This is taken from another post that I replied to, since it’s apropos for this discussion:

Turretinfan writes:

“In other words, why is your interpretation any better than say, John Calvin’s, John Doe’s, or Augustine’s?

After all John Calvin is undoubtedly a greater scholar than you are, and he was ordained to teach. Augustine is undoubtedly more esteemed as a teacher even within the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, John Doe has all the same credentials that you have.

And then, of course, if the answer is that there is no reason that your interpretation is better, then why should we listen to what you have to say?”

Gregory’s response:

1) Theological “knowledge” has been kept from the “wise” and, instead, has been given to the “pure of heart” (Matt. 5:8); even unto “babes” (Matt. 11:25).

Therefore, hear what the scriptures elsewhere say:

“‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent’.

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of the age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God….” (1 Cor. 1:19-21)

2) The same question that you pose to Orthodox believers is the same question that illustrates the incoherence of Protestant “hermeneutics”. Since you reject communal or ecumenical “authority”, questions about the meaning of certain scriptures is left to the whims of personal imagination. There is no “hermeneutic spiral” for Protestants…instead, there exists a “hermeneutic pit with no bottom”.

3) I have offered a defense of the Orthodox position on “authority” elsewhere. Feel free to peruse my responses in Part 2 or 3 of these blogs on Eastern Orthodoxy. But let me summarize:

The issue of “authority” was settled by the fact that Christ bestowed His authority on the Church. You already mentioned Matt. 16:17-19. But here’s some more to think about:

“As you sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth….And the glory which You gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one.” (John 17:18-19,22)

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore…” (Matt. 28:18,19)

“To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ; to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church….” (Eph. 3:8-10)

“I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (1 Tim. 3:15)

That is why I had said this:

God gave his “authority” to people, not parchments. It is also why I pointed out that the Church did, in fact, use her authority to make known the “truth” via writing and preserving scripture, binding mankind with the New Testament canon, giving a clear and unambiguous “interpretation” of that canon (i.e. Nicene Creed, or just The Creed), a plethora of commentaries from the Church Fathers, as well as the miraculous lives and testimonies of the Saints down through the ages.

The Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches are Johnny-Come-Lately pretenders to the Apostolic throne.

And so, all doubts about the “authority” of the Orthodox Church are really doubts about the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Therefore, attacks to the lower extremities of the Body are, likewise, also attacks against the Head.

The Orthodox consider such Confessions to bespeak the Filioquist mindset, and therefore, are not consonant with the ‘pnevma’ of the Church, in that the ‘Mysteries’ are apophatic - i.e, ‘unknowable.’
For, as Van Til(?) said, “If we knew all there was to know about God, we’d be God, for we would know Him - exhaustively.’ Or something to that effect.

Thus, when you wrote, “Your rhetorical question, “which Tradition is more likely to have upheld the Faith? Is it the one that’s continuous with the Ancient Church or the one that arose in the 16th Century?” we find to be a false dilemma.’

But that is exactly the point. Because you will not acknowledge that the very forms you use confesionally, liturgically, and theologically are all tainted with the infection of Rome, you are like the speaker in the OT that says, “I am not weak, poor, in need of God,’ etc. And that is the Pride that St. James says keeps us from God.

Therfore, to assume that ‘ The Reformation recovered the faith of the Ancient Church, at least where that Church was Scriptural ” is to be laughable, in that you never possessed the Scriptural mindset to UNDERSTAND it in the first place, nor the Tradition of its’ exegesis, since you DERIVED FROM ROME IN BOTH your theology as well as your study of the Church. You don’t HAVE the ‘pnevma’ of the Church, for Rome did not have it for 500 years before Luther et al, and therefore, you are like the Ethiopian eunuch- unable to bear fruit, not understanding the Scriptures, etc.

And, my reference to the Tubingen Theologians, as well as to the Anglicans approaching the Russian Church in the XIXth Century, was to approach as EQUALS. I am trying to be nice, here, and to show you that you possess a great treasure, and are ‘not far from the Kingdom of God’ as St. Paul says. But when one will not even acknowledge that the MINDSET is erroneous, how can one ‘talk theology’ with those who TRULY ARE the “King’s kids’ when you are merely a Pauper wanting to be Prince?

