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Practical Differences Between the Orthodox and Evangelicals
First Orthodox Cathedral built in Georgia in 1,000 years.
I am a Baptist and a missionary that was on the field for 14 years and I worked primarily in Georgia but other Orthodox countries as well. My experience with culturally Orthodox and faithful Orthodox believers are from these countries in descending order of interaction, Georgia, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and America. I was inspired by this post from @heavywater on the conversion of the Bible Answers man to Orthodoxy. What I wanted to do here is to lay out the practical differences I found between not just the teaching of Orthodoxy and Evangelicals generally but how the teaching is put to work in the real world. I am a Baptist and I would be a Reformed Baptist, on the question of salvation, to lay down a theological marker.
I am not trying to win or even make an argument here, I am not interested in this post who better reflects the teaching in the Bible or the wishes of Christ, instead I want to lay out how the differences in the teachings of the two churches play out in the lives of people practicing the two faiths. I want to illuminate what motivates the conversions that move people from Orthodoxy to Evangelicalism and what often motivates the reverse. I intend to take a more bottom-up look at what happens here so instead of starting with theology and then working down to the people I am going to start with the people and work my way up to some insights on the theology.
Let’s get started with part of a testimony of a girl that went from Orthodoxy to Evangelicalism.
“My first doubt about my faith is when we went to sacrifice a chicken to the Lord at the local Orthodox church. We had sinned and the Priest said we needed to sacrifice a chicken to Lord to atone for it. So my parents brought the chicken and while we prayed the Priest slaughtered the chicken and threw half in a basket before the altar and then took the other half for himself. Before I could control myself, I said aloud, “That is for God, why are you taking it?” My parents were mortified but the Priest just smiled at me and said, “Christ also takes care of his Priests.”
Now any, even nominally educated, Orthodox believer will quickly tell you the above story is a mess. Orthodox theology does not need chickens, no one atones for sin with the blood of animals. Some even question whether the above incident could have even happened. No one in Georgia would bat an eye at it however, they all know it happens. I am here to tell you though that Orthodox theology does not allow the Priest to act the way he did and it is true even if the people believed the chicken was sacrificed for their sins it was only because they were taught incorrect Orthodox theology.
Even Priests in Georgia, educated ones used to foreigners, will tell you what we see here is simple folk practice. Country priests have to find various ways to supplement their income to survive and people build up stories about once simple rituals to give them greater importance and so we get bad theology. But they are also quick to assure you that it is alright and the people’s faith in the Church is justified and their salvation is secure. Why is that? Well, one more story.
My sister in law, Nino, is out on a camping trip with her girlfriend and some male cousins and friends. They are feasting on fish the boys have caught in the stream and the next day they are going to a church up in the hill country called Tetri Giorgi (White/Silver George) the church is ancient and very holy. It is said the earth all around the church is black from the tens of thousands of cattle sacrificed there over the centuries. One of the boys noticed a gold chain around her neck and said, “You better hide that or even bury it out here.” Shocked Nino responded, “No, way. Why would I do such a thing?”
The boys explained that Saint George and other Saints located at the church are very hungry for sacrifice and if they “see” the gold they will demand it from her and if she does not give it they may even curse her causing her death. Nino, then explained that the church they are going to is simply a piece of cultural heritage to her and there are no saints who do anything like they say, and that her faith is in Jesus Christ regardless and Jesus doesn’t really need nor wants her necklace.
The boys then launched into long stories about how magical the church was, how the Saints can mess with the Earth’s magnetic field and essentially tell horrifying ghosts stories with gruesome ends for those that tried to defy the Saints of the church of Tetri Giorgi. When Nino and her friend still weren’t moved and tried to explain that even according to normal Orthodox teaching what they were saying about the church was wrong. The boys were so angry the girls were frightened and asked to go home and one the cousins drove them away from the camping trip.
What to make of these two stories, stories used often when explaining to others why the people that experienced them became Baptist instead of Orthodox? Well, normally the conversation derails on high theological grounds and defenses based on the fact that the bad actors in this story were not acting as true Orthodox and who seem ignorant of basic Orthodox teaching.
