2–3).

Likewise, the claim that it is always God’s will that we not suffer or that we can always be delivered from suffering through positive confession goes against Christ’s prediction that the apostles would suffer for His sake. Even more deeply, it cuts against the suffering of Christ Himself—why would He set such a bad example by suffering and death, if it is God’s will that we always be healthy? Word-Faith preachers might say that Christ’s suffering is what made physical healing always available, but this confuses matters when it comes to believers seeking to imitate Christ.

In Orthodoxy, faith healing for the body is not necessarily aimed at immediate miraculous physical healing. The sacrament of holy unction, for instance, is given “for the healing of soul and body.” But what if there is no immediate physical healing? That does sometimes happen (though rarely), but such healing has a far more lasting and long-term purpose—the full healing of the human person in the resurrection. Although sometimes temporary relief does come, physical healing in the Orthodoxy Church is ultimately eschatological. We are not made to last forever in this current state. We will all die, and then we will all be raised. That is when the healing of God will be fully realized in those who participate in it.

Prophecy

It is common to hear Pentecostals speak with biblical language in ways unfamiliar to other Christians, even those who are part of the wider revivalist tradition. One of the areas in which this happens is with prophecy.

Discussions of prophecy in modern Pentecostalism largely revolve around two questions—how to tell true prophecy from false prophecy and what the authority of new revelations is as compared with Scripture. Pentecostals are all over the map regarding both these questions. Once the idea of new revelation is introduced—not just the normal sense that God speaks to believers, but new, authoritative revelation that is to be applied broadly—then a whole can of worms is opened that brings us back to the basic problem of authority. Why should I believe this new person who claims to be a prophet, especially when other “prophets” are saying contradictory things?

That said, much prophecy in Pentecostalism seems to be closely associated with two of the spiritual gifts mentioned by Paul in 1 Cor. 12:8—the word of knowledge and the word of wisdom. While most Christians would not regard these gifts in such technical terms, seeing them instead as general ways of speaking of God-given intellectual abilities, Pentecostals often refer to them as very specific effects.

A word of knowledge is a piece of information given prophetically by God to someone who could not otherwise know the information. An example might be when a sick person approaches a faith healer and the healer immediately identifies some non-obvious ailment, such as cancer.

A word of wisdom is not information but rather understanding of the right thing to do—again, given prophetically by God. So to continue with our example, the person who has been identified with cancer might then be told by the healer that God was saying that he should go see the oncologist at the local hospital.

Both of these gifts can work on the individual level, but many preachers will claim much larger kinds of revelation, such as knowing when the end of the world is coming, what new direction their ministry should take, and so forth.

These gifts are not limited to Pentecostal leaders. A believer may suddenly stand up in the middle of a service and begin speaking on behalf of God. Such revelations are given in the grammatical first person, as well, so that it is understood to be the very voice of God speaking through the person as through an oracle. This is not the same as in the Bible, where prophets would preface such messages with “Thus saith the Lord,” passing on what God had already said to them prior to their speaking. Rather, this is more like divine possession. Such new “prophecies” might be accompanied by “Thus saith the Lord,” but it’s clear that this is supposedly happening in real time—God is not so much speaking to the prophet as through him.

The Orthodox see prophecy much as they do other miracles. There are certainly instances of clairvoyance in the lives of saints, and wisdom is a common gift for the holy and even for more ordinary believers. But oracle-style speaking in the first person on behalf of God is not something one finds in Orthodox tradition.

I once asked friends in the Pentecostal tradition what happens if someone stands up and starts speaking like this in a way that is objectionable to church leaders. Often, such people will be told, “The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets” (1 Cor. 14:32), that they should control themselves and be quiet. There are even instances of would-be prophets being escorted out. Others may be brought first to the pastor or other leaders to be vetted quickly before being allowed to speak. So there are controls over this practice, and it is not usually a free-for-all of new revelations from God.

Anointing

Another biblical term that Pentecostals use in a specific technical way is anointing. The term in Scripture is typically used in a literal way, usually referring to the anointing with oil of priests or kings, but also for healing. It is used twice in a possibly metaphorical way in 1 John 2:

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. (1 John 2:20)

But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him. (1 John 2:27)

For the Orthodox, this may be understood (whether literally or metaphorically) to refer to chrismation and the knowledge that comes from the gift of the Holy Spirit. But Pentecostals often use anointing to refer to a specific ability given by God, and it is primarily used metaphorically, though anointing with oil is not unheard of.

A preacher might be said to have an anointing for preaching, meaning that God has given him that gift. Or a teacher might have the anointing for teaching. Likewise, a healer could have the anointing for healing.

But sometimes the anointing may be oddly specific and temporary. For instance, a faith healer could say that he is receiving an anointing for the curing of lung cancer. So he will call out those suffering from lung cancer for healing during a revival meeting.

An anointing is sometimes said to be generally present in a specific place, speaking broadly about God’s presence: “There’s an anointing in this room tonight!”

Particularly gifted preachers’ anointing is thought to adhere to them in a physical way. They can pass it on through the laying on of hands. Even after they die, one may find people lying down at the gravesite of a deceased Pentecostal leader, hoping to absorb some of their anointing, a practice called “grave soaking” (or sometimes “grave sucking” or “mantle grabbing”). This practice is criticized within the movement. But the essential idea is that the anointing can be transferred. This idea comes from the incident when Elisha picks up Elijah’s mantle (2 Kings 2:13) and receives a “double portion” of the spirit of the departed prophet. A special prophetic gift may also therefore be referred to as a mantle that can be picked up.

A related term, popular in the Word-Faith movement, is favor, which might be best understood as serendipitous divine providence. When God gives you favor, probably as the result of your positive confession of faith, you are gaining something you normally would not have.

Spectacle and Celebrity

One of the things one may notice about Pentecostal church services and revival meetings is that they are often quite spectacular, whether because people are stunned by seeing what they believe are miracles or because deliberate techniques are used to engage people in a theatrical way.

One of the earliest pioneers in the use of entertainment techniques in church was Aimee Semple McPherson, the founder of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which today boasts close to eight million members. Sister Aimee, as she was called, put on elaborate stage performances for her audiences, including costumes and special effects. She herself often dressed in a long cape and a vaguely clerical-looking costume, as well as a military-style hat.

Her Angelus Temple in Los Angeles seated over five thousand people, and during the 1920s, it was filled to capacity three times a week, where Sister Aimee would preach emotional sermons and do public demonstrations of faith healing. Membership grew to over ten thousand, and it was said to be the largest Christian congregation in the world. Her radio programs there may represent the invention of Christian radio. It was a mega-church before there were mega-churches, and Sister Aimee and her church were a media sensation. She was perhaps the first true celebrity preacher in the age of mass communication.

The spectacular character of Pentecostal services creates an apt setting for stirring up an emotional experience, and the feeling of expectation for miracles can be strongly conditioned, especially in those who are accustomed to this approach. One can very much have the feeling of being manipulated in the strongly emotional style of worship that is normal in Pentecostalism. This stands in marked contrast with the sobriety of traditional Christian worship, which, while it can evoke emotional feelings, is not designed specifically to induce them.

When the sense of a miracle happening right in front of you is strong, the experience can be electrifying. One former Pentecostal told me he found it addictive. He always wanted to go back for more and greater miracles. He said Pentecostals becoming Orthodox may first need to break their addiction before they can embrace the joyful sobriety of the historic Christian faith.

Celebrity is also common among Pentecostal preachers—not that many of them are truly celebrities, but there is an expectation that someone who is truly blessed by God and being used by Him will become famous. For a preacher to be a celebrity is an indication that he is doing God’s work.

It sometimes happens that a truly holy person may gain some public recognition within the Orthodox Church during his own lifetime. People have been known to seek out saints. But the response of such saints to celebrity is to flee it, not to embrace it. They see it as a temptation to pride.

Touch Not the Lord’s Anointed

A very common problem throughout the Pentecostal movement is how leadership should arise and function. There is, generally speaking, no established denominational process to produce clergy. There are Bible schools and ministerial training, but even such things are often criticized as being unspiritual, as “quenching the Spirit.” Anti-intellectualism is very common in Pentecostal circles.

So how is one to certify true leadership? Ultimately, true leadership is demonstrated by results. If many people are converted, many miracles performed, etc., then that is the authentication for leadership. Such a person may often be identified as “the Lord’s anointed,” a reference to Psalm 105:15 and 1 Chronicles 16:22: “Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm.” Thus, to criticize someone who has gotten clear results in ministry or who has simply been appointed as pastor is to go against God Himself. This leaves Pentecostal church leadership wide open for abuse, especially in the independent congregations and ministries outside the established denominations. Some may have a rather exalted view of their ministry:

The day is coming when those that attack us will drop dead. You say, “What did you say?” I speak this under the anointing of the Spirit. Can I tell you something? Don’t touch God’s servants; it’s deadly. . . . Woe to you that touch God’s servants. You’re going to pay. (Benny Hinn, “Miracle Invasion Rally,” Anaheim Convention Center, 22 November 1991, cited in Hank Hanegraaf, Christianity in Crisis, 336)

With this feeling about leadership, churches may be led for years by men proven to have deep personal failings, even egregious sins. Many of the most famous Pentecostal leaders of years gone by were deeply flawed people who would probably be regarded as unfit for ministry in a more rigorous church environment. We remember the failings of Charles Parham from the beginning of this chapter, but many other famous revivalists had major problems: late nineteenth-century Scottish preacher John Alexander Dowie believed he was Elijah; faith healer A. A. Allen was expelled from the Assemblies of God for alcoholism; fellow Assemblies preacher Jack Coe was also kicked out for “misleading the public,” telling them not to take medicines or go to doctors; William Branham seemed at times to be insane; Aimee Semple McPherson was divorced and carried on adulterous affairs; and modern Charismatic celebrities such as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker also had dramatic, scandal-driven falls from grace.

But God still used them, and so ironically, these failed personalities actually became heroes to be emulated precisely because of the combination of their flaws with their ability to get results. Why should it matter if a preacher has a failed marriage or a criminal record? Why should it matter if there is rivalry and even outright public conflict between entrenched members of a Pentecostal leadership family? (Many of these churches are a “family business.”) Look at how God is using them!

While it is true that some biblical figures such as David were flawed yet used by God, the question is not really whether someone is being used by God. Anyone may be used by God. The difference with these flawed Pentecostal leaders is that they remain in ministry even while unrepentant, especially having committed sins that biblical standards say disqualify one from leadership in public ministry. Further, the fact that an organization is successful in terms of the numbers often pointed to by Pentecostals does not mean that its leaders are doing God’s will. Getting results isn’t the same as faithfulness.

IS THIS REAL? PENTECOSTALS AND ORTHODOXY

It is reasonable to ask whether all these signs and wonders are truly real. Can Pentecostals really deliver when it comes to performing miracles?

This is a very difficult question, especially because there is evidence for miracles in many religions, even among non-Christians. It is not unique to Pentecostal Christianity. There are numerous possibilities for explaining the experience of miracles in the Pentecostal movement.

Many effects could be purely psychological or psychosomatic—whether speaking in tongues, healing, or others. Some might be pure fraud. Some might be the application of human spiritual energies—natural abilities in mankind that most people do not know how to tap into. They could be the influence of demons. They could be the influence of angels. And they could be the presence of the Holy Spirit.

I suspect that all of those things may be active in the Pentecostal movement. Knowing for sure would probably require a close investigation of each instance by people far more spiritually advanced than I am. So I’m not willing to lay out a definite ruling on everything happening there. I do believe, as I mentioned above, that some of these practices are at least dangerous and problematic, especially as they depart from the norms of Orthodox tradition.

What about the revelations claimed by Pentecostal leaders and believers? Is God really appearing to them and giving them new revelations, some limited and specific, some much larger in scope? As an Orthodox Christian, in that many of these revelations contradict Orthodox tradition, I have reason to doubt them. But even outside a commitment to Orthodox tradition, we can observe that such revelations often contradict each other and even the Bible (when it’s not being stretched beyond recognition to apply to a new word of knowledge). Even if it is true that God is speaking directly to some of these Christians, it is very difficult to sift out what is true from what is false, because there is no tradition governing Pentecostalism to use as a measure.

What I am more interested in is how Pentecostals may come to find a home in Orthodoxy. In some ways, Pentecostals and Holiness believers may approach the Orthodox Church quite differently from mainstream Protestants and Evangelicals. Those more in touch with their Holiness roots will not find in Orthodoxy the moralism of their founders, but may nevertheless appreciate our ascetical emphasis on purity. Those who especially focus on healing from God may connect with our theology of salvation as a healing process. The highly interactive character of Pentecostal services may make the back-and-forth rhythms of liturgy more accessible. Some may be attracted by our sense that everyone has a “personal Pentecost” when he is chrismated, that that first Pentecost never truly ended. And Pentecostals who thrill at the stories of famous faith healers and fiery preachers will no doubt have their heads set spinning at the stories of the lives of the saints.

On a deeper level, I believe that one of the things that Pentecostals share with the Orthodox is an appreciation of materiality when it comes to the spiritual life—something that distinguishes them from most Evangelicals and other Protestants, who tend to shun this as idolatry. The Orthodox believe that holiness can reside in physical things, including our own bodies, and so do Pentecostals. We may not engage in “grave soaking,” but we certainly do like to visit the graves of saints and ask for their prayers. And we do have the sense that physical touch can be an important part of our connection with the saints. Our dedication to physical beauty and love for the mystical experience of worship with all five senses may be for a Pentecostal seeker not merely familiar but more deeply fulfilling than what is available in Pentecostalism.

The appeal of Pentecostalism in all its forms is that it speaks directly to the real pain and suffering of people, to their need for healing and direct contact with God. While I believe that its methods and peculiar beliefs are not the best way to do this (and in some cases are counterproductive), even the acknowledgment of this need in people is powerful and compelling. Orthodoxy, when truly lived, also sees the pain of mankind, offering direct experience of the true God, true consolation, and hope for resurrection.

While the Orthodox do not seek for God with the pursuit of ecstasy and the constant expectation of miracles, we do believe that He touches us directly in the holy sacraments. I believe that it is this experience of the very touch of God that may appeal most to Pentecostals and bring them home into Orthodoxy.

While it was the largest and most successful new religious movement to come out of the revivals and doctrinal experimentation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Pentecostalism was by no means the only one. Let’s now move on to discuss the various non-mainstream and non-Trinitarian groups who emerged from that period of religious history.

SEVEN

Non-Mainstream Christians

MANY GODS, MANY CHRISTS

For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. (Matthew 24:24)

In the preceding chapters, we examined the doctrines of other Christians—Catholics, Protestants, and Pentecostals. With the vast majority of them, we saw how they shared certain core Christian teachings, such as belief in the Holy Trinity and in the incarnate God-man Jesus Christ. The details of how those beliefs get worked out are certainly crucial, but there is still a good bit of common ground.

In this chapter, we will examine the beliefs of groups that call themselves “Christian,” but are usually regarded as non-Christians by most of the groups we have already covered. Mainstream Christians often look upon these people as cults or heretics. These non-mainstream groups’ rejection of the traditional dogmas of the Holy Trinity and the two natures of Jesus Christ as professed by most Christians are the main reason many Christians don’t see them as fellow believers, though there may be other reasons. While the Orthodox Church differs with the mainstream Christian communions on what else it means to be truly Christian, we stand with them in affirming that these traditional dogmas are critical elements of Christian faith.

One of the things we will see as we look at these various communions is that once basic dogma is discarded, the whole theological world can radically shift for a believer. While Orthodoxy believes that traditional Triadology and Christology are not the only elements of Christian dogma, the Church regards these dogmas in particular as anchors which hold fast, inform, and shape all other parts of Christian theology and therefore spiritual life. It is for this reason that the beliefs and practices of these non-mainstream denominations often look and sound so different from other Christians.

With most mainstream Christian groups, we can believe we are probably worshiping or at least talking about the same God, though with some extreme doctrines (such as Calvinist predestinarianism), that commonality is strained. With the communions we will examine in this chapter, however, it is almost impossible to regard our faiths as being aimed in the same direction. That is why when a believer comes to the Orthodox Church from one of these groups, even if they had been baptized before within them, their baptism is not accepted by the Orthodox, and they are usually received into Orthodoxy with the full conversion process normally reserved for non-Christians.

This approach may seem unfair, especially considering that the foundation for these non-mainstream groups is often the same as that of most mainstream denominations—their source of authority is a claim to have the new, exclusive truth on biblical interpretation or revelation from God. Yet if we look at the practices of the ancient Church, we will find that Orthodoxy has always taken an uneven approach when receiving converts from other faiths.

St. Basil the Great in the fourth century, for instance, says that certain kinds of heretics should be baptized and chrismated, others should only be chrismated, and still others are received solely through profession of faith. This same approach is taken by the ecumenical councils. These distinctions do not reveal an arrogance on the part of the Church, but rather a willingness to try to work with whatever can be found in a converting believer that can be adapted to Orthodoxy. With some believers, there is more to work with than with others. Even for those who are professedly non-Christians, such as Jews or Muslims, catechesis will vary. In most ways, a Jew is closer to us than is a Muslim, for instance.

Let’s now look at the particulars of these non-mainstream Christian groups. We will address them generally in the historical order of their origins.

UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS

The Unitarian Universalist Association as a religious denomination was founded in 1961. Nevertheless, despite the modern denomination’s relatively short history, its origins actually lie in the seventeenth-century Radical Reformation, which began the modern Christian experimentation with unitarianism.

Unitarianism as a doctrine is the teaching that God is not a Trinity of three divine Persons, but that He is absolutely one divine Person. This belief had proponents among early heretics, most especially Sabellius, whose variety of unitarianism taught that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were “modes” of a single Person of God.

A number of unitarian theologians wrote during the Radical Reformation, though they did not form any lasting denominations. In the mid-seventeenth century in England, John Biddle published unitarian tracts and held private meetings in London. American Unitarianism, which is the source of the modern denomination, began in the late eighteenth century with the formation of King’s Chapel in Boston in 1785, adapting a form of the Episcopal liturgy according to unitarian doctrine. In 1825 a denomination was formed, called the American Unitarian Association. The early nineteenth century saw unitarianism adopted in a number of Congregational churches, most especially in New England.

By the end of the nineteenth century, American Unitarianism had been influenced by Enlightenment rationalism and began to reject a number of traditional Christian doctrines and practices, even aside from Trinitarianism. Unitarian theology came to be extremely liberal in its outlook and began to look more toward science for doctrinal guidance. It also began formally recognizing non-Christian religions as true.

In terms of population, Unitarianism was never a major force in American religious history, but it gained enough standing that four presidents were Unitarian: John Adams (a former Congregationalist), his son John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft. Other prominent figures from American history were Unitarians, such as essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, novelist Charles Dickens (an Englishman who toured the US), jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

While Unitarianism was developing in the United States, universalism also was gaining ground, particularly among Christians of the pietist and Anabaptist movements coming out of the Radical Reformation. The year 1778 saw the first convention of what became the Universalist Church of America, forming officially as a denomination in 1793.

The essential distinctive teaching of universalism is that, because it is God’s will that all should be saved (2 Peter 3:9), then all will necessarily eventually be saved, no matter what they do or believe in this life. This teaching had a few adherents in the ancient Church, as well, whose belief was summed up with the term apokatastasis, the “recapitulation” of all things in Christ, even Satan and the demons. Universalism was rejected in multiple forms throughout the history of the Church, however, from the gnostics in the first and second century up to the Sixth Ecumenical Council in AD 680.

In 1961, the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Association (hereafter, “Unitarians”; they are often called “UUs”). It is not a denomination in a traditional sense but rather a voluntary association of congregations. The Association has no authority to speak for all of them as a whole. With the merging of two denominations that had been historically Christian but dedicated to radical theology, the association evolved into a religious group without any doctrine:

Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion born of the Jewish and Christian traditions. We keep our minds open to the religious questions people have struggled with in all times and places.

We believe that personal experience, conscience, and reason should be the final authorities in religion. In the end religious authority lies not in a book, person, or institution, but in ourselves. We put religious insights to the test of our hearts and minds.

We uphold the free search for truth. We will not be bound by a statement of belief. We do not ask anyone to subscribe to a creed. We say ours is a noncreedal religion. Ours is a free faith.

We believe that religious wisdom is ever changing. Human understanding of life and death, the world and its mysteries, is never final. Revelation is continuous. We celebrate unfolding truths known to teachers, prophets, and sages throughout the ages. (Marta Flanagan, “We Are Unitarian Universalists,” Unitarian Universalist Association Publication #3081)

The seven principles of Unitarian Universalists are essentially a statement of basic human rights such as one might find in the American Constitution, as well as an environmental affirmation. The seven shared principles are:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

2. Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

(“Our Unitarian Universalist Principles,” http://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles)

Unitarians also recognize six sources of religious wisdom and spirituality: direct experience, words and deeds of prophetic men and women, wisdom from world religions, Jewish and Christian ethical teachings, humanist teachings on reason and science, and spiritual teachings of “Earth-centered traditions” (Unitarian Universalist Association, “Sources of Our Living Tradition,” http://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/sources).

Many Unitarians are former members of other churches who enjoy the social, ethical, and charitable aspects of religious life but are less interested in traditional religious questions such as salvation. Unitarian Universalism is, in a sense, a way of being “spiritual but not religious” yet still gathering for organized religious activities.

Despite the lack of doctrine among Unitarians, they do still have some rituals, though of course these vary widely from congregation to congregation. One example is Flower Communion, in which each member brings a flower to the meeting and puts it into a vase. These flowers are “consecrated” by a minister during the service. At the end, each person walks away with a flower different from the one he brought with him. Believers are encouraged to interpret this ritual however they like. In a similar ritual, Unitarians may each bring some water with them from various locations. The water is then combined together and used for blessings.

With such an immensely broad definition of Unitarian Universalism, it is hard to know where we might have commonality with the group as a whole. The Orthodox Church may certainly have things in common with individual believers, but since the whole Unitarian Universalist religion seems to be dedicated to the notion that there is no absolute, universal truth, Orthodox Christians find it to be antithetical to our most basic beliefs. It is relativism expressed as a religion.

Although the Bible, for instance, may be studied by Unitarians, it is regarded as full of “mythical and legendary” material and not as a witness to the truth in any binding, authoritative sense. There are no set beliefs in the Unitarian Universalist Association. Even atheism is welcome. (The largest Unitarian Universalist congregation in the United States is in Tulsa and features well-attended services explicitly for atheists.)

That said, the Unitarian desire for freedom from dogma is likely a reaction to the way dogma is often presented in the West—as condemnation, rejection, and so forth. When Orthodoxy is preached rightly, that is not how it functions. It is true that the Orthodox reject certain teachings and behaviors, but this is not a rejection of persons themselves. We reject distortions of human nature so that we can embrace persons in their full humanity. Further, the Unitarian penchant for finding wisdom in all religions is something the Orthodox also can laud. We understand this as the spermatikos logos (“the Logos in seed form”) of St. Justin Martyr, who saw truth in non-Christian teachings inasmuch as they reflect the truth of Jesus Christ, the Logos Incarnate. And the human rights language of the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism has its origins in Christian ethics, so there is common ground there as well.

There are an estimated 800,000 self-identified Unitarian Universalists in the world, mostly in the United States, with about 157,000 people holding actual membership in congregations, a number that has remained relatively steady since the 1961 merger, which began with a combined membership of 151,557 (Unitarian Universalist Association, “UUA Membership Statistics, 1961–2014”).

SWEDENBORGIANISM (NEW CHURCH)

Emanuel Swedenborg was a Swedish scientist and philosopher born in 1688. His father, Jesper Swedberg, was a professor of theology and later became the Lutheran bishop of Skara in Sweden. Swedenborg himself was gifted with a brilliant mind and mathematical ability, and in his writings he anticipated many scientific hypotheses and inventions, such as nebular and magnetic theory, the machine gun, and the airplane. In 1716, he was appointed by the Swedish king to a post on the Swedish Board of Mines.

In the 1740s, Swedenborg began claiming to have direct contact with angels and the spiritual world, partly in dreams and visions, but also in his normal waking life. He believed through these revelations that God was sending him on a mission to make the truth known to mankind. The vehicle for this mission was the New Church, proposed not as a new denomination but rather as a fraternity of like-minded believers joining across denominational lines (much like the pietist movements of the Radical Reformation). In 1747 he resigned his position on the Board of Mines and began intensively studying the Bible, spending the rest of his life writing detailed defenses of his teachings while living in Sweden, the Netherlands, and finally in London.

Swedenborgianism initially found supporters among Anglican clergy, but it was five former Wesleyan preachers who worked to create an actual Swedenborgian denomination in 1787, then called the New Jerusalem Church. The first American congregation was formed in Baltimore in 1792. A smaller, separate body of Swedenborgians was formed in 1890 and based in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, called the General Church of New Jerusalem. Other bodies of Swedenborgians exist in other parts of the world.

Swedenborg’s religious system is based on what he called a “doctrine of correspondence” between the physical and spiritual worlds. The spiritual world consists of groups of deceased humans who together constitute one single great human being. Christ is the most perfect human being, but He did not atone for mankind’s sins on the Cross in the sense of substitutionary atonement. Rather, God takes on human nature in Jesus (a teaching similar to Orthodox Christology) to serve as a medium by which mankind can be saved. But on the Cross, it is Jesus’ human nature that suffers and not His divine nature (Emanuel Swedenborg, The Lord, 21). (By contrast, Orthodoxy uses the traditional formula “one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.” In other words, a person suffered who had two natures. Natures don’t suffer.)

Swedenborg’s theology is unitarian, teaching that God is a single divine Person, and that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “aspects” of God just as soul, body, and activity are aspects of a human person. In Jesus, Swedenborgians see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He is regarded as a manifestation of God, “the divine made flesh,” whose Second Coming has already occurred and is ongoing in a spiritual sense:

There is one God, in whom there is the Divine Trinity, and he is the Lord Jesus Christ. This can be briefly illustrated in the following way: It is a certain and established truth that God is one, and his essence cannot be divided; and also that there is a Trinity. Since God is One, and his essence cannot be divided, it follows that God is one Person. And since he is one Person, the Trinity is in that Person. It is clear that this Person is the Lord Jesus Christ from the fact that he was conceived from God the Father (Luke 1:34, 35), and thus as to his soul and life itself he is God. Therefore, as he himself said, “he and the Father are one” (John 10:30). (Emanuel Swedenborg, A Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church, 44)

This is not modalism (Sabellianism), in which the one Person wears three masks or operates in three modes, but it is another form of unitarianism which attempts to account for the Bible’s Trinitarian language (similar to Oneness Pentecostal Christology). Further, Swedenborg says that the Trinity is not eternal, but only comes about at the moment of the Incarnation (Emanuel Swedenborg, The True Christian Religion, n. 170, 171). For him, a Trinity of eternal Persons existing before creation constitutes three Gods (ibid., 173).

From the Orthodox point of view, Swedenborg’s theological error is in failing to recognize a difference between essence (or nature) and person. Traditional Trinitarianism does not teach that three Persons divide the essence of God, but rather that the one essence of God is fully in each divine Person. (Human beings likewise all share a single human nature and yet are many persons.) It is a paradox that three Persons can be one God, but it is nevertheless how God revealed Himself, as confirmed by the Church.

Swedenborg’s dissent from traditional Christianity on this point is explained by him as having been predicted in the Bible itself. His church is the New Jerusalem of Revelation:

The reason these facts about the Lord are now being made known for the first time is that in Revelation 21 and 22 it was foretold that a new church would be established by the Lord at the close of the former one, a church in which this teaching would be first and foremost. This church is what is meant in Revelation by the New Jerusalem into which only those who recognize the Lord alone as God of heaven and earth can enter. (Emanuel Swedenborg, The Lord, 61)

For Swedenborg, mankind consists of spiritual bodies (souls) clothed in material bodies. Only spiritual bodies live on after death. The afterlife is determined by our behavior in this life, not through God passing a judgment on us, but through our own choices. The final judgment is essentially self-realization after death; those who die are grouped in the afterlife with other people with the same kind of spiritual attitude. In heaven, all those who are married in this life will continue to have the same spouse, and some singles may get married in heaven.

The Orthodox differ from Swedenborgians on major doctrines, such as the nature of God and Jesus Christ. We also believe in a physical, material resurrection for all mankind, because the body is an essential component of human personhood. In general, Swedenborgianism has a tendency to “spiritualize” (that is, to dematerialize) the spiritual life, a tendency Orthodoxy does not share, seeing Christian life as involving both the soul and the body, as well as the whole material world. Swedenborgians would certainly agree that what we do with our bodies matters, but materiality itself is in a sense ultimately dissolved by its anthropology. Jesus, for instance, in His Resurrection does not raise His material body from the dead; instead His human nature is “glorified” and “raised into heaven,” letting go His ego and uniting Him with God, which makes possible the same thing for believers. The Orthodox believe that Jesus always was God and that the Resurrection was a true raising of His material body.

Swedenborgians are encouraged to focus on the meanings of dreams, as well as on prayer and meditation. This mystical tradition often sets believers apart from mainstream Western Christianity. It is a point of contact with Orthodoxy, which also has a strong mystical tradition, though not in the dualistic, anti-material sense held by Swedenborgians. Orthodox Christians also share with Swedenborgians the belief that there is an “inner” meaning to the Bible, but our understanding of that meaning is not divorced from the concrete events of sacred history and their representation to us, most especially in the sacraments.

World membership in Swedenborgianism is claimed at only about 65,000, and membership in the US has been in decline since its peak in the 1850s. Some sources put Swedenborgian membership at about 25,000 to 30,000. While Swedenborgianism is relatively unknown to most Christians, some Swedenborgians have gained fame in America, such as folk hero and missionary John Chapman (“Johnny Appleseed”), industrialist Andrew Carnegie, poet Robert Frost (though he left the church as an adult), Helen Keller, and the prominent Gyllenhaal family.

MORMONISM

At roughly the midpoint of the Second Great Awakening, in 1820, in the upstate New York town of Palmyra, a fourteen-year-old farm boy named Joseph Smith began to wonder which of the many Christian denominations was the true faith. The region of western New York where he lived was referred to as the “Burned-Over District,” since it had so many times “caught on fire” for God in revival meetings.

Although Smith’s family had little to do with organized religion, they often claimed to have received visions and prophecies from God. There is also some evidence that members of the family, including his father, may have used divining rods to try to locate buried treasure and other hard-to-find objects, and that he had extensive experience with scrying (fortune telling with crystal balls or other similar devices) and using seer stones as a child. Smith may also have attended some Methodist revival meetings. In the midst of this religious atmosphere, one can see how a teenager would be confused about what was really true. Joseph later claimed that the answer to his pondering came in the miraculous appearance to him in a vision of God and Jesus, who told him that all Christian churches had fallen away from the true faith and that the true Church would be restored in time. Three years later, at the age of seventeen, he said he had a vision of an angel named Moroni, who told him where to find a set of golden plates buried in a hillside.

Unearthing these plates, along with a pair of “seer stones” that allowed him to read the plates, since they had been inscribed with writing in an ancient Egyptian language, Smith reported that he had discovered ancient texts from long-forgotten Native American tribes. What he said he found was the Book of Mormon. The religion founded on this discovery came to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), or Mormonism. Smith, along with other Mormon leaders, is believed by Mormons to have been a prophet.

Initially, Smith said that Moroni would not allow him to remove this archaeological find from the hillside, but he visited the site a few times over the next few years. During this time, Smith may have gotten involved in divining the location of buried treasure and other items.

Finally, in 1827, when he was twenty-one, Smith was permitted by the angel to remove the plates, and he began the process of translating them by using a pair of spectacles made from the seer stones buried with the plates. Smith identified the stones as the Urim and Thummim referenced in Exodus and 1 Samuel (1 Kingdoms) in the Old Testament, objects of unknown character used by the Israelites for casting lots as a means of determining God’s will. Smith’s successor Brigham Young would eventually say that Smith had five seer stones, some found later than the ones buried with the golden plates. The LDS church claims to have possession of one of them, a brown and black stone, and released a photograph of it in August 2015.

In the process of this translation, Smith would put his face into his hat, along with the seer stones, and he would dictate the translation into English to various scribes, claiming that he was not permitted to continue dictating until the scribes had correctly inscribed his exact translation, word for word and letter for letter. (There is no indication in the Bible that Urim and Thummim were used for translations.) He produced the Book of Mormon in this way, along with another work called the Book of Abraham, a text said to be authored by Abraham himself in Egypt which Smith purchased as Egyptian papyri from a traveling mummy exhibit. (This would later be incorporated into The Pearl of Great Price.)

Smith’s ability to read Reformed Egyptian is said by Mormons of today to be the gift of speaking in tongues, and so there was an early emphasis on tongues as xenoglossia—the ability to speak in a foreign language. Mormons also say that their missionaries sometimes experience rapid understanding of a new language, also proof of the gift of tongues. Smith wrote about the gift of tongues and seemed to reject the idea of glossolalia (a divine prayer language), insisting that tongues always required understanding by someone. That said, it is likely that Brigham Young introduced glossolalia to Joseph Smith, and Mormon women spoke in tongues in the early years of the movement—usually accompanied by interpretation, however. By the twentieth century, glossolalia was frowned upon, and xenoglossia became the standard way of discussing Smith’s tongue-speaking.

In 1830, Smith officially founded his church in Manchester, New York, calling it simply the Church of Christ. In time, in addition to his translation work, he authored contributions to two books, Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price. These books, together with an edited version of the Bible and the Book of Mormon, are regarded by the Mormons as sacred scripture. Mormonism, the religion founded on these texts and expanded upon by the Mormon prophets following Smith, claims to restore the true Christian Church after centuries of apostasy, much like other restorationist movements of the nineteenth century.

In 1843, Smith said he received a revelation from God sanctioning polygamy, which he referred to as “plural marriage” and said was necessary for salvation. Putting this revelation into practice, Smith himself may have had as many as forty-four wives over the course of seventeen years. He married his first wife, Emma Hale, in 1827. By the time of the revelation in 1843, he may have been married nineteen times. Such marriage was even said to grant salvation to the wives and their families. One of Smith’s wives, Helen Mar Kimball (married in May 1843), wrote:

[My father] asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph. . . . After which he [Joseph] said to me, “If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.” This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. (Helen Mar Kimball, quoted in Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, 1997)

Helen was fourteen when she married him. It is contested as to whether Smith slept with all of his wives, but there is plentiful evidence that he consummated more than one of his marriages, eleven of which were to women who were currently other men’s wives (not widows or divorcées). Smith’s successor Brigham Young himself had a total of fifty-five wives.

Despite its being a revelation of supposedly eternal value, Wilford Woodruff, the fourth president and prophet of the Latter-day Saints, repudiated plural marriage in 1890—a declaration which contradicted the teachings of not only Smith but also the two Mormon prophets who came after him, Brigham Young and John Taylor. This move was probably largely as a result of pressure from the United States federal government, which refused to recognize Utah as a state unless it outlawed polygamy. Mainstream Mormons believe that plural marriage will be restored in heaven, but plural marriage is still practiced by a handful of small Mormon groups.