That’s the great gulf fixed between the West and the East, whether Roman or Genevan. It’s not an easy gulf to breach- it took me ten years of study to even come to this point. But one has to say, “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,” whether that is to the Risen Christ before the Ascension, or to the Theanthropic Body known as THE Church, ever after.

I would merely ask you to be Bereans, and DIG DEEPER on this and other matters, for the Orthodox Church has much to offer. And the West WAS once part of that “Ecumene” as well.

Sincerely,

Scott, what do you mean, exactly? I’ll be a bit mind-reading, and posit two option for you to choose from:

A) That we will be a polyglot mess of hues and tones, aping (!) the modern Multiculturalist mindset-

B) or that we will see ourselves as Belloc pithily put it ‘The Faith is Europe; Europe, the Faith.’ We must be (if He is, as Scripture says, to ’save His People from THEIR SINS- Matt. 1:21) of the same ‘kind’ as Christ- the Second Adam - that word from Genesis that translates into ‘fair, ruddy, able to blush’?

I actually tend to believe the second of the two. DO I believe that only those Europeans will be in Heaven? No. But just as the OT people were confined (BY AND LARGE) to the “Sons of Heber” - and while ‘kissing cousins’ did join from time to time (see Seabrook’s analysis of Ruth the Moabitess’ ethnic relation to the Hebrews) they were not a large part of that “Chosen People.”

So, too, we have our St. Moses the Black, etc. But I don’t expect a miscegenated mulatto skin tone to suffuse our heavenly realms, as though al the Saints are to be ‘like unto their Head,Obama’ to bastardize (!) Scripture on this point.

No, I consider that POV to be more ‘anti’ than ‘pro’ the Christian Weltanschauung.

Obviously, we differ in the matter of what Scripture teaches. But is there the possibility of formal or methodological agreement? You say,

So, in a significant way, the historic “Reformed” and “Lutheran” churches agree with Eastern Orthodoxy in this sense: that there are “correct” and “incorrect” ways to understand scripture; therefore, a “creedal” statement is necessary, in order to correctly understand and defend the “Faith”.

Creeds (or we say: Confessions) are not necessary to correctly understand, but they can be helpful to that end, much as a good textbook might be helpful, even necessary for this or that individual to come to understand quantum mechanics; but that textbook does not define the laws of Nature as if legislating those laws.

Now it goes farther than that for us: our church officers must swear that they agree with the Standards, but this does not make the Confession a supreme norm; it remains a normed Norm, normed by Scripture. The use for examination of candidates for the ministry is a way for the church in its own succession to speak distinctly. The conversation between the Church and the Candidate goes something like this:

Church: Do you believe what the Scripture teaches?

Candidate: I think so; but how will you know if what I believe is what Scripture teaches?

Church: By examining you according to a statement we have prepared that summarizes what Scripture teaches; called the Confession.

So for Scripture to communicate, it is required that there be an awakened people that listens, just as with human communication. Where the communication “breaks down,” it is always the fault of the human refusing to listen, or listening incorrectly.

Nevertheless, I love it that Luther struggled for a time with recognizing the voice of God in James and Esther. This shows that he was asking the right question: is this the voice of God, or the voice of men? That “the church has spoken” on this is weighty, but not eo ipso decisive.

That God has raised up, in all ages, a people grafted into his continuing church, that hear his Word, means that I should be very reluctant to assert a hearing, a way of listening, an interpretation, that contradicts that united voice. Yet, in the end, one must believe what one hears; language is not chaos. If there is an aspect of the Will involved with belief, then the orientation of that will should be to obey what he clearly hears the Father say, not what his children report that his Father said.

The difference between the Confession as subordinate standard versus norming standard may seem small in the description; but it is a chasm, not a small crack.