I think this misses the point. The Orthodox are basically unchallenged in Georgia. They have government backing and have been free of Communist oppression for more than a generation. If the Orthodox Church in Georgia wanted to stop these practices, they certainly could. A priest or monk coming out of the church of the Tetri Giorgi and telling everyone with a cow in tow that there was no reason to kill the cow and that it would bring them no advantage would swiftly put an end to the practice. They chose not to end it. Why?
Church Authority in Salvation
The reason these practices horrify Baptists and usually get rueful shrugs from Orthodox Priests is their different views of the role of the Church in salvation. For the Orthodox, the membership in the right church brings a person to salvation. The hard work of the priest and the church hierarchy is to bring their flock into salvation the flock does not have to do much more than belong and stay members in good standing with the church to make it into heaven.
Imagine for a moment that you are a priest and strongly believe that people need salvation and that salvation is on offer in the Orthodox Church. You head out to a village or small town and start caring for the flock. As you teach standard Orthodox theology you find that many people are surprised by what you are teaching and they start questioning many of their folk’s beliefs. As you try and reassure them that their folk beliefs are wrong they begin to worry about their dead grandparents and other relatives and get upset. The flock is troubled and there is dissension in the flock with many accusing you the Priest of teaching bad or “new doctrine”. You have a big mess on your hands, you are barely paid anything, you depend on donations from the flock who are upset and angry, other Priests around rebuke you for rocking the boat, and in general your life becomes very unpleasant. What would you do?
Well, I think we can forgive a Priest for asking, “Do the people really need to know any of these things?” They are in the right church, it is your job to secure their salvation by blessing a few folk practices you make a lot of people happy and you will give them correct sacraments and really isn’t that the most important thing?
People yearn for the supernatural and the unexplained, they desire meaning in their lives and folk practices, superstitions, legends, and Saints give them something to get them through hard days and for the Priests there really is no harm done since the people are in the right church. They obey their “Fathers” and they get the correct and very powerful sacraments and that is simply enough for salvation. I should say here too that the Priests I knew of or knew personally did not, for the most part, hide their deeper theological truths from their people but they took a very God-focused approach to sharing theology. If God moved someone to really ask questions and wanted to read books the Priest would help them do those things and teach them, because they figured they really wanted to know. They were always careful to leave some wiggle room for the customs and practices of the local people however, no matter how weird. As long as the practice did not detract from the authority of the Priest or the church he served.
There is a movie that gets at this as well. It is called Leviathan. A 2014 film from Russia. In the movie a man is losing his lands to a corrupt official but the innocent man knows a lawyer so he fights back to keep his land. This land stealing has been normal for a while in the region and the corrupt official Vadim is giving some of the land to the Church and using some of his wealth to build up the church in the area. There is Bishop in the movie and he is pretty good. I could not find the scene I wanted on YouTube but when Vadim thinks he is about to be undone by his victim’s lawyer he goes to the Bishop for advice. The scene starts at the 1:11-minute mark in the movie and Vadim confesses he is feeling uneasy about his criminal behavior, he is not sure if he will succeed. The Bishop carefully keeps himself from hearing any details of crimes and instead checks in on the man’s faith. He asks if he is going to the mass and talking with his confessor and then spiritualizes the conflict for him. The Bishop says that the realms of the two men are different, Vadim is in the secular realm and must use his strength to solve his conflicts. Vadim is doing God’s work, yes? Then act like a man and don’t let the Enemy win over him. The Bishop rebukes him for being a child and having doubts and then blesses him and sends Vadim off. Sure enough, the lecture works and Vadim solves all his problems with some carefully applied violence and fear and soon all his enemies have fled, committed suicide or are in jail.
Again this is not what the great moral theology of the Orthodox theology would teach. What is shows how easy the Orthodox fall into the trap separating what happens inside and outside the church. In the Secular world, you do what you must to accomplish your goals and the “greater good” when you are in the world of the church you obey the church authority and trust in them for your salvation.
Again the point here is to not show how the Orthodox Church “really” works I am discussing flaws in the system thate convince people to leave the Church for another denomination or faith.
A Nominal Orthodox confesses her faith in Christ.
So what about the Baptists?