There have actually been dozens of Mormon denominations since the initial group was founded in 1830, but the primary one is the one led immediately after Smith by Brigham Young, who acted as Smith’s right-hand man and commanded the majority of followers after Smith was killed in a gunfight with a mob in 1844. This main group is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

The Mormons believe in the Holy Trinity, but they regard the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three separate gods who are united in purpose, which they refer to as the “Godhead” (which is an Orthodox Christian term, as well, though Orthodox use it with very different meaning). Unlike the God of Orthodox Christians, these gods are not eternally divine. In fact, the Father who created our world was once human but gradually became god over time, just as his own creator-god had. (For a time, the Mormon church taught that Adam was God the Father.) As Joseph Smith preached:

What sort of a being was God in the beginning? . . . God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with Him, as one man talks and communes with another. (Joseph Smith, “King Follett Sermon,” April 7, 1844)

Lorenzo Snow, the fifth Mormon prophet and president, coined the saying, “As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.” This is the goal of life as a Mormon, to become a god—in every way the same as the God of our world:

Here, then, is eternal life—to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power. (ibid.)

An elevated Mormon man will also get to become a Heavenly Father, sire many children, and create his own world, beginning the cycle of creation over again, accompanied by a Heavenly Mother. She is in a similar state but does not receive the prayers or worship of her children.

Jesus is therefore of course “god,” but he was born from sexual reproduction just as every other god was. He is a “spirit child” of the Heavenly Father who created our world. Another one of these spirit children is Lucifer, that is, Satan, who opposed his older brother Jesus. All people are considered “spirit children” of the Father, though this was in our “premortal life.” Satan is Jesus’ brother, but he is therefore our brother, too.

And the Father, who has a physical body, has had several wives. Mary’s giving birth to Jesus is taught to be the result of intercourse with the Father, though it is still defined as a “virgin birth” because it was intercourse with God and not with a mortal man. And because Mary is also a child of the Father, that means he is having intercourse with his own daughter.

As we have seen, Mormon doctrine concerning divinity is radically different from Orthodoxy, because Mormons are polytheists, while Orthodoxy is monotheistic:

The head God called together the Gods and sat in grand council to bring forth the world. The grand councilors sat at the head in yonder heavens and contemplated the creation of the worlds which were created at the time. . . . In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it. (ibid.)

Mormon soteriology (doctrine of salvation) sounds similar to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis, but in Orthodoxy, man does not become an almighty creator-god, but rather participates in and becomes transformed by the one and only God. In Orthodoxy, man becomes like God, but his nature is not changed into something else, and his theosis is dependent on an ongoing relationship with God, not on a series of personal attainments toward exaltation.

The key problem in all Mormon theology in general is the failure to distinguish between the created and the uncreated, stemming from a repudiation of the traditional Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). In the Mormon model, everything is essentially uncreated:

You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing, and they will answer, “Doesn’t the Bible say he created the world?” And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the word baurau, which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end. (ibid.)

The rejection of creation ex nihilo is in a sense a reversion to paganism, as it was that doctrine that above all else distinguished Judaism and Christianity in the ancient world. If that is lost, then all things become products of the gods’ own nature. That all men might become gods (in the polytheistic sense) is simply a democratization of the rare event of apotheosis that one sees in pagan mythology, where a mortal man is immortalized by the pantheon.

This theology in Mormonism is also combined with a kind of gnosticism, an argument advanced by religion scholar (and self-described “Jewish Gnostic”) Harold Bloom in his The American Religion. Materiality is embraced on the one hand, but also rejected with the Mormon brand of asceticism, with its rejection of caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, etc. And the feeling of continuous inner revelation (known by the “burning in the breast”) leading to salvation that gnosticism typically entails is very much present in Smith’s theology.

Like the Orthodox, Mormons practice baptism, regarding it as a normal part of salvation. Yet for Mormons, baptism is so absolutely essential that they believe it is utterly impossible to ascend in the afterlife without it. As such, Mormons practice what is called baptism for the dead, a proxy baptism for someone who has died. With this practice, Mormons believe they are converting people to Mormonism. Their concern for all their ancestors becoming Mormon is the reason for their strong interest in genealogy. Mormons are researching their family trees so that they can retroactively convert their ancestry to become Latter-day Saints.

Mormons also believe in ongoing revelation, even if it sometimes contradicts revelations previously preached by Mormon leaders. Aside from the about-face on plural marriage, Mormonism has also changed its teaching on race. It used to be impossible, for instance, for black men to become part of the Mormon priesthood (i.e., full membership for men), but that teaching was reversed in 1978 after the societal changes brought about by the civil rights movement.

Even the Book of Mormon itself has been revised over the years. Most of the thousands of revisions involve minor errors or idiosyncrasies in grammar and spelling, but other more major changes have been made. This would not raise questions if Joseph Smith hadn’t claimed that his translation itself was divinely inspired, even to the point of requiring that the scribes taking dictation from him had to get it right before God would let him continue—why was it so important to get it so precisely correct if it could be justifiably edited later? Many of the changes Mormons have made in their teachings over the years have been covered up by LDS leaders.

There are many problems with the Book of Mormon even aside from its revision history. Whole passages are copied almost word-for-word from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:58 and Mosiah 5:15 are nearly identical). Many other portions have language similar to the KJV but without the grammar and usage that were correct in early seventeenth-century England. In other words, it is a poorly done imitation of the KJV.

The argument of plagiarism from the King James Version is strengthened by another observation: Many of the minor textual and translation errors that the KJV includes are repeated exactly in the Book of Mormon where it quotes the Bible. Yet, it is claimed that Smith’s golden plates predate the KJV by some 1100 years. That such errors would be reproduced so precisely with two translations made centuries apart from each other based on original texts that are also centuries apart from each other is extremely unlikely.

Further, the text claims that Jews came to North America in ancient times and that Jesus also came after His Resurrection. Detailed information is given about various ancient civilizations that supposedly existed in North America. But there is no corroborating archaeological evidence for the presence of Jews or even the Native American civilizations the Book of Mormon describes, nor any other non-Mormon evidence.

It is also claimed that the golden plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated were written in a script known as Reformed Egyptian. Yet there is nothing either in North America or in the Middle East that attests to the existence of that language. Eleven Mormon witnesses from the period said that they saw the plates in 1829, with three of them saying that they also were visited by an angel.

There are arguments that elements of the Book of Mormon were plagiarized from other books published shortly before it, including an unpublished story by ex-preacher Solomon Spalding. This theory was first advanced in 1834 by E. D. Howe. Some theories suggest that the Book of Mormon may have been at least partly composed by one or more of Smith’s associates. A combined theory suggests that Sidney Rigdon, another Mormon, got a copy of Spalding’s manuscript and worked with Smith to produce the Mormon scripture. (Rigdon himself testified that he converted to Mormonism after reading the Book of Mormon.) Both LDS and non-LDS scholars have discounted these theories, though they still have support from some non-Mormon scholars.

Aside from these criticisms, there is good evidence that many Mormon symbols, teachings, and even temple ceremonies were adapted from Freemasonry. In fact, the mob Smith fought against in 1844 may have been provoked to attack him by Freemasons who felt betrayed that Smith, who along with a number of other Mormon leaders was a member of the Freemasons, had revealed their secrets to non-Masons.

Mormonism is currently growing by nearly 250,000 people every year. The Mormon community tends to be strongly moral and friendly, and the Mormon missionaries who de-emphasize the more controversial teachings of the religion help to facilitate its spread. Like most believers, who rarely undertake a critical inquiry into the claims of their religion, many Mormons are unaware of a good many of the things we have mentioned.

The main Mormon denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, currently claims over 13 million members, spread over about 175 countries. The second largest denomination coming from this tradition is the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), based in Missouri, which has about 250,000 members. These two groups emerged following the death of Smith in 1844, with the larger group immediately following Brigham Young and the smaller following Joseph Smith III, Smith’s eldest son. This latter group formed from smaller dissenting groups joining together in 1860. These two largest denominations comprise more than 99 percent of all adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement, but there are numerous smaller groups, some of which have membership in the tens of thousands, while others may have only a dozen.

The organization of the main LDS church is taught to be the literal restoration of the church established by Jesus Christ, and it includes fifteen apostles. Three of them, known as the First Presidency, are the highest officials in the church. They are the President and Prophet (both titles are for one person) and two apostles he appoints as his First and Second Counselors.

The church teaches that the Apostles Peter, James, and John filled the office of the First Presidency and held primacy over the other apostles. The President is selected upon the death of the previous President and usually is the senior apostle. The President and Prophet acts as the mouthpiece of God, as described in Doctrine and Covenants: “For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith” (Doctrine and Covenants 21:4–5).

Below the First Presidency are the Twelve Apostles, who oversee the general administration of the international church. Beneath them are the quorums of the Seventy, who have seven presidents presiding over them. These are all of the full-time positions within the LDS church. Mormons claim these positions are not paid positions, but they are offered stipends for living expenses.

Each geographic area is divided, and LDS members are assigned a nearby ward within a stake to attend—this is the local congregation. Each ward has its own bishop, and several wards make up a stake, all using the stake center at an assigned time. The leader of the stake is the stake president. These positions are volunteer and are part time. (US presidential candidate Mitt Romney served as a bishop and later as a stake president.)

Mormon men are expected to spend two years of their lives as missionaries, at their own expense, and women also serve as missionaries. There are currently about 53,000 such missionaries in the world—about one for every 245 Mormons. If the Orthodox Church commissioned missionaries at the same rate, we would have about one million missionaries in the field.

CHRISTADELPHIANS

The Christadelphians were originally called the Thomasites for their founder, John Thomas, an English doctor who started the group in America in 1848. The word Christadelphians itself, meaning “Christ’s brothers,” was Thomas’s substitute for Christians, a term he rejected. He believed that the traditional teachings and history associated with the term constituted an apostasy from the true teachings of Jesus. Thomas claimed to have rediscovered the original teachings of Jesus and His first disciples.

Thomas joined the Restorationist movement of the Stone-Campbellites, but eventually his insistence on his own doctrine led him into a series of fierce debates with Alexander Campbell. As a result, Thomas was “disfellowshipped” by the movement, and he left to strike out on his own. He became associated with some of the Adventist Millerite groups of the nineteenth century and was even baptized three times during a period of personal doctrinal evolution, each time renouncing his previous beliefs. He was particularly bitter at being disfellowshipped:

We leave others, such as Messrs. Campbell, Wallis, and King, to cast men out of fellowship, for our own part we pass not sentence, whatever we may think the party may deserve, “until the Lord come.” We show what the truth is, where it condemns and justifies, and leave the application to particular cases to individuals themselves. We are not lords over men’s consciences; when these become sufficiently enlightened they will not rest until they do the truth, and then all will work well. That we do not “refuse” those who are immersed on Campbellite and Baptist principles, is manifest from the fact that the churches we visit are principally composed of such. We desire to enlighten and save them, not to anathematize them and proscribe them, while at the same time we testify that no immersion is worth a stiver which is not predicated on faith in the things of the Kingdom and the name of Jesus. (John Thomas, Herald of the Kingdom of the Age to Come, Vol. 1, 1851, p. 81)

He eventually settled down as a preacher in Philadelphia and formulated his teachings based on a philosophical reading of the Bible. He said he was revealing its true teachings, not through any special revelation given to him by God, but rather through careful study of the Bible, which he saw as the exclusive record of God’s revelation to mankind.

Thomas also preached in Richmond, Virginia, and New York City, especially targeting Jews, because he placed great emphasis on Christ’s fulfillment of the Law of Moses. He and his followers became known during this time as the Royal Association of Believers. Thomas later traveled to the South in the 1860s, concerned that the Civil War was dividing believers. Because he wanted his followers to be exempt from military service on religious grounds, it was at this time that he officially formed an organization and coined the term Christadelphians to refer to his followers. He later traveled to England, preaching there as well.

Christadelphians, who refer to themselves as a “Bible-based community,” are unitarian, rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity and teaching that only the Father is God. They believe that the name Holy Spirit simply refers to the power of God the Father in the world. (The Orthodox identify this power as the energies of God, which are uncreated and common to all three Persons of the Trinity.) Christadelphians reject the divinity of Jesus Christ, because of the philosophical contradiction between God being immortal and the death of Jesus on the Cross—how can God die?

They also believe that Jesus’ temptation by the devil proves that He is not divine, since temptation without the possibility of sin is supposedly meaningless. From this attitude toward God and the nature of Jesus Christ, we can see that Christadelphians are strongly committed to philosophical categories to determine their theology.

Even though they teach that Jesus was a mere man, Christadelphians believe that He was the Son of God, was sinless, and that God raised Him from the dead and made Him the mediator between God and man. Even though human beings are not naturally immortal of their own power (a position the Orthodox agree with), Jesus was granted immortality by God. Jesus, instead of being the God-man as in Orthodox doctrine, thus occupies a sort of Neoplatonic position as an intermediary between the divine world and the human, though without truly being part of the divine.

Christadelphians teach that salvation is possible through belief in the Bible and obedience to its commandments, by accepting Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross and being baptized (which is only for adults). Those who die without salvation will be annihilated, because immortality is a gift only to the righteous. Resurrection will not be granted to the unconverted, the ignorant, or infants.

By contrast, Orthodoxy teaches that God sustains all human beings in immortality whether they accept Him or not. All will be raised, even the damned (John 5:29). Salvation for the Orthodox is about much more than simply belief, obedience, and acceptance. Salvation is rather a whole life of communion with God and participation in the life of the Holy Trinity, progressing infinitely through all eternity.

The devil is seen by Christadelphians not as a fallen angel as in Christian tradition, but rather as a symbol used by the Bible to refer to the sinful human nature. Christadelphians also do not tithe, because they believe tithing was limited to supporting the Levitical priesthood in the Old Testament. They believe Christians are not the New Israel but are rather grafted into the ethnic Israel, who remain the People of God. At the end of time, Jesus will come again to earth and set up a literal worldwide kingdom with its capital at Jerusalem.

They claim their teachings come directly from the Bible, and they believe that a process of debate and studious inquiry into the Scriptures will lead the honest, serious believer into becoming a Christadelphian on his own. Christadelphians use the same canon of Scripture as most Protestants and describe themselves as a “community of Bible students.” They reject tradition and history in interpreting the Bible:

Search the scriptures with the teachableness of a little child, and thy labour will not be in vain. Cast away to the owls and the bats the traditions of men, and the prejudices indoctrinated into thy mind by their means; make a whole burnt offering of their creeds, confessions, catechisms, and articles of religion; and, after the example of the Ephesian disciples, hand over your books of curious theological arts, and burn them before all (Acts 19:19). These mountains of rubbish have served the purposes of a dark and barbarous age; the word, the word of the living God alone, can meet the necessities of the times. (John Thomas, Elpis Israel, 5)

John Thomas’s followers have never been many in number. Christadelphians gather in fully autonomous local congregations called ecclesias (they reject the word church, even though it is simply a translation of the Greek ekklesia), often grouped into associating fellowships. They have no denomination as such and publish no official membership figures. They also have no professional clergy. Their numbers are estimated at about fifty thousand worldwide.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

Christian Science is the system of religious belief of the Church of Christ, Scientist. It is perhaps the most prominent of the groups that came out of the metaphysical movement of the nineteenth century. This movement, also called New Thought, placed primacy on the mental world and saw material reality as being the result of mental states. It especially became known for its focus on healing through mind powers (and thus it is also called the “mind cure movement”) and may have influenced some of the healing movements that were eventually subsumed into Pentecostalism. Christian Science is distinguished from New Thought by its devotion to the authoritative works of Mary Baker Eddy. Current Christian Science leaders reject the association with New Thought.

The Church of Christ, Scientist denomination was founded in 1879 by Eddy, who had been raised as a Calvinist in a Congregationalist context in New Hampshire. From her youth she suffered from various ailments, but she believed she had been cured of them by a mesmerist named Phineas Quimby, a former clockmaker turned mind healer whose motto was “the truth is the cure.” Quimby was a precursor to the New Thought movement and likely influenced Eddy’s teachings. She visited him multiple times over the course of two years, promoted his ideas, and even wrote a sonnet to him.

About a year after this cure, Eddy suffered a relapse. In 1866, at the age of forty-five, she said she experienced instantaneous physical healing while reading the account of the cure of the paralytic in Matthew 9:1–8. After this, Eddy claimed to have discovered the spiritual law and the science behind the healing work of Jesus.

In 1875, she published the first edition of her book dedicated to teaching her discoveries, entitled Science and Health, expanded in 1883 to include another work, Key to the Scriptures. Four years later, the Church of Christ, Scientist, was incorporated in Boston and became the “Mother Church” of a new denomination with Mrs. Eddy as its chief pastor. In 1895, she published The Manual of the Mother Church to organize its workings. It is one of the most prominent and recognizable buildings in Boston.

The single most distinctive teaching of Christian Science is the belief in the unreality of the material world. For Christian Scientists, the only thing truly real is the spiritual world. Materiality is an illusion. If someone is suffering from some sickness, its cause is purely mental, and the cure is to realize that the sickness is just an illusion. All evil can be destroyed by becoming aware of the power and love of God. Seeking medical treatment shows a lack of faith. (These are all similar ideas to what one sees in the Word-Faith movement we discussed in the previous chapter, though with the key difference that Christian Science sees the material world as unreal, and most Word-Faith teachers would not forbid medicine.)

Heaven itself is a “divine state of mind.” Eddy once summarized her central teachings with what is called “The Scientific Statement of Being”:

There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual. (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, 468)

Christian Science accepts the historical accounts of the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, but Eddy distinguished Jesus the man from Christ, the divinity He manifested. He is thus divine but not God. God Himself is called “Father-Mother,” and the Holy Spirit is equivalent to the “divine science,” that is, Christian Science teaching. Jesus is still regarded as God’s Son. Although Eddy rejected traditional Trinitarian theology as polytheism, there is in her teachings a semi-Trinitarian side to God, defined as “Truth, Life, and Love.” God may also be referred to by other terms, such as Principle, Soul, Mind, and Spirit. Eddy’s theology is therefore unitarian but with a depersonalization of God in a kind of pantheism, in which all things are in some sense God.

Christian Science religious services are simple, consisting mainly of readings from the Bible and from Science and Health. Also included are hymns, the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, and silent prayer. There are twenty-six official set topics for the “lesson-sermon,” which are cycled twice throughout the year. In a year with fifty-three Sundays, one of them is used three times. These lesson-sermons are used at every congregation and have titles such as, “Are Sin, Disease and Death Real?” and “Is the Universe, Including Man, Evolved by Atomic Force?”

From the Orthodox point of view, Christian Science is a combination of variants on multiple ancient heresies: most especially gnostic dualism, with its denial or degradation of the material world; Nestorianism, with its radical disjunction between Jesus and Christ; modalism, which denied the Trinity; and pneumatomachianism, with its denial of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Christian Scientists have neither ordained clergy nor sacraments. Baptism and Holy Communion are thought of in purely spiritual—that is, non-material—terms. The primary focus in Christian Science is on spiritual healing, and Christian Science describes itself as a “healing and educational system.” While many members will testify as to the reality of the healing powers of their religious methods, they have never been corroborated outside the denomination.

From the Orthodox point of view, the dualistic anti-materialism of Christian Science is a denial of the fullness of God’s creation. Creation exists in both visible and invisible elements, both material and immaterial, in an eternal union. Man himself is a union of both body and soul, and the separation that occurs at death is temporary. Man is healed and renewed at the general resurrection at the end of time.

There are between 100,000 and 400,000 Christian Scientists worldwide. The primary means of contact many outsiders have with the denomination is their popular newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. Aside from local churches, many congregations may also maintain a Christian Science Reading Room, typically located in a downtown area.

UNITY CHURCH

A movement closely related to Christian Science is Unity, known informally as Unity Church. Unity also comes from the New Thought movement, and its origins directly connect with Mary Baker Eddy. It describes itself as a positive, practical, progressive approach to Christianity based on the teachings of Jesus and the power of prayer.

Unity was founded in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1889 by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. Mrs. Fillmore had suffered from tuberculosis, and she believed she had been cured by spiritual healing. This led the Fillmores to study the works of Eddy along with learning from Emma Curtis Hopkins, a leading thinker in the New Thought movement who had been a student of Eddy’s and had a falling out with her.

Both Hopkins and the Fillmores used the Christian Science name for their own teaching for a while but eventually abandoned it. Later in life, no doubt ascribing his feelings of youth to his devotion to New Thought teachings, Charles Fillmore believed that he might be physically immortal and possibly the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul. He authored twelve books, including one with the title Atom-Smashing Power of Mind.

Unity’s teachings are similar to Christian Science in its emphasis on thinking as a cure for disease and an answer to life’s challenges. Unlike Christian Science, however, Unity does not forbid seeking medical treatment, and it sees sickness as being real and not illusion.

Unity also depersonifies God and identifies Him as spirit without personality. Charles Fillmore once wrote:

God is not a person who has set creation in motion and gone away and left it to run down like a clock. God is Spirit, infinite Mind, the immanent force and intelligence everywhere manifest in nature. God is the silent voice that speaks into visibility all the life there is. (Charles Fillmore, Talks on Truth, 9)

Jesus is divine, but not God, and His divinity is something that every person can attain to. “Christ” is the divine potential in every person, and Jesus showed how to realize that potential. He is therefore called “the Way-Shower” by Unity. The Bible is also studied but seen primarily as history and allegory rather than a source of doctrine per se.

One of the more famous ministers in Unity was James Dillet Freeman, a popular poet who wrote for the Unity Daily Word publication, as well as for Hallmark cards. Two of his poems were even brought to the moon by astronauts Buzz Aldrin and James B. Irwin. Some celebrities are also known to have been members of Unity, such as poet Maya Angelou, singer Erykah Badu, and actresses Barbara Billingsley and Betty White.

Unity is known to the general public not only through the Daily Word but also through the Unity School of Christianity program and its “Dial a Prayer” service (known formally as Silent Unity), a free service people can call on the telephone to have someone pray with them.

In the early 1990s there were an estimated seventy thousand Unity adherents across six hundred congregations in the United States, with sixty congregations internationally.

JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

The origins of the Jehovah’s Witnesses lie in the 1870s with the preaching of Charles Taze Russell, whose group was originally called the Bible Student movement. Russell was a businessman from Pennsylvania involved in the Adventist movement in the nineteenth century. After becoming an agnostic in 1869, he later regained faith in God and began studying the Bible. His study led him to conclude that Jesus had returned to the earth invisibly in 1874 in order to prepare for the Kingdom of God, which would be ushered in by Armageddon, set to take place in 1914:

The seven times will end in A.D. 1914; when Jerusalem shall be delivered forever, and the Jew say of the Deliverer, “Lo, this is our God, we have waited for Him and He will save us.” When Gentile Governments shall have been dashed to pieces; when God shall have poured out of his fury upon the nation, and they acknowledge him, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. (Charles Taze Russell, Bible Examiner, Oct. 1876)

All of these claims are similar to those of other Adventist groups, who had their own dates calculated for eschatological events. Russell’s followers were expected to spend much of their time warning others about the imminent end of the world. Those who heeded the warnings would survive the coming first judgment, followed by a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, followed by a second judgment. In the end, only 144,000 people from the whole of human history would actually make it to heaven.

They were set to go home to heaven in October 1914. But the date came, and the world did not end. Russell adapted:

Quite a few delegates stayed at Bethel, and, of course, members of the headquarters staff were present at the breakfast table on Friday morning, October 2. Everyone was seated when Brother Russell entered. As usual, he said cheerily, “Good morning, all.” But this particular morning was different. Instead of proceeding promptly to his seat, he clapped his hands and joyfully announced: “The Gentile times have ended; their kings have had their day.” “How we clapped our hands!” exclaims Cora Merrill. Brother Macmillan admitted: “We were highly excited and I would not have been surprised if at that moment we had just started up, that becoming the signal to begin ascending heavenward—but of course there was nothing like that, really.” Sister Merrill adds: “After a brief pause he [Russell] said: ‘Anyone disappointed? I’m not. Everything is moving right on schedule!’ Again we clapped our hands.” (1975 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 73)

Not long after, the 1914 date came to be spiritualized. The world was not going to end then (as had been taught), but now the end was just beginning.

Even prior to 1914, Russell’s original group suffered a number of schisms, and the majority of the members of the Bible Student movement dissociated themselves with the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society he founded in 1881. Those who remained came to form the main body of the modern denomination, which was organized along almost theocratic lines after the First World War by Joseph (“Judge”) F. Rutherford, who predicted that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets would return to earth in 1925. In 1931 Rutherford renamed the group as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a reference to Isaiah 43:10.

Particularly during the period of Rutherford’s leadership, the Witnesses often had an adversarial relationship with the American government, which led to a number of the laws enacted allowing conscientious objectors to avoid military service, since Jehovah’s Witnesses will not associate themselves with the military. In 1942, Rutherford died and was succeeded by Nathan Homer Knorr, who refocused the Witnesses away from cultural confrontation and toward missionary outreach.

During Knorr’s tenure, Armageddon was predicted to come in 1975, which was supposedly exactly six thousand years after the creation of Adam. Despite Knorr’s predictions, Armageddon did not take place in 1975, and in 1977, Knorr died. His successor Frederick Franz explained that Armageddon would actually take place six thousand years after the creation of Eve, who was a few months or years younger than Adam. With Franz’s death in 1993, the Witnesses were led by Milton Henschel, who resigned in 2000 and was followed by Don Adams.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses emphasize their view of the biblical name of God, which in Hebrew is probably pronounced “Yahweh,” but came to be Latinized over time into Jehovah. The Witnesses say this is the true name of God. Mankind itself is a participant in a struggle for sovereignty between Jehovah and Satan. Jehovah himself does have a body, but it is a spirit body. Only Jehovah is God, making the Witnesses unitarian in their basic theology.

Like the ancient Arians, the Witnesses identify Jesus as a creation of God through whom the rest of creation was made. Jesus performed miracles during His time on earth but does not perform them any more. He suffered and was killed, but it was not on a cross but rather a “torture stake,” a single upright piece of wood. (The cross is seen as a pagan symbol.) His death works to set human beings free from sin and death. After dying, he was resurrected by God as a spirit creature. Jesus is also the same person as the Archangel Michael. The Holy Spirit is not a divine Person but rather is merely God’s “active force.”

The Witnesses use and believe in the Bible, though they have their own idiosyncratic translation called the New World Translation, which is an alteration of the biblical text to support their doctrines. John 1, for instance, instead of reading, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” reads, “. . . and the Word was a god.” Their translation also inserts the word Jehovah into the New Testament 237 times without any correspondence to the Greek texts of any manuscript tradition.

Hell does not exist for the Witnesses. It is simply a symbol for death. Instead, the wicked will be annihilated after Armageddon. Until that happens, all of the dead, both good and evil, are conscious of nothing (similar to Adventist teaching on soul sleep). The beginning of the end did occur in 1914, when Jehovah threw Satan and all the demons out of heaven, which is why world events have been getting progressively worse since World War I (1914–18). The abolition of all world governments and the setting up of a theocracy ruled directly by God is predicted to come soon, though after multiple failed prophecies, precise dates are no longer given. In 1995, the Witnesses abandoned the teaching that Armageddon would occur within the lifetime of those alive in 1914, referring to the earlier teaching as “speculation.”

After the end comes, 144,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses will be given spirit bodies and live in heaven. The remainder of Jehovah’s Witnesses will live in paradise on a restored earth. Everyone else will be annihilated, after being given a second chance to prove their obedience to God by becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses. This arrangement into levels of salvation is similar to the ancient gnostic spiritual caste division of the truly spiritual (the spiritual elite) and the merely “soulful,” the average believer. Orthodoxy holds, however, that transfiguration by God and communion with Him is fully available to every human person. There is no spiritual caste system. Everyone can become a saint.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are not regarded as Christians by most Christian groups. Unlike Mormons, however, they do not want that recognition and see themselves as the only Christians. Since they reject the use of the Cross, they often will use images of a watchtower, a reference not only to their earliest identity but also to the name of their publishing arm, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Their meeting places are not referred to as churches but rather as Kingdom Halls, a reference to their belief in the imminent establishment of God’s Kingdom on Earth. Each Kingdom Hall, typically of simple, unadorned architecture, has a maximum of two hundred members, and members attend the Kingdom Hall closest to their home.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are all strongly encouraged to engage in evangelistic activity, which is usually done by door-to-door visitation, typically with copies of their literature in hand (most often their two periodicals, Awake! and The Watchtower). Evangelism is often conducted by whole families visiting people’s homes, offering to conduct free Bible studies. Everyone is expected to give monthly reports on their witnessing activities to the local congregation.

Witnesses also do not celebrate any religious holidays, with the exception of an annual observance of Christ’s death, an event called the Memorial, which is dated by the Jewish calendar on the fourteenth of the month of Nisan (the traditional date for the Passover) and is open for anyone to attend. They reject Christmas and other Christian holidays, believing that such celebrations are idolatry. Birthday celebrations are also forbidden as pagan astrology. They have no problem, however, with celebrations for weddings, anniversaries, or funerals.

They refuse to salute the American flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, or serve in the military, because doing so is idolatry and treason against their true citizenship in God’s Kingdom, which includes a literal government. The Witnesses also do not engage in inter-faith or inter-Christian activities or ecumenical dialogue, because doing so would pollute the purity of their faith. They believe that blood transfusions are prohibited by the Bible, based on their reading of Acts 15:20 (which Orthodoxy looks upon only as a prohibition against eating or drinking blood).

Witnesses baptize and hold communion, though both acts are purely symbolic. Their communion rite is held during the annual Memorial and uses unleavened bread and wine. Only those who believe they are among the 144,000 partake of the elements. Baptism is only for those “of a responsible age” and confers full membership.

Over the years, the Witnesses have changed a number of doctrines that formerly were regarded as essential. They also believe that their organizational government is God’s sole channel for communication with the world, usually expressed in articles in the Watchtower magazine. Many articles in The Watchtower warn against the dangers of independent thinking in an effort to keep Witnesses in line with the Watch Tower Society’s teachings. The Society also discourages members from exposing themselves to criticism of the faith or to Bibles or other publications from outside the organization. Members are encouraged to shun former Jehovah’s Witnesses, including family members, especially if they have been officially disfellowshipped for refusal to obey the leadership or for unrepentant sin.

Orthodoxy does not seek control over its members’ reading or thinking, emphasizing the free will of man and the possibility for every person to know God without fear that reading something is in itself harmful or threatening. In addition, while the Church will sometimes practice pastoral excommunication temporarily while a person is repenting, he is never to be systematically shunned, especially not by family members.

There are about 8.2 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world, spread across more than 118,000 Kingdom Halls. While their numbers are still growing, the rate of growth has slowed in recent years. They are particularly active among the black population in the United States.

DAVIDIAN SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS, BRANCH DAVIDIANS, AND CHURCH OF GOD GENERAL CONFERENCE

As we saw, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded by a man who had been part of the Adventist/Millerite movement (see chapter five) initially but later developed his own distinctive theology. The larger stream of that movement which directly produced the most well-known Adventist denomination, the Seventh-day Adventists, also was the context for the rise of several other groups, such as the Adventist Christian Church, who worship on Sunday and are similar to most Evangelicals. But there were other, smaller groups whose theology placed them beyond the fringe of Evangelicalism, where Seventh-day Adventists reside.

Probably the best-known of these smaller offshoots in recent years are the Branch Davidians, who were nearly erased by a violent standoff with law enforcement near Waco, Texas, in 1993. The Branch Davidians (also called “The Branch”) were themselves a schism from another group that broke from the Seventh-day Adventists, the Davidian Adventists. Both of these groups, unlike any of the other groups in this chapter, are Trinitarian (though with some alteration in the Branch group, as we shall see) and see Jesus Christ as fully God and man.

The Davidian schism occurred in 1930, with the publication of Victor T. Houteff’s The Shepherd’s Rod, a manifesto of reforms that he demanded be made within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Houteff was a Bulgarian immigrant to the United States who converted to the church in 1919. He was disfellowshipped from the mainstream Seventh-day Adventists just prior to the publication of his book, after his views had been examined by church leaders. This was the genesis of the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists.

Houteff chose the name Davidian as an indication that his movement was a restoration of the Davidic kingship of the Old Testament. His most distinctive teaching was that he had received a revelation that the 144,000 of Revelation 7 were Christian Jews who had lost their ethnic identity over the centuries. They were also identified with the “marked ones” of Ezekiel 9:4–7 who lamented lawlessness. These, he said, were actually present in the Seventh-day Adventist church and would play a role in the end times. All these teachings had precursors in the writings of Seventh-day founder Ellen G. White. His other primary distinctive teaching was a Dispensationalist-style emphasis on the role of the Middle East in eschatology.

The Branch Davidians broke from the main Davidian group in 1955, with the death of Houteff. His wife Florence attempted to take control, but a power struggle led to the main group coming under the leadership of Benjamin Roden. She lost more of her following when a 1959 prediction of the end of the world failed to come true. Roden renamed the group the Living Waters Branch after a revelation he said he received, later again renaming it to the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church.

With the death of Roden in 1978, his wife Lois assumed leadership and soon informed the church that she had received the following revelations: (1) God is both male and female, (2) the Holy Spirit is female, and (3) Christ’s return to earth will be in the form of a woman.

In 1981, Vernon Howell joined the Branch Davidians. He soon married a fourteen-year-old girl and made two visits to the state of Israel. During the second visit, he said that the same spirit which had descended on Christ at His Baptism also descended on him. He then ceased life as an ordinary human being and became Christ.

Howell later acquired four more wives and gathered Davidian followers to him. Lois’s son George Roden had a bitter feud with Howell (including a gunfight) over the leadership of the group. The feud ended with the jailing of Roden for murder of another rival. With the death of Lois in 1990, Howell assumed leadership of the Branch Davidians and changed his name to David Koresh. He began to emphasize the seven seals mentioned in the Book of Revelation, with his followers seeing his teachings as being the very word of God.

With an attempted raid of Koresh’s Waco property based on suspicion of weapons violations, a fifty-one–day siege began on February 28, 1993, initially killing six Davidians. On April 19, law enforcement officials stormed the compound, killing seventy-six more Davidians and also resulting in the death of four officers.

About twelve Branch Davidians persist to the present time. Every distinctive teaching we have mentioned above is not taught by the Orthodox Church. While the group is very small and has no major influence, we’ve included it here as a kind of case study of how a splinter from a more mainstream group can very quickly evolve into something very different.

Not directly related to the Davidian Adventist groups is the Church of God General Conference (CoGGC), also called the Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith. The CoGGC is a denomination that emerged from the union of several non-Sabbatarian (“first day”) Adventist bodies in 1921 in Waterloo, Iowa. They were all of Adventist tradition but rejected Trinitarian theology. The Father is God, but the Holy Spirit is merely His “power.” They teach a Christology historically referred to as Socinianism—Jesus Christ did not pre-exist His virginal conception

The CoGGC itself suffered a split in the process of its foundation, producing the Church of the Blessed Hope, which maintains a close relationship with the Christadelphians, whose doctrine is similar in a number of ways. Members often go back and forth between the groups.

ARMSTRONGISM (WORLDWIDE CHURCH OF GOD)

A movement related historically to the Adventists is Armstrongism, named for Herbert W. Armstrong. His church was properly called the Worldwide Church of God (Armstrongism is used mainly by critics). Armstrong himself had been a minister in the Church of God (Seventh-day), a Sabbatarian group that came from the Adventist movement that produced Seventh-day Adventism under the preaching of Ellen G. White. This group of Adventists rejected White’s teachings and formed their own body in the 1860s.