Your rhetorical question, “which Tradition is more likely to have upheld the Faith? Is it the one that’s continuous with the Ancient Church or the one that arose in the 16th Century?” we find to be a false dilemma. The Reformation recovered the faith of the Ancient Church, at least where that Church was Scriptural. Thus, we are the church “continuous with the Ancient Church.” That statement, as well as yours, are both question-begging and thus not very helpful. Thus, “to the law and the testimony.”

That is, your sources are inherently LIBERAL sources. Timothy Ware, a converted Anglican, is now called Bishop KALLISTOS [Ware], has deeply imbibed the modernist rhetoric of the EU-seeking Greeks. His rather good book, “The Orthodox Church” has been through a number of revisions, as he has travelled further and further from an authentic Orthodoxy, to a pan-ecumenicist version of same, and his book has done so likewise.

(Imagine if I were to say Reformed theology is best exemplified by Barth!)

Also, Florovsky is better, but he has his problems as well.

You DO quote some of the Fathers, which is commendable, but then you presume that which you do not possess, in analyzing same. What I have surmised from these entries, is that there is the assumption that you all have the ‘pnevma’ of the Holy Spirit in discussing the Church; when it is clear from the writings of the Apostles and the Fathers, (all of whom knew each other in an unbroken line, with oversight, teaching, and didactic intent intact) that you don’t. NOt because you don’t want it - for ‘no man can call Jesus, LORD’ apart from the [common grace] of the HS, but you don’t have the [electing grace] of that same Spirit, in that you don’t have the chrismation of the Orthodox and catholic Faith of the Ages.

One of the marks of the Orthodox phronema (mindset, but it goes deeper than that- perhaps Rushdoony/North’s use of the term “Weltanschauung” is more to the point) is that it acknowledges the ORGANIC nature of the Church practically above all else- at least in the still-ethnic enclaves wherein Orthodoxy has not succumbed to the modernist INSTITUTIONAL model, (derived from Rome, BTW).

While both the Reformers and the Orthodox call Rome heretical, we do it from different motives: You, to legitimate a position that is not antithetical to that of your whoring mother, (at least where it counts- the North aphorism of the “First Church of NOT this or that” applies here) but is merely one of degree, and not of ‘kind.’

Holy Orthodoxy (and that is not to be confused with modernist Orthodoxy, as I said before - the SCOBA churches in the USA, for example, who are members of the NCC/WCC) sees herself as THE Body of Christ, that St. Paul says was to be ‘without spot or wrinkle.’ While her adherents are sinful, it has that ‘already and not yet’ descriptor that (if memory serves) Hendricksen noted of the Pauline epistles’ view of the church in his commentaries- but that’s going back thirty years…. THE Church is not.

Because THE Church ( and note the same delimiter of not more than ONE, but only ONE used in the WCF quote…”to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of THE Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world…”) IS Organic, there cannot be MANY of them, but only ONE. This then asks the question, “WHICH ONE” is THE one?

The Reformers were MUCH more honest than many modern adherents of their theology in answering this, because THEY KNEW they were ’stepping into quicksand’ in presuming that Rome was NOT that “ONE Church.” Indeed, Luther’s fear and trembling were for that very reason. IT was only the ‘hotheads’ who came after [Calvin, Knox, and even cautious Cranmer] that had lost that ‘fear of God’ when it came to the ‘THE Church’ question- and therefore, all her heirs to this day.

There was a definite HUBRIS when the Tubingen theologians approached Jeremias II of Constantinople soon after 1517, to seek an ‘umbrella’ against Rome.- the Lutherans were ACTIVELY seeking that ORGANIC connection with the Church of the ages, and clearly did NOT want to ‘go it alone’ (for the branch severed from the vine will die….even if it is five HUNDRED years aborning.) But what they did was so ‘cheeky’ they didn’t even realize it. They came as fully equals to Constantinople, instead of ‘…a suppliant at thy feet.’ (to quote W.S. Gilbert)

That the EP (Ecumenical Patriarch) did NOT listen to them, was clearly because he read in their confessional standards THE SAME HERESIES THAT ROME PREACHED, and therefore, KNEW that the Reformation was NOT a) a return to the Fathers or the Primitive Church but was b) a FILIOQUIST, RATIONALIST offshoot of Rome’s errors.