While I have been discussing cracks in the Orthodox practice, it has to be said that the system overall is quite popular. Things like this don’t last if they are not popular and do not appeal to a side of our human nature. Since this post is about conversion, I thought I would line up how Baptist practice, and Protestant more generally, match up against these fault lines.
The first is the practice that matters here is the emphasis on Bible reading. It is often alleged that the Orthodox don’t read the Bible because they are not allowed too. That was not what I experienced working and living with Orthodox for 14 years. There is rarely, if ever, any command not to read the Bible by any Orthodox authority. Instead nearly all Orthodox believe, especially those in Orthodox countries where I have direct experience, the Bible is challenging and confusing. Reading the Bible directly is a holy exercise that requires regular access to a Priest and a lot of time. It is troublesome to read the Bible so it is better to read the readily available and curated books that Priest have put together where you read Bible verses and/or chapters with explanation in one book. Passages that are too troublesome are just left out.
This usually meant that the normal Orthodox member you ran into wasn’t just ignorant of the Bible, most people everywhere are Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or other notwithstanding, they were shocked to learn what was in the Bible. In other words, Orthodox were often truly ignorant of the Bible but confident they were not. Reading the Bible, especially passages they didn’t know existed, would shock many Orthodox and undermine their trust in the church. I would say that of all the Georgians and others who sat down and read the Bible with me over the course time 80% of them became Baptist. Now, getting them to read the Bible with you for a period of time was very difficult but if they did they were very likely to convert.
This was not because the Bible “disproves” Orthodoxy; it was because they had been told for their whole lives that the Bible was confusing and that the Church would take care of the salvation. Reading the Bible, they did not find it very confusing and the Bible was pretty clear about having faith, yourself, in Christ to be saved. The church hierarchy didn’t seem to factor into this according to the Bible.
The second aspect of the Baptist practice that attracted people away from the Orthodox Church was fusing their normal secular lives with their faith. As a missionary, the hardest lift for me in teaching and preaching was not convincing people that Jesus loved them and they needed a personal faith Christ but that faith in Christ meant their “public” life was to match up with the “church” life. When people realized that Christ could affect their whole life, through a relationship with Him, the rituals of the Orthodox Church would feel empty or even pointless. Doing rituals to get rid of sin as you went pales in comparison to Jesus Christ who forgives all sin, once and for all so that we can love Him and love others more freely. This strikes many Orthodox as a life of greater integrity and fulfillment than one of ritual obedience to the Church. Once you believe that you are in a relationship with Christ and his Holy Spirit dwells within you the idea that Saints of any kind or Holy Water, Blessed Crosses, Holy Candles or any other aid or intercessor is necessary loses their appeal. Instead, converts felt these things distracted from Christ instead of drawing Christ closer to them. If Christ loved them instead of being angry with them, why do you need someone that Christ “really” loved, like a Saint, intercede for you?
This post is more than long enough. I will write a part II that will be up early next week where I will write an “Ode to Orthodoxy” about how the practical aspects of Baptist practice will lead people to the beauty and ancient wonder and wisdom of the Orthodox Church.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
I think there is a lack of willingness to consider the interpretation I described above not so much because it’s an incorrect interpretation, but because it’s just not one that many church leaders want to accept.
Professor Dale C. Allison lectures on the Historical and Theological Jesus
You give no evidence for your speculation about what motivates these people. And why should you or I care about their hidden motives?
And whom the heck are you even talking about?
I am perfectly willing to consider the interpretation from # 56. So is Brian Wolf. So are my wife, my brother, pastor Jonathan, pastor Brad, pastor Dale, pastor Asif, my friend Bob, and nearly any other evangelical I know.
As it happens, I have ample reasons to not decisively conclude that that interpretation is correct, although I hesitate to rule it out altogether.
I cite those reasons in # 59. You proceed to ignore them entirely, offer your speculations about the hidden motives of unspecified people, state no reasons in support of said speculations, and instead offer a link–stating no reason I should devote any of my precious time to it.
Instead of speculating about some people’s hidden motives and links to scholars I know nothing about, why not look at the logic and evidence?
You could give us a reason to accept your interpretation from # 56.
You could name one of those “verses in the New Testament that say otherwise” and give a reason to interpret it that way.
Or you could respond to my concerns in # 59.