Some held to an Arian-like Christology, teaching that the Son of God is a created being, while others taught that the Father and Son are God (but not the Holy Spirit). They also objected to the celebration of feast days such as Christmas and Easter. Like the Seventh-day Adventists, they teach soul sleep (the dead are unconscious of anything) and annihilationism (conditional immortality; only the righteous will exist forever).

Armstrong was ordained as a minister for the Church of God (Seventh-day) in 1931 and broke ties in 1938 over doctrinal differences. He soon began teaching British Israelism (also called Anglo-Israelism), the doctrine that the people of Western Europe, especially in the British Isles, are descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel. In 1934 Armstrong began his first radio broadcasts with his program The World Tomorrow (which eventually was on television, as well). His small magazine The Plain Truth (originally his church bulletin) began publication in the same year. The Plain Truth reached a circulation of 8.2 million by the mid-1980s, extending Armstrong’s reach far beyond the denomination he created. The World Tomorrow became the seed for Armstrong’s denomination, which was founded in 1934 as the Radio Church of God and changed its name in 1967 to the Worldwide Church of God. At its height, around a hundred thousand people attended services in Armstrong’s denomination.

Armstrong’s teachings placed him firmly outside the Evangelical mainstream and even outside of those in the wider Adventist movement. He is known especially for his British Israelism, which teaches that the prophecies and promises in the Bible for Israel apply to the British and by extension to Americans, because these peoples are descended from two of the “lost tribes” of Israel. Great Britain he identified with tribe of Ephraim and the United States with Manasseh. The Orthodox Church does not teach this theory and places no special emphasis on ethnic descendants of the tribes of ancient Israel.

Like many in the Adventist/Millerite family of movements, Armstrong emphasized an imminent Second Coming, warning that the end would arrive very soon at various times from the 1940s to the 1980s. This millenarianism is what gave his broadcast its name The World Tomorrow.

One of his more unusual teachings is on the “God Family.” At the current time, the Godhead is binitarian—the Father and Son are God. But people can be brought into the God Family by being saved, a process that will become complete at the end of time. Armstrong literalized the language in Scripture of believers becoming “children of God.” The Father and Son will be eternally worshiped by the children of God, and so the binitarianism remains intact. Except for the binitarianism, his doctrine is similar in some ways to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis, though it differs in that theosis happens through adoption, not “reproduction” as Armstrong taught.

Like many Protestant founders, Armstrong held that all churches before him represented not only apostasy but “false gospels.” God had revealed to Armstrong—who was himself the prophesied return of Elijah before the end times—the “plain truth” of Scripture, something that had not happened since the time of the apostles.

Part of this plain truth was that Christians were not released from most of the obligations of Old Testament Judaism. He thus observed the various Jewish feasts, such as Passover and Pentecost (rejecting the Christian versions of these), as well as the Feast of Tabernacles. He also insisted on following the Old Testament’s dietary laws and worship on Saturdays (Sabbatarianism). Sabbatarianism in particular became his test for whether someone truly loved God. These are all reminiscent of the ancient Judaizing heresy.

Armstrong also believed that a first resurrection would be for believers, while a second would give most unbelievers a second chance to repent. All those who do not repent or who are ineligible for the second chance (because of incorrigible rejection of Christ) will be annihilated. Most people would be saved, a kind of semi-universalist position. Orthodoxy teaches a single resurrection of all mankind simultaneously leading to eternal existence for all, with the righteous enjoying the presence of God and the wicked eternally punished. The Church does not teach how many people will be saved.

In 1978, Armstrong’s church suffered a schism with the excommunication of his son Garner Ted Armstrong, who differed with his father on doctrinal and practical matters. His doctrine was mostly the same, though he added the teaching that the God of the Old Testament was Jesus Christ, whose revelation of the Father was of a previously unknown divine person. He also taught that his own church’s leadership—not his father’s—was the true Church. He formed the Church of God International in 1978, which has sixty congregations. In 1998, he was ejected from that church over sexual harassment allegations, and he formed another splinter denomination, the Intercontinental Church of God.

After the death of Herbert Armstrong in 1986, his chosen successor Joseph Tkach, Sr., began a process of radically changing the denomination. By 1990, weekly attendance peaked around 133,000, despite several thousand members leaving in 1989 as Tkach began to bring the Worldwide Church of God closer to the Evangelical mainstream. The 1990s saw big changes for the denomination, with the acceptance of Trinitarianism and Christian festivals and the repudiation of Sabbatarianism, British Israelism, and the Jewish dietary laws. Armstrong’s writings were taken out of print.

In the process, the denomination lost nearly half its members and income and suffered further schisms of those faithful to Armstrong’s peculiar teachings. Churches split and hundreds of ministers quit. Twelve thousand members left in 1995 to form the United Church of God, the largest splinter group that retained Armstrongism, which still has more than 400 congregations. Over the course of its whole history, Armstrong’s denomination suffered dozens of schisms, though most were quite small.

In 1995, with the death of Tkach, his son Joseph Tkach, Jr., took the leadership of the denomination and continued the process of mainstreaming into Evangelicalism. In 1997, the denomination was granted membership in the National Association of Evangelicals. With the change of its name in 2009 to Grace Communion International, the transformation of the denomination was complete.

Although Grace Communion International is a relatively small denomination with about 42,000 members across 900 congregations, its story of the move from beyond the borders of Adventism into the Evangelical mainstream is notable. Not only can major change happen relatively quickly, but this is also a rare example of a religious group that went, as a 1996 Christianity Today article on the denomination put it, “from the fringe to the fold” (Ruth Tucker, “From the Fringe to the Fold: How the Worldwide Church of God discovered the plain truth of the gospel,” Christianity Today, July 15, 1996).

THE WAY INTERNATIONAL

In 1942, in a small Ohio village called Payne, Victor Paul Wierwille believed he heard the voice of God. It was a year after his ordination in the Evangelical and Reformed Church (a denomination that would later merge into the United Church of Christ). The voice told him audibly that he would be led to interpret the Bible correctly, with teachings in line with those of the early Church but different from anything else currently being taught: “He said he would teach me the Word as it had not been known since the first century, if I would teach it to others” (Elena S. Whiteside, The Way: Living in Love, 178).

That year, he began a live radio ministry called Vesper Chimes, broadcast from Lima, Ohio. The radio ministry eventually shifted into a series of classes that came to be called “Power for Abundant Living,” which were taught live with Wierwille traveling to various locations in Ohio.

In 1955, Wierwille incorporated a group called The Way, and two years later he resigned his pastorate in the Evangelical and Reformed Church. He held meetings in his own home and eventually set up headquarters for his ministry on the family farm in New Knoxville, Ohio, in 1961, calling it the Ecumenical Bible Research Center. During this time, Wierwille became convinced that the New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, and he was associated with Aramaic translator George Lamsa, who was a member of the Assyrian Church of the East.

By the late 1960s, the “Power for Abundant Living” classes were taped to allow for wider distribution, and Wierwille traveled to both New York and California to meet with Jesus People street ministries, drawing members for his group and creating “The Way East” and “The Way West,” which both eventually merged into his larger group, The Way International.

The Way has no official members except for the board of directors, but estimates of participation range from 35,000 at its peak in the late 1990s to less than 10,000 today, with small household fellowships of six to twelve persons meeting weekly. For many years, The Way also sent out hundreds of “Word Over the World” ambassadors as volunteer missionaries around the world, which helped to spread its message. Many splinter groups have broken from The Way International but continue to revere Wierwille (who died of cancer in 1985) and his works.

The Way’s biblical hermeneutics fit within a Dispensationalist historical framework, and only the New Testament epistles are taught to be directly addressed to believers. The remainder of the Bible is for learning only.

The Way is unitarian, with God and the Holy Spirit being the same one person. Jesus is the literal son of God, who is said to have created a sperm which impregnated Mary. Jesus is therefore a created being who did not exist prior to this fertilization. He is calculated to have been born on September 11, 3 BC, narrowed down to a ninety-minute window.

In addition to its peculiar teachings on God and His Son, The Way also teaches a number of doctrines which seem to be drawn from Adventist, Millerite, New Thought, Charismatic, and Word-Faith sources. For instance, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Way teaches that Jesus’ death was not on a cross but on a wooden stake. Like many Adventists, The Way teaches that the dead are unconscious and that the wicked will be annihilated at the end of time. Like Word-Faith, The Way teaches that happiness and prosperity come because of a firmness of faith, and that positive confession is necessary for creating desired outcomes.

The divine gift from God is called “holy spirit” (not the Holy Spirit), and there are nine manifestations of this gift. The first is speaking in tongues, which is required for salvation and activates the other eight. Once someone is born again, he cannot lose this holy spirit, and his spirit can no longer sin, though his mind and body can. The Way rejects baptism in water as being necessary for salvation, saying the practice was only for the Day of Pentecost and only for Israel. Followers are also expected to live totally debt-free.

If someone exhibits extreme behavior, such as violence, addiction, mental illness, or homosexuality, then he is possessed by a “devil spirit,” which can be exorcised by a believer, but only if he receives a special revelation from God to do so.

Aside from its potpourri of fringe teachings, The Way has also been accused of using controlling techniques over its followers, often with abusive results. Former participants have said that sexual promiscuity is common, and that adultery is even given a theological defense (the biblical references to adultery are intended to be spiritual, not physical). When a member of The Way’s research team wrote a paper against this, he was fired by the leadership.

Internal strife within the organization led to the splintering it suffered, and one disgruntled leader actually wrote that the despair that resulted from this strife is what killed Wierwille. His death, he said, was the result of a decision by Wierwille to commit suicide—he gave himself cancer through his power of positive confession. In addition to the group that controls the headquarters in Ohio, there are at least thirteen splinter groups from The Way who continue to use Wierwille’s recordings and teachings.

UNIFICATION CHURCH (“MOONIES”)

The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (founded as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity), also known as the Unification Church, was founded by Sun Myung Moon in 1954. Its followers are commonly known as “Moonies,” from the family name of their founder, though that term is often taken to be derogatory. In 1994, the official name of the church was changed to the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Born in 1920 with the name Mun Yon-myung in what is now North Korea, Moon was raised in a family of Confucian background but converted with them to the Presbyterian church in Korea at the age of ten. Five years later, in 1935, according to official church accounts, Jesus appeared to Moon and asked him to complete the work left unfinished after the Crucifixion. After a period of prayer and consideration, he took up the task, changing his name to Mun Son-myung, which is usually rendered in Western sources as Sun Myung Moon (Korean names usually begin with the family name followed by the personal name, the reverse of the Western custom).

After lengthy study of the Bible, Moon began preaching his complex doctrines in 1946, leading to his excommunication by the Presbyterian church. He eventually fled government persecution in 1950 and made his way into South Korea, where he founded the Unification Church in 1954. One of Moon’s early converts, known as Miss Kim, had been prone in her early life to seeing visions, including at least one from Emanuel Swedenborg, and she was commissioned by Moon to become his first missionary to the United States. She moved to San Francisco and began the work there.

The Unification Church teaches that Moon is the Messiah, that he is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. His teaching is called the Divine Principle, which he says he received from God through divine inspiration, prayer, suffering, and the study of Scripture. The basic concept in the Divine Principle is that everything in nature comes in pairs, such as male and female, light and dark, positive and negative electrical charges, arteries and veins, and so forth. Understanding these pairs in the creation leads to knowledge of the Creator. Moon taught that God Himself is a duality of masculinity and femininity. Further, because human beings value love and harmony, we should conclude that “heart” is the inner essence of God. In addition to this inner essence, God has what is called the “universal prime energy,” which sustains the universe. This last idea is similar in some ways to the Orthodox teaching about God’s divine energies, which are His actual presence in creation.

The purpose of all of creation is to enjoy love. Adam and Eve were created to attain to a “four-position foundation” within “three blessings”: (1) Becoming perfect, which is having God’s character and being in the four positions, which are God, the perfected individual, and the individual’s mind and body. (2) Having an ideal marriage, in which the four positions consist of God, the husband, the wife, and their children. The offspring of such a marriage are perfect and sinless. (3) Having dominion over all creation, in which the four positions are God, man, things, and a dominion of love.

After the third blessing, the Kingdom of God would be established on earth. However, Adam and Eve fell short of their calling in two falls, a spiritual and a physical. The spiritual fall occurred when Eve had sexual relations with Lucifer. The physical fall occurred when, after Adam and Eve were ashamed, they consummated their marriage before they had completed the first blessing. Selfish love has subsequently dominated all human life.

In order for God’s Kingdom to come to earth, someone has to become perfect, have an ideal marriage, and then propagate this perfection throughout all the earth until the Kingdom is established. Before these blessings can be fulfilled, however, two foundations have to be restored, the foundation of faith and the foundation of substance. John the Baptist is said to have restored the first to prepare the coming of the Messiah, by having perfect faith.

The foundation of substance can only be restored if someone in the position of Lucifer humbles himself before someone in the position of Adam, because the foundation was originally broken by an angel (Lucifer), who reversed positions with mankind. This the Jews supposedly restored when they venerated John the Baptist, because they represented Cain while John represented Abel. This allowed Jesus to come into the world, but the foundations were subsequently destroyed again when John denied being Elijah and supposedly questioned Jesus’ identity as the Messiah.

Jesus was able to restore the foundation of faith in His forty-day fast, but His people rejected Him, and so He did not restore the foundation of substance. But Jesus allowed Satan to invade His spirit and was killed on the Cross. Three days later, His “spirit self” (but not His physical self) was resurrected, giving Him victory over Satan. When His disciples believed in Him, the foundation of substance was restored, making Him the Spiritual Messiah and providing salvation to believers. He did not, however, bring about physical salvation because He did not marry and have children, which is part of the completion of God’s plan. This is where Sun Myung Moon comes in.

The Unification Church teaches that for four hundred years before the coming of Moon, God was preparing the world through events such as the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakenings in the United States and Great Britain. From calculations based on the Bible, it was determined that the Second Messiah (or the Second Coming) would have to be born in Korea between 1918 and 1930. Moon’s coming was to complete the work of Jesus, and the children that he and his wife have conceived are the first in human history since Adam and Eve to be born without original sin, a herald of the end times.

Moon and his wife are “co-messiahs” who are the “True Parents” of all mankind, God incarnate on earth in both His feminine and masculine aspects. Other members of the “True Family” are highly regarded, and at least two of them have had officially sanctioned mediums channeling them after death.

Moon’s preaching constantly reinforced his followers’ loyalty to him and unabashedly placed himself on a divine level. He expected his followers to obey him in all things. Here is an example of his preaching:

Why would God love me? Because I am doing God’s work; God cannot do it effectively all by Himself, so I do it as His representative. That is why God cannot leave me. If you want to be that way also, raise your hand. . . . Leaving that home behind you to serve the country is the higher way. Even better than that is to give up your country for the sake of the world, and beyond that it is better to give up the world for the sake of God’s work. Even if you must give up your own life and love to do God’s work, this is the way you must feel.

This is why you drop everything when I say we will go to Africa. You will leave even your country and follow God’s voice. Are you that way? Worldly people criticize us by saying that we don’t fulfill our family responsibilities, but they don’t see that we are like migrating birds which move from one place to another because we are following the law of the universe. You are enlarging the family of the world, multiplying it with wider, deeper love until the world is filled with love. We keep flying from one place to another and are so experienced that we can fly right to heaven. That means there can be heaven on earth and in spirit world both. (Sun Myung Moon, “We Who Have Been Called to Do God’s Work,” London, July 23, 1978)

Former church members attest to the controlling character of the church in recruitment and maintaining loyalty. One of the tactics in this process is something called “heavenly deception,” in which a member of the church is permitted to lie, cheat, steal, or even kill if it’s necessary to take something back from Satan that rightfully belongs to God, such as the entire life savings of one of Moon’s followers.

Moon’s followers get married and imitate him. Their children are thus also born without original sin. In this way, through marriage and propagation, the Unification Church is establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. The church is therefore very much against premarital sex, infidelity, divorce, and homosexuality, as all are distortions of the perfect procreative pairing of husband and wife. The church is perhaps best known for its mass wedding ceremonies, which usually include marriages arranged by the Unification Church. (In 1982, they rented out Madison Square Garden and married 2,075 couples simultaneously.) The ceremony itself is complicated and believed to wipe away the sins of the couple, which then permits them to have sinless children. Interestingly, Moonie honeymoons consist of forty days of sexual abstinence.

Besides the creation of perfect families, the Unification Church teaches that there are three “indemnity conditions” that have to be fulfilled in order for the three blessings to come. The first and second were satisfied by the First and Second World Wars. World War III, which is imminent, will satisfy the third. After this happens, all humanity will be united together with God in a four-position foundation, and the world will enjoy eternal peace, joy, and love.

The church’s activities are funded not only by donations, but also by a vast business empire built up by Moon, which sold (among other things) cars, guns, newspapers, and sushi. The Washington Times newspaper was founded by Moon in 1982. In the late 1970s, some of his dealings ran afoul of the United States government, and in 1982 he was convicted of filing fraudulent tax returns and criminal conspiracy, a crime for which he served thirteen months in a federal prison in Connecticut.

Orthodox Christianity is completely different in most respects from the teachings of the Unification Church. We share some of the same concepts and some of the same historical events, but our understanding of those concepts, people, and events is quite different. Most of all, we do not believe that Sun Myung Moon is the Messiah, nor do we believe in the complex array of cosmological foundations and blessings that he taught.

Salvation for the Orthodox can exist with or without marriage, and marriage itself is solely for the purpose of the salvation of the husband, wife, and children. Though we do not believe in the Western concept of original sin, we do believe that all mankind is born with ancestral mortality, which introduced corruption into the human person, bringing with it the tendency to sin. Everyone is born with this, no matter how holy their parents are. The basic problem with the teachings of the Unification Church, aside from their being radically divorced from the Holy Tradition of Orthodox Christianity, is one of history. History is reinterpreted in bizarre ways, more reminiscent of the vast cosmological speculations of the gnostics than of the concrete history of salvation as described in the Bible.

The Unification Church has a presence in roughly a hundred countries. They claim a membership of about three million, but other sources put their numbers at between 250,000 and one million. Moon himself died in 2012 at the age of ninety-two, leaving the leadership of the church to his family. His wife Hak Ja Han has assumed the role of spiritual leader, and in the past years, the Unification Church has moved away from its millenarianism and toward utopianism.

THE FAMILY INTERNATIONAL

Emerging from the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s, which combined Christian theology with hippie aesthetics and values, the Children of God movement began in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California. Over time, it has changed its name several times, also being called Family of Love, The Family, and now The Family International. (We will use these terms interchangeably here.)

David Berg, the founder of The Family, had like his father been a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a Holiness movement denomination. His initial assignment was in Arizona, but he was eventually expelled due to doctrinal differences, amid accusations of sexual impropriety with a church employee. He went on to found the Children of God in California in 1968 with a ministry called Teens for Christ, using his children as its primary workers and doing outreach to hippies. The group would retain this name until 1978.

During this initial period, Berg moved to Texas and cooperated with television evangelist Fred Jordan. In Texas, Berg and his group staged public demonstrations in downtown areas, prophesying the judgment of God on society and the religious establishment, which attracted media attention. The Children of God proselytized on the streets, handing out millions of copies of tracts with Berg’s message.

After a falling out with Jordan, Berg’s movement took to founding communes, which were initially called “colonies” and later “homes,” and Berg lived with a number of them during this first period. Berg soon came to be known by such pseudonyms as King David, Moses David, Mo, Dad, and Grandpa to members of the movement. He soon went into hiding, however, and communicated with his followers through “Mo Letters,” a series of more than three thousand writings that were distributed over twenty-four years.

In these letters, Berg prophesied the end of the world. He was the last prophet, whose death would herald the final seven years of the world’s existence. His death would be in 1989, and Jesus would return in 1993. (His actual death occurred in 1994, and without any sign of the end of the world seven years later, his group was forced to revise its teachings.)

The Family’s best-known emphasis is its teaching that followers abandon “the System” (i.e., the world outside the movement) and “forsake all,” leaving everything behind—family, job, friends, etc.—selling all their possessions and turning over the full proceeds to the Family. People outside the movement are referred to as “Systemites.”

Early in its history, the Children of God became the target of one of the earliest known anti-cult groups, the Parents’ Committee to Free our Children from the Children of God (FreeCOG). FreeCOG enlisted the help of a cult deprogrammer, who was believed to be successful in countering brainwashing. The effort backfired, however, with the arrest of the deprogrammer on kidnapping charges.

By 1983, the group reported ten thousand members living in its communes. Members normally did not socialize with Systemites except for evangelistic or fundraising purposes. The System was seen as unclean. This separatism was expressed even with practices such as washing dishes separately that had been used by Systemites and also by promptly removing and washing clothes used while in the System. These practices are due to a perception of the System as physically dirty and also because of a risk of attracting “hitchhiking spirits,” which were often blamed for problems with children.

Perhaps its best-known practice is what was called “Flirty Fishing,” a method of evangelism begun in 1974. With this technique, female members of the Children of God would seduce men in order to recruit them into the group. The women were called “bait,” “fisherwomen,” or even “hookers for Jesus,” and the men so recruited were called “fish,” thus supposedly fulfilling the prediction of Jesus that His followers would be “fishers of men.” Detailed instructions were published, and women who were willing to go the furthest with “fish” were admired within the group. Even married women in the group were encouraged to become fisherwomen.

The practice eventually devolved into “escort servicing,” whose purpose was not to recruit men into the Children of God but rather simply to make money for the group—it was straight prostitution. Flirty Fishing and escort servicing were practiced from 1974 until 1987, officially abandoned partly because of the outbreak of AIDS, though the practice likely continued for some time after. Fisherwomen were expected to keep track of their activities, and records show that at least 223,000 men had been “fished” from 1978 to 1988.

Flirty Fishing is only one piece of a larger puzzle showing a highly sexualized movement. Accusations of sexual abuse of both adults and children are plentiful, and in 1995, the group introduced a doctrine called “loving Jesus,” which describes a believer’s relationship with Christ in explicitly sexual terms. (If the believer is a man, he is instructed to imagine himself in feminine terms so as to avoid homosexuality.) Sex between consenting adults (regardless of marital status) is taught to be spiritually beneficial if done with love. Throughout the history of the movement, marriages were arranged and even dissolved by leadership at will.

The group was renamed the “Family of Love” in 1978, “the Family” in 1994, and finally in 2004 “the Family International,” which is its current name. With each name change, the group has attempted to recast itself as an entirely new organization.

With Berg’s death in 1994, his widow Karen Zerby took leadership of the organization, taking the titles of “Queen” and “Prophetess.” She has introduced new doctrines herself, including the “loving Jesus” doctrine, which is in line with Berg’s emphasis on sex in the spiritual life. She continued Berg’s legacy and worked to prepare the Family for its next chapter.

This project took a turn in 2005, however, when Ricky “Davidito” Rodriguez, the son of Zerby through a “flirty fishing” encounter, who was prophesied along with Zerby to be one of the two end-times witnesses, killed one of his mother’s assistants and then took his own life. He had been raised to become the prophet of the next generation of the Family. Zerby and her husband Steven Kelly remain as the leadership of the group.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the Family accepts Trinitarian dogma and the Incarnation (though Berg once speculated that Jesus’ virgin birth was the result of impregnation by the Archangel Gabriel). Conversion is through the sinner’s prayer model (see chapter five). More unusual teachings include the idea that heaven is pyramid-shaped and inside the moon, which will someday land on earth for a millennial reign of Christ.

The Family International claims to have about three thousand active members today, describing themselves as “an online Christian community of individuals committed to sharing the message of God’s love with people around the globe” (The Family International, “About the Family International,” http://www.thefamilyinternational.org/en/about/). Their current publications refer to their “colorful history” but make no references to any of the controversial teachings and practices we’ve mentioned. By 2010, most of their communal homes had been closed, and the group was reorganized.

The Family International achieved a notable size even while it practiced and taught highly controversial ideas. It was also the childhood home of the Phoenix acting family, including River, Joaquin (formerly Leaf), Summer, and Rain, along with their sister Liberty. (River Phoenix died of a drug overdose in 1993.) Blues guitarist Jeremy Spencer, a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, left the band in 1971 when he joined the Children of God.

There is almost nothing about their distinctive teachings and practices that is acceptable to the Orthodox Church. Their emphasis on sexuality as almost central to Christian faith is far outside traditional Christian moral teaching, and while their “Loving Jesus” doctrine has superficial similarities to the eros that sometimes appears in theological writings speaking of the Church as Christ’s bride, Christian tradition does not put it in carnal terms such that one imagines blasphemous acts. Their strange story, like that of the Branch Davidians, is mainly useful as an illustration of how the evangelistic fervor of Christianity can be turned to dangerous and abusive purposes.

A COURSE IN MIRACLES

On October 21, 1965, an atheist and clinical psychologist named Helen Shucman said that she heard from Jesus. The inner voice she heard said to her, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.” Over the next seven years, over a thousand pages of revelation were dictated to Shucman and written down, including a 622-page textbook, a 478-page workbook, and an 88-page teacher’s manual. A Course in Miracles (ACIM) was published in 1976.

Shucman says that the material she received was described using Christian terminology, but only because Christianity has been such a profound influence on mankind. It could easily have been something else. The work has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and made its way into Sunday School classes and home Bible studies. More than two million volumes have sold.

ACIM essentially teaches a variety of New Thought. All that we can conceive of—time, space, perception—is illusion. Only God is real—perfect, unchanging, whole, and complete. What we think of as reality is a fragmented dream that is already over. What remains is the perception, which is illusion. Asking how a perfect God could dream such a broken, illusory dream is a categorical error for ACIM. Even to ask such a question is to presume the reality of what is in fact unreal.

Individuals do not exist but are instead simply part of God’s single, collective sonship, who is not just Jesus but all life. The dream is an attack by this sonship on God, and it feeds on what brought it into being, which is judgment, attack, and separation. This creates the “sin-guilt-fear” cycle. We sinned by starting the Big Bang and rejecting God, we feel guilt because of this rejection, and so we fear God. This “sin-guilt-fear” is too difficult for us to face, so we project it into creation and do not see it in ourselves.

The solution for this cycle is to awaken out of this sleep, “see the Face of Christ,” and “accept the Atonement,” which leads to the dissolution of the individual self and a return to the unity and eternality of God. The workbook presents 365 lessons designed to assist the student in doing this.

ACIM does not really qualify as a religious group in itself, but its reach into existing Christian groups is significant. Its psychology-style, bite-sized teachings, as well as the attention it received through its being discussed on The Oprah Winfrey Show, have given it broad appeal as something somewhere between daily Christian devotional and self-help.

Like most of the ideas arising from New Thought, ACIM’s fundamental error is in denying the reality of creation. Even with its frequent talk of the love of God, the dissolution of all individuality ultimately means the end of love, because the beloved is absorbed completely into the lover, who then has no one left to love but himself.

CONCLUSIONS

The origins of these various non-mainstream religious bodies yield another demonstration of what happens when the notion takes hold that the individual person is the arbiter of what is true, especially when one accepts that true Christianity has been lost at some point in history. If a Lutheran can stand up and say that Joseph Smith is not to be believed, then one also has to wonder why Martin Luther should be believed. While both represent major disjunctions from traditional Christianity, both also claimed to be restoring ancient and true Christianity.

The religions we have just described are generally rejected by mainstream denominationalist Protestant Christianity. Yet, if Swedenborg is wrong, then why is Calvin right? If Mary Baker Eddy is wrong, then why is John Wesley right? If Sun Myung Moon is wrong, then why is Billy Graham right? All of these people claimed an authority divorced from the Church and then founded or motivated religious movements based on their personal authority. The only conclusion we can draw is that critics of these various groups usually think they are too weird or too different from what they themselves believe. But such evaluations depend on the authority of the tradition offering the evaluation.

At least one lesson we learn from this chapter is that everyone draws the line somewhere. Mainstream Protestant denominations disagree over things like whether baptism is merely symbolic or whether your salvation is predetermined before all time by God without your input, and yet they recognize each other as validly Christian. But they will place most of the groups we have just mentioned outside the boundaries. It reflects a minimalist understanding of theology—that only certain issues are truly essential, while most are of secondary importance. While the Orthodox agree that there are essential questions and less essential ones, our understanding of the essentials of the Christian faith is not minimalist but rather maximalist—the Orthodox Christian faith is a whole life, not a minimum set of doctrines. Further, that life is to be lived within the one Church established by Christ, not between any number of denominations who all disagree on major issues and yet somehow still recognize each other’s legitimacy. I think a decent shorthand for considering a group to be Christian is whether they teach the traditional doctrines of both the Trinity and the Incarnation. But here we have seen some groups that might fit that definition yet stretch “Christian” rather far.

The Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc., all reside on the very fringes of Protestantism. All claim to be Christian. All claim to have a true interpretation of the Bible. All were founded by people with a background in more mainstream Protestant denominations. These non-mainstream groups represent another set of schisms from Protestantism. Certainly, most Protestants would not recognize these people as Christian, but they share a common founding principle: If someone has a different interpretation of the Bible or of what Christianity should be, he can found his own church.

This approach contrasts with Orthodoxy, which teaches that the Son of God came to earth at a moment in history, was born of the Virgin Mary, lived, died, and rose from the dead, founding His one Church through the apostles. All departures from this Gospel message, as we have seen, can lead to dangerous spiritual results.

Now that we have covered almost the whole of everything that might be construed in some sense as Christian, let’s discuss most of the world’s major (and a few lesser-known) non-Christian religions.

EIGHT

Non-Christian Religions

MANY PATHS, MANY DESTINATIONS

There are some who say that all religions are really trying to accomplish the same thing and perhaps even that all of them are legitimate paths to God. Living in pluralistic American society, whose most visible religious expressions are grouped under the “Christian” label, makes this easier to believe. These different Christian groups may use the same terminology and the same rituals and share many doctrines, but as we have seen, they are very much not the same. To a casual observer, it may appear that they are all working toward the same goal, salvation in Jesus Christ, but that some minor details are at issue. This viewpoint, however, is only possible to hold under the influence of pietism, which sidelines doctrine in favor of religious feeling.

If the various Christian groups are headed in different directions, a look at the rest of the world’s religions will reveal even more widely diverging paths. To assert that all religions are really just different paths to God is to do violence to the fundamental beliefs of these religions. The Hindu yogi trying to achieve the dissolution of self and absorption into the universe is not on the same path as the Jew bowing down before the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the Scientologist working to become “clear” of alien beings called “thetans.” To suggest that all these believers are really on the same path is to do damage to their theological systems—to assert that we know better than these people do what their teachings really are. On the contrary, it is a fundamental rule of any religious study that one should let believers speak for themselves as to what they believe and, most especially, what they are trying to achieve in their religion.

A somewhat more sophisticated approach to this question is called perennialism, a philosophy that asserts that there is an esoteric core to be found at the heart of the orthodox versions of all major world religions. This esoteric core is supposedly the same in every faith, and so every faithful follower of an orthodox religion is validly on his way to divine enlightenment. The perennialist must decide for himself which exact teachings make up this esoteric core and which do not, despite what the leaders and sacred texts of those religions may say about themselves. He has to say that he knows what the real truth inside a religion is better than its theologians and leaders do. Again, this is a violation of the basic integrity of these religions. Who is the perennialist to say what is truly at the heart of a faith and what is not?

That being said, as we mentioned at the beginning of this book, within the Orthodox tradition is the idea that there is a seed of the truth, Jesus Christ Himself, in every religion and philosophy. That seed is often obscured by error, but it is still there. The ancient pagan Egyptians, for instance, believed that Pharaoh was an incarnate god—the intuition is correct, even if the identification is not. So even while we look critically at other religious traditions, we also see in them the possibility for their believers to cultivate the truth they have.

St. Justin’s view of the spermatikos logos (mentioned earlier) contrasts with the perennialist’s in that he is looking for Jesus Christ in all other belief systems, not for an esoteric core that validates them. He also regards Christ as the fullness of the revelation of God to mankind, maintaining that only in the Church can man encounter that revelation in its wholeness. For the perennialist, there would be no point in conversion from one religion to another, but for the Orthodox Church, all of mankind is invited into communion with God in the Church.

In this chapter, we will briefly examine most of the world’s major non-Christian religions, as well as a few minor ones that Americans may encounter. Unfortunately, our examination of all these groups will necessarily be simplified and generalized. Whole books and even series of books have been written on these subjects, so we cannot pretend to do them full justice in one chapter. Although I have studied all of them to one extent or another, I am by no means an expert on any of these religions. What we are attempting to present here is an encyclopedia-level view, a brief summary of the major points.

We can make at least two generalizations about all of these faiths. None of them believes as the Church does in the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three divine Persons who are One in essence. And neither do they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, who became incarnate to save mankind, died and rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven.

JUDAISM

Of all non-Christian religions, the one with which Orthodox Christians have the most in common is Judaism. We share a common inheritance from the covenant made with Abraham, though we interpret and apply it differently, and of course Christians also believe that there is a New Covenant.

In comparison with the Judaism of the Old Testament, modern Judaism stands in both continuity and in divergence. The most significant divergence of present-day Judaism from the religion into which Jesus was born is that the sacrifices offered at the Temple in Jerusalem ceased.

In AD 70, the Romans destroyed the Temple, which ended the system of animal sacrifice that had been instituted by God in the wake of the Exodus from Egypt. The Temple was the center of the religion of Moses, the center of the Jewish priesthood and its sacrificial cult. All Jews went to the Temple every so often to make sacrifices, especially on high holy days such as the Passover. But when the Temple was destroyed, the priestly line was ended. No more sacrifices could be made. What remained were the synagogues, provisional places of teaching and learning—but not sacrifice—which served as local branches of the Jewish faith.

This was not the first time that Israel had lost its Temple, however. The First Temple was destroyed after Babylon invaded and took the Israelites into exile (roughly 586 BC, the time of the second deportation). After the Babylonian Exile, Judaism developed a means for its survival without the Temple—the Torah. We may think of the Torah (roughly translated from Hebrew as “the law”), which includes the first five books of the Old Testament, as part of an ongoing narrative of Israel’s journey. But it really did not come into its full importance for Israel until the period following the Exile, when it was promoted by Ezra as a kind of national constitution, giving it unprecedented prominence. With the leadership of Ezra, the Temple was rebuilt as many of the Israelites returned (539 BC), but the Torah functioned much more powerfully as a means of common identity for Israel after that point.

The Second Temple period is distinct in a number of ways from the First, but there are two that are of special note. First, the shekinah (“glory”) of God that was seen to enter the First Temple never did come into the Second. And second, the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple did not contain the Ark of the Covenant (which probably went missing at the destruction of the First Temple). The sense of God’s dwelling in this Second Temple was not as pronounced as it had been with the first. It is a major argument of many New Testament scholars that Jews were still waiting for the return of the shekinah at the time of Christ, and some New Testament texts characterize Christ as being the return of the glory of God to His people.

Judaism in the time of Christ—Second Temple Judaism—encompassed multiple sects and movements (e.g., the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians, and Zealots), all with different sets of beliefs but a generally common set of practices. With the destruction of the Temple, these groups mostly disappeared, with the exception of the Pharisees. It was the sect of the Pharisees that survived, and so they came to define Judaism and practice it based on a new pattern of life that did not include the Temple sacrifices. Thus was born Judaism as it exists today.