Why should the EP consider that this was ‘canonical’ or even ‘evangelical’ when it held to the same FAULTY PNEUMATOLOGY that Rome had made official long before 1054, and had actively taught for over three hundred years, via Aquinas and Scholasticism, of which both Luther and Calvin were avid students?

So, when you analyze either a) the Fathers or b) the Scriptures, I will not be so uncharitable (and for my earlier outburst, I do apologize, but error gets me RILED!) as to say you do not have ‘common grace’ as the sons of Christendom to at least see a BIT of the light ‘that enlightens every man’ etc.- but to ASSUME that that is the same light as the ELECTING Grace of “THE Church” is to compare a candle to the sun.

Even the Scriptures cannot be understood, apart from the Church’s praxis and commentary! For that is ALSO of the ORGANIC nature of Christendom: (Because Benny Hinn now is an Evangelical, his ’scriptural eisogesis’ comes fully from the Reformation camp, even if YOU say it is the accursed Dispensational wing of said camp!) THE Church says it (Dispies et al) that is, heresy, is due to the FILIOQUIST error that such aberrancies occur- indeed, she [THE Church] is not surprised that more and more Western Protestants aren’t worshiping a variant of the Antichrist already…oh, wait, you just elected Obama, didn’t you?

So, to seek to claim that you ARE ‘THE’ Church, [when you are not-shades of Rev. 2:8,9] is to be (whether you want to, or not) a ’synagogue of Satan.’ Again, the Dispensationalist error vis a vis Hagee comes to mind……

While I (for one) am willing to see good in the West (I am an Anglo, and a Celt!) and even in her Church forms (I am Western Rite-friendly far more than Byzantine) I can see, after ten years or more within this fold, that the Orthodox are correct- the West denies the Faith in almost every action and theological construct she engages in, due to a false Trinitarianism, grounded in the Filioque. While we have much in common, and even share an ethnic background, your stances end up (when let to their own devices) to a heretical position not much different from the Arians, the Monophysites, or the Nestorians.

Indeed, much of modern Protesantism is actually proto-Nestorian, and anti-Incarnationalist, in that they DENY the BVM ANY human involvement in the Incarnation! The KINISTS are closest to the Orthodox- I mean, the HISTORIC Orthodox- but they, too (as this same discussion over at LG.com showed) heretics under the skin, when you prick too hard with the ‘medicine of immortality,’ the Sacramental rites of THE Church.

sincerely-

Since Protestants interpret the Incarnation in a legal/juridical way, there is no escaping the radical disconnect that occurs between monergistic theology and the zealous pursuit of holiness. What you wind up with is a testimony to the Faith that’s found, not in an important way in the individual’s life (”Saint” is damnable Catholic speak), but rather entirely in scripture.

And if there is any talk about “holiness” and “saintliness”, it’s always in the context of the micromanaging power, knowledge and will, of God. To say otherwise means your a “Pelagian” heretic. Nevermind the fact that Pelagius was condemned, precisely, because he was a monergist!! For him, being a saint was entirely within mans power, knowledge and will.

Of course, the Eastern Orthodox view is, and always has been, “synergy”.

The original Reformers really picked a lousy theological point (i.e. underscoring the movement with anti-synergy) to serve as vindication for the move towards ecclesiastical revolt.

Luther’s monergism is what led him to question the authenticity of some of the New Testament books (notably the book of James). It is impossible to escape the overt synergy of passages like these:

“What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? Thus also faith, by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works…..Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect?” (James 2:14,17,18,22)

I can think of one Protestant whose testimony, both in words and deeds, is as close to being a “Saint” as any the West has yielded: C.S. Lewis

And he’s venerated by Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox alike. He has a sort of “catholicity” about him, you might say.

The Incarnational work of the God-Man was, among other things, a bridge between God and man so that man could live Godlike….like Jesus Christ. That the same aroma that attracted the masses to Jesus, for both good and evil, is, likewise, given in measure to those who follow Him (I am speaking metaphorically, of course). That’s what being a “human epistle” is all about.