You are certainly entitled to your interpretation of Matthew 25:31-46. But you have not backed up your interpretation with any kind of analysis of the text itself.
Also, you don’t have to listen to Professor Dale C. Allison’s lecture if you don’t want to. I am certainly not saying that you must listen to it. It’s up to you.
I haven’t even given an interpretation; I don’t even know what my interpretation is–other than the obvious moral requirement to care for “the least of these.”
You have given an interpretation, and you have not backed it up.
You still haven’t told me anything relevant. Who is he? Why should I care? Is he talking about what we’re talking about?
I probably don’t have time or motivation to watch him with all my other work today, but the point is you haven’t explained the link; it looks like either a random link away from the topic, or an incomplete citation of something on-topic.
I’m not demanding that you accept my interpretation of Matthew 25:31-46. Sure, I could spend my precious time and provide a detailed analysis of Matthew 25:31-46, explaining why I interpret it in the way that I do.
Your time is precious. So is mine. I think Jesus is saying that going to heaven or hell is based on how well one treats the hungry and the dispossessed. You think this is an incorrect interpretation.
I think we leave this discussion of Matthew 25:31-46 the same way we entered it. Your mind has not been changed and my mind has not been changed.
I’m not sure I even think that. I just think, given the context, there’s no decisive evidence for that interpretation.
You mystify me.
Are you just uninterested in logic and evidence? Or are you only interested in your own evidence, but you’d rather keep it secret and not have a conversation about it?
Why are you even talking here?
Do you actually enjoy it when a conversation follows the pattern “I have an interesting conclusion, and you have an interesting conclusion, so let’s ignore all our premises and agree to disagree”?
You seem to think that you are the judge and jury of logic and evidence. You are entitled to this self-evaluation. But I don’t share it.
An absurd accusation with no evidence.
The standards of logic are objective, and I am neither a special judge nor jury.
But this is a change of subject.
Logic only applies when there is both a premise and conclusion. I have very plainly given neither concerning this NT passage, and you have very pointedly given a conclusion, withheld a premise, and ignored a plausible objection.
This suggests a lack of interest in even looking at arguments. I asked what you are trying to accomplish because I truly cannot understand why you write the way you do.
It’s not my responsibility to educate you about how various New Testament scholars have interpreted various parts of the Gospels, including Matthew 25:31-46.
So your premises are in some scholarship, and it’s not your job to mention them or even cite their location?
I don’t get it. Why bring up your conclusion if you don’t want to talk about its premises? Why not respond to my objection?
You really prefer to leave it at “I have an interesting conclusion, and you have an interesting objection, and my premise is in some scholarship I prefer not to mention, so let’s ignore the evidence and agree to disagree”?
I’m not kidding about finding this mystifying. I honestly can’t understand wanting to have a conversation like that.
It seems like your objection is just your own personal opinion, which doesn’t mean that much to me, though it might mean a lot to you.
I’m not sure what you are asking.
I’m asking if you’re seriously this uninterested in talking about the evidence for or against your conclusion. I don’t understand such disinterest in the logic pertaining to a conclusion you yourself offered.
The objection is that the context of the passage is not even soteriological, but ecclesiological, eschatological, and prophetic of AD 70. That’s not at all a personal opinion.
Does soteriology come up in context of AD 70 prophecy and eschatology? Sure. Is an anecdote in this context the place to find a statement on the terms of salvation? I don’t know.
Note that my objection is not a you’re-wrong objection; it’s a your-point-is-not-proven objection. (I’m sure Al Plantinga has some technical terms for these.)
Here is another objection of the same kind.
Who are “the least of these”? They are the brothers of the Messiah, and the sheep who helped them knew it.
So, perhaps, the passage is not about caring for the poor at all. It’s about caring for the least of Jesus’ followers. It’s the same message as Matthew 10:42.
Does this affect the traditional evangelical understanding of Pauline passages about the terms of salvation? Only in the slightest way. One plausible theory is that everyone who responds with faith to any revelation of Christ is saved—maybe with the codicil that he not reject any revelation of Christ.