That said, we should not see modern Judaism as monolithic. It is probably as diverse now as it was in the time of Jesus, though generally flowing from the Pharisaic seed. The major part of what made Pharisaism into the root of modern Judaism was the development of the Talmud. The Talmud has two parts, the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is a record of the oral Torah—the Jewish tradition for interpreting the Scripture and giving precepts on living that were not enumerated in the Torah—collected and redacted around AD 200. And the Gemara is a commentary on the Mishnah and related writings, composed roughly AD 500. (The Gemara is sometimes alone referred to as the Talmud.) This tradition is the tradition of the rabbis, and thus it is also called Rabbinic Judaism.

The diversity of modern Judaism flows from how one applies what is written in all these sources. Both theology and practice can vary considerably, even within apparently strict categories such as “Orthodox.” Many groups of Jews are called “Orthodox,” yet they vary according to rite and also teachings, with subgroups such as the Modern Orthodox, Haredim (often called “Ultra-Orthodox” in the media), and Hasidim (who are a subset of the Haredim).

Pharisaism as shown in the New Testament especially emphasizes a way of life, following particular rituals and, perhaps most famously, dietary requirements (kosher). Ritual washings are a significant element. Orthodox Christianity shares this emphasis with Judaism on adopting a whole way of life designed to bring the remembrance of God into every moment, and some of our practices are even based on our common heritage. But the Orthodox Church places a somewhat higher emphasis on right belief, while many of the details of ritual, etc., are more variable.

Jews reject major Christian doctrine, such as the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and His identification as the Messiah. Jews are still awaiting the coming of the Messiah. Especially in this last sense, Christianity may be seen as simply the fulfillment of Pharisaic Judaism, which hoped for both the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead. Seen in this way, the primary difference between Christianity and modern Judaism is that Christians see things as being at a different place on the timeline—the Messiah has come, and the resurrection has begun with Christ as the first-fruits.

We do share with Jews a belief in monotheism, that there is only one God. We do not share the same Bible—even aside from the inclusion of the New Testament, the Jewish canon developed differently from the Christian one. We do, however, share a similar outlook on biblical interpretation, namely, that there is both a “written Torah” and an “oral Torah”—two sources of true religious tradition, each of which informs and shapes the other. The oral Torah differs from Holy Tradition, however, in that it has more internal variation and also may not be seen as divinely inspired.

We also share a common belief in divine revelation from God through the prophets, though we believe that the prophets ultimately were predicting the coming of Jesus and that God made His final revelation to the apostles at Pentecost.

Like Christians, some Jews believe in an afterlife. Ancient Pharisaism certainly believed in the final resurrection of the dead, a belief carried over into Christianity. (In Acts 23:6, Paul famously showed his Pharisaic credentials by his belief in the resurrection.) Jews believe they are God’s chosen people. While Judaism receives its membership by birth, specifically maternal ancestry, Orthodox Christianity demands the conversion of the soul to faith in Christ and entry into the covenant via baptism. (For infants, the confession of faith of the godparents is active in the baptism, with the pledge of a Christian upbringing.) Christianity, therefore, considers itself the “True Israel,” which receives the covenant promised to Abraham by faith and not by the flesh.

The status of Jews belonging to the Old Israel who have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah is complicated in the New Testament. Paul seems to suggest in Romans 9—11 that unbelieving Jews may yet be grafted into the tree of Christ before the end, that they may have something that is “irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). That said, Orthodox Christians do not teach Dispensationalist doctrines that essentially set up Judaism as a parallel path to God.

Modern Judaism is split into three general groups—Orthodox, Conservative (known as Masorti outside North America), and Reform. In general, these groups represent a continuum from traditionalism to liberalism (though with a lot of variation within each category). Reform Jews in particular do not believe in a coming personal messiah nor in the chosenness of the Jewish people in an exclusive sense. Depending on how identity as a Jew is defined, there may be as many as 14 million Jews in the world, about 42 percent of whom live in the state of Israel, with an equal number in the United States.

ISLAM

Islam’s traditional account of itself is that Muhammad, the last of the prophets, received a word-for-word dictation from the Archangel Gabriel, which is now known as the Qur’an. This revelation is said to have begun in AD 622, with further revelations taking place throughout the rest of Muhammad’s life. The Arabic word Islam literally means “submission,” and it describes how the Muslim (“one who submits”) is to live toward God (in Arabic, Allah).

Both classical and modern Muslim commentators generally divide the Qur’an revelations into two periods—the Meccan (which is more apocalyptic) and the Medinan (more about legislation). Later verses in the Qur’an abrogate earlier ones. For instance, an early verse which says not to pray while drunk (implying that drinking wine is okay) is abrogated by a later one which forbids drinking at all.

Islam regards its relationship to Christianity similarly to the way Christians regard their relationship to ancient Judaism—that it is the final fulfillment of previous Abrahamic religion. Islam sees Jesus as a true prophet and believes in His virgin conception and birth, as well as His second coming. Islam is radically monotheistic, however, and rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and even the idea that God could have a son. Trinitarianism is looked upon by Muslims as disguised polytheism.

Sunni Muslims frown upon icons, though the ban on images varies in its application. Some say that neither God nor any other living thing (except birds, interestingly) should be depicted, which is why traditional Muslim art has a highly developed calligraphy but not a tradition of pictorial representation. Others may depict animals but not God or Muhammad. Shi’ite Muslims, however, make extensive use of religious images.

Muslims regard the Christian Bible as having been corrupted over time, believing that the original teachings of Jesus were essentially Muslim. The Qur’an, by contrast, is supposedly a direct dictation from God Himself in Arabic. It was preserved in oral tradition until the time of the third caliph, Uthman. He gathered all the scattered fragments of the Qur’an and put them into a codex (the origin of the modern book with a binding and pages) and destroyed all earlier Qur’anic material so that there would be no competing versions. This narrative is part of what establishes the authority of the caliphs as successors to Muhammad’s leadership. Variant manuscript traditions do exist, but they are minor and of interest mainly to philologists. Publicly questioning the perfection of the Qur’an can lead to persecution within Islam.

The chapters of the Qur’an are known as surah, totaling 114 in all, divided into verses. Traditionally, the Qur’an is interpreted by means of hadith, which are collections of reports on things said and done by Muhammad. Hadith form a major part of Muslim jurisprudence, and different collections of hadith are preferred by Sunni and Shi’a. Twelver Shi’a (see below) include hadith from the imams in addition to Muhammad.

The place of the Qur’an in Islam is similar to the place of the Bible in sola scriptura Protestantism. It is an absolutely authoritative text from which most doctrine and practice are derived. Normative Muslim practice and tradition (sunnah) is primarily the combination of the Qur’an and the hadith.

Muslims believe that proper life consists in adhering to the five pillars of Islam:

1. Shahadah—The confession, “I testify that there is no god but God, and I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” Making this confession with sincerity is how one converts to Islam.

2. Salah—Ritual prayer performed five times a day, facing toward Mecca.

3. Zakat—Almsgiving, both to help the poor and for the spread of Islam.

4. Sawm—Fasting during the month of Ramadan, which consists of not eating or drinking anything at all, as well as sexual abstinence, before sunset. In practice, however, some wealthy Muslims will simply sleep through the day and then feast at night. The fast is much more difficult for poor and working Muslims.

5. Hajj—A one-time pilgrimage to Mecca for all who can afford it.

Orthodox Christians share all of these elements of proper life in various ways, although they are not regarded as absolute obligations as they are for Muslims. Submission to God is what defines Muslim life. For Orthodoxy, the obedience we offer to God is given freely out of love for Him, and because doing so transforms us inwardly to become more like Christ. In Islam, God is merciful and perfect, but He is not truly loving. God is absolutely transcendent, and so there is no true communion with Him. Perhaps the only exception to this is the Sufi tradition of Islam, which has a strongly mystical side that speaks of union with the divine. All that said, most Muslims would probably say that they feel they have a connection with God.

In a sense, Islam resembles ancient paganism—a relationship with God based on obedience, reward, and punishment, and most especially the fatalistic pursuit of self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation. (These things show up in other religions, of course, including among some Christians.) This sociological character contrasts with the multicultural catholicity of Christianity, the relationship of love between God and man, the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, and His Resurrection for the salvation of mankind. Our understanding of God and our relationship with Him is deeply different from that of Muslims. Given this discrepancy, there are some (probably ignorant of Arabic) who identify Allah as a different “god” entirely. However, Allah is in fact simply the Arabic word for “God,” used by Arabic-speaking Christians as well. Christians believe in Allah, but Islam is simply wrong about who Allah is.

Islam is itself divided, with the most major divisions being Sunni and Shi’a. These two groups share much in common, though with different doctrinal emphases and contrasting views on who was the proper heir of Muhammad as caliph (essentially a theocratic leader) in the first years after Muhammad’s death. Some in each group regard the other as heretical and their own as the true Islam, while others see the differences as simply schools of thought. All Islam shares the general belief in the absolute union of religion and the state. Theocracy is the Muslim ideal. (The Orthodox are not theocratic, and despite long periods of attempted Church cooperation with the state have never sacralized any form of government, looking mainly toward the coming Kingdom of God.)

Sunni is derived from Ahl al-Sunnah (“people of the tradition”), and these Muslims believe that Muhammad’s first caliph was his father-in-law Abu Bakr. Shi’a is from Shi’atu Ali (“party of Ali”), whose name refers to their identified first caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib, the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad. Aside from the schism in leadership, Sunni and Shi’a differ on doctrinal emphases, and both have multiple competing internal traditions, including different authoritative collections of hadith.

Sunni Islam is focused largely on the establishment of the power of God in the material world, including in the public and political sphere. This is especially expressed in terms of sharia, the divine law, and its application, which includes not only morality but also rituals such as various washings. Shi’a Islam traditionally emphasizes sacrifice and martyrdom, modeling themselves after Ali, who was assassinated while he was kneeling in prayer, but more importantly focusing on Ali’s son Husayn, whose martyrdom at the Battle of Karbala marks the traditional point of departure between Sunni and Shi’a Islam.

Shi’a Islam is generally divided into two groups, Twelver and Ismaili (“Sevener”) Shi’a, who differ as to where the succession of imams from Ali continues. Twelver and Sevener are academic terms. Twelver refers to the Twelve Imams, a group of divinely ordained leaders, while Sevener refers to the point in the succession where the Ismailis break off. (There is also a much smaller Zaidi (“Fiver”) group, which is more similar to Sunni Islam.) Ismaili Shi’a are more esoteric in their approach to Islam and greatly venerate the family of Muhammad, who are the source for their imams. Twelvers constitute some 90 percent of Shi’a.

Imams in Sunni Islam are generally leaders of the community, especially in leading prayer in mosques, which are the worship centers for Muslims. For Shi’ites, imams are successors to Muhammad who play a cosmic role and are regarded in some sense as infallible guides to God. Twelver Shi’a function according to detailed legal guidelines and jurisprudence and have a list of twelve imams, with the Twelfth Imam (the Mahdi) being currently hidden and awaiting a kind of Messianic return. Ismaili Shi’a imams are seen as being infallible in themselves by virtue of heredity, and there will always be a living imam to guide the Ismailis.

In Sunni Islam, Muhammad’s successors are the caliphs, who function in many ways like Shi’ite imams. Sunni caliphs are the temporal head of the Muslim community. For Shi’a, the imam must be a descendant of Ali and Muhammad’s daughter Fatima. For both major types of Shi’ites, the imam’s interpretation of the law is infallible. He is not the same as a prophet in that he does not bring new revelation but only interprets what was revealed through Muhammad.

Although Islam’s modern face is focused on outward questions such as jurisprudence and politics, there is an inner mystical tradition within both Sunni and Shi’a Islam called Sufism. (Dervish is the Turkish term for a Sufi, derived from Persian.) Like monasticism in Christianity, it is in a sense an optional path of Muslim spirituality, an inner, contemplative element that functions within Islam. Sufis may belong to particular religious orders, organized around a Mawla whose teachings are in a succession of teachers connecting back to Muhammad.

There is debate in our time as to whether Islam is inherently violent, whether the jihad (“struggle”) expected of all Sunni Muslims is only an interior spiritual struggle or a call to war against non-Muslims. A certain late hadith speaks of the internal struggle as being the “greater jihad,” while the “lesser jihad” is on the battlefield. All Muslims would agree on the obligation to wage defensive war against invaders, but jihad as expansionism is traditionally seen as the annual duty of the caliph, and only possible when there is a caliph. Modern militant/jihadi groups transfer the obligation of expansion through jihad to every Muslim when there is no caliph. There has been no recognized caliph since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, with the caliphate formally abolished in 1924. (One of the things that characterizes certain jihadi groups is that they believe they have a caliph.)

Many historical Muslims saw jihad precisely as a call to conquest, which is one of the major reasons the Middle East, what is now Turkey, and much of western Asia are all now majority Muslim areas and not Orthodox Christian as they formerly were. All of those regions were conquered in the name of Allah by the sword—though initial conversion rates were relatively low. Most conversions of Christians to Islam took place over generations through social stigma and tax policy, though there have also been many martyrs for the Orthodox faith under Islam.

Islam has a traditional allowance for certain religious groups to live within the Muslim community as dhimmi, a lower-class position that also requires the paying of the jizya, a special tax. Those allowed dhimmi status are the “People of the Book,” that is, Jews, “Sabians,” and Christians. This status was later also accorded to Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, and Mandaeans (who may be the “Sabians” referenced in the Qur’an, though some hadith use the term to describe Muslim converts). Many converted to Islam solely in order to escape the difficulties of being dhimmi.

The recent phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombers (who refer to themselves as martyrs) is uncharacteristic of the larger tradition of Sunni Islam and is, legally speaking, a marginal school of thought at best. Coupled with the jihadi emphasis on conquest of both non-Muslims and non-Sunni, these newer streams of Islam are often known in the West as “militant Islam.” These phenomena are enormously complicated in Muslim jurisprudence and should not be taken as mainstream Islam, either Sunni or Shi’a.

Depending on where they are in the world, many Muslims today are secular or semi-secular, with an almost pietist approach to religion that doesn’t much care about a state religion. Religion is taken as a private affair, especially among Muslims who settle in the West. Just as with Christianity, actual Muslim commitment varies considerably.

Islam is the second largest religious group in the world, with over 1.6 billion members. About 87 to 90 percent are Sunni Muslims, while the remainder are Shi’a. One common misconception about Muslims is that they are mostly Arabs. It is true that the Middle East is Islam’s home region, but some 62 percent of Muslims are Asian, with the largest population of Muslims being in Indonesia, which has nearly 205 million. Only 20 percent of Muslims live in the Middle East and North Africa. An additional 15 percent live in Sub-Saharan Africa.

DRUZE, ALAWITES, AND ALEVI

The Druze, whose origins lie in early eleventh-century Egypt, are historically an offshoot of Shi’a Islam, but their faith incorporates elements of Hellenistic neoplatonism and gnosticism. Their founder was the Persian mystic Hamza ibn-’Ali ibn-Ahmad, who gathered a large group of Muslim scholars and teachers together in Egypt and formed his movement. Although their beliefs differ from mainstream Islam, they are often considered to be Muslims by other Muslims, most often because Druze are usually quite secretive about their faith. They may often deliberately identify themselves as Muslims in order to avoid persecution.

Reliable information about what the Druze believe and practice is very difficult to come by, so the following is a summary of what research I was able to do and should not be considered authoritative.

The Druze concept of God is almost pantheistic—God is not “above” everything or “in” everything, but rather He is the whole of existence. The emphasis is on the oneness and the unlimited nature of God. Despite the insistence on His unlimited nature, God is still understood as not being identical with creation. This teaching about God is partly compatible with Orthodoxy, though we would not say that God is the whole of existence, but rather that He is both “above” and “in” everything. We don’t believe that His “otherness” from creation suggests that He is limited.

Individual Druze mystics who are spiritually advanced claim to experience God as a light that may be manifest in them. This light is not to be understood as an incarnation of God as in Christianity, but rather almost in the sense that we understand saints—that God is apparent within them, without the saint becoming fused with God. This kind of enlightenment is available to a rare few. Druze are strongly esoteric in their theology and have at least three levels of teaching which are revealed to believers only at certain stages. Most believers will never receive all the teachings of the faith, and about 80 percent are defined as a sort of “non-religious class” who mainly practice personal prayer without the more esoteric teachings of the faith. In this, the Druze are like the ancient gnostics, who believed in secret teachings available only to a special few. The Christian Gospel, by contrast, is preached openly to all who will listen.

In the late nineteenth century, several uprisings of Druze in the Ottoman Empire resulted in the martyrdom of many Orthodox Christians, including the 1860 death of the Hieromartyr Joseph of Damascus, who was the parish priest of the Hawaweeny family that produced St. Raphael of Brooklyn. These events led to many of the Arab Christian emigrations to the New World.

There are between 750,000 and 2 million Druze in the world. The largest communities are in Syria, with significant communities also existing in Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, as well as in immigrant communities outside the Middle East.

Alawites are another esoteric offshoot of Twelver Shi’a Islam, who, like the Druze, do not allow converts and hide their inner teachings from the public and to the uninitiated within their communities (so this information should also be taken as tentative). They are regarded as syncretic by mainstream Muslims, as having mixed non-Muslim beliefs and practices into their religion, including borrowings from Christianity. They are said to believe in reincarnation, where sins can lead Alawites to being reincarnated as Christians or animals. The cycle of reincarnation is to purify Alawites to return to heaven, whence they had been cast out through disobedience. There are about three million Alawites in the world, most in Syria.

The Alevi are less well known to the West but constitute 25 percent of the population of Turkey, numbering some 15 million in total, and they are the largest religious minority in the country. Membership includes both ethnic Kurds and Turks, though there are many more Turks (80 percent) than Kurds (20 percent).

They are in many ways similar to Twelver Shi’a Islam but incorporate non-Muslim elements into their belief and practice, especially from gnosticism. They also belong to the Bektashi tradition, which is a Sunni Sufi order. They worship in cemevi (pronounced “djemevi”), buildings in which the cem ceremony is held. This ritual involves dancing, instrumental music, drinking wine, and free mixing of men and women—all things that are forbidden in mainstream Muslim practice.

Some Alevis regard their religion as pure Turkish Islam, while others define their religion as properly Kurdish. Some Alevi attend both cemevi and mosque, while others would never go to a mosque. They are related somewhat to the Alawites, and the two groups share a number of things in common. Whether Alevism originates in Shi’a Islam or Yazdanism (see below) is a debated question. It may well be that it is essentially from both, along with other regional traditions.

ZOROASTRIANISM

Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of what was the Persian Empire, centered in modern Iran. Its origins date to roughly one thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ. The founder of the religion is Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), who claimed to be a prophet from Ahura Mazda, the one, true god.

Zoroastrians share with Orthodox Christians a belief in one, uncreated God, to whom all worship is due. However, for Zoroastrians, Ahriman, who is the force of chaos, is co-eternal with Ahura Mazda. This dualism is central to Zoroastrian belief.

The Avesta, the Zoroastrian scripture, is of great antiquity and has parallels in the Hindu Rig Veda (ca. 1500–1200 BC), with which it likely shares common source material. It is composed in Avestan, a language otherwise unknown in any other source and closely related to the Vedic Sanskrit of ancient Hindu tradition.

In Zoroastrianism, goodness is not understood, as in Christianity, as love and communion with God, but rather as order. Thus, evil is identified as chaos. In the Orthodox Church, however, while we believe that God is a God of order, we do not identify goodness with order in itself. Rather, goodness is in relation to God.

In Zoroastrianism, those who actively participate in all areas of life, including pleasure, with good thoughts, words, and deeds will have happiness. Active participation is key, and contemplative ways of life, such as monasticism, are rejected. This contrasts with Orthodoxy, which teaches that suffering in this life will often come to the righteous, and that only in the next life will the triumph of good finally be revealed. Orthodoxy also embraces asceticism, a focusing of the human person on what is good, even to the extent of denying oneself what is morally neutral so as to better practice good.

For Zoroastrians, there are in some sense angels and demons, though rather than being separate persons, they are “divine sparks” emanated by Ahura Mazda, personifications of aspects of his creation.

At the end of time, a savior figure (a Saoshyant) will appear and drive all evil from the world. Even the souls previously banished to “darkness” will be recalled, and all the dead will be resurrected. Those who died in old age will be made alive in immortal “spiritual” bodies about forty years of age, while those who died young will be about fifteen years of age. These bodies will be so insubstantial that they will not cast shadows. In the end, everyone will enjoy this restoration, and all humanity will be united in one nation speaking one language. This eschatology has certain similarities to Orthodoxy, but we have no dogmatic speculations as to what “age” anyone will be in the afterlife. (There are some Syriac Christian texts that suggest we will all be resurrected with the age of 30.) We also believe that in the resurrection, we will all have bodies that can be touched and are substantial, just as Jesus’ was after His Resurrection. But we do not believe that the resurrection will be salvation for all—some will be damned.

Zoroastrian worship strongly centers on the fire cult. In this cult, which is served by priests, fire is highly revered and is believed to mediate the spirit of Ahura Mazda to worshipers. Zoroastrians would not say that they worship fire, but rather that the fire serves as a connecting point to Ahura Mazda. Such ritual fires are so highly prized that ashes from particular sacred fires are brought to new places to act as a seed for a new fire temple. It is believed that some of these successions of ashes go back to Zoroaster himself. The ashes are also used for anointing, such as in the initiation ritual that makes one a member of the faith.

The traditional four elements of earth, air, fire, and water are seen as sacred and not to be polluted, a view that gave rise to the practice of “sky burial,” in which bodies of the dead are placed in towers and exposed to the elements. The pollution of the corpse is therefore kept from both the earth (where most cultures place their dead) and fire (cremation is thus forbidden). In some English sources, these structures used for sky burial are called Towers of Silence (a neologism that does not come from Zoroastrianism).

By contrast, Christianity has traditionally buried its dead in the earth, not seeing the body as a pollutant but rather as anticipating the resurrection that will occur at the return of Jesus, sometimes expressed with the image of a seed planted in the earth and awaiting growth. Christians do not traditionally cremate their dead, either, but it is not because of the fear of polluting fire but rather out of veneration for the body, which is an integral part of the human person and will someday be resurrected.

Today, there are only about 90,000 Zoroastrians left in the world, 75 percent of whom live in India and are called Parsis. Most of the rest live in their traditional homeland of Iran, with a few in Pakistan. Zoroastrianism’s dominance in the region came to an end with the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. They are a very small religious group in the modern world, though many in the West may be familiar with a famous Parsi named Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara), the lead singer of the rock-n-roll band Queen.

Indian Zoroastrianism does not permit converts to the faith, an influence from the Hindu caste system (in which one is born into one’s lot in life), and the children of mixed marriages are not members of the faith. Iranian Zoroastrians actively encourage conversion, however, and regard their religion as the true national faith of Iran (which is otherwise overwhelmingly Shi’a Muslim).

MANDAEISM

Mandaeism is a monotheistic faith whose traditional homeland is in modern Iraq (though many Mandaeans fled Iraq after the 2003 American invasion). The earliest written accounts of the Mandaeans date to the late eighth century. They have a great reverence for many figures from the Old Testament, such as Adam, Abel, and Noah, and they especially venerate John the Baptist. They may also be called Sabians, and like other groups we have mentioned here, reports of their beliefs are often contradictory and unreliable.

There are no basic written guides to Mandaean theology, which exists as a set of traditions held in common by believers. Like most monotheists, Mandaeans believe in a supreme spiritual entity, though this deity delegates the act of creation to lesser beings. Our own universe was created by the Archetypal Man, who created our world in his own image. (Note the similarity with the Christian doctrine that creation comes through the Son of God.)

Reality is largely characterized by the dualism of gnostic theology, with spirit opposed to matter, as well as other cosmic pairings, such as a cosmic Father and Mother, left and right, light and dark. As in Platonism, a world of ideas exists that has a stronger reality than the world of physical matter. The human soul is therefore a captive in the physical world, and the supreme entity is the soul’s true home, to which it will eventually return.

Mandaeans have their own astrology, believing that planets and stars influence human life. These celestial bodies are places of the detention of souls after death. Worlds of light may be reached after death with the assistance of savior spirits. The soul may also be purified in this life through the aid of ritual mysteries with a highly symbolic and esoteric interpretation attached to them, including baptism (musbattah). Such rituals are only fully explained to initiates, who pledge themselves to secrecy with this knowledge.

These rituals are usually practiced in a manda, the Mandaean place of worship. Due to the central place of water in Mandaean life, the manda is traditionally built beside a river but may also include a bath inside a building. The ritual life of Mandaeism is governed by a priesthood, who are sharply distinguished from the laity and are regarded as superior beings.

Mandaean scripture is a large corpus of varied writings that have never been codified into a systematic theology. The traditions in them focus largely on a dualistic division between light and darkness, with light being associated with the supreme entity and darkness with Ptahil, who is the corrupted, archetypal man who created our world. (Ptahil’s name is similar to the pagan Egyptian deity Ptah, who called the world into being. Mandaean tradition includes accounts of their presence in Egypt.) The earliest texts in Mandaean scripture date to the second and third centuries.

While venerating as prophets Adam, his son Abel, and grandson Enosh, as well as Noah and his son Shem and grandson Aram, Mandaeans regard Abraham and Moses as false prophets. Noah and his descendants are taught to be the Mandaeans’ ancestors. Jerusalem itself is a city of wickedness, dedicated to the false god of the Jews, Adunay (from Hebrew Adonai, “the Lord”). They also regard Jesus and Muhammad as false prophets. Jesus in particular is accused of having corrupted the teachings entrusted to Him by John the Baptist, who is the highest and most respected teacher in Mandaeism.

From the Orthodox point of view, Mandaeism is a gnostic-style religion that gets certain things right, such as monotheism, but is wildly distorted on other issues, such as the overall narrative of salvation in God’s plan for the world. Probably the most major problem with Mandaeism is its cosmology, the idea that the physical world is the creation of a corrupt entity and not the work of the loving God.

It is possible that Mani, the founder of Manichaeism (a heretical sect from which St. Augustine converted when he became Christian), may have been a member of a sect called the Elkasaites, whom some scholars have proposed as the ancestors of the Mandaeans. There are only about 70,000 Mandaeans in the world, and while most of them lived in Iraq until 2003, a number of them have fled into Iran and other neighboring countries. As of 2009, there were perhaps only as many as twenty-four Mandaeans in the priesthood.

YAZDANISM: YAZIDI AND YARSAN

The Yazidi are monotheists following an ancient religion with roots in Indo-Iranian culture, primarily in Kurdish communities near the Turkish-Iraqi border. Along with the Yarsan, the Yazidi are classified into a general grouping known as Yazdanism, which altogether makes up about one third of the Kurdish population (most Kurds are Sunni Muslims). These groups’ beliefs are also difficult to define with reliable sources, but they are together regarded as the successors to Yazdanism, a pre-Islamic Kurdish religion focused on a cult of angels whose existence was controversially proposed in the 1990s by Kurdish scholar Mehrdad Izady.

Yazidism is a syncretic faith with elements of Sufism, Christianity, Mithraism (a pagan cult originating in Persia), and other pre-Muslim pagan and gnostic traditions of the Mesopotamian region. Its foundations as a distinct community are traced to the twelfth-century sheikh Adi ibn Musafir al-Umawi (also called Shex Adi), whom the Yazidi regard as being an avatar or reincarnation of Melek Taus (or Tawuse Melek), the Peacock Angel.

Sheikh Adi was a Sufi of Umayyad descent born in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon who spent much of his early life in Baghdad and eventually took up residence in the Kurdish regions of Iraq to live a life of asceticism. While there, he impressed many of the locals with miraculous accomplishments. His tomb is in Lalish, northeast of Mosul, and is the principal shrine for Yazidi pilgrimage, where all Yazidi are expected to visit at least once in their lives.

Yazidi believe that God is the creator of the world and that He has placed the care of the world into the hands of the Heptad, seven angels through whom He created Adam. The world was created initially as a pearl and then later reconstructed and expanded to its current state. The chief of the seven angels is Melek Taus, who is also called Shaytan (“Satan”), leading Muslims and Christians in the area to identify the Yazidi as devil-worshipers. The Yazidi do not regard Melek Taus as evil, however, but as the leader of the angels, which is of course similar to the Christian understanding of Lucifer in his pre-fallen state. Evil is believed to find its source only in the human heart.

When Adam was created, Melek Taus is supposed to have been given the choice by God to bow down to him or not. He chose not to bow down, which was in keeping with the nature God had given him, that he should never bow to anyone. From this primordial choice of good over evil, Yazidi derive inspiration for their own choices for good over evil, and devotion to Melek Taus helps believers to make the right choices. Curiously, the Yazidi regard themselves as descended solely from Adam, while all other humans are descended from both Adam and Eve.

The seven angelic beings are believed to be reincarnated in human form (koasasa) every so often. It may also be possible for lesser Yazidi souls to be reincarnated in a process called kiras guhorin (“changing the garment”). During the annual festival of Cejna Cemaiya (“Feast of the Assembly”) at Lalish, it is believed that the Heptad descend on Lalish. During this festival, a bull is also sacrificed at the shrine of Sheikh Adi.

The Yazidi do have their own scriptures, the Kiteba Cilwe (“Book of Revelation”) and Mishefa Resh (“Black Book”), but the available manuscripts for these books, published in 1911 and 1913, are regarded by scholars as probable forgeries, though their contents are consistent with Yazidi tradition. There may once have been authentic copies of these texts, but they remain obscure. Yazidism is mainly transmitted through oral tradition, which in our day is beginning to be written down.

Like Muslims, Yazidi practice five prayers each day. They also maintain a strict system of religious purity, including a caste system of three levels in which members marry only within their caste. Purity is also maintained by not violating the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water (it is forbidden, for instance, to spit on water, fire, or earth), a similarity with Zoroastrianism. Likewise, Yazidi avoid contact with non-Yazidi, which can be spiritually polluting as well. They also will not wear the color blue (possibly because it usurps the color of the Peacock Angel). Children are baptized at birth, and boys are frequently circumcised. Conversion to Yazidism is not possible, because Yazidis may only be those who are descended solely from Adam.

Orthodox Christians can admire the Yazidi desire for personal purity, though much of its actual expression is based on something other than the revelation of God in Christ. As with all syncretic religious systems, there are parts that are familiar and acceptable to Christians, but there are also elements we must reject. Christians do not believe in castes, nor do they worship angels. Likewise, we do not believe in reincarnation, nor do we sacrifice animals.

Estimates of Yazidi population range from 200,000 to 300,000, mostly in Iraq, though with some in Turkey and Armenia. Recent wars in Iraq have displaced many Yazidi, bringing them to the attention of some in the West.

The Yarsani are originally from western Iran and mostly Kurdish, numbering between 500,000 and 1 million. There are also some in eastern Iraq. Their community was founded in the late fourteenth century by Sultan Sahak, who is said to be a direct descendant of the Musa al-Kadhim, the seventh imam of Shi’a Islam. The mystical community founded by Sultan Sahak was called the Ahl-e Haqq (“People of Truth”), and there are some who regard the Yarsani as having been a Sufi Shi’a group originally.

Yarsani do not observe Muslim rites, nor do they see Muhammad as a prophet, though much of their theological terminology originates in Islam. They are also dualistic and believe in the transmigration of human souls (reincarnation), which enables gradual perfection in ascension through successive lives. Like Yazidi, they believe in seven archangels who are central to their faith, though the names and characteristics of these angels is different from Yazidism. The manifestation of one of them, Khatun-e Rezbar, is believed to be the mother of Sultan Sahak.

These various semi-gnostic syncretic groups often show elements of ordinary Christian practice, such as veneration at the shrines of saints, love for God, the belief in the possibility of human perfection, and so forth. In a sense, they are the result of the movement of different religions throughout their home regions, picking up various pieces along the way. In terms of their basic religious “personality,” they often have more in common with ancient heretical Christian groups than with the now-dominant Islam.

BAHA’I FAITH

The Baha’i faith is a monotheistic religion founded in nineteenth-century Persia by Baha’u’llah, who claimed to be a fulfillment of Babism, a mid-nineteenth-century Messianic Muslim community that broke from Shi’a Islam. The faith’s single most identifying feature is religious universalism—the teaching that all major religions in the world were founded by true prophets, who each progressively revealed something about God to the world and predicted the coming of the next prophet. The universe itself is regarded as being eternal.

Each of these prophets is regarded as a “manifestation of God,” not an incarnation, but rather a semi-divine intermediary between God and man that existed spiritually before his birth as a human. With the coming of the Baha’i faith, however, all previous religions are revealed as being one single religion with a progressive revelation to mankind. Unlike Jesus or Muhammad, Baha’u’llah did not claim to be the last of these manifestations, and so there may yet be more revelations to come. Orthodoxy teaches that the final revelation of God to man came in Jesus Christ. We don’t have to worry about whether the true religion will suddenly change underneath us with the appearance of a new prophet.

Because the Baha’i faith believes that it is the fulfillment of all other world religions, it reinterprets previous religious doctrine in its own terms. Christian Trinitarian theology, for instance, rather than revealing the nature of God, is understood symbolically to refer to different aspects of God (a form of unitarianism). Thus, even though Baha’is claim to accept all religious teachings within themselves, they are forced to change those doctrines fundamentally in order to harmonize them according to Baha’i teaching. A believer in one of these other faiths cannot help but conclude that Baha’is (like Perennialists) are claiming to know other faiths better than their followers and religious authorities themselves do.

The Baha’i faith emphasizes acceptance of all religions and all people, and so it can be highly attractive in our modern, relativistic age. Many who convert to the Baha’i faith may do so because they believe it to be an embrace of true equality and freedom from dogma and tradition. Yet underneath, the Baha’i faith is simply a new set of dogmas that revises old dogmas to bring them into conformity. The faith even teaches that all humanity should learn a single language to further perfect oneness.

Orthodox Christianity teaches that all of us are truly of equal value in Christ and may commune with Him. However, this communion is only fully possible within the dogmatic and traditional boundaries of the Church, not because those boundaries limit human life, but because they free human beings to become who they were created to be. Orthodox dogma and tradition are thus like the universal knowledge among athletes of what it takes to become truly fit.

Baha’i rejection of the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo also violates one of the most basic tenets of some of the faiths it claims to validate. In Christianity, the radical distinction between the uncreated, eternal God, and the created world is the basis for true communion with God and for the Incarnation itself.

Because the Baha’i faith has no doctrine of the Incarnation, while the believer may grow closer and closer to God, there is no sense of true communion with Him. The closest the Baha’i can ever get is “standing in the presence of God,” which nevertheless implies a certain distance from Him. Traditional Christianity teaches that in baptism we put on Christ, and He takes up residence in us. We are gradually more and more united with Him and partake of the very life of the Holy Trinity more fully, following a potentially infinite progression.

Population estimates of Baha’is are around five to six million, and the religion has seen some success among middle-class suburbanites in America. It is currently illegal in its home country of Iran, with believers figuring prominently in the Iranian diaspora.

HINDUISM

There really is no such thing as Hinduism. Essentially, Hinduism is a group label for a collection of religions and associated traditions from India that range from classically pagan—a single tribe worshiping its individual god or gods—to a kind of attenuated monotheism. Some Hindus believe in multiple gods. Others believe there is only one God, and everything is part of Him. Still others believe there is one God who may occasionally manifest Himself in various forms, avatars which have been mistaken by certain tribes as separate gods. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to define Hinduism. The word Hindu itself does not refer to any religion but rather to the region of the Indus River valley in India. In English, however, Hindu is most often used to refer to the religious traditions of that area.

Despite the great variation in Hindu beliefs and practices, there are certain common sets of belief which most Hindus share, whose origins stretch into roughly 1700–1100 BC. These beliefs are interpreted differently depending on one’s tradition or the teachings of a guru.

For most Hindus, the human soul (the atman) is eternal. For some, the soul is a part of Brahman (“God,” the universe), and so salvation consists in realizing this fact and being absorbed back into the oblivion of non-personality. For others, the one God or the gods have a personal existence and may be worshiped.

Most Hindus believe in karma, a sort of universal justice in which those who do good (dharma, roughly “order”) are rewarded, while those who do evil are punished. This justice is not necessarily the act of a god but is rather in some sense the laws of nature. Most Hindus seek to gain good karma, perhaps through good deeds or devotion to a god, so that they may experience a better life here and now or in their next incarnation. The traditional purpose of the ascetical practices of yoga, however, is to rid oneself of all karma, whether good or bad, so that one can escape the cycle of reincarnation entirely. Thus, not all Hindus have the same religious goals. It is, however, acceptable to practice more than one tradition simultaneously to pursue multiple goals.

Depending on how one defines them, there are multiple Hindu gods, called deva (male) and devi (female). Foremost among them are the Trimurti (“three forms”) of the cosmic functions of creation, preservation, and destruction/transformation, which are respectively represented by Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Other major deities include Krishna, Kali, Rama, and Ganesha. All of these deities may be depicted with super-human characteristics (such as multiple arms) or even animal features (e.g., Ganesha has the head of an elephant).

The major Hindu scriptures are the Vedas (the most ancient and said to be from Brahma himself), the Upanishads (which expound on Hindu philosophy), and the Smrti (post-Vedic texts such as the Mahabharata, which includes the Baghavad Gita). They are all written in Sanskrit, which is the ancestor of most Indian languages.

Hindu religion functions highly syncretically, with cross-pollination between different Hindu traditions happening easily. There is even such syncretism going on between Hindus and Muslims in India, in both directions.

Because the soul is immortal, it may be reincarnated into a new life, whether as a human being or as an animal. The body is therefore ultimately meaningless, and cremation is the norm for the dead, with the ashes being cast into the Ganges River to symbolize merging with the universe. Reincarnation is influenced by one’s karma, and so a truly good person may become reincarnated as a member of a higher caste in the next life. Likewise, an evil person may be reborn into a lower caste or even as an animal.

Castes since the time of Gandhi (d. 1948) have become less strictly observed, but traditionally they have been divided into Brahmin (the highest, priestly class), Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas (artisans, merchants, and farmers), Shudras (laborers), and the Dalit (untouchables, outside the good order of society). Christianity rejects caste as not reflecting the inherent worth of all human beings as made according to the image of God.

Most Hindu traditions have no problem with logical paradox, which is a similarity with Orthodoxy. Perhaps the hardest part in talking about Christ to Hindus is in showing Him to be the one, true God. Many Hindus will gladly accept Christ as yet another god or as an avatar of Brahman, because that is consistent with their religious system. The greatest difference between Hinduism and Orthodox Christianity is Orthodoxy’s particularism—the teaching that there is one God, who revealed Himself as one man, the God-man, who founded one Church, which shares one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

The pluralism of many ancient religions such as the Hindu traditions is one of the things which makes Christianity stand out so sharply by comparison. In the pagan world, Christians were persecuted precisely for their evangelistic monotheism—not only did they believe in only one God, but they thought everyone else ought to, as well. Yet this catholic embrace of all of humanity by the one true God eventually led to the triumph of Christianity over paganism. This may be one of the more difficult things to communicate to Hindus.

In terms of similarity, however, Hinduism is highly iconic (images are used to connect with the divine) and, in a sense, sacramental, with most of its religious imagery and rituals seen as participating in realities larger than the purely local. Like Orthodoxy, it is mystical in this sense.

Hinduism has become popular in the United States since the early 1970s with the introduction of gurus to America, although usually in less traditional, more watered-down forms palatable to Americans. Despite its more recent visibility, American interest in Hindu religion actually dates back at least to nineteenth-century essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. The visibility of traditional Hinduism in America has also been accelerated with significant immigration from India since the 1970s. Hindus collectively make up the world’s third largest religious grouping, with about one billion adherents.

BUDDHISM

Buddhism arose out of the Vedic traditions that were also the source of Hinduism. It is essentially a sort of philosophized version of the basic Hindu teachings. It originated at least four hundred years before the birth of Christ with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly known as the Buddha (the “Awakened One”). The Buddha himself left behind no writings, so his teachings are a collection of traditions that are believed to have originated with him.

In its essence, Buddhism is non-theist, believing in no god at all. It is therefore sometimes said to be a philosophy rather than a religion. Nonetheless, some Buddhists will in a sense worship Buddha himself as a sort of god—though said worship might be better thought of as veneration. Buddhism also has many deity-like figures, similar to Hinduism, which may be thought of as gods but also may be considered manifestations of nature or animistic spirits.

Like Hinduism, Buddhism also believes in karma, as well as the cycle of reincarnation. This cycle is called samsara, the endless experience of suffering. All of life, according to Buddhism, is suffering, and so escape from life and the cycle of rebirth is the highest goal. This escape is referred to as nirvana. Following the path of the Buddha is the only way to achieve nirvana. Those who achieve it are dispassionate, not pulled in any direction by desire. Nirvana is possible in this life, and after death, one who has achieved it is not bound by time or samsara any longer. He has been absorbed into non-distinction, his distinct personality obliterated.

The Buddha was the first boddhisatva, an enlightened person (usually human but sometimes divine) who has attained nirvana but stays behind in order to bring salvation from samsara to those who are less advanced. The Buddha is “first” in that he revealed the cycle of samsara for what it was. It is this condescension which Buddhists revere and why they ask for the intercession and help of the Buddha. There are other boddhisatvas, and among Tibetan Buddhists, the Dalai Lama is regarded as one. In a sense, these figures also function similarly to Christian saints, though of course with many exceptions.

Buddhist philosophy is summarized in what are called the Four Noble Truths:

1. The truth of Dukkha (suffering, anxiety, stress, unsatisfactoriness) is that all conditional or transient phenomena and experiences are ultimately unsatisfying.

2. The truth of the origin of Dukkha is that desire for pleasure or the rejection of pleasure result in dissatisfaction and the cycle of reincarnation (samsara).

3. The truth of the cessation of Dukkha means that the cycle of dissatisfaction and reincarnation will also cease.

4. The truth of the path of Liberation from Dukkha is that by following the Noble Eightfold Path—behaving decently, cultivating discipline, and practicing mindfulness and meditation—one can be liberated from samsara.

The first truth tells us what the problem is (suffering), while the second traces the problem to its cause (desire). The third explains the solution (ending desire), while the fourth is the method to attain the solution (the Noble Eightfold Path).

Orthodox Christians can agree with these Four Noble Truths to some extent. Certainly, our passionate desires do indeed lead to suffering, though they are not necessarily direct causes—we can experience suffering because of someone else’s desires, for instance. But we don’t believe in samsara and its cycle of reincarnation, so our goal is not to be liberated from that. Rather, the practice of virtue and asceticism of the Christian is to bring his body and his desires under control so that he can be united to God in a union without fusion. We are not seeking to lose our selves but rather for our selves to be illumined and deified by communion with God.

Buddhists traditionally believe that every man’s path is his own. Buddhism is most traditionally and fully expressed in Buddhist monasticism, where the Buddhist is free to pursue nirvana on his own, though in a communal setting. All Buddhists try to live in total moderation, neither descending into pleasure nor rejecting it entirely. There are various schools of Buddhism, which differ somewhat in their teachings as to how to achieve nirvana. Perhaps the most well known of these schools in the West is Zen Buddhism, which emphasizes experience over the study of religious texts.

As with Hinduism, there is a lot of variety in Buddhist practice even in its traditional lands. It’s common in Thailand, for instance, for young Buddhists to spend a year of young adulthood as a monastic. Many monastics will beg for sustenance, as well. Japanese Buddhist priests are likely to be married, own their own temples, and pass down their office through inheritance. Tibetans may practice sky burial (see above on Zoroastrianism), while most other Buddhists cremate. The cremated ashes of famous Buddhists are often enshrined in a stupa, a shrine for veneration. Buddhists also have a reputation for non-violence and vegetarianism, but neither is universal throughout traditional practice.

Orthodoxy shares certain things in parallel with Buddhism that are largely absent from some or most Western Christianity, such as the emphasis on universal asceticism and dispassion, as well as the veneration of saints (including pilgrimages), prayer for the dead, and compassion for all living things. However, the purpose of Orthodox asceticism is not to be released from this world, but rather to bring the body under the soul’s rule, reoriented toward Christ. Further, Orthodox dispassion is practiced in communion rather than detachment. Finally, salvation in Orthodoxy is not the attainment of non-self, but rather the full realization of self in communion with God and mankind.

Buddhism has two major branches, Mahayana and Theravada, with a third smaller branch called Vajrayana, roughly arranged geographically into eastern, southern, and northern Buddhism, respectively. Mahayana and Theravada differ on which texts are considered canonical scripture—Theravada accepts only what is called the Pali Canon (Pali is the language spoken by the Buddha’s earliest followers). Theravada also makes a strong distinction between monks, whose role is to meditate toward enlightenment, and laymen, who focus on doing good deeds. Mahayana is a broader category that represents nearly everything non-Theravada, with a lot of regional variations.

One noteworthy variant on Mahayana is “Pure Land” Buddhism, which is the main form in China, whose hope is that followers may be reincarnated into the Pure Land, essentially a form of heaven where people are essentially immortal and conditions for attaining enlightenment are ideal. Another is Zen Buddhism, which is austere and encourages meditation without images or focusing on koans, which are paradoxical anecdotes or riddles. Tibetan Buddhism is another form of Mahayana, and it was strongly influenced by both Hindu traditions and also Bön, the indigenous Tibetan religion. It focuses especially on complicated rituals to attain enlightenment.

There are about 500 million Buddhists in the world, centered in Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The largest populations are in China, Thailand, Japan, and Myanmar (Burma). (In practice, most Japanese Buddhists are nearly secular.)

JAINISM

Perhaps the most religiously pacifistic people in the world are the Jains of eastern India, who number more than four million believers. Jainism is similar to Hinduism in its belief in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls from one lifetime to another. As an organized faith, it developed around the same time as Buddhism, possibly between the ninth and sixth centuries BC, although its adherents regard the faith as being eternal. Jain life is centered around the principle of non-violence, which is attained primarily through asceticism and detachment from physical reality.

Jains believe that every living being (not just humans) has an uncreated, eternal soul, which has the potential to develop into divinity (one who does so is called a siddha). Jainism also teaches the doctrine of karma, and every being is regarded as responsible for its own fate, based on its own actions. Like Buddhism and Yogin Hinduism, Jainism’s goal is enlightenment and liberation (moksh or nirvan) from the cycle of rebirth through the shedding of all karma. When that happens, the soul is freed from earthly life and attains divine consciousness, which grants it infinite knowledge, power, vision, and bliss; thus it becomes a siddha. Karma is laid aside not by inaction or apathy (as in some forms of Buddhism), but by virtuous living, particularly non-violence. The path to liberation is through right faith (or vision), right knowledge, and right conduct, the “triple gems” of Jainism. It is also critical that followers learn to control their senses and minds, since these pull them away from the path of liberation.

Twenty-four souls who reached enlightenment are referred to as tirthankar (or jina), teachers who pass on the beliefs of Jainism (similar to the Hindu guru). The last such tirthankar was Mahavira, who is the one who set out the tenets of Jainism. Tirthankar literally means “ford-maker,” because these people make it possible for human beings to ford across the “river of human misery,” which comes from violence. Mahavira was the twenty-fourth in a line of the tirthankara, the first of whom was Rishabha. Together, these two are the founders of Jainism as it is now practiced.

The tirthankara, along with all teachers, Jain monastics (sadhu, a term also used in Hinduism and Buddhism), and enlightened beings who have passed on, are highly revered by Jains, and it is believed that this veneration will help to grant knowledge of what they attained to believers. All of these divine people are venerated particularly in the recitation of the namokar mantra, a repetitive prayer in which the believer bows before these persons, though not by name.

Jains do not believe in any supreme being. In some sense all of nature is divine (pantheism), and of course individual souls may become divine (though only after becoming human first). Jainism is therefore in some sense a polytheistic system.

Jain monastics dedicate themselves to non-violence (ahimsa), truth (satya), non-stealing (asteya), chastity (brahmachanga), and non-possessiveness (aparigraha). In their worship at shrines and temples, Jains bow before images of the tirthankara or other enlightened souls, and they may also recite mantras and other prayers, as well as anointing the images of the enlightened. There are two major sects of Jainism, the Shvetambaras (“white-clad”) and Digambaras (“sky-clad,” so-called because their monastics go naked).

Non-violence is the central virtue of Jain life, and some Jain monastics wear masks to prevent accidentally inhaling an insect or microbe. Some may not even eat vegetables (regarding them as having souls), but will ingest only fruit, nuts, and milk. Advanced practitioners will ritually starve themselves to death.

There is much in Jain belief and practice that is similar to Orthodox Christianity, such as the stress on not harming others, learning to control the mind and senses, giving up possessions in order to focus on what is most needful, and not indulging in pleasures. Likewise, the Orthodox believe that human beings may become divinized by proper living. However, the Jain understanding of these things is incomplete because there is no personal God for whom and with whom these things are done. Divinization for Orthodoxy means union and communion with God, not ascendance through one’s own virtues to a place of enlightenment.

Orthodoxy also rejects reincarnation, as noted earlier, and we do not believe that souls transmigrate from one being to another, especially not from humans to animals or plants. Human souls are unique and have only one lifetime on earth, which is given to them for repentance. There is only one God, the Holy Trinity.

Aside from the main Jain presence in India, there are also many Jains living in the West, including about 100,000 in the United States. Conversion to Jainism is not possible, and in some ways the community functions more like an ethnic group than a religion, with many adherents not really having any clear sense of what the religion teaches.

SIKHISM

Sikhism represents a kind of hybrid between Islam and Hinduism formed in sixteenth-century northern India, centered today in the Indian state of Punjab—almost all Sikhs are Punjabi. Like Islam, Sikhism is strongly monotheistic. Like Sunni Islam, it also forbids the representation of God in images or bowing down before them. Another inheritance from Islam is an emphasis on the equality of all human beings. Sikhs reject the caste system of their neighboring Hindus.

Like Hinduism, however, Sikhs believe in reincarnation and define ultimate salvation in terms common to some Hindus and most Buddhists—escape from the cycle of rebirth. Salvation is possible only through rigorous discipline and devotion to God, although not through separation from the world as in monasticism or the hermits of the Hindu yogi tradition. Salvation is attained through an internal struggle in the heart—outward rituals, pilgrimages, and so forth are ultimately irrelevant. Salvation finally consists in absorption into God.

Sikh religious authority rests with a series of ten gurus who lived and taught during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The “final guru” of Sikhism is the Guru Granth Sahib, also known as the Adi Granth, which is not a person but the Sikh scripture. Like Islam, Sikhism believes in the establishment of a theocratic state.

Orthodoxy shares with Sikhs the emphasis on the human heart as the locus of true spiritual work but sees physical rituals as being part of the training of the heart. Further, salvation for the Orthodox is union and communion with God, not fusion with Him.

Sikhs are often recognizable by their long beards and hair. Their religion generally forbids cutting the hair, so the men bind it up in a turban to keep it out of the way, which makes them distinctively recognizable in the West. Many Sikh men and women have the same religious last name, Singh for men, meaning “tiger,” and Kaur for women, meaning “princess.” There are roughly 30 million Sikhs in the world, most of them living in Punjab in northern India. The word Sikh itself means “student.”

SHINTO AND OTHER ANIMISM

Shinto is a traditional Japanese religion and was once Japan’s state religion. Prior to the Meiji restoration in 1868, Shinto was a scattered collection of traditions, often with shrines attached to Buddhist temples. (Buddhism was the state religion of Japan for centuries.) At that point, it was codified by the state and systematized to form a distinctly Japanese religion.

Shinto is a type of animism and is therefore, in a sense, polytheistic. Animism itself is the belief that there are spirits in plants, animals, places, and even other humans that are worthy of worship or veneration. Animist spirits do not usually rise to the level of gods, however. Some such spirits are considered purely local, while others are of a more universal character. Animists may believe in spirits that are connected with particular families, who could be the souls of dead ancestors. Although it is animist in its basic makeup, Shinto has been influenced by the philosophy of Confucianism and also by Buddhism. For many believers, following both Shinto and Buddhism is seen as perfectly acceptable, and two different altars, one dedicated to each faith, may be found in a home.

This dual approach is quite common in Japan. It is common, for instance, to have a Shinto wedding and a Buddhist funeral, though this may be more practical than anything, since Buddhists don’t conduct weddings and Shinto don’t conduct funerals. And some temples in Japan are confusingly both Buddhist and Shinto, depending on how rituals are interpreted.

Westerners who visit Japan are most likely to encounter Shinto customs via matsuri, festivals where the local shrine is brought out for processions, accompanied by food, ritual dancing, etc. It is a distinctly tribal, local phenomenon. While non-Japanese may sometimes be allowed to participate in such rituals, it is mainly out of politeness, and Shinto identity is fully Japanese. One cannot convert. Japanese nationalist groups also strongly emphasize Shinto identity.

Shinto believers have a strong reverence for family and tradition. Family is the primary mechanism by which traditions are preserved, and many rituals are connected with key family events, such as birth, death, and marriage. Practitioners also have a strong reverence for the natural world because of their belief in the spirits that inhabit it, which they call kami. To be close to nature is thus to be close to the kami. It is believed that every physical thing has its own kami, even mundane objects such as rocks. There are also kami for groups, such as a universal kami for all trees.

The religion places an emphasis on physical and ritual purity, which, if not observed, can disturb peace of mind and cause misfortune, possibly due to having offended a kami. This pursuit of cleanliness is not understood in an ethical sense, but rather in practical terms—if you want a peaceful and good life, you should be clean. Purification rituals are thus one of the major components of Shinto, and they may be performed for various reasons, such as placating an offended kami whose shrine had to be moved.

Shrines are rebuilt periodically—utterly destroyed and rebuilt. (The Ise Grand Shrine, for instance, is fully rebuilt every twenty years.) Shrines also often have a central sanctuary that is forbidden to all but the ritually pure or specific ritual individuals, such as the Japanese emperor or a celebrant. Large shrines also usually have a corps of young women who are responsible for cleaning, ritual preparations, and certain dances. Purity rituals often involve water—dippers and pools feature prominently—and may even include sake (Japanese rice wine). The primary activity at shrines is divination of various kinds.

Those who follow both Shinto and Buddhism may believe in reincarnation and may interpret the kami as supernatural beings who are somehow caught in the cycle of rebirth.

Orthodox Christianity has a number of things in common with Shinto and other animistic faiths, most especially a reverence for nature. Like the Orthodox, Shinto priests will hold blessing rituals for homes, new businesses, groundbreakings, and so forth. Orthodox Christians, however, do not reverence nature because of a belief in spirits dwelling in various objects, but because we regard the whole creation as a gift from God, meant to be offered to Him in sacrifice. He then returns that creation to us as a means of salvation and sanctification, most especially in the Eucharist, but also in all other things that are offered to God for His blessing.

Orthodoxy also shares Shinto’s high regard for family and tradition, though not for their own sake or for the sake of personal fulfillment. Shinto practitioners, like the Orthodox, do not see themselves as isolated individuals, but rather as persons who are part of a whole, connected with an ancient tradition and having a duty to that tradition. But for the Orthodox, all is referenced back to the one true God, the Holy Trinity.

Shinto is also similar to Orthodoxy in its insistence that truth is not known primarily through the rational intellect, but rather through faith and experience.

There are ultimately many kinds of animism, which is a general term for polytheistic paganism with an emphasis on local nature spirits. Shinto is one of the more developed varieties, whose identity eventually enveloped a whole nation—unlike most animist religions elsewhere in the world, which remain primarily tribal.

CAO DAI

Caodaism is a monotheistic syncretic religion originating in Vietnam. The religion was founded in the Vietnamese city of Tay Ninh in 1926. Cao Dai is their name for the highest deity, who created the universe and who is worshiped by Caodaists. While followers worship Cao Dai, whose primary symbol is the Left Eye of God, they also worship a Queen Mother, whose feminine yin is said to balance the masculine yang of Cao Dai himself (the counterbalancing concept of “yin and yang” is borrowed from Chinese philosophy).

Most Vietnamese (45 percent) follow a variety of animist folk religion with elements from Confucian philosophy. Caodaism is in a sense a form of this religion, though it has incorporated elements from Catholicism and Buddhism, as well as pieces from a number of other world religions. Caodaism is the third largest organized religion in Vietnam (after Buddhism and Roman Catholicism), with roughly six million members, representing about five percent of the Vietnamese population. Most adherents are in Vietnam, though there is a scattered membership in the Vietnamese diaspora.

Ngo Van Chieu, a district head of the French administration in Vietnam, was said from 1921 to have received a revelation of the Left Eye of God. He was the first to worship Cao Dai and to receive messages from the deity. The Left Eye symbol figures prominently in Caodaist temples and is the focus at their altars. The full title of Cao Dai himself is Cao Dai Tien Ong Dai Bo Tat Ma Ha Tat, which includes titles from Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.

In addition to the divine pair of Cao Dai and the Queen Mother, Caodaists also believe in a twelve-fold hierarchy of divine spirits, which are divided into four main categories—angels, saints, immortals, and Buddhas. These spirits are all venerated, and somewhat interestingly, a number of the saints are figures well-known to Westerners, such as Catholic saint Joan of Arc, who is said to have guided the foundation of Caodaism via séances, as well as English playwright William Shakespeare and French novelist Victor Hugo. Hugo’s interest in spiritism was especially attractive to early Caodaists, and they believed that he had predicted the religion’s rise.

Creation was accomplished by Cao Dai through dividing his spirit and rearranging it into matter and all existing creatures. (This cosmogony is similar to most paganism, in which creation comes from the being of an existing god, though with pagans, it is usually a mother-goddess.) In a sense, therefore, everything is uncreated—both Cao Dai himself and all creation are of the same one nature.

Caodaists divide history into three periods. The first began in roughly 2500 BC, when Cao Dai inspired the creation of Judaism in the Middle East, Hinduism in India, and the philosophies of transformation that arose in China. Later, he also inspired the creation of Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, and Confucianism. The third period began in 1926, with the founding of Caodaism, which is a universal truth which makes up for what is lacking in all other religions. Caodaism believes that, ultimately, all religions are one, despite their clearly contradicting differences.

In terms of its goals, Caodaism is similar to Buddhism in that it seeks freedom from samsara, the cycle of reincarnation, as well as union with Cao Dai. Given the many enlightened spirits associated with Caodaism, however, union with the divine is not as it is in Hinduism or Buddhism, which involves the abolition of the individual self. Rather, the goal seems to be more like the Orthodox theosis, in which there is union without fusion. Unlike in Orthodoxy, however, the enlightenment of the soul is through a series of successive incarnations, via karmic law.

Caodaist worship involves prayer, the offering of incense, flowers, wine, and tea. Prayers are offered to Cao Dai himself but also to the various other spirits recognized by the faith. The ceremonies of the religion are believed to have been revealed directly by Cao Dai. Revelation in Caodaism is ongoing, with revelations typically received as prayers in verse form.

Structurally, the titles of Cao Dai leaders are quite similar to Roman Catholicism—there is a pope, as well as cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and priests, with each rank limited to a certain number. Any of these positions may be occupied by either men or women. The central church in the religion is in Tay Ninh and is referred to as the Holy See—the same title for the Roman Catholic Vatican.

In addition to the main Cao Dai group based in Tay Ninh, there are a few smaller, breakaway groups that also follow the religion, divided roughly geographically in Vietnam.

MODERN WESTERN RELIGIONS

In the middle and at the end of the twentieth century, a fascination with Far Eastern religions and with faiths that had long since died grew in the West, particularly in the United States. This fascination is what Fr. Seraphim Rose refers to as “Vitalism” in one of his books (Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age). Vitalism is essentially the pursuit of almost anything spiritual or philosophical that appears to have authenticity, most especially something hallowed by antiquity or by exotic foreignness. It is a form of nihilism, because one of the key elements of the Vitalistic impulse is that there is no one, universal, absolute truth. Rather, there is only what is true “for me” or “for you.”

Before we discuss these revivals or reinventions of ancient or foreign religions, however, we will look at two syncretic religions that found their fullest expressions in the modern West—Santeria and Rastafarianism. Both include elements of Christianity within them, though their essential foundation is different. They represent appropriations of Christian imagery, not offshoots from Christian communities.

And finally, we will also discuss Scientology, an organization that calls itself a church but has nothing to do with Christianity nor any ancient or foreign religion. It is the invention of a science fiction writer.

Santeria

Arising from the Caribbean, Santeria is a syncretic religion developed by descendants of the West African slaves brought there by the Spanish empire. It combines the Yoruba folk religion of southwest Nigeria and neighboring Benin with elements from Roman Catholicism and native religious traditions of the New World.

It is difficult to date the beginning of Santeria exactly, but it may have begun as early as 1515 in Cuba. Many of the slaves that had been brought to the New World were baptized as Catholics by their Spanish masters, but they retained the basic shape of their religion, which was based on animistic African traditions, including animal sacrifice, ancestor worship, and divination. In order to prevent their native religion from being suppressed, some of these people adopted the outward forms of Catholicism while keeping their native religious system intact.

The term santeria commonly refers to the worship of saints, and this is the most prominent feature of the religion. The native deities of the Yoruba (called orichás) were identified with Catholic saints. Practitioners will often use the terms saint and orichá interchangeably. Thus, when slaves appeared to be celebrating saints’ feast days in the Spanish plantations of the Caribbean, the rituals aimed toward the orichás were effectively hidden. Orichás are powerful spirits who are nonetheless mortal and require worship in order to continue to exist.

Santeria exists alongside Catholicism in a number of Spanish-speaking communities in the Caribbean and the United States. Santeria practitioners typically are baptized Catholics, and priests and priestesses (santeros and santeras, respectively) usually require Catholic baptism from initiates. Santeros will set up their own shrines for conducting worship, a casa de santos (“house of saints”), which double as homes for the santeros.

Santeria is essentially non-creedal, defined more by its rituals than by doctrines. The rituals continue with the same general outline we mentioned above, with sacrifice (usually of chickens) and divination featuring prominently, often expressed with sacred drumming and dance, as well as with herbs, charms, and potions. The goal of these rituals may be forgiveness of sin or obtaining good fortune. There are numerous local house traditions that vary considerably, and its practice is typically private and within families.

Despite its inclusion of Catholic saints and even baptism, there is little that Santeria proper shares in common with Christianity. Its basic dynamic is still pagan, with prayers and sacrifices being used to manipulate divine forces to one’s own benefit.

Counting Santeria practitioners is very difficult, as there is no organization that can speak for the religion as a whole. Some estimates put their worldwide number as large as 100 million, with perhaps as many as 30,000 in the United States. Most followers are centered in the Spanish-speaking regions of the Americas, especially in Cuba and in Puerto Rico.

Rastafarianism

Rastafari is a religion that developed in Jamaica in the 1930s, centered around worshiping the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as a divine messiah, the second incarnation of God the Father, the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth. While it does function as a religion, its vagueness on doctrine is likely due to its primary character as a black Caribbean identity movement, which developed partly under the influence of Jamaican political leader Marcus Garvey, who promoted black nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

Haile Selassie, who is said to be descended directly from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, is seen by Rastafarians as a messiah who will lead the peoples of Africa and the African diaspora to freedom in Zion, which is identified as Ethiopia (a designation transferred from Jerusalem). The term Rastafari comes from part of the ducal regnal name of Haile Selassie (born Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael) prior to his coronation as emperor—Ras Tafari Makonnen.

Rastafarians refer to God as Jah, derived from the Hebrew Yah, which is usually expressed with the name Yahweh. They also use Jah to refer to Haile Selassie. They also confess belief in the Trinity, though their theology regarding the three divine Persons is not very developed, with an emphasis more on the meaning of the name Haile Selassie, which was given to the emperor when he was baptized and means “power of the Trinity.” As such, it is probably not correct to see Rastafarians as truly Trinitarian, even if only because of their identification of Haile Selassie as divine.

In some ways, Rastafari religion reflects its relationship with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which is one of the churches of Oriental Orthodoxy that broke from the mainstream Orthodox Church in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451). But there are also many differences, such as the sacramental smoking of cannabis (marijuana), which often accompanies Bible reading, used when seeking inspiration from Jah. Positive references to herbs or vegetation in the Scriptures are interpreted to refer to cannabis.

Rastafarians may also be vegetarians, adhering to a diet called ital, which emphasizes natural eating and rejects processed foods. They are also known for growing their hair into long, matted dreadlocks, which symbolize the Lion of Judah, an image closely associated with Haile Selassie.

Haile Selassie publicly denied being in any way divine—though that denial is doubted or reinterpreted by some Rastafari. He was, by all accounts, a faithful member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church throughout his life, and at one point he sent an Ethiopian archbishop to the Caribbean to try to draw Rastafarians into the church. After the emperor’s death in 1975, some Rastafarians doubted whether he was dead, and most avoided his official funeral services.

Rastafarianism is not a tightly organized religion and has many mansions (a reference to John 14:2: “In My Father’s house are many mansions”), which function in some ways like denominations in the movement. There are also many independent practitioners not associated with any mansion.

One of the better-known Rastafarians is reggae musician Bob Marley, who was a member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel Mansion. He is still associated with Rastafarianism in the public mind, despite having been baptized into the Ethiopian church just months before his death from cancer in 1981. He was buried by the church.

The distinctives of Rastafarianism have little in common with the Orthodox Christian faith, though the Orthodox can certainly appeal to the connection of Rastafarians to one of the historic Christian churches. Their claim that Haile Selassie is divine is probably the most problematic of their beliefs, though his denial of that divinity is a good starting point.

Neo-Gnosticism

One of the forms of Vitalist religious pursuit is neo-gnosticism. Like the ancient gnostics who distanced themselves from the Church, the new gnostics also see themselves as having a special, elite revelation that average people cannot understand. Their actual beliefs vary widely, and perhaps the primary thing most of them share is an aversion to Christianity, especially in its Western forms. Most of these gnostics are isolated individuals who have discovered certain attractive teachings in a book or on the Internet. Few actually practice in religious communities, though there are gnostic societies. Sociologically, neo-gnosticism is especially attractive to academics and many who see themselves as intellectual elites.

These gnostics see themselves as contemplatives and may draw upon mystical practices and beliefs from multiple religious traditions that may otherwise contradict each other. Because of neo-gnostics’ religious elitism, critics may be dismissed as simply incapable of understanding the esoteric truths that the gnostics have discovered.

Neo-gnosticism, like its ancient counterpart, is usually dualistic, seeing the goal of spiritual life as becoming free of physical captivity. How this manifests itself may vary—some gnostics may be sharply ascetical, like a Hindu yogi, attempting to be free of the body. Others may instead embrace gross physical immorality, believing that what one does with the body is spiritually irrelevant.

Like the ancient gnostics, neo-gnostics stand in opposition to one of the basic truths of Orthodox Christianity, that the one God became man to save all of mankind. If gnostics do believe in Jesus, He is probably not God to them, but perhaps only a sort of intermediary connecting them to ultimate divine reality (a belief that resembles both ancient gnosticism and certain heretical Christian groups). The spiritual elitism of neo-gnosticism is also a very different sort of religion from the faith that Jesus Christ gave to the apostles and through them to all mankind, a faith in which all are loved equally and fully by God.

Neo-Paganism and Wicca

Like neo-gnosticism, neo-paganism also varies considerably in terms of its beliefs and practices. The primary concept behind neo-paganism is that it is a revival of ancient religious life. It may be polytheistic, animistic, pantheistic, or otherwise. Neo-pagans may believe they are legitimately new followers of these ancient faiths, although in many cases we have scant evidence as to what such religions actually looked like or what their rituals were. Most neo-pagan faiths are actually reconstructions, reimagined creations based on what modern practitioners think the religions used to be like. Most followers are converts from Western Christian denominations.

Unlike their neo-gnostic counterparts, neo-pagans have a strong belief in the centrality of the physical world in their religious life. Many may worship nature itself or nature spirits. The basic goals of neo-paganism are like those of ancient paganism, namely, the pursuit of personal self-fulfillment and profit through religious acts.

The largest and most popular form of neo-paganism is Wicca, though many Wiccans would not classify themselves as neo-pagans. The word Wicca is a term from Old English that referred to witchcraft. (Wicca, whose double “c” is pronounced in Old English as soft “ch,” is the origin of the modern English word witch.) Many Wiccans regard themselves as practicing an ancient religion, but its modern form was introduced in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British customs officer, and is based on the writings of nineteenth-century occultist Aleister Crowley. The primary activity of Wicca is in the study and casting of spells, and Wiccans may organize themselves into covens of witches and warlocks, though many are solitary in their practice. They may refer to their religion as “practicing the Craft.”

Adherence to higher, universal truth is not the usual goal. As one Wiccan I read put it, “The only way to be a true follower of Gerald Gardner, my friends, is to have the guts to create a religion for yourself that meets your own needs” (Aidan Kelly, “Why Wicca is a Major World Religion,” Including Paganism, June 16, 2012).

Most Wiccans are ditheistic, believing in both a “God” and “Goddess,” who are both closely identified with nature. Some may believe only in the “Goddess.” Wicca and other forms of neo-paganism are often found among young women (usually disenchanted with Christianity), and the “mother goddess” image was a major part of a number of ancient pagan religions. Feminist philosophy and politics sometimes accompanies such religious emphases.

Orthodox share with neo-pagans a love of nature, though for quite different reasons—we see the presence of God within nature, not nature as inherently divine. Orthodoxy also offers neo-pagans something that was probably absent from their previous religious experience—a mystical tradition with a strongly physical side. Ultimately, though, the religion of neo-paganism must be understood as St. Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 10:20: “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons.” Neo-pagans and Wiccans may well be playing with forces they do not understand.

The basic Wiccan ethical affirmation is neutrality, expressed in this motto: “If it harm none, do what thou wilt.” This is a sort of libertarian philosophy, which is attractive to many in the West. Do whatever you like, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. Of course, this is a highly individualistic understanding of human society. The Orthodox would contrast Wiccan morality with the far superior ethical urging of St. Augustine: “Love, and do what thou wilt.”

The varieties of neo-paganism that are not associated with Wicca usually focus on some god or pantheon of gods from pagan religion, such as from ancient Greece (the Olympian gods), Germany or Scandinavia (known as Asatru or Heathenry/Heathenism), or the British Isles (Celtic or Druid). Like Wiccans, neo-pagans will often claim to be following the same religion as those ancient pagans.