Does it count if you don’t have any Christian theology to speak of but recognize that Jesus is a messenger of G-d and act accordingly, like the Muslim in Pakistan who helps the Christian in need out of respect for Jesus? Maybe. Maybe Matt. 25 is a clue to that–and it really is a terms-of-salvation passage.
Maybe.
For the Roman / Byzantine centuries you see frequent conflicts between the emperors and the church. The emperors were certainly given a special place in the church, but there are a number of notable periods where emperors would try to push things too far and would be beaten back. There was a partnership between the emperors and the church, but I’m not sure “married” is quite the right way to put it. It was rarely the case that the church was ever truly subservient, and after the Muslim conquests the entire patriarchates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were out of imperial reach anyway (I’m not going to get into the monophysite issue, but that was a factor too).
That power dynamic changed for Constantinople after the Ottoman conquest, when the sultans would pick and choose patriarchs either overtly or covertly. It also changed for Russia especially with Peter I. Even during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, you find many instances of bishops rebuking Ivan, and reminding him of his mortality, and his cruelty, often at risk to their lives (one such read about yesterday was strangled). Peter changed everything. Under Peter, the Patriarchate of Moscow was abolished, and a ruling council of bishops, all directly subservient to Peter, was put in place. This is what I refer to when discussing church / state entanglement.
In the Byzantine era, both church and state had their separate spheres of work, and they would sometimes conflict, and other times not. Each would at times try to assert power over the other, and there would be periodic imbalances, or rebalances. But the Russian dynamic after Peter was very different – under Peter, the church was entirely subservient to the state (at least officially), and remained so until the Romanovs were deposed. Some echoes of that old subservience do remain in places, but this should not be the norm. In any case, for the better part of the last 500 years, aside from brief windows of liberation between the Ottomans and the Soviets, the churches have mostly been trying to balance holding themselves together against oppression.
It’s funny, but everyone has a different story here. For me, the way so may churches would painfully dissect and do word by word analysis of single sentences, sometimes wringing 45 minute lectures (I hesitate to call them sermons) out of 3-word phrases, absolutely dried scripture out for me. When I finally left the last Protestant church I was attending, it was in the middle of a 2 1/2 year slog through Romans. They’ve been crawling through Ecclesiastes now for over a year. I couldn’t see the forest for the ants on the leaves of the trees that way, and this particular church was hardly the only church that taught and preached that way.
Within the Orthodox liturgical cycle of readings, which gets you through about 90% of the New Testament during the year (OT readings, aside from during Lent or the Nativity season, are fairly rare – in that it’s a fair criticism that the Orthodox don’t always know the OT well), the books come alive to me in ways they never did before. The liturgical year takes you, again and again, into that time – the events and parables are not merely past-tense history, but paralleled with our own time. This is reinforced with the Hymnody which so often uses the phrasing “Today is the day…”
Glad to hear there are more of us on Rico (and welcome to Ricochet too!).
I interpret Matthew 25:31-46 as soteriological, salvation based on how one treats other people, not based on accepting Jesus as lord and savior.
Really? I interpret it as an explanation for how one may serve God without first having to listen to bushes burning in the wilderness. How do you square that interpretation of salvation with other passages describing salvation, such as the quotation from Romans upthread?
Yes, obviously you do.
Are you interested in talking about the evidence for or against your view?
You quoted Romans, one of Paul’s letters. Matthew is supposedly quoting Jesus.
As I see it, we have to make some guesses about a few things.
[1] Did Jesus actually say the words attributed to him in Matthew 25:31-46. We can’t be certain, but it seems likely that these words were probably words spoken by Jesus.
[2] When analyzing Paul’s words, not just in Romans but in all 7 of the undisputed Pauline epistles (not including those epistles which were likely forgeries [2nd Thessalonians, 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, Titus, Ephesians, Colossians], we have to wonder whether Paul’s words are simply Paul’s words or Jesus’s words.
We have to consider the very real possibility that Paul’s words are in conflict with some of Jesus’s words, even though there could be some Jesus-Paul overlap.
What I am doing is simply explaining how I understand Matthew 25:31-46. The evidence is the actual words of Matthew 25:31-46.
There is no other evidence that we can appeal to other than the words of Matthew 25:31-46.
Okay, try on the discourse in John 3.
Jesus