The literary and archaeological evidence of those ancient religions show a rather different sort of religious practice, however, typically centered on ritual animal sacrifice. One particularly notable difference between ancient paganism and neo-paganism is that the latter usually draw their ethics from the inheritance of Christianity. Ancient pagans, for instance, did not believe in equal rights for all, and they had no sense that all human life—especially the lives of women or children—was inherently valuable.

It is hard to count practitioners, but there may be as many as 1 to 3 million Wiccans and other neo-pagans in the world, some of them united in denominational organizations. Other estimates put them at fewer than 150,000. Another estimate puts the number at 6 million, with 600,000 initiated witches in America. That said, there is no systematic way of counting how many people practice these religions, and since there is no good self-reporting from related organizations, any figures are little more than wild guesses.

Scientology

Scientology is a religion founded in California in 1954 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. As a religion, Scientology is mainly represented by the official Church of Scientology, although there are minor groups that have broken off. Whether Scientology is a religion or not is a matter of some debate. It describes itself as “applied religious philosophy,” having little to say about God and mainly focusing on personal self-fulfillment.

Scientology teaches that “Man is a spiritual being endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally envisions. He is not only able to solve his own problems, accomplish his goals and gain lasting happiness, but also to achieve new states of awareness he may never have dreamed possible” (Church of Scientology, “What is Scientology?” http://www.scientology.org/faq/what-is-scientology.html). It bears some resemblance to certain New Thought ideas (see chapter eight).

Scientology’s basic teachings are outlined in Hubbard’s book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and are essentially a form of psychotherapy retooled in religious terms. Scientologists undergo a process known as “auditing” in which past experiences are recounted with another Scientologist in a one-on-one session. The person being “audited” is hooked up with electrodes to a machine called an “E-meter” that passes a low-level electrical current through the body. This process, Scientology says, helps to render a person “clear” of bad decisions and transgressions in life. Everything said by the person being “audited” is carefully recorded and stored in Scientology files.

As Scientologists progress deeper into the religion, they are said to reach higher and higher states of spiritual awareness and gain abilities they didn’t know they had. Each level requires larger and larger donations by members to the organization.

Scientology teaches that all evil that resides in a person is the result of the alien presence of “thetans,” the souls of extra-terrestrial beings. These thetans came to Earth 75 million years ago when an extra-terrestrial galactic overlord named Xenu brought them here and stacked them around volcanoes. Xenu then set off a series of hydrogen bombs, making the volcanoes explode and sending the thetans careening all over the planet.

One of the more telling quotes from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was uttered in 1949 (as reported by writer and publisher Lloyd Arthur Eshbach): “I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is.” And in speaking of his career as a science fiction writer, he said, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion” (quoted in the Los Angeles Times, August 27, 1978). He is quoted as saying similar things on multiple occasions from the 1940s up to his death in 1986.

Hubbard was not very successful as a science fiction writer, but he was able to put his inventiveness to more profitable use when he created Scientology, which besides its bizarre teachings about human nature and salvation, also teaches that humans evolved from clams. (A popular anti-Scientology website is named “Operation Clambake.”)

For many reasons, but most especially because involvement with the organization is not free of charge, Scientology’s status as a religion has been questioned, and in some countries it has been officially blacklisted by the government. Those who reveal its inner teachings to the public are often viciously pursued by Scientology lawyers and spokesmen, as are those who criticize Scientology publicly, especially former members.

As an example, former Scientologist Leah Remini (a Hollywood celebrity, like a number of adherents) has become a target for Scientology since her departure from the religion. Her mother became involved in Scientology when Remini was seven years old, and they came to live in Scientology housing, where Remini experienced a harsh, controlling childhood. Remini publicly denounced Scientology in 2015 in an interview with ABC News. The controlling behavior she remembered from childhood extended into her adulthood, as well, with her getting “written up” for having made a mildly negative remark in private to prominent Scientologist Tom Cruise. Members are encouraged to report on each other for bad behavior. Remini said that she filed such “Knowledge Reports” even on her own husband multiple times.

In its official response to her interview, Scientology claimed that she had been expelled from the organization, and that she was merely repeating myths that had been promulgated by other ex-members, saying that she was “now joined at the hip with this collection of deadbeats, admitted liars, self-admitted perjurers, wife beaters and worse” (“Leah Remini on Her Break With the Church of Scientology: ‘I Wanted to Be The One to Say It,’” ABC News, October 30, 2015).

The differences from Orthodoxy should be fairly obvious, but one particularly worth pointing out is that the whole religion is geared toward a totally self-centered manner of life. This approach, along with the secrecy and elitism of the higher levels of the organization, is probably what attracts so many celebrities—who are treated rather differently from rank-and-file members. In turn, the high profiles of celebrity Scientologists, such as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Kirstie Alley, help to attract others to the organization. Cruise in particular has been a major force in promoting Scientology and has a vast influence in the group.

Scientology claims to have millions of members, but its actual membership probably numbers only in the tens of thousands.

CARGO CULTS

One of the lesser-known religious movements in the world is the cargo cult, which does not refer to any one religion but is a generic term for a kind of religious practice that arose in the twentieth century in Melanesia, an island region to the northeast of Australia. Cargo cults formed as a result of contact with colonial cultures who arrived on the islands, often replacing the native religious traditions.

The basic shape of a cargo cult works like this: Colonial visitors set up an airport on a small island. The native peoples observe the colonials’ cargo being brought in by planes, delivering food, supplies, etc. After the colonials leave, the native people set up their own “airport,” complete with a landing strip and control tower, manned by people dressed similarly to the personnel they saw at the real airport. Their own airport personnel wave their arms and behave like what they saw from the colonials. All of this is understood in a sense to be the elements of a magical incantation that will also attract planes to bring cargo to the island.

The most famous of cargo cults is the John Frum cult, centered on a figure by that name, which arose on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu (then known as the New Hebrides) in the 1930s. John Frum was understood as a divine figure, often appearing as an American serviceman, who would lead the island people to wealth when the white colonials would vacate Vanuatu and leave behind all their possessions. The name “John Frum” is sometimes said to be a corruption of “John from America” (or perhaps other points of origin).

In the 1940s during World War II, some 300,000 American servicemen were located on Vanuatu. After their departure, John Frum followers built landing strips to try to attract cargo planes.

Although the attraction of cargo is what identifies cargo cults in the popular mind, what they tend to share in common is a millenarianism focused on the liberation of native peoples after the departure of colonial powers. In this, there is a similar expectation to the messianic theology of both Judaism and Christianity. Such millenarian movements among subjugated peoples extends back at least to 1885, when a movement of that sort arose in Fiji under British colonial rule.

Cargo cults are of course not a significant religious movement in terms of their numbers, but they are sometimes held up by religious anthropologists as being the key to what actually creates religion—a primitive population misunderstanding some phenomenon, perhaps experiencing oppressive conditions and then building a ritual system around those experiences. Given enough time, such cults may develop into more complex theological systems and world religions.

As a theory of religion, this makes some sense in terms of the basic religious psychology of human beings. But it does not explain the rise of Christianity, which is not based on muddled interpretation of difficult phenomena by a primitive people. Rather, in both its Jewish inheritance and the Christian covenant, the worship of the one true God is based on direct revelation to people living in sophisticated civilizations and corroborated by multiple, reliable witnesses. And in the case of Christianity, numerous eyewitnesses all went to their deaths insisting on a key piece of revelation—that they had seen Jesus Christ alive after a very public death. So while there are some things we can recognize in cargo cults that tells us something about human nature, they don’t serve to explain the appearance of the worship of the one true God.

CONCLUSIONS

In Seeds of the Word: Orthodox Thinking on Other Religions, Fr. John Garvey makes an important distinction between religious tolerance and religious compromise, as well as between firm religious belief and religious violence. These distinctions may be blurred in today’s world, which is often marked by a relativistic religious pluralism as well as religiously motivated terrorism. Nevertheless, the sober-minded Christian must keep both these distinctions in mind, firmly knowing and practicing the Christian faith while also authentically loving others. Garvey also makes the point that St. Justin Martyr made in the second century, namely, that while we believe that Orthodox Christianity is the fullness of God’s revelation to mankind, Orthodox Christians nevertheless also believe that God is working in all people throughout all of history. That work will manifest itself in a number of ways, including within other religions. I think we can learn from other religious traditions. I say this as an individual person writing to other individuals. The Church, which includes Christ as Head and chief member, does not have any learning to do in itself, because God has revealed Himself within His Church, leading the apostles into all truth (John 16:13). There is nothing else that needs to be taught to the Church other than what it received from Christ.

Yet each of us as Christians working out our salvation in fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12) can come to knowledge of Christ by many means. The clearest and most direct way is within the Church, but a Christian functioning within the Church may be exposed to the Church’s truth even outside its visible boundaries. Each of us therefore needs to remain open to transformation and personal change, because none of us here on earth has yet attained the fullness of salvation (Phil. 3:12). But because all truth is God’s truth—after all, Truth is Christ (John 14:6)—whatever truth we encounter is ultimately not a contradiction to the Orthodox faith but rather an expression of it. If it seems to contradict the faith, then we have misunderstood either what we have encountered or the faith itself; or else we have mistaken falsehood for truth.

All of this should add up to humility for each of us, especially when we encounter people who believe and practice other faiths. Some religious groups, such as the Church of Scientology, may strike us as ridiculous, but in relating to actual people, we need to keep in mind that all people are created according to Christ, the image of the invisible God (Gen. 1:27; Col. 1:15). That means all of them are meant for communion with Him, and all are deserving of our love, honor, and respect. The best approach to bringing the fullness of the Gospel to people of other faiths is to affirm what we have in common and to expand on that common truth to reveal the wholeness of Orthodoxy, offering up gentle corrections if need be. Even Scientology, as foreign as it is to Christianity, shares a basic belief in the brokenness of mankind and his need for healing.

May God grant us humility, patience, and love as we seek to deepen our own experience of salvation and to bring that experience to others.

EPILOGUE

Relations with the Non-Orthodox

We need investigation and conversation in matters of theological disputation so that compelling and conspicuous arguments may be considered. Profound benefit is gained from such conversation, if the objective is not altercation but truth, and if the motive is not solely to triumph over others. Inspired by grace and bound by love, our goal is to discover the truth, and we should never lose sight of this, even when the pursuit is prolonged. Let us listen amicably so that our loving exchange might contribute to consensus. (St. Mark of Ephesus, Patrologia Orientalis XV [Brepols, 1990], 108–109)

I do not presume to call false any church which believes that Jesus is the Christ. The Christian Church can only be either purely true, confessing the true and saving Divine teaching without the false admixtures and pernicious opinions of men, or not purely true, mixing with the true and saving teaching of faith in Christ the false and pernicious opinions of men. . . . You expect now that I should give judgment concerning the other half of contemporary Christianity, but I do no more than simply look out upon them; in part I see how the Head and Lord of the Church heals the many deep wounds caused by the old serpent in all the parts and limbs of this body, applying now gentle, now strong, remedies, even fire and iron, in order to soften hardness, to draw out poison, to cleanse the wounds, to separate out malignant growths, to restore spirit and life in the half-dead and numbed structures. In such wise I attest my faith that in the end the power of God will evidently triumph over human weakness, good over evil, unity over division, life over death. (Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, Conversation between the Seeker and the Believer Concerning the Orthodoxy of the Eastern Greco-Russian Church, Moscow 1833, 27–29, 135)

For we are not seeking victory, but to gain brethren, by whose separation from us we are torn. This we concede to you in whom we do find something of vital truth, who are sound as to the Son. We admire your life, but we do not altogether approve your doctrine. . . . I will even utter the Apostle’s wish. So much do I cling to you, and so much do I revere your array, and the colour of your continence, and those sacred assemblies, and the august virginity, and purification, and the psalmody that lasts all night and your love of the poor, and of the brethren, and of strangers, that I could consent to be anathema from Christ, and even to suffer something as one condemned, if only you might stand beside us, and we might glorify the Trinity together. (St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration 41, 8)

In the course of this book, we have examined the teachings and practices of well over a hundred religions, denominations, sects, and ancient heretical groups, sometimes in brief and sometimes with more detail. While we have covered a lot of detail, we have really only scratched the surface of most of these groups, as believers from those groups would almost certainly tell us.

Though I have tried my best to represent them as fairly as I can with what I know and can access, misrepresentation is always unavoidable to a certain extent. There are two reasons for this. First, it is because true understanding of a religion can take a whole lifetime; it is impossible to say that you truly know a religion unless you have lived it and lived it well. Second, it is also because in this work we have explicitly taken it upon ourselves to look at these religions with the eyes of Orthodox Christianity, not from a theoretical, impartial viewpoint. True impartiality is, in any event, something of a Platonic ideal that I don’t think is achievable by flawed human beings.

What we can say with some certainty, however, is that each of these religions can constitute a coherent theological and spiritual world for its believers. We can speculate on the inner spiritual state of believers with whom we disagree, but for most serious Muslims, Mormons, Methodists, Mennonites, and Mandaeans, it is self-evident for them that what they believe is correct. Even if they have never taken the time to examine their beliefs critically, sincere followers of any religion continue to follow it because they believe it is true, because it gives them a coherent way of understanding the world and living in it.

For any religious believer, however, such belief is never entirely founded on concrete, material evidence. Even if it were, the philosopher of epistemology might ask how we absolutely know we can trust our senses. How do you know what you see and hear is what’s really there? All religious belief—in fact, all belief, whether religious or not—is founded upon faith. Faith is a trust built on a mysterious and hard-to-analyze mixture of evidence, interpretation, experience, relationship, and reason. So while we may criticize other religions and their theology, we still look upon their followers as God’s creatures, made according to His image, and assume they are acting in good faith on what they believe to be true. Above all, everything we say should proceed from love:

People feel in their souls when they are doing the proper thing, believing in Jesus Christ, revering the Mother of God and the Saints, whom they call upon in prayer, so if you condemn their faith they will not listen to you . . . But if you were to confirm that they were doing well to believe in God and honour the Mother of God and the Saints; that they are right to go to church, and say their prayers at home, read the Divine word, and so on; and then gently point out their mistakes and show them what they ought to amend, then they would listen to you, and the Lord would rejoice over them. And this way by God’s mercy we shall all find salvation . . . God is love, and therefore the preaching of His word must always proceed from love. Then both preacher and listener will profit. But if you do nothing but condemn, the soul of the people will not heed you, and no good will come of it. (Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), quoting St. Silouan in Saint Silouan the Athonite, 64–65)

In speaking about these many dozens of religious groups, we have employed reason, history, and the Scripture to criticize their teachings and practices. Based on all this (and more), I believe that Orthodox Christianity is right and all the rest of these groups’ teachings are at least partly wrong (some more than others). But someone else may be exposed to the same set of evidence and draw entirely different conclusions. There are much smarter, more learned, and more sincere people than I who have done so. But since we know that very smart, learned, and sincere people often disagree with one another, we cannot conclude that choosing the wrong religion is only a matter of low intelligence, ignorance, or personal moral failing. There are people of goodwill in all these groups. There are quite educated people in all these groups. There are sincere people in all these groups.

While I want every person in the world to become an Orthodox Christian, and while I believe that the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is uniquely the Orthodox Church, I have no illusions that the words written in this book will magically make people want to convert to Orthodox Christianity. Words in any book, even one as powerful as the Bible, can only ever help to map out the path or to clear away some of the obstacles. This latter goal, the clearing of obstacles, is really the point of this book. The path must still be walked, and how one finds the way to it and how one walks it is always a precious secret really known only to God. To try to unpack it in its entirety and display it for the whole world would be to do violence to its integrity—and it is impossible, anyway.

What I think we have to see is that there is a mysterious border country between these different religions. In that strange country is the locus of conversion. In that mysterious place, reason, history, Scripture, experience, expectation, desire, and relationship may all steer the traveler in one direction or another. But what we cannot track and cannot chart is the working of the Holy Spirit, who, we believe, is at work in every human being.

As an Orthodox Christian who is trying to love his brothers and sisters and wishes them to know the love and salvation of God, I do what I can to nudge folks into that border country. But I also try to remember that the critical part is played by both God and the person himself. The only authenticator of the Gospel is the One to whom it points. And once it is authenticated within the human person, it is up to him either to act on it or not. Conversion is always an act of the human will and also always a miracle. The truth of the Gospel is made apparent through divine intervention.

Our job is to preach the Gospel. The authentication of its truth is up to God. And the choice to make it effective is up to the person who listens.

So you can see that my purpose here is ultimately evangelistic—I want everyone to be an Orthodox Christian. But I don’t want everyone to be Orthodox just in terms of membership in a visible body. Evangelism is about more than that kind of conversion. Our conversion is actually to Christ, not to “Orthodoxy” (defined here as a mere label, membership, or idea). There are, unfortunately, many who are “Orthodox” but do not seem to know Christ or His Gospel. Although this book is not directly aimed at their conversion, I hope that it may serve that purpose. And those who are in the Orthodox Church and are converted to Christ also know that conversion is an ongoing process of deepening communion, which means that there is something here for them, as well.

I cannot stress enough how critical it is that we understand conversion to be to Jesus Christ Himself. I believe that the Orthodox Church is the true Body of Christ, and that conversion to Christ therefore ultimately should mean incorporation into His Church. That said, some evangelistic efforts on behalf of the Church seem uninterested in actually connecting people to Christ. Or rather, they may talk so much about “Orthodoxy” while equating what they’re talking about with Christ that they end up making Him out to be an ideology or a set of concepts. But the true Jesus Christ is not any set of concepts, and He is certainly not membership in a sectarian club, which is how I fear the Church sometimes is being used. The Gospel is not a Gospel that preaches first the Church. The true Gospel preaches Jesus Christ. Conversion happens through an encounter with Jesus Christ. Yes, the Church is the Body of Christ, but He is the Head. Just as we engage the face of a person when we interact with him, we also engage the Face of Jesus Christ first and always.

I am not suggesting a Churchless “Christianity,” but rather warning against a Christless “Church.” Just as there is no Christianity without the Church, there is also no Church without Christ. If I cannot detect Jesus Christ—in all His warmth, personality (if we can use such a word), and transformative love—in someone’s speaking about the Church, then I have reason to doubt whether I should heed him.

I have often seen this kind of Christless “Church,” especially in the polemics that rage on social media nearly anywhere that theology is talked about, especially when the conversation turns to members of other Christian confessions. It is not uncommon to see the word heretic unwisely used—as though it were not an emotionally charged “fight word”—even if it may be accurate in a sense for all who do not embrace Orthodoxy. It is also not uncommon to see ecumenist or modernist used for any Orthodox Christian who so much as considers engaging the non-Orthodox with something other than polemics and raw calls to repentance.

The inner spirit of such conversations is accusation. In the Middle East, this spirit (magnified considerably) is called takfir, a term that comes from Islam and describes the behavior of the jihadi groups that attack both Muslims and members of other religions alike as being unfaithful to their own vision of Islam. Though the violence of the takfiri is not paralleled in these conversations, the essential spirit certainly is. I believe that we have seen the rise of a Christian takfirism which is just as spiritually dangerous as jihadi takfirism is physically dangerous.

I understand where this spirit comes from, and it is ultimately a good place. Its origins are in the desire to have something firm and certain to rely upon and to be able to defend in the face of a world that seems progressively more chaotic. That inner desire is laudable, but it should be directed toward Christ Himself. Directing that desire toward Christ leads to a spirit of reaching out to see how all can become one in Him who is Truth. Sadly, though, it is often directed instead toward an ideological, accusatory spirit. It is that accusatory spirit that is damaging, not the desire that motivates it.

This spirit arises, I believe, from the assumption that the other person, if he is saying something different from you, must be your enemy. He must be acting out of malice toward you and what you believe.

If, when listening to another’s theology, your basic assumption is that he is acting out of malice, then suspicion is the only posture that makes sense, and your suspicion will always be rewarded with the other’s fallibility.

If, however, your assumption is that your interlocutor is acting out of love for God and for the truth, then while you may see his errors and may well be required to help him with them, you will more importantly see his movement toward holiness, and your love for him will help to draw him toward the truth.

No one is your enemy who has not made himself so. And the one who has made himself so is even more a proper object of love, since loving our enemies is one of the commandments that distinguish Christianity.

The only proper way to enter into theological conversation is in love. Anyone who insists that he is “speaking the truth in love” probably isn’t. Someone who loves doesn’t have to tell anyone that he does. And without love, one cannot actually speak the truth, because the Truth is a Person who is love.

I have often noticed that those who complain about engagement with other Christians usually have little in the way of contributions to make to Church life. But the “protest culture” that is endemic in politics (and now theology) in the West does not tend to accomplish much, so even when such complaints are made with substance (and, it must be said, they often are not), they are unlikely to have an effect. Even if they did, is a victory obtained by shouting someone into submission really what is supposed to characterize Christianity, let alone the great tradition of Orthodoxy? How is that like Jesus Christ?

I’ve also noticed that polemic is sometimes being used for evangelism (or at least claimed to be), as though triumphalistic announcements that the other person is in heresy, deception, or some such will somehow inspire them to join the Orthodox Church. I have never seen that work, not once. Why? Because triumphalistic polemic does not connect people to Christ.

The other problem with this approach, aside from its total ineffectiveness, is that polemic is traditionally used in Christian history toward those who are actively attacking the Church and leading others astray, i.e., those who have consciously made themselves enemies of the Church. In other words, polemic is traditionally a defensive tactic aimed at protecting the faithful, not an evangelistic one aimed at converting those outside the Church. The Fathers are not triumphalists.

It is possible to be faithful, serious, and traditional while also seeking deep engagement with members of other Christian confessions and even non-Christians, while making space for them in our hearts and in our lives. But such engagement has to be based on love and the desire to know and understand the other, to build relationship. If we make agreement a prerequisite for love and relationship, then we have turned Jesus Christ into an ideology.

Yes, those who are in error need to repent, but if we do not offer them anything to repent toward, that is, if we do not offer them the love of Jesus Christ, then we are actually not offering them the truth. We recall how the Prodigal Son “came to himself” when he remembered the love and plenty of his father’s house. The critical complaints of his brother—who was correct about the Prodigal’s behavior—ended up being beside the point.

Another problem we create by refusing true engagement with the non-Orthodox is that we miss opportunities for our own spiritual growth. We can learn from these encounters. Some of the best theology in church history has arisen precisely out of what we might think of as ecumenical engagement.

There are some who seem to think that everything that can (or should) be said has already been said, and they turn the Church Fathers into a kind of closed canon. While the Fathers are for the Orthodox authoritative exegetes and theologians with a received patrimony, treating them as sealed in the past with no more possibility of theological contribution is actually to do violence to the Fathers themselves. The Fathers were working creatively to speak about the same Jesus Christ in a way that communicated Him anew to their own generation. But the time for that creativity is not over. The age of the Fathers continues. That does not mean that dogma evolves or that we can contradict what was spoken dogmatically before by the Fathers, especially in the ecumenical councils, but it does mean that applying that same knowledge of Jesus Christ can be done in new ways.

All this means that something beautiful comes when with love we engage those outside our own canonical boundaries. It is beautiful not only for them but also for us. Many of our most profound theological treasures are the product of this engagement. Indeed, most of the best-beloved theology of the ancient Church comes from earnest engagement—not merely reductionist polemics that never seek to know the other person and what he teaches, but real study, time, and the hermeneutic not of suspicion but of love. I am not qualified to say what this engagement ought to look like on the “official” levels, where credentialed theologians and high-ranking prelates have dialogues and make public appearances together. That world is the subject of much controversy, and I don’t want to get into its details here. I will say this one thing about it, though—we must engage in it. Why? Because it is the command of Jesus Christ that all should be gathered into His one Church, and it is also His observation that His true followers would be known by their love.

While I do keep my eye on popes, patriarchs, and the assorted official dialogues, the relations with the non-Orthodox I am more interested in are those undertaken by ordinary people. It is between friends, between spouses, between strangers on the Internet, between the mothers working together in a homeschooling co-op, between pastors at local clergy meetings, between scholars, between students, and between branches of multi-confessional families where one finds the ecumenism that most interests me.

Some people define ecumenism to mean compromise of dogma and tradition for the sake of getting along. If that is the definition of the word, then of course I reject ecumenism. But that is not how the word is most often used. Its most common definition refers to relations between Christians. If that is what ecumenism is, then I am very much in favor of it.

It really doesn’t matter too much what word one uses for this engagement. As a Christian, I have to engage. I have to bring Jesus Christ to the world, and I cannot do that if I am not interested in knowing other people and understanding what they believe. Jesus always showed an intimate knowledge of the person in front of Him. He never engaged merely on an ideological level. So if we are going to try to bring Him to others, then we bring Him as He is in all His personal reality, not as an ideology.

I have been speaking here in this epilogue mostly to my fellow Orthodox Christians, but I do want to say something specifically here to the non-Orthodox who might be reading this: Please engage us. Please get to know us. And if we fail you, please know that it is we who are failing, not Jesus Christ or His Church. If we fail to love you, please love us anyway, and maybe we will have something good to show you.

The great ecumenist Fr. Georges V. Florovsky, a theological giant of the Orthodox Church in the twentieth century, spent much of his life engaging with the non-Orthodox. He not only discussed and critiqued other Christian theologies but also grappled with some of the great philosophical problems of our time, such as the problems of theories of history and hermeneutics, issues of critical concern to all Christians.

These are difficult questions, and engaging with other Christians was also difficult. But Florovsky made sure that he not only knew those philosophies and theologies inside and out but that he also established relationships with those who professed them. For, as Florovsky once famously observed, “charity [love] should never be set against truth” (Georges V. Florovsky, “The Tragedy of Christian Divisions,” in Ecumenism I: A Doctrinal Approach, 29–31) . They are not opposites. Indeed, they require one another.

Florovsky’s ecumenical endeavors yielded two concepts that I have tried to keep as guiding ideas throughout this whole book. The first is the more famous, called the “neo-patristic synthesis.” By this he did not mean any kind of departure from the Church Fathers, going “beyond” them in the sense of leaving them behind or contradicting them. Rather, he meant a continuation of their work. We have not yet arrived at the end of time, so that means that the task of theology continues. We “synthesize” the Fathers, taking in their teaching and being faithful to it, and we also have something new to do, which is to use their same spirit to answer our own age’s concerns.

The second, less well-known principle of Florovsky’s ecumenism was what he referred to as “ecumenism in time.” By this, he meant that all Christians have a common heritage in the patristic tradition of the early Church. We can all, in a sense, go backwards to arrive at the time before all of our divisions to find our common inheritance as Christians. The early Church belongs to all of us, and I believe that if we look to be faithful to that heritage in all honesty and humility, we will indeed come to be one in Jesus Christ.

A third principle may be observed from Florovsky’s own life, and that is that he was dedicated to both dialogue and friendship with those who disagreed with him. Both pursuits are difficult, and both sometimes require confrontation, which is only fruitful in love. He believed earnestly that the West had much to learn about the East, and the Orthodox in the West encounter its ignorance regularly. But the Orthodox East also has to learn more of the Roman Catholic and Protestant West precisely so that those bonds of friendship may be strengthened. We cannot love someone very well if we do not know who he is. The purpose of this book is to contribute in some small way to that learning—in both directions.

So my hope is that all of us—Orthodox Christians, other Christians, and even non-Christians—will earnestly read the Holy Scripture and the words of those who followed the apostles, seeking for an encounter with the God-man Jesus Christ, seeking to know the One who is both love and truth. And I believe that anyone who sets out seriously on that great adventure will be, by God’s mercy, on the path to salvation in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

APPENDIX I

Atheism and Agnosticism

Perhaps the most frequent request I received in the course of doing the Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy podcast was to address atheism and agnosticism. But I hadn’t prepared any material on those viewpoints, because they’re not religions. Yes, I agree with those who say that being an atheist or agnostic requires a certain kind of faith, but that doesn’t really make these points of view religions. Nevertheless, because it is likely that we will encounter people in our lives who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics, it seemed a good idea to say something about them here.

First, we have to realize that these terms—atheist and agnostic—are used by people to mean a number of different (but related) things. Here are some examples:

“I do not believe that there is a god.”

“I believe that there is no god.”

“I have no beliefs that have anything to do with a god.”

“I know that there is no god.”

“I have seen no evidence that there is a god.”

“I don’t know whether there is a god.”

“I cannot know whether there is a god.”

“No one can know whether there is a god.”

“If there is a god, I don’t like him and want nothing to do with him.”

“I don’t believe in your god.”

“People in that church are hypocrites, and I want nothing to do with them.”

“Religious people have done bad things in the name of their god.”

Many assumptions, some of them factually wrong or incomplete, lie behind those statements. For instance, a lot of atheists have rejected faith in God because they don’t like the way God has been presented to them—usually as a tyrannical, arbitrary punisher. The best response to that problem is simply to show them that Orthodoxy does not believe in that “God,” either. God loves everyone and wants to heal everyone, and that healing is available to all who will cooperate with Him.

Another common objection is that religious people do bad things, sometimes in the name of their religion. I recall seeing “GOD SAVE ME FROM YOUR FOLLOWERS” scrawled on the inside of a bathroom stall once while traveling. This objection has some genuine substance, but it is based on a logical fallacy. The fact that a person who says he’s a believer does something bad doesn’t mean that his religion is false or that there is no God. While there are some religions that demand bad things (such as human sacrifice), the bad person under discussion may actually be violating his own religion. (A good example here is that of clergy who abuse children. I have never heard of one whose religion condoned that behavior.)

At the same time, anyone who objects to religion because of killing in religious wars has only to consider the twentieth century’s bloodbath at the hands of atheistic governments. If Stalin doesn’t delegitimize all atheism, neither should the Spanish Inquisition delegitimize all religion. Sometimes, we do ask God to save us from those who claim to be His “followers,” because those people are not actually following Him.

Probably the biggest issue for atheists and agnostics is the question of evidence. Where exactly is this God that believers claim to know? That is, indeed, the crux of the matter. Reason should make it apparent that no one can honestly say, “I know that there is no god.” Why? Saying such a thing would require that someone have knowledge of absolutely everything there is. A needle may be placed in a haystack, but unless absolutely every piece of hay is examined separately, you cannot say, “There is no needle there.”

While a person dedicated to finding such a needle has the possibility of being that thorough, no one could ever examine the whole universe to see if there is a god anywhere in it. Not only would that require the ability simultaneously to observe all the parts of reality that we can theorize as existing, but it would also require that we have perfect knowledge of everything that might exist at all in any shape. What if there are other dimensions of reality that are not bounded by our universe? And even if we knew all the possible space that needed to be explored, do we have the right kinds of tools to detect what is present in it? Or what if we detected a god but didn’t know that’s whom we were seeing?

The issue here is what tools are being used to see the evidence. The Bible tells us that some things can only be seen with eyes of faith. Orthodoxy also teaches that some knowledge only comes through experience, usually only through a long struggle in asceticism and repentance. The Lord Jesus says it is the “pure in heart” who see God (Matt. 5:8).

So how do we help people to see God who just don’t see Him? It’s tough to insist that they have to enter the Church and embark on a lifelong journey of asceticism before they’ll really see God. Few people will take you up on that invitation. Nevertheless, I believe the key is in the words of Christ that seeing God requires purity of heart. Most atheists and agnostics will at least acknowledge that morality is a good thing, even if they refuse to adhere to it because they reject the authority of the Christian tradition. Such a person can be encouraged toward selflessness, which purifies the heart when it is undertaken, even if only partially, opening it up to be touched by the divine light.

At the same time, the most powerful evangelistic strategy with atheists and agnostics is simply to love them and pray earnestly for them. They probably are tired of having people try to convert them, so it’s unlikely that any arguments will win them over. They are also probably burned out by the hypocrisy of so-called believers. But there is no defense against love, which is life: “For every argument there is a counter-argument, but who can argue against life?” (St. Gregory Palamas, Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts).

A life that is lived in authentic love will preach the Gospel to all those around. If someone doesn’t want to believe, talking to him will never make him believe. But giving yourself selflessly for him may well provoke some questions within that he’s never considered before. Being kind to him when you are not required to do so may inspire him to want to know the Source of your kindness. Giving him freedom when every other religious person has tried to trap him may make an impact he’s never felt before.

I think one of the mistakes many of us (including myself) make when speaking with atheists, agnostics, or any person who does not share our faith is to believe that we can argue them into seeing the truth. I do not believe this is possible. I have never known anyone who was successfully argued into a true, lasting faith.

There actually were two people I argued to the point that they were received into the Orthodox Church. With the force of reason, history, and other evidence, I convinced them mentally that Orthodoxy was the one, true Church of Jesus Christ. But now neither is in the Church. They left. Their choices are their own responsibility, but I take their departure as a warning to myself, all the same.

Christian faith is built on an encounter with the God-man Jesus Christ. It is not built on stacking up enough incontrovertible evidence interpreted correctly through reason that anyone who comes upon such a stack will have no honest choice but to become Christian. Because faith is built on an encounter, it is not something that can ever be coerced, whether by force of reason or any other kind of force.

To be converted to Jesus Christ means that a human person encounters Him and is mysteriously drawn to trust Him and to unite with Him. All we can do is to open the path between that person and Christ, remembering that both persons have the freedom not to make the encounter. Our strongest evangelistic tools are love and prayer.

APPENDIX II

How and Why I Became an Orthodox Christian

As I’ve given lectures and retreats at various parishes and other venues throughout the United States, the question I get asked most often is how I became an Orthodox Christian. I have been hesitant to write the story down before now, because I’ve always thought the world did not need yet another convert story. But it was suggested to me that I include it in this edition of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, which made sense to me. I also now have enough distance in time from the events themselves that I think a general accounting of them is probably in order, at least for myself. Perhaps something here may be useful for you. At the very least, you may see how I became interested in the subject of this book.

I am convinced that my life as a Christian before I discovered Orthodoxy was both real and fruitful. I would not say that I was a good Christian, however. In the time immediately surrounding my learning about the Orthodox Church, I had been in a period of some drifting from active church membership. I still believed in Jesus Christ and trusted Him for my salvation, but it had been a few years since I had a strong commitment to attending church every Sunday and going to other church-related activities. I participated often enough, but it didn’t take much to pull me away on any given occasion. That said, my upbringing in faith in Jesus Christ had been steady since my birth, and I never was inclined to abandon Him at any time.

When I was born in the mid-1970s, my parents would have had no problem calling themselves “fundamentalists,” though they would usually have identified simply as “Christians.” I remember this being the case even in my earliest childhood. In those days, fundamentalist did not have the negative sense it has now, meaning extremism or closed-mindedness. Rather, fundamentalist still bore the basic meaning it had even from its time in early twentieth-century debates about the Scripture. It meant that one was a Christian committed to certain fundamentals of the Christian faith, including a belief in the integrity of what was written in the Bible. It was an Evangelical orthodoxy of sorts. These days, the meaningful space occupied by the earlier sense of fundamentalist is taken up mostly by those who call themselves Evangelicals.

As for where we went to church, it was mainly Baptist churches early on, some of them belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention, but others belonging to other denominations or independent. We did not mostly live in the South, however, and Baptist churches in places like Virginia, New York, and Ohio are a bit different from their fellow Baptists in the South. That said, the doctrine was essentially the same, and a good bit about the church culture was the same, too.

Both my parents had committed themselves to living as Christians from an early age, but my mother, Sandy, had a special call she brought with her when she met my father, Bill. When she was fourteen, at a church summer camp she made a promise to God that she would someday be a missionary. When she met my father, one of her stipulations for eventually agreeing to their engagement was that he be open to that sense of calling himself.

I don’t know what immediately went through his head, but I have to imagine that, like most young men in their early twenties, he probably didn’t give such commitments as much thought as his bride had. At the time, he was serving aboard nuclear-powered vessels in the US Navy, a job he loved and likely didn’t imagine leaving any time soon. It would eventually take him to many places around the world, including one full circumnavigation of the globe. My earliest memories of my dad were that he was some kind of adventurer. I remember a picture of him with a big snake draped around his shoulders. He was in Singapore.

My parents were married in October of 1972. My big brother Matthew came along in January of 1974, and I was born some nineteen months after him. A little less than five years later, my little sister Bethany was born. We were a mobile family sprung from mobile families. Of the five people in my immediate family, we have five birth states between us—Massachusetts for my father, Alaska for my mother, Maine for my brother, Virginia for me, and New York for my sister. (I later enjoyed that I was the only non-Yankee of the bunch.)

My earliest memories of church were wholesome and warm. Our Sunday morning “liturgy” consisted of a welcome from the pastor, three old-style hymns that everyone sang accompanied by a piano and organ, a roughly hour-long sermon, and then one more hymn that usually doubled as an altar call. I remember a lot of sermons about hell and a lot of sermons about what was in Revelation. That stuff concerned me. I didn’t feel like I was ready for all that, and it felt like it was going to happen soon.

I remember raising my hand on many occasions when the pastor would have everyone bowing their heads and closing their eyes, indicating I needed prayer. More than once when I was a kid, I would “go forward” at the end of the service, looking for I’m not sure what but wanting to be serious about this faith.

At some point, when I was probably around six years old, in my bedroom one night in our home in Churchland, Virginia, my parents talked with me about making an important decision. They urged me to ask Jesus into my heart. It was not with any frantic eagerness, as I recall, but with love and calm. I remember after they left, I lay on my bed and prayed what I could. I wanted Jesus in my heart more than anything else. I didn’t really know what that meant, of course, but I knew I believed He was real, and I knew that this is what I had to do.

Not much later, my parents left me and my siblings with some friends for a few days and went up to New Jersey. I didn’t really know what was going on, but when they came back, we were told that we were all going to be missionaries. Dad was going to get out of the Navy, and the months-long cruises when we didn’t hear from him except through mail and souvenirs from exotic places would soon be coming to an end.

In 1983, my dad finally left the Navy after a twelve-year career, and our deputation, as they called it, really began. My parents had signed up with Trans World Radio (now simply “TWR”), the world’s largest Christian missionary radio organization; my dad had been brought on largely because of the technical skills he had learned as an enlisted man in the Navy. We moved to northern Ohio to be near my mother’s parents. For the next three years, my dad spent his time during the week calling churches of the kind we were used to—Baptist and independent Bible churches, mostly—to see if they would host us for a weekend.

And so for those three years, we visited a different church almost every weekend. We took long car rides, during which we read the Chronicles of Narnia and other books. We slept on people’s floors, played with the video game consoles that other kids had but we didn’t, and went to a different Sunday School class every week. I remember the question I was most asked was how old my little sister was. They also asked me what it was like to be a missionary kid (MK). I had no idea.

On the grown-up side of things, my mom would sing in church to accompaniment tapes she brought with her (having carefully screened which churches forbade background tracks with drums). My dad would talk about the mission and how many languages they transmitted in, where their missionaries were serving, and how important the work was. I remembered that he was always a good speaker, even though he had never had any training as a preacher.

We traveled with a big threefold display board with large photographs of jungles, people’s faces, and radio towers, which we would set up in the narthex. We set out pamphlets and brochures about TWR, and my dad would put out a few special souvenirs he’d already picked up in his travels. Once in a while, we would go to something called a “mission conference,” where a church would invite multiple missionary families at once to give their pitches and hope for monetary support. We would meet other MKs. This process repeated endlessly, or so it seemed to us kids.

Then one morning in the spring of 1985, my dad was coming back from a trip visiting churches. As he came up to our front porch in Elyria, Ohio, my brother and I held up a sign we had slapped together. It read (in our bad handwriting) “How does 97% sound?” We had just gotten a phone call from the mission. Our support raised had reached a level at which they told us to start packing. We were being sent to the Pacific island of Guam.

We left for Guam in the early summer of 1985 and spent the next three years there. Guam is a tropical island territory belonging to the United States, which it received in the Treaty of Paris signed in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. I was ten years old when we got there and fifteen when we finally left in 1990 (due to my mother’s poor health in a tropical climate). Although the island is American, the local culture is a hybrid of Hispanic, American, Polynesian, southeast Asian, and east Asian cultures. I learned a little bit of the local languages, and I loved the local food.

My time there at that critical period in my younger years turned me into what psychologists call a “Third Culture Kid” (TCK), belonging not completely to the first culture (the parents’) nor to the second (the one we lived in), but forming a so-called “third culture,” a sort of intercultural personality of perpetual diplomacy and adaptation. TCKs tend to be the children of military servicemen, missionaries, and diplomats. They pick up on linguistic and cultural cues quickly and often recognize each other as fellow TCKs as soon as they meet. But they have one major problem that follows them their whole lives—they have no home.

During my life up to this point, I have lived in twenty-three separate homes, spread across fifteen towns, six US states, and of course Guam. My father (as of this writing) has lived in more than fifty homes. He was also a military child, though when he was twelve, the family settled not far from Hartford, Connecticut.

I mention all this because I think it explains somewhat the restlessness that emerged in my teenage years. All teenagers are restless, of course, but I was a teen who didn’t know where he was from. Furthermore, I was the middle child. Questions of identity and how to define relationships tend to follow middle children around like a cloud, and I came into young adulthood with all these things churning together within me. Nearly every young adult raised in church tends to drift a bit, but I started to have big questions on my mind that unmoored me from the kinds of ties that eventually bring most kids back home.

Not only did I not know who I was—I was obsessed with that question—but I didn’t know what home was.

Three weeks after I graduated from high school in 1993, my family relocated to North Carolina so that my dad could work at the mission headquarters (which had moved from New Jersey). Shortly after we arrived, we started going to the Baptist church down the street. It had all the old “hooks” of the down-home Baptist churches we’d attended when I was a kid, though with a distinct Southern flavor, including a bullet hole in a window frame they’d preserved proudly since the Civil War (“the War of Northern Aggression”). It even had that moralistic cultural inheritance from the Holiness movement that affected so many Baptist churches—no drinking, smoking, or dancing. Card playing was frowned upon (though we did it anyway). The women should probably be in skirts, and the men had better have short hair. That may sound stilted and harsh to some people, but where we were, it was not only normal for many but upright and wholesome.

There was something about it that didn’t work for us, though. My dad started a college-aged Sunday School class with the only two students in that age group—my brother and me. It felt forced, not because my dad was a bad teacher, but because it seemed a little pointless if it was just us. The pastor kept trying to get me to join the choir. I remember one time when everyone was singing “It Is Well with My Soul” (a song I still love to this day), and he called me up front during the Sunday morning service and had me sing a verse solo for everyone. I can’t say I liked that. Not long after, my family switched to the beginnings of an Evangelical mega-church elsewhere in the area.

This was the beginning of my gradual awakening to the details of what Christian life really meant—especially doctrine. I became aware that one could just switch churches and that there were differences between them—disagreements, even. I also knew that we moved to another church because we didn’t like the Baptist church.

Mega-churches (this one had a few thousand members every Sunday) have a lot on offer, so we dived in. Now that I was aware of doctrine and how it could differ between churches, out of curiosity, I followed my dad to an apologetics class. It was mainly aimed at trying to use externalized evidence to prove the Bible’s veracity. I imagine much of the content would probably be picked apart by a professional anti-Christian philosopher, but its point wasn’t to prepare the students for real debates. It was meant mostly to help confirm them in the idea that being a Christian was actually quite reasonable and stood up to scrutiny.

Despite its shortcomings in terms of philosophical rigor, the class was still another significant step for me. I read C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity around this same time, and I came to see that Christianity was something one could and should think about. And I started thinking about it, asking questions like where the teachings of my church came from, how they knew that what they said about the Bible was right, and most especially why the soft-pop/soft-rock style of music used in worship was supposed to align with what was being taught in the sermons.

One of the things I haven’t mentioned up to this point was how much I came to love theater. (You’ll see in a moment why this is important.) I got into it in high school, and when I began college in 1994, I took a job at a theater on campus. I had done some performance onstage, but I really felt most at home doing the technical work backstage. From that one theater on campus, I branched out into working at many venues in the region, including the big arena where the large touring shows came through with big-name bands. During the ten years that I was a professional stagehand, I learned how to put on a show that provoked people into feeling one thing or another using lights, music, timing, and so forth. It was all about technique, and I knew how to make it happen.

So one Sunday morning when I was standing in our mega-church with the band performing on stage and many of the people waving their hands in the air and clearly feeling things about what they were hearing, it suddenly occurred to me that I knew exactly how to make all that happen. It also occurred to me that the rock-n-roll I heard down at the arena was better than the rock-n-roll I was hearing in church.

One morning in particular, when the worship team sang the rhythm and blues classic “Lean on Me,” two things occurred to me: first, I loved that song, but second, it was quite transparently clear that the point of singing that non-Christian piece in Christian worship was to evoke an emotion, not to teach Christian truth.

The church was good at this. Even though mega-church worship in the mid-1990s wasn’t yet the high-quality production spectacle that is the norm now, it was still quite effective and part of a program for rapid growth. And of course a myriad of classes and programs were available. It had all been carefully designed around a marketing strategy that involved the creation of demographic simulacra—a generic couple from the area whose needs, tastes, and preferences were all used to shape what the church should be.

Around this same time, I began taking classes in English literature at the university where I had enrolled a year after moving to North Carolina. During those classes, I encountered the John Keats poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which includes this famous line: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” It was 1997.

It might seem a bit esoteric, but when I read that line, it occurred to me immediately that it was right. There was a deep identity between truth and beauty. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew that it got me thinking about my Sunday mornings: I believed what the preacher said was true, but I had a very hard time understanding the worship as beautiful. And I suspected the church leaders weren’t really aiming at beauty.

I started wondering what this could mean. I remember one day as I was walking back from class with one of my literature professors, he asked me this:

“You’re a Christian, right?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Where do you go to church?”

I told him about the mega-church.

“Huh.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I thought you would go someplace much more traditional. That’s all.”

I started thinking about what that might mean. “Traditional”? Tradition was a word that had been beaten to a pulp in the preaching heard in my youth. Tradition was bad stuff that people added to the pure, simple Gospel, stuff piled on top of it to manipulate other people. But the idea still stuck in my head. There was something about it that seemed true to me when he said it.

Besides going to church on Sundays, I also participated in the church by attending a Wednesday night Bible study for college-aged young adults. As is typical in such settings, there was a time of sharing, where each person would share a “prayer” (a concern he would like prayed for) or a “praise” (something he was thankful to God for). Often, people would say, “I’m not sure if this is a ‘prayer’ or a ‘praise,’ but . . .” There would be affirming responses: “I’ll pray for you,” “Thank God for that!”

When it came to my turn, I began to talk about how I was trying to understand the relationship between truth and beauty and what that meant for worship. I talked about how I was thinking about tradition (even though I didn’t really know what it meant). I talked about this on several occasions. I don’t remember getting any responses at all. What I was talking about was simply off the radar screen.

Then the catalyst occurred: In the late summer of 1997, I was having lunch with one of my fellow MKs whom I’d known on Guam; I had known him for about fifteen years by that point. During the conversation, he announced to me that he was leaving behind the Presbyterianism of his family and joining the Roman Catholic Church. I was shocked, and I told him so. I asked him why he would do that. He was not so much in love with Rome as he was disenchanted with the Protestant world. He began listing off a series of problems he had with the Evangelicalism in which we’d been raised.

As I listened, I realized he was articulating concepts that had been rolling around inside me but had no words put to them yet: unrootedness, slavery to innovation, no way to judge between opinions on Scripture, historical blindness, triviality in worship, and manipulative marketing. I had seen “the man behind the curtain” when I saw the inner character of mega-church worship. I was now getting a close look at all the bells and whistles of that particular religious machine.

I didn’t see it all as fake, of course. I knew the people in my church to be sincere and serious, and I was even surer about my own family. But I also came to believe that there were some deep problems with the whole project of Protestantism, especially in terms of its foundations on the doctrine of sola scriptura (Scripture alone), which allowed anyone with an opinion to found his own church and accounted for most of the differences between Protestant groups.

In the course of that conversation, the Orthodox Church was mentioned. To this day, I do not remember which of us mentioned it. It’s surprising that either of us did, because neither of us really knew anything about it. But the idea stuck in my head. So I decided to get on a computer and look it up.

Back in 1997, you could read almost all there was on the Internet about the Orthodox Church in the space of about three weeks. And I did. I followed one link after another until I found myself looping around in circles. I kept reading. I found that I couldn’t stop. There was this whole Christian world I knew almost nothing about, and yet here it was—a historical church stretching demonstrably back to the apostles themselves, claiming even to be teaching the same doctrine and practicing the same Christian life.

I couldn’t get enough. But I ran out of webpages to read. (I was using Mosaic and Netscape and looking things up with Altavista! Google hadn’t quite been invented yet.) I bought a couple books (in fact, my first-ever purchases through Amazon were Orthodox books), but that wasn’t enough. So I found some email discussion groups for conversation between Evangelicals and Orthodox Christians, and I joined two of them. I sent a lot of rather naive and argumentative messages to those groups, but the back-and-forth helped me a good bit. I like to learn and refine my ideas through debate, so this was helpful.

Eventually, though, I got a private email from one of the contributors on those discussion lists. He saw that I was in his area and invited me to church. I had been sharing my discoveries about Orthodoxy with a friend, so I passed on the invitation to him, as well. On the morning of September 21, 1997, we visited a little Orthodox mission church where about ten people were gathered for the Divine Liturgy. It was a little chapel belonging to the local Episcopal diocese. It had an altar and an enormous cross on the wall behind it with a rugged yet austere image of the crucified Christ hanging from it.

I was nervous about going, but I had to see what this was all about. I had to see in person what I had been reading.

And there in that borrowed room with fewer than a dozen people present, a wiry, vested priest with a wiry black beard swung his censer and intoned his prayers, and the people responded. And I knew that heaven touched earth there on that altar. Time seemed to suspend its motion.

After it was over, as I remember, I looked out the back door, which was open to the outside. I saw the grass waving in the wind, heard the cars going by, and then had the sense that time had begun moving again. I didn’t know it at that moment, but that was when I had decided to become an Orthodox Christian.

One of the texts that was recommended to me in those email conversations was the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch. Here was a member of the New Testament Church, a disciple of John the Apostle who had probably even met Jesus. What he said about Christian life bore a great authority, since he literally received the faith from the apostles themselves. And in reading his seven letters, something dawned on me. He was describing the Church as he had received it from the apostles, and it looked very little like the one I was attending on Sunday mornings. Why wasn’t I in his Church?

Especially after my experience in that little mission, I knew very clearly that the kind of Christianity Ignatius described was still alive. It was in the Orthodox Church.

So while I went in search of beauty and trying to understand its relationship to truth (and finding both in abundance), I also found something else that helped me on the way—history. History was the sure footing I needed in order to have a connection with Jesus Christ, the connection that I had first haphazardly reached out for even as a little boy in that bedroom in Virginia. And the plain facts of history showed that where I was in the Christian continuum was a long way away from where things had started during the New Testament era. If I wanted to be sure that I was part of what Jesus Himself had begun through His apostles, there was only one place I could do that—the Orthodox Christian Church.

A few weeks after my first encounter with Orthodoxy in the flesh, I visited another parish that was closer to mine. I was welcomed there warmly, just as I had been in the little mission. With that second visit, I knew I had to talk to the priest and tell him what was in my heart. I had found my home. I had found the Church founded by Jesus Christ and kept sure and steady all these years. It was real! I could hardly believe it.

This wandering middle child and third-culture kid without a hometown had finally found a place where he could be at home. By God’s grace, I was received into the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church at All Saints Orthodox Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 19, 1998, the great feast of Holy Pascha, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In the nearly two decades since my journey into Orthodoxy really began, I cannot say it has been smooth sailing at all. I cannot say I have never wanted to throw my hands up in the air and leave it all behind, frustrated with the process of trying to repent. But I will say that there is no other place I want to be or could ever be. I have long felt, especially as I have now spent many years looking at various iterations of what it means to be Christian, that if the Orthodox Church is not “it,” then there is no “it.”

A few years after my reception into the Church, I met Nicole, who would become my wife in 2003. We went in 2004 to seminary at St. Tikhon’s in Pennsylvania and spent three very challenging years there. I was ordained to the diaconate in October 2005, then to the priesthood a year later. In 2007, we were assigned to St. George Cathedral in Charleston, West Virginia, where I spent two years as assistant pastor, and then in 2009 to St. Paul Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where I have been pastor since. Along the way, we have had three children. By the time you read this, by God’s grace we will have four.

I am so very grateful to my family, who introduced me to Jesus Christ, to the friends and clergy who introduced me to His Church, to my wife and children, who minister to me like Christ, and to my parishioners, who challenge me to minister to them like Christ.

I still have a long way to go in this process of repentance turning into joy. Say a prayer for me.

APPENDIX III

Orthodoxy Quick Reference

The following are the basic beliefs held by Orthodox Christians.

1. THE HOLY TRINITY

One God.

God is uncreated, existing before all created things.

God is three Persons, one in Essence.

All three Persons are absolutely equal.

All attributes of God are either unique to each Person (e.g., Fatherhood) or common to all three (e.g., perfection).

The Father is the eternal Source of the Godhead. The Son is begotten of the Father, while the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

God is unknowable essence and knowable energies.

2. JESUS CHRIST

Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity.

He is fully divine and of one essence with the Father.

He is fully human and of one essence with mankind.

He is one Person in two natures.

He truly was born, lived, died, and bodily rose from the dead.

He is the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures.

3. THE CHURCH

There is only one Church, the Orthodox Church.

The Church is the Body of Christ. He is a member and its only Head.

Salvation is in and through the Church.

Salvation is theosis (“deification,” “divinization”), becoming more like God in union with Him.

Salvation is a change not merely in status, but in actual being.

Salvation is by God’s power but only with man’s active cooperation, termed synergy.

The sacraments really communicate grace by means of their administration from the episcopacy, who are successors to the apostles.

Christ will return again, and that will be the end of time. At that time, all the dead will rise, the righteous to a resurrection of life and the wicked to a resurrection of death.

APPENDIX IV

Heresy Quick Reference

Docetism—Jesus is God, but only “appeared” to be human.

Judaizing—Christians should become Jews first or follow more of the Jewish Law.

Gnosticism—“Knowledge” saves and may be available only to a select few. Highly dualistic.

Marcionism—Rejection of Hebrew “god” in favor of New Testament “god.”

Montanism—Ecstatic spiritual experiences sought out, new revelation through “prophet” Montanus.

Chiliasm—Christ will reign for a literal one thousand years after the Second Coming.

Apokatastasis—All will be saved, even if they reject God.

Origenism—A set of Platonized cosmological teachings and speculations.

Manichaeism—Persian gnostic religion, highly dualistic.

Sabellianism—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are only “modes” or “masks” of one divine Person.

Novatianism—People who apostatize or commit serious sin can never be absolved.

Donatism—Personal moral unworthiness invalidates the sacraments of clergy (even if repentant).

Arianism—Christ is not God, but only the highest created being.

Semi-Arianism—Christ is not God, but is of similar essence with God.

Apollinarianism—Christ did not have a human mind, but the Logos fulfilled that role.

Pneumatomachianism—The Holy Spirit is not divine, but a creature.

Pelagianism—Man can save himself without divine grace.

Nestorianism—Jesus Christ is two persons “conjoined.”

Monophysitism—Jesus Christ has one nature, either divine only or a hybrid of divine and human.

Monothelitism—Jesus has only one will, the divine.

Monoenergism—Jesus has only one energy, the divine.

Iconoclasm—Icons should be removed from churches and destroyed.

Filioquism—The Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.

Barlaamism—Rejection of hesychasm, assertion that highest knowledge is mental/philosophical.

Ethnophyletism—Church governance should be based on ethnic rather than geographic divisions.

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Cyprian of Carthage, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL), 3.

Dictatus Papae, 1075.

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———, Key to the Scriptures, 1883.

———, The Manual of the Mother Church, 1895.

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Gregory Palamas, Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts.

Gregory the Theologian, Oration 41.

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———, I Went to Hell, 1982.

———, The Midas Touch, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 2000.

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Houteff, Victor, The Shepherd’s Rod, 1930.

Hubbard, L. Ron, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, Hermitage House, 1950.

Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans.

John Chrysostom, Homily IV on II Thessalonians.

John of Damascus, The Fountain of Wisdom (includes “The Exact Exposition on the Orthodox Faith”).

Justin Martyr, First Apology.

Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1998.

———, Incarnationis Mysterium, 1998.

———, Orientale Lumen, 1995.

Kelly, Aidan, “Why Wicca is a Major World Religion,” Including Paganism, June 16, 2012.

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Kimball, Helen Mar, quoted in Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, Signature Books, 1997.

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———, quoted in Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950.

———, Luther’s Works.

———, Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude.

———, Response to the Inquisition at the Diet of Worms, 1521.

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———, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

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———, Doctrine and Covenants, 1835.

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———, Herald of the Kingdom of the Age to Come, Vol. 1, 1851.

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———, Pastor aeternus, 1870.

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———, Lumen gentium, 1965.

———, Orientalium Ecclesiarium, 1964.

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———, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 1961.

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Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905.

Wesley, John, Sermon 128, “Free Grace.”

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Index

Page numbers refer to print edition

A

absolute divine simplicity, 72–74

accusation (takfir), 262–63

A Course in Miracles (ACIM), 306–8

Adams, Don, 287

Adams, John, 261

Adams, John Quincy, 261

adoration of the Eucharist, 91–92

Adventism, 191–92, 286, 290, 297

Adventist Christian Church, 290

African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), 129

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion), 129

agnosticism, see atheism and agnosticism

Alawites, 322–23

Alevi, 323

Allah, use of term, 318

Allegory of the Cave, 28

Allen, A. A., 255

Alley, Kirstie, 354

altar call, 165–66

American Unitarianism, 261

Amish, 153

Ammann, Jakob, 153

Anabaptists, 144, 152–54, 158

ancestral sin, 80, 302. See also original sin

Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, 205

Ancient Evangelical Future Conference, 205

ancient future, 205

Ancient Future Faith Network, 205

Anderson, Robert Mapes, 210

Angelou, Maya, 285

Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), 126, 128

Anglican Continuum, 127

Anglicanism

dissenting groups from, 127, 156

doctrinal basis and divisions, 104, 127–28

history, 100, 126–27

Orthodoxy, relationship with, 128

via media approach, 127

Anglo-Catholics, 127

Anglo-Israelism (British Israelism), 217, 293, 295

animism, 341–42, 343

annihilationism (conditional immortality), 192, 293

annulment, of marriage, 59, 93–94

Annunciation, 82, 112

anointing, 252–53

Anselm of Canterbury, 85

anti-cult groups, 304

anti-intellectualism, 186, 254. See also rationalism

anti-materialism, see dualism

antinomianism, 110, 138–39

apokatastasis (universalism), 47, 56, 206, 262, 330–31

Apollinarianism, 49

apostasy, 36

The Apostolic Faith (periodical), 209, 215–16

Apostolic Faith movement

Parham’s obscurity, 216–17

speaking in tongues focus, 217–19

transmission to Seymour, 220–21

apostolic succession, 93, 118, 148

Aquinas, Thomas, 57, 73, 74, 76, 81

Arianism, 48–49

Aristotle, 57

Arles, Council of, 48

Arminianism, 120, 125–26

Armstrong, Garner Ted, 294–95

Armstrong, Herbert W., 292–94, 295

Armstrongism (Worldwide Church of God), 292–95

art, religious

Calvin on, 103

iconoclasm, 50

Islamic, 316

Orthodox iconography, 58

Radical Reformers on, 143

Roman Catholicism, 58

soli Deo gloria and, 115

asceticism

Adventist practices as, 192

in Buddhism, 337

dualistic dismissal of, 178

fasting, 59, 97, 192, 317

in gnosticism, 139

in Jainism, 338

miraculous gifts and, 243

in Mormonism, 274

Orthodoxy on, 171, 324, 336, 337, 371

prosperity gospel and, 241

Radical Reformers on, 167

Roman Catholicism, 59, 97

Assemblies of God, 225, 234

Athanasius the Great (saint), 37, 107, 151

atheism and agnosticism

introduction, 369

evangelism to, 371–72

evidence issue, 370–71

justifications for, 369–70

nature of God issue, 370

religion as evil issue, 370

Augsburg Confession, 109, 115

Augustine of Hippo (saint)

on absolute divine simplicity, 73

double predestination and, 121

ethical stance of, 352

heresies opposed by, 48, 49

Manichaeism background, 48, 327

on original sin and sexual intercourse, 78–79, 80

Orthodox view of, 78

on speaking in tongues, 246–47

on visible and invisible church, 150

authority, question of, 101–2, 105–6, 151, 207, 250, 308

Avesta (Zoroastrian scripture), 324

Azusa Street revival, 215–16, 221–22, 227

B

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 115

Badu, Erykah, 285

Baha’i faith, 330–32

Bakker, Jim, 255

Baltimore Catechism, 81

baptism

Anabaptists, 152

believers’, 144–45, 152

Christadelphians, 280

Christian Science, 283

dualistic view of, 177

individualism and, 171

of infants, 116, 129, 143–44, 144–45

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 289

Lutherans, 116

Magisterial Reformers, 142, 143–44

Methodists, 129

Mormonism, 274

Orthodoxy on, 111, 145, 315

Pentecostals on, 224

Quakers, 157

Radical Reformers, 142, 144–45

reception of converts and, 40

Restorationists, 190

The Way International, 297

Zwingli on, 124

Baptists, 140, 158–59, 202

Barlaamism, 51

Baroque art, 58

Bartholomew I (ecumenical patriarch), 52–53

Basil the Great (saint), 40, 73, 141, 260

Baxter, Richard, 123

beatific vision, 74

Bebbington, David, 168

Belgic Confession, 120, 203

believer’s baptism, 144–45

Bell, Rob, 200, 206

Benedictines, 59

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, 92

Benedict XVI (pope; Joseph Ratzinger), 53, 94, 95–96

Bennett, Dennis J., 226

Bentley, Todd, 248

Berg, David, 303–4, 306

Bernstein, Fr. James, 195

Bible

biblical inerrancy, 115, 116

biblical scholarship, 106

Christadelphians on, 280

Islam on, 316

Jehovah’s Witnesses’s translation, 287–88

Lutherans on, 115

New International Version (NIV) translation, 104

New Testament canon, 37, 107

Orthodoxy on, 103, 108, 115–16, 131, 141–42

Radical Reformers on, 139–40

Reformation questioning of canon, 108, 110

Scofield Reference Bible, 184, 214

Unitarian Universalists on, 264

Unity Church on, 285

Vulgate, 103

See also sola scriptura

biblical inerrancy, 115, 116

biblical interpretation, see Bible

biblical scholarship, 106

Biddle, John, 261

Billingsley, Barbara, 285

Bloom, Harold, 274

Bohemian Brethren, 154

Book of Mormon, 269–70, 275–76

Bourgeois, Patrick, 227

Bowman, Robert M., Jr., 234, 238

Branch, Lori, 163–64

Branch Davidians, 290, 291–92

Branham, William, 234–35, 255

Brethren, 152, 153–54. See also Anabaptists

British Israelism (Anglo-Israelism), 217, 293, 295

Buddhism, 335–38

Bugnini, Annibale Cardinal, 96

Bunyan, John, 162

burial, of dead, 325, 334, 337

Burned-Over District, 268

C

Calvary Chapel movement, 229

Calvin, John, 86, 99, 103, 122–23, 123–24, 125, 177

Calvinism

contemporary observance, 124

covenant framework, 119–20

five points of (TULIP), 120–21, 125, 202

on Great Apostasy, 146

on Holy Communion, 122–23

imputed righteousness, 120

New Calvinism, 202–4

Orthodoxy on, 121–22

predestination and double predestination, 120, 121, 122

Puritans and, 156

theocracy, 123–24

uncertainty in, 42

work ethic, 156–57

Campbell, Alexander, 188, 278

Campbell, Thomas, 188

Canons of Dort, 120, 203

Cao Dai, 344–45

cargo cults, 355–56

Carnegie, Andrew, 268

Carthage, Council of, 49

caste system, 334

celebrity, 254

Chapman, John, 268

Charismatic movement, 186, 226–29

Charlemagne, 50–51

Chemnitz, Martin, 131

chiliasm, 47, 55–56, 185

chrismation (confirmation), 90–91, 94, 95

Christadelphians, 278–81, 292

Christian and Missionary Alliance, 193

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 190

Christian history

Evangelical interest in, 205, 207

explanation of origins, 356

incarnation and, 179

overview, 36–38

Christianity Today, 205

Christian Reconstruction, 123

Christian Reformed Church (CRC), 126

Christian Science, 233, 281–83

Christmas putz, 155

Christology

Apollinarianism, 49

Arianism, 48–49

Branch Davidians and Davidian Adventists, 290

Christadelphians, 279

Christian Science, 282

death of Christ, 82

Islam, 316

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 287

Judaism, 314

Mandaeism, 327

Menno Simons on, 151

monoenergism, 50

monophysitism, 50

monothelitism, 50

Mormonism, 273

Nestorianism, 49

Orthodoxy, 44, 266, 331

semi-Arianism, 49

Socinianism, 292

solus Christus, 112–14

Swedenborgianism, 266

Unity Church, 284–85

The Way International, 297

Church

Baptists on, 159

congregationalism, 141

Evangelicalism on, 172–74

invisible, 149–50

Orthodoxy on, 41, 44, 150, 173

revivalism on, 167

church discipline, 203–4

Churches of Christ, 189, 190

Church Fathers

common ground through, 94, 116

Evangelicals on salvation and, 169

Evangelical use of, 205–6

Orthodoxy on, 206, 365

Oxford Movement on, 127

reason and, 57, 58

on speaking in tongues, 244

Zwingli’s use of, 125

Church of Christ, non-institutional, 190

Church of Christ, Scientist, 233, 281–83

Church of God (Seventh-day), 293

Church of God General Conference (CoGGC), 292

Church of God in Christ, 225

Church of God International, 295

Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith, 292

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 269, 271, 276–77. See also Mormonism

Church of the Blessed Hope, 292

Church of the Nazarene, 193

clergy

apostolic succession, 93, 118, 148

Baptists, 159

congregationalism, 141

as mediators, 113

Orthodoxy on, 45, 113, 141

Radical Reformers on, 142

Roman Catholicism on ordination, 92–93

solus Christus, as reaction to, 112–13

Vineyard Movement, 230

See also ordination

Coe, Jack, 255

communion, see Holy Communion

Community of Christ (Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), 276–77

compatibilism, 112

conciliarism, 66

conditional immortality (annihilationism), 192, 293

confession, 116

confessionalism, 102, 115, 116, 166

confirmation (chrismation), 90–91, 94, 95

congregationalism, 141

Congregationalists, 100, 127

Constance, Council of, 65–66, 154

consubstantiation, 117

contemporary Christian music (CCM), 182, 230

conversion

Evangelical emphasis on personal, 171, 188

Orthodox practices, 40–41, 260

proper understanding of, 361–62

St. Paul’s model, 171–72

testimonies, 185–86

See also ecumenical engagement

Copeland, Kenneth, 232, 239

councils, authority of, 64, 66, 68. See also ecumenical councils

Council of Arles, 48

Council of Carthage, 49

Council of Constance, 65–66, 154

Council of Florence, 61

Council of Trent, 75, 79

covenant framework, 119–20

A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians (ECO), 126

created grace, 74–76

creation, see materiality

creation ex nihilo, 273–74, 332

credobaptism, 144–45

Creed, see Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed

crisis of conscience, 165

Cromwell, Oliver, 123

Crowley, Aleister, 351

Cruise, Tom, 354–55

Cyprian of Carthage (saint), 64, 65

Cyril of Alexandria (saint), 49, 70

D

Dake Study Bible, 214

Darby, John Nelson, 214

Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, 290–91

Davies, Samuel, 164–65

Denck, Hans, 140

development of doctrine, 55–56

dhimmi status, 320

Dickens, Charles, 261

Dictatus Papae, 61, 64

Dionysius the Areopagite (saint), 73

Disciples of Christ, 188, 190

discipline, church, 203–4

Dispensationalism, 119, 194–95, 214

Dissenters, 156

docetism, 45–46

doctrinal pluralism, 129, 134

doctrine

definition, 35

development of doctrine, 55–56

importance of, 33–35

Orthodox Christian, 43–45

proper presentation of, 264

rational approach to, 57

See also truth

dogma

definition, 35

results from changes to, 259–60, 309

Dollar, Creflo, 233, 239, 240

Dominionism, 123

Donatism, 48, 113, 148

Dort, Canons of, 120, 203

double predestination, 112, 121, 122. See also predestination

Dowie, John Alexander, 255

Driscoll, Mark, 202, 203

Druze, 321–22

dualism

definition, 45–46

as denial of creation, 143, 283

in docetism, 45–46

environment, impact on, 179

in Evangelicalism, 177, 178, 180–81

in gnosticism, 46, 168

in Manichaeism, 48

morality and body, impact on, 179–80

sacraments, impact on, 177–78

spiritual disciplines, impact on, 178

See also materiality

Dune series (Herbert), 198

Dutch Reformed Church, 125, 202

E

Eastern Catholic rites, 94, 97

eating, 179. See also fasting

Eck, Johann, 101–2

ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, 126

ecumenical councils

First, 48, 107

Second, 49, 71

Third, 49

Fourth, 50, 64

Fifth, 48

Sixth, 68

Seventh, 50, 51

purpose of, 51

See also councils, authority of

ecumenical engagement

accusation (takfir) approach, 262–63

argumentative approach, 272

with atheists and agnostics, 271–72

Church Fathers on, 358–59, 360

conversion and, 361–62

critiques of, 364, 366

ecumenism in time and, 367

Florovsky’s example, 366–67

imperative for, 365, 366

neo-patristic synthesis and, 367

with ordinary people, 366

personal growth from, 265

polemic approach, 264

proper approach to, 43, 263–64, 264–65, 360–61, 367–68

See also conversion; non-Orthodox

ecumenical movement, 228

ecumenism in time, 367

Eddy, Mary Baker, 281, 282, 284

Edwards, Jonathan, 164–65, 170

Elizabeth the New Martyr (saint), 132

Elkasaites, 327

emerging church, 199–201

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 173, 174, 261, 335

end times, see eschatology

Enlightenment, 138, 175, 261

enthusiasm, 185–87

entire sanctification, 129, 192–93, 211, 212, 215

environment (nature), 179, 182

Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA), 126. See also Anglicanism

escapism, 168, 182–85

eschatology

Adventism, 191

Armstrongism, 293–94

Charismatic movement, 227–28

chiliasm, 47, 55–56, 185

Davidian Adventists, 291

Dispensationalism, 194, 222

Evangelicalism, 183

Holiness movement, 213

Orthodoxy, 45

Rapture doctrine, 183–85

Second Great Awakening, 165

Seymour’s prediction, 222

Swedenborgianism, 266

Zoroastrians, 324

essence/energies distinction, 44, 72, 73–74

eternal security, 139, 175–76

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, 348, 349

ethnophyletism, 51

Eucharist, see Holy Communion

Eutychianism, 50

Evagrius, 58

Evangelical, meaning of term, 118

Evangelical Church in the Royal Prussian Lands, 134–35

Evangelical Free Church, 118

Evangelicalism

introduction, 162–63, 169

appropriation of tradition, 204–7

changing nature of, 174, 181

on Christian history, 179

on Church, 167, 172–74

Church Fathers and, 169

definitions of, 167–68

diversity within, 169

dualism, 177–81

end times beliefs, 183–85

on environment, 179, 182

escapism, 182–85

eternal security, 175–76

experience and enthusiasm focus, 185–87

faith as knowledge, 174–77

“fire and brimstone” preaching, 170

future of, 198–99, 207–8

gnostic characteristics, 168–69

goals of, 188

Great Awakenings, 164–66

individualism, 169–74

lack of staying power, 197–98

morality and body, 179–80

multi-site churches, 181

origins in revivalism, 166

pietism in, 138

relationship with Christ, 138, 149, 175

on sacraments, 177–78

on salvation, 170–71, 174, 188

self-help approach, 186–87

sinner’s prayer, 170–71

on spiritual disciplines, 178

subcultures, 182

Third Wave Pentecostalism and, 231

worship practices, 162–63, 166, 180–81

Evangelicalism, denominations and movements

introduction, 187–88

Adventism, 191–92

Dispensationalism, 194–95

emerging church, 199–201

Fundamentalism, 196

Holiness movement, 192–94

Liberalism, 195–96

mega-churches, 196–98

missional movement, 201–2

New Calvinism (Young, Restless, and Reformed), 202–4

non-denominationalism, 196–97

Restorationism, 188–90

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), 118

Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), 126

evangelism, see conversion; ecumenical engagement

Evdokimov, Paul, 41

excommunication, 102, 290. See also shunning

experiences, enthusiastic, 185–87

F

Facebook, 31

faith

basis of, 360, 372

historic understanding, 174–75

as knowledge, 174–77

reason and, 57–58

sola fide, 108–11

Word of Faith movement on, 238

faith healing

in Christian Science, 282

democratization of, 230

mainstreaming of, 234–35

Orthodoxy on, 249–50

responses to failure, 248–49

techniques and practices, 237–38, 247–48

in Word-Faith movement, 236–37, 237–38, 249

The Family International, 303–6

Farrow, Lucy, 222

fasting, 59, 97, 192, 317. See also asceticism; eating

favor, 253

Fifth Ecumenical Council, 48

filioque, 50–51, 68, 69–72, 154

Fillmore, Charles and Myrtle, 284

Fillmore, Millard, 261

Finland, 117

Finney, Charles G., 162, 165–66, 193, 211

First Ecumenical Council, 48, 107

First Vatican Council, 60–61, 66–67

Florence, Council of, 61

Florovsky, Fr. Georges, 42, 53, 98, 366–67

Flower Communion, 264

food, 179. See also fasting

Foursquare Church, 253

Fourth Ecumenical Council, 50, 64

Fox, George, 157

Francis (pope), 89, 94, 97

Franciscans, 76

Francis of Assisi, 59

Franck, Sebastian, 146–47

Franz, Frederick, 287

Frederick William III (king of Prussia), 134–35

Freeman, James Dillet, 285

Freemasonry, 276

Free Methodist Church, 129

free will, 45, 121, 125, 130, 158, 290

Free Will Baptists, 158

Frost, Robert, 268

Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, 235

Fundamentalism, 196

G

Gardner, Gerald, 351

Garvey, Fr. John, 356–57

Garvey, Marcus, 348

General Baptists, 158

glossolalia, 223–24, 227, 244. See also tongues, speaking in

gnosticism, 46, 138–39, 168–69, 174, 182, 185. See also Manichaeism; neo-gnosticism

God, nature of

absolute divine simplicity, 72–73, 74

Druze, 321–22

essence/energies distinction, 44, 72, 73–74

Unity Church, 284

See also Christology; Holy Spirit; Trinitarianism

God Family belief, 294

grace

created, 74–76

Orthodoxy on, 76, 112

sola gratia, 111–12

Grace Communion International, 295. See also Armstrongism (Worldwide Church of God)

grave soaking, 253

Great Apostasy

Calvinist modifications, 146

development of, 145–46

importance for Reformation, 146–47, 148, 159

Orthodoxy on, 147, 148–49

Restorationists on, 189

Seventh-day Adventists on, 192

Trail of Blood theory, 147–48

Great Awakening, First, 164–65

Great Awakening, Second, 165–66, 212

Great Schism (1054), 37, 51, 53–54

Great Schism (1378-1417), 65–66

Grebel, Conrad, 153

Gregory of Nyssa (saint), 47, 56

Gregory Palamas (saint), 51, 73, 371

Gregory the Great (pope and saint), 64–65

Gregory the Theologian (saint), 359

H

Hagin, Kenneth E., 209–10, 232, 233, 235–37, 238, 239–40, 247

Hagin, Kenneth W., 239

Haile Selassie, 348–49

Hall, Franklin, 234

Han, Hak Ja, 303

health and wealth gospel, see Word of Faith movement

Heidelberg Catechism, 120, 122–23, 203

Henry VIII (king of England), 87, 126

Henschel, Milton, 287

Herbert, Frank, 198

heresy

definition, 36

historical heresies, 45–51

impact of, 34

revival by Radical Reformers, 150–52

heretic, definition, 36

hesychasm, 51

heterodoxy, definition, 35. See also non-Orthodox

Hiebert, Paul, 201

Higgins, S.J., 219

Higher Life movement, 214–15, 234

Hinduism, 32, 332–35

Hinn, Benny, 233, 248, 255

history, see Christian history

Holiness movement, 138, 192–94, 210–13, 221

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 262

Holy Communion

adoration of, 91–92

Baptists, 159

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, 92

Calvinism, 122–23

Christian Science, 283

confirmation, separation from, 90

consubstantiation, 117

Hus on, 154

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 289

Lutherans, 116–17

Methodists, 129

Orthodoxy on, 92, 117, 123

Protestant divisions over, 130

receptionism, 123

Restorationists, 190

Roman Catholicism, 90, 116–17

transubstantiation, 116–17

Zwingli on, 124

Holy Mysteries, see sacraments

Holy Spirit

Charismatic movement, 226–29

conversion, role in, 361–62

filioque, 50–51, 69–72

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 287

Montanus on, 47

Orthodoxy on, 243

pneumatomachianism, 49

second blessing, 193, 211–12, 215, 217, 241

See also faith healing; miracles; Pentecostalism; tongues, speaking in

Holy Trinity, see Trinitarianism

Honorius of Rome (pope), 50, 68, 69

hope, 42

Hopkins, Emma Curtis, 284

Houteff, Florence, 291

Houteff, Victor T., 291

Howe, E. D., 276

Howell, Vernon (David Koresh), 291–92

Hubbard, L. Ron, 352, 353

Hugo, Victor, 344

humility, 28, 43, 357

Hus, Jan, 154

Hutterites, 153

I

iconoclasm, 50

iconography, Orthodox, 58. See also art, religious

Ignatius of Antioch (saint), 45, 46, 141, 148

Ignatius of Loyola, 59

Immaculate Conception, 81–83

imputed righteousness, 108–9, 119, 120

incarnation, see materiality

individualism

Church Fathers and, 169

communion of believers issue, 172–74

conversion process in, 170–71

in gnosticism, 168

vs. Orthodox salvation understanding, 171–72

in Wicca, 351–52

indulgences, 59, 86–89, 89–90, 100

infused righteousness, 108

Intercontinental Church of God, 295

International Churches of Christ, 189

International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, 253

International Convention of Faith Churches and Ministers, 239

InterVarsity Press, 205

Investiture Controversy, 54

invisible church, 149–50, 192

Irenaeus of Lyons (saint), 46, 56

Islam

on Christian teachings and practices, 316

commitment of individual Muslims, 321

dhimmi status of non-Muslims, 320

divisions within, 318–20

five pillars of, 317

God, relationship with, 317–18

jihad, 320

meaning of name, 316

membership numbers, 321

militant, 320–21

origins, 315–16

Qur’an, 316–17

as theocratic, 318

Israel, 194. See also British Israelism; Judaism

Izady, Mehrdad, 328

J

Jainism, 338–40

Jehovah’s Witnesses

American government, relationship with, 287, 289

beliefs, 287, 288

Bible translation, 287–88

end time focus, 285–86, 287

holidays and celebrations, 289

membership numbers, 290

missionary activities, 288–89

organization and self-perception, 288, 289–90

origins, 285–86

on sacraments, 289

The Way International and, 297

Jeremiah II (ecumenical patriarch), 117, 130, 131

Jesuits, 76

Jesus Christ, see Christology

Jesus Movement, 303

Jews, 315. See also Judaism

jihad, 320

Joan of Arc, 344

John Chrysostom (saint), 141

John Frum cargo cult, 355

John of Damascus (saint), 50, 57, 73, 82

John Paul II (pope), 52, 57, 88, 94, 97

John Sigismund (Prussia prince-elector), 134

John VIII (pope), 68, 71

Jordan, Fred, 303

Joseph of Damascus (saint), 322

Judaism, 194, 195, 312–15. See also Israel; Jews

Judaizing heresy, 46, 195, 294

justification, 108, 111, 138, 175

Justin Martyr (saint), 40, 56, 192, 264, 311, 356–57

K

kami, 342, 343

karma, 333, 335, 338–39

katholikos, 65

Keifer, Ralph, 227

Keller, Helen, 268

Kenyon, E. W., 233–34, 237

Keswick movement, 214–15, 234

Kimball, Helen Mar, 271

Knorr, Nathan Homer, 287

Koresh, David (Vernon Howell), 291–92

Kuyper, Abraham, 202

L

Lamsa, George, 296

Landmarkism, 147–48

Latter Day Saint movement, 276–277; see also Mormonism

Latter-Rain movement, 234, 235

Lee, Philip J., 168–69, 182

legalism, 57, 59–60, 72, 139

Leithart, Peter, 199

Leo III (pope), 71

Lewis, C.S., 206

Liberalism, 195–96

liberation theology, 95

liturgical worship, 163–64, 166, 185

Lord’s Supper, see Holy Communion

love, 264, 371

Lubac, Henri Cardinal de, 76

Luther, Martin

on antinomianism, 139

changing views by, 130

on confession, 116

on Holy Communion, 117

ninety-five theses, 37, 100

questioning of New Testament canon, 110

response to Inquisition, 99

on sola fide, 108, 109–10, 111

on sola scriptura, 101, 102

on theosis, 117

tradition, influence on, 139

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), 118

Lutheranism

Augsburg Confession, 109

on biblical interpretation, 115–16

church governance, 118

as confessional, 102, 109

correspondence with Jeremiah II (ecumenical patriarch), 117, 130, 131

denominations in America, 118

“Evangelical” term for, 118

origins in Magisterial Reformation, 100

pietism in, 136

on sacraments, 116–17

on theosis, 117

worship practices, 118

M

MacDonald, Maggie, 184

Macedonianism (pneumatomachianism), 49, 283

Magisterial Reformation

introduction, 99–100

on baptism, 143–44

confessionalism, 102

doctrinal differences and changes, 129–30, 132

on Great Apostasy, 146

imputed righteousness, 108

mediatorial roles, rejection of, 112–13

Orthodox converts from, 132

Orthodoxy, commonalities and differences, 130–31, 131–32

Radical Reformers and, 135, 150–51

sola fide, 108–11

sola gratia, 111–12

sola scriptura, 101–8, 131

soli Deo gloria, 114–15

solus Christus, 112–14

tradition, influence on, 139

See also sola scriptura

Magisterial Reformation, groups and denominations

introduction, 100, 115

Anglicanism, 126–28

Arminianism, 125–26

Calvinism, 119–24

Lutheranism, 115–18

Methodism, 128–29

Zwinglianism, 124–25

See also specific groups and denominations

Mahan, Asa, 211

Mahayana Buddhism, 337–38

Mandaeism, 326–27

Mani, 48, 327

Manichaeism, 48

Manz, Felix, 153

Marcionism, 46–47

Mark of Ephesus (saint), 52, 358

Marley, Bob, 349

marriage

annulment, 59, 93–94

Driscoll on, 203

dualism, effect on, 179

polygamy, 270–71

Roman Catholicism, 93–94

Unification Church (Moonies), 299, 301–2

materiality

Christian Science, 282, 283

Evangelical dualism, effect on, 177–80

Evangelical versions of, 180–81

Orthodoxy on, 143, 160, 180, 283, 343

Pentecostal appreciation for, 257–58

Radical Reformer rejection of, 143, 160, 167

Roman Catholicism, 58–59, 72

Swedenborgianism, 267–68

veneration vs. worship, 114

See also dualism

Maximus the Confessor (saint), 50, 70

McLaren, Brian D., 199–200

McPherson, Aimee Semple, 233, 253–54, 255

mediatorial role, of clergy and saints, 112–13

mega-churches, 196–98

Meneses, Eloise Hiebert, 201

Mennonites, 152

Mercersburg Theology, 146

Mercury, Freddie, 325

merit, 84, 86. See also satisfaction, for sin

Messianic Judaism, 195

Methodism, 100, 128–29, 138, 156, 213

Meyer, Joyce, 233

miaphysitism, 50

Miller, William, 191

Millerites, 191. See also Adventism

miracles

beginning of expectation of, 165

in Holiness movement, 212–13

Orthodoxy on, 243

in Pentecostalism, 176, 186, 214–15, 215–16, 227, 256

See also faith healing; Holy Spirit; prophecy; tongues, speaking in

missional movement, 201–2

Mithraism, 328

modalism (Sabellianism), 48, 194, 266

Mohler, Al, 202–3

monarchianism, 48

monasticism, 109

monergism, 112

monoenergism, 50

monophysitism, 50

monothelitism, 50, 68

Montanism, 47, 148

Moody, Dwight L., 193, 214

Moon, Sun Myung, 298–99, 300–301, 302, 303. See also Unification Church (Moonies)

morality

antinomian rejection of, 110, 138–39

Charismatic rejection of Holiness separatism, 228–29

dualism, effect on, 179–80

engagement with atheism and agnosticism and, 371

Holiness focus on, 192–93, 211, 212

in Mormonism, 276

Orthodoxy on, 139, 193

in pietism, 136

Puritans on, 156

Moravians, 154–55

Mormonism

baptism, 274

beliefs, 271–75

Book of Mormon, 269–70, 275–76

creation ex nihilo, rejection of, 273–74

denominations in, 271, 276–77

on divinity and salvation, 272–73, 274

Freemasonry and, 276

growth of, 276

on Holy Trinity, 271–72

on Jesus Christ, 273

membership numbers, 276

missionary efforts, 277

organization, in LDS church, 277

origins, 268–70

polygamy, 270–71

restorationist claims, 270

revelation, ongoing, 274–75

speaking in tongues and, 270

multi-site churches, 181

Muratorian Fragment, 107

music

contemporary Christian music (CCM), 182, 230

Restorationists, 190

Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, 58–59

N

Neo-Calvinism, 202

neo-gnosticism, 349–50

neo-paganism, 350–52

neo-patristic synthesis, 367

Neo-Pentecostalism, see Charismatic movement

Nestorianism, 49, 143, 283

New Apostolic Reformation, 230, 231

New Calvinism (Young, Restless, and Reformed), 202–4

New International Version (NIV) Bible translation, 104

Newman, John Henry Cardinal, 55, 58

New Testament canon, 37, 46, 107

New Thought movement, 233, 234, 281, 284, 307, 353

Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed

chiliasm refuted by, 47

filioque, 50–51, 68, 69–72

Moravians on filioque, 154

Orthodox doctrine in, 43

ratification, 71

rejection by some Radical Reformers, 151

nihilism, 346

non-Christian religions, 310–12, 356–57. See also non-Orthodox; specific religions

non-denominationalism, 196–97

non-mainstream Christians, 259–60, 308–9. See also non-Orthodox; specific groups

non-Orthodox

as acting in good faith, 359–60

misrepresentation of, 359

Orthodox approach to conversion of, 40–41, 260

Orthodox view of, 39–40, 41–43, 260, 356–57

truth among, 40, 264, 311, 357

See also ecumenical engagement

non-violence, 152, 154, 338, 339–40

North American Lutheran Church (NALC), 118

Novatianism, 48, 148

O

Oden, Thomas, 205

Oneness Pentecostals, 194, 224, 266

On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (St. Photius the Great), 72

open theism, 200

ordination

sacramental validity, 92–93

of women, 118, 124, 126, 129, 155, 193

See also clergy

Oriental Orthodox Churches, 50, 348

Origen, 47–48, 78, 107

Origenism, 47–48

original sin, 78–81

Orthodox Christianity

consistency in, 181

definition, 35

doctrine, 43–45, 309, 331–32

fullness of truth represented in, 28, 30

Great Schism, 37, 51, 53–54

maximalist approach, 308–9

Western Rite, 92

Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), 126, 196

orthodoxy, definition, 35

Osteen, Joel, 187, 232–33, 240

Osteen, John, 232

Ottaviani, Alfredo Cardinal, 96

Oxford Movement, 127

Ozman, Agnes, 218

P

pacifism, 152, 154, 338, 339–40

Palmer, Phoebe, 211

Palmer, Walter, 211

papal infallibility, 55, 66–69

papal primacy, 64

papal supremacy

definition and implications, 60–61, 62–63

history, 61–62

Orthodox response to, 63–66

Parents’ Committee to Free our Children from the Children of God (FreeCOG), 304

Parham, Charles F., 209, 216–19, 220–21, 222, 227, 255

Particular Baptists, 158

patripassianism, 48. See also Sabellianism

Paul (saint and apostle)

conversion model, 171–72

covenant framework and, 120

on the gift of Christ in Church, 173

on good works, 111

on Holy Communion, 117

infant baptism and, 145

on Jews, 315

Judaizing controversy, 46

neo-paganism and, 351

papal supremacy and, 63, 68

resurrection of dead and, 315

on salvation, 175

on speaking in tongues, 244

on tradition, 104

Paul of Samosata, 48

Pelagianism, 49, 111

Pelikan, Jaroslav, 132

Penn, William, 157

Pentecost, second, 242–43

Pentecostalism

introduction, 209–10

Apostolic Faith movement, 216–21

Azusa Street revival, 215–16, 221–22, 227

Charismatic movement, 226–29

denominations in, 225

Dispensationalism in, 214

divisions within, 224

growth of, 224–25

historical claim of, 225

missionary efforts, early, 222–23

origins in Holiness movement, 194, 210–15

Orthodoxy and, 256–58

Protestants on, 226

supernatural focus, 176, 186, 214–15, 215–16, 227, 256

Third Wave Pentecostalism, 229–32

Word of Faith movement, 232–41

Pentecostalism, practices and beliefs

introduction, 241–42

anointing, 252–53

faith healing, 247–50

leadership, 254–56

prophecy, 250–52

second Pentecost, 242–43

spectacle and celebrity, 253–54

tongues, speaking in, 217–20, 221–22, 223–24, 244–47

viral nature of, 242

perennialism, 311, 331

person, theology of the, 74

Peter (saint and apostle), 46, 63–64, 68, 74

Philaret, Met. of Moscow, 358–59

Phoenix acting family, 306

Photius the Great (saint), 71, 72

physicality, see materiality

pietism, 135–38, 163, 186, 310

Piper, John, 202, 203

Plato, 28, 48

Plotinus, 73

pluralism

in ancient religions, 334

doctrinal, 129, 134

pneumatomachianism (Macedonianism), 49, 283

polemic, 264

polygamy, 270–71

predestination, 112, 119, 120, 125, 156, 202. See also double predestination

Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), 126

Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), 124, 126

Presbyterians, 109, 123, 127, 156. See also Reformed churches

pride, 28

priesthood, see clergy

prophecy, 176–77, 244, 250–52, 257

prosperity gospel, 239–41

Protestantism

critique of liturgical worship, 163–64

historical overview, 37–38

on Pentecostals, 226

See also Evangelicalism; Magisterial Reformation; Radical Reformation

Prussian Union of Churches, 134–35

“Pure Land” Buddhism, 338

purgatory, 83, 86–87, 89

purification rituals, 342

puritanism, 193

Puritans, 127, 156–57

purity of heart, 28, 74, 371

Q

Quakers, 157–58

quantitative penances, 59

Quimby, Phineas, 281

Qur’an, 315, 316–17, 320

R

Radical Reformation

introduction, 133, 135

anti-clericalism, 142

antinomianism, 138–39

anti-sacramentalism, 142–43

on baptism, 144–45

on church art, 143

congregationalism, 141

Great Apostasy, 145–49, 159

heresies revived by, 150–52, 261

invisible church, 149–50, 163

Magisterial Reformers and, 135, 150–51

materiality, rejection of, 143, 160, 167

Orthodoxy, commonalities and differences, 160–61

pietism, 135–38, 163

revivalism as descendent of, 166–67

on scripture and tradition, 139–41

soul competency, 140

Radical Reformation, denominations and movements

Anabaptists, 152–54

Baptists, 158–59

divisions in, 159–60

Moravians, 154–55

Puritans, 156–57

Quakers, 157–58

Shakers, 158

Rapture, 183–85. See also eschatology

Rastafarianism, 346, 348–49

rationalism

American Unitarianism influenced by, 261

biblical inerrancy as reaction to, 115

biblical interpretation, effect on, 195–96

faith and, 57–58

Orthodoxy on, 58, 116

Roman Catholicism as, 57

See also anti-intellectualism

Ratzinger, Joseph (Pope Benedict XVI), 53, 94, 95–96

receptionism, eucharistic, 123

Reformation, see Magisterial Reformation; Protestantism; Radical Reformation

Reformed churches

Arminianism, 125–26

Calvinism, 119–24

church governance, 124

as confessional, 102

denominations in America, 126

doctrinal approaches, 124, 126

origins in Magisterial Reformation, 100

in Prussia, 134–35

worship practices, 125

Zwinglianism, 124–25

See also Calvinism

Reformed Church in America (RCA), 124, 126

reincarnation, 323, 334, 335, 338, 340, 343

religion, 31–32. See also doctrine; non-Christian religions; truth

Remini, Leah, 354

Remonstrance Movement, 120

Renaissance art, 58

Ressourcement movement, 94

Restorationism, 188–90

resurrection, of dead, 267, 294, 315, 324–25

revivalism, 164–66, 166–67, 170, 211. See also Evangelicalism

Rigdon, Sidney, 276

righteousness

imputed, 108–9, 119, 120

infused, 108

Roberts, Oral, 234, 235

Roden, Benjamin, 291

Roden, George, 292

Roden, Lois, 291

Rodriguez, Ricky “Davidito,” 305

Roman Catholicism

absolute divine simplicity, 72–74

adoration of the Eucharist, 91–92

Anglicans received into, 127

beatific vision, 74

communion and confirmation practices, 90–91, 144

created grace, 74–76

development of doctrine, 55–56

engagement with, 95

faith and reason, relationship between, 57–58

filioque, 69–72

good works focus, 109

Great Schism (1378-1417), 65–66

Great Schism with Orthodox, 37, 51, 53–54

on Holy Communion, 116–17

Immaculate Conception, 81–83

indulgences, 59, 86–89, 89–90, 100

infused righteousness, 108

Investiture Controversy, 54

mediatorial role of clergy, 112–13

merit, 84, 86

music style, 58–59

original sin, 78–81

Orthodoxy, commonalities and differences, 41, 52–53, 94–95, 97–98

papal infallibility, 55, 66–69

papal supremacy, 60–66

purgatory, 86–87, 89

religious art, 58

sacramental validity, 90, 92–94

on salvation, 76

salvation of non-Catholics, 76–78

satisfaction for sin, 83–86

spirituality tendencies, 58–60, 97

worship practices, 95–97

Rose, Fr. Seraphim, 246, 346

Russell, Charles Taze, 285, 286

Rutherford, Joseph (“Judge”) F., 286

S

Sabbatarianism, 191–92, 294

Sabbatine Privilege, 59

Sabellianism (modalism), 48, 194, 266

Sabellius, 48, 261

sacramental validity, 90–94

sacraments

Baptists on, 159

Evangelicalism on, 177–78

Jehovah’s Witnesses on, 289

Lutheranism on, 116–17

Orthodoxy on, 45

Radical Reformers on, 142–43

reception outside of ecclesial boundaries, 92

Roman Catholicism on, 90–94

Zwingli on, 124

See also baptism; confirmation (chrismation); Holy Communion; ordination

saints, veneration of, 114–15

salvation

Arminianism, 125–26

Baptists, 158

Buddhism, 335

Calvinism’s five points (TULIP), 120–21

Cao Dai, 345

Christadelphians, 279–80

differing meanings of, 32

eternal security, 139, 175–76

Evangelicalism, 170–71, 174, 188

gnosticism, 168

as healing, 86

Hinduism, 333

Jainism, 338–39

Jehovah’s Witnesses, 288

Mormonism, 272

of non-Catholics, 76–78

original sin and, 78–81

Orthodoxy, 33, 44–45, 110–11, 112, 121, 139, 172, 175, 273, 280, 288, 302, 337, 357

Pelagianism, 49

Pentecostalism, 176

Roman Catholicism, 76

satisfaction for sin, 83–86

second blessing needed, 211–12

Sikhism, 340–41

sola fide, 108–11

St. Paul’s model, 171–72

See also conversion; indulgences; purgatory

Salvation Army, 193

sanctification, entire, 129, 192–93, 211, 212, 215

Santeria, 346–47

satisfaction, for sin, 83–86, 109

scapulars, devotional, 59

schism, 36, 42

Scientology, 346, 352–55, 357

Scofield, Cyrus, 184, 214

Scofield Reference Bible, 184, 214

scripture, see Bible

scrying, 269

second blessing (second work of grace), 193, 211–12, 215, 217, 241

Second Coming of Christ, see eschatology

Second Ecumenical Council, 49, 71

second Pentecost, 242–43

Second Vatican Council, 62, 67, 77, 95

self-help approach, 186–87, 240, 354

semi-Arianism, 49

Separatists, 127, 156

Sergius of Constantinople (patriarch), 50

Servetus, Michael, 123, 150

Seventh-day Adventist Church, 191–92

Seventh Ecumenical Council, 50, 51

sexual reproduction, 78–80

Seymour, William, 216, 220–21, 221–22

Shakers, 158

Shakespeare, William, 344

Shi’a Islam, 318–19

Shinto, 341–43

Shucman, Helen, 306–7

shunning, 153, 203. See also excommunication

Signs and Wonders movement, see Third Wave Pentecostalism

Sikhism, 340–41

Silouan the Athonite (saint), 173, 360

Simons, Menno, 133, 151, 152

sin, satisfaction for, 83–86

sincerity, 138, 163, 166, 171

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (Edwards), 170

sinner’s prayer, 170–71

Sixth Ecumenical Council, 68

slain in the spirit, 231, 247

Smith, Joseph, 268–70, 270–71, 272, 276

Snow, Lorenzo, 272

Social Gospel, 196

Socinianism, 292

Socinus, Faustus, 151

sola fide, 108–11, 120, 138

sola gratia, 111–12

sola scriptura

anti-intellectualism and, 186

authority in interpretation issue, 101–2, 105–6, 151

biblical objections to, 104–5

as check on theological experimentation, 163

doubts about Bible and, 196

historical problems with, 106–8

importance for Protestantism, 131, 152

intention and use, 101, 102, 103–4

Quakers on, 157

Radical Reformers on, 139–40

Zwingli on, 124–25

soli Deo gloria, 114–15

solus Christus, 112–14

soul competency, 140, 159

souls, transmigration of, 338, 340

soul sleep, 192, 288, 293

Southern Baptist Conference, 159, 202

Spalding, Solomon, 276

spectacle, 253–54

Spencer, Jeremy, 306

Spencer, Michael, 198–99

Spener, Philipp Jacob, 133, 136

spermatikos logos, 40, 264, 311

“spiritual but not religious” attitude, 172–73

spirituality

dynamic nature of, 42

Evangelicalism on relationship with Christ, 138, 149, 175, 188

Roman Catholicism, 58–60, 72

tools for, 27–28

See also asceticism; sacraments

Spong, John Shelby, 128

Spurgeon, Charles H., 162–63

Stanley, Howard, 218

Stations of the Cross, 59

stigmata, 59

Stone, Barton W., 188

Stone-Campbellite Movement, 188–90

Sufism, 319–20

suicide bombers, 320–21

Sunni Islam, 318–19

supernatural, see miracles

Swaggart, Jimmy, 255

Swedenborg, Emanuel, 265

Swedenborgianism (New Church), 265–68

synergy, 45, 76, 111, 112

Synod of Dort, 120, 202

T

Taft, William Howard, 261

takfir (accusation), 262–63

Talmud, 313–14

Taylor, John, 271

Tertullian, 47

theocracy, 123–24, 318, 341

theology, definition, 35

Theonomy, 123

theosis

Armstrongism and, 294

Cao Dai and, 345

Edwards on, 170

entire sanctification and, 129, 211

essence/energies distinction and, 73

Luther on, 117

Mormonism and, 273

Orthodoxy on, 44, 193

Roman Catholicism and, 74

Theotokos (Virgin Mary), 49. See also Virgin Mary

Theravada Buddhism, 337–38

Third Ecumenical Council, 49

Third Wave Pentecostalism, 229–32

Thomas, John, 278–79

Thompson, Leroy, 240

Tibetan Buddhism, 338

Tilton, Robert, 232

tithing, 280

Tkach, Joseph, Jr., 295

Tkach, Joseph, Sr., 295

tongues, speaking in

in Apostolic Faith movement, 217–20

Azusa Street Revival, 221–22

Charismatic movement on, 227

Church Fathers on, 244

Hagin on, 237

human agency in initiation of, 245–46

Mormonism and, 270

neuroscientific approach to, 244–45

Orthodox approaches to, 246–47

in Pentecostalism, 223–24, 244

St. Paul on, 244

Toronto Blessing, 231

tradition

appropriation by Evangelicalism, 204–7

definition, 35

Magisterial Reformation, influence from, 139

Orthodoxy on, 141–42, 206–7

Radical Reformers and, 139–40

scripture, relationship to, 141–42

Trail of Blood theory, 147–48

transmigration of souls, 338, 340

transubstantiation, 116–17

Travolta, John, 354

Trent, Council of, 75, 79

Trinitarianism

absolute divine simplicity and, 74

Armstrongism on, 293, 295

Baha’i on, 331

Branch Davidians and Davidian Adventists on, 290

Christadelphians on, 279

Christian Science on, 282–83

Church of God General Conference on, 292

The Family International on, 305

filioque, 50–51, 69–72

Islam on, 316

Messianic Judaism on, 195

Mormonism on, 271–72

Oneness Pentecostals on, 194, 224

Orthodoxy on, 43–44, 267

Rastafarians on, 348

Sabellianism on, 48

Swedenborgianism on, 266

unitarianism on, 150, 261

The Way International on, 297

truth

among non-Orthodox, 40, 264, 311, 357

fullness represented by Orthodoxy, 28, 30

importance of, 33–35

proper approach to, 29, 30–31

relativistic approach to, 27, 29–30

spiritual tools for accessing, 27–28

traditional approach to, 29

See also doctrine

TULIP (Calvinism’s five points), 120–21, 125, 202

U

ultramontanism, 62, 67

Unification Church (Moonies)

beliefs, 299–301, 302, 303

controlling nature of, 301

funding of, 302

history, 298–99

marriage practices, 299, 301–2

membership numbers, 303

Orthodoxy on, 302

unitarianism, 150, 261–62, 266, 279, 297

Unitarian Universalist Association

beliefs, 262–63

formation of, 262

membership numbers, 264–65

Orthodoxy on, 264

unitarian background, 261–62

universalism background, 262

worship practices, 263–64

Unitas Fratrum, 154

United Church of Christ (UCC), 124, 126

United Church of God, 295

United Methodist Church (UMC), 129

United Reformed Church (URC), 126

Unity Church, 284–85

universalism (apokatastasis), 47, 56, 206, 262, 330–31

Universalist Church of America, 262

Utraquists, 154

V

Vatican I, 60–61, 66–67

Vatican II, 62, 67, 77, 95

veneration, of saints, 114–15

via media (middle way), 127

Vineyard Movement, 229–30, 231

Virgin Mary (Theotokos)

Annunciation, 82, 112

death of, 82

Immaculate Conception, 81–83

Nestorius on, 49

Orthodoxy on, 81–82

Sabbatine Privilege, 59

Vitalism, 346

Vulgate Bible, 103

W

Waggener, Fr. Alban (Robert), 128

Wagner, C. Peter, 230–31

Warnke, Mike, 185

Warren, J.A., 222

Watt, James, 182

The Way International, 296–98

Webber, Robert E., 205

Weber, Max, 157

Wesley, Charles, 128–29

Wesley, John, 121, 125, 128–29, 193, 211

Wesleyan Church, 100, 129, 193

Western Rite Orthodoxy, 92

Westminster Standards/Confession of Faith, 109, 120, 123, 203

Wheaton College, 205

White, Betty, 285

White, Ellen G., 192, 291, 293

Whitefield, George, 164–65

Wicca, 350–52

Wierwille, Victor Paul, 296, 297, 298

Wigglesworth, Smith, 248

Williams, Daniel H., 205

Willow Creek Community Church, 197–98

Wimber, John, 229, 230

Winfrey, Oprah, 187, 200

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), 118

witch trials, 156

women

in The Family International, 304–5

ordination of, 118, 124, 126, 129, 155, 193

Wicca and, 351

Woodruff, Wilford, 271

Woodworth-Etter, Mary B., 212–13

Word of Faith movement (Word-Faith)

introduction, 232

on faith healing failure, 249

mainstreaming by Branham and Roberts, 234–35

on medical treatment, 282

origins in Kenyon, 233–34

positive confession process, 237–38

proponents of, 232–33

prosperity gospel emphasis, 239–41

shaping by Hagin, 235–37, 239

The Way International and, 297

works, good, 108, 109–10, 110–11, 139

Worldwide Church of God (Armstrongism), 292–95

worship

Anglicanism, 127, 128

Baptists, 159

emergent church, 200

Evangelicalism, 162–63, 166, 180–81

liturgical, 163–64, 166, 185

Lutheranism, 118

Orthodoxy, 114

Pentecostalism, 253–54

Reformed churches, 125

Roman Catholicism, 95–97

Sabbatarianism, 191–92, 294

soli Deo gloria, 114–15

Unitarian Universalists, 263–64

Wright, Frank Lloyd, 262

Wycliffe, John, 154–55

Wycliffe Bible Translators, 154–55

X

xenoglossia, 219, 222, 224, 244, 270. See also tongues, speaking in

Y

Yannaras, Christos, 137

Yarsani, 330

Yazdanism, 328

Yazidi, 328–30

yoga, 333

Young, Brigham, 269, 270, 271

Young, Restless, and Reformed (New Calvinism), 202–4

Z

Zen Buddhism, 337, 338

Zerby, Karen, 305

Zoroastrianism, 323–26

Zwingli, Huldrych, 99, 102, 124–25, 142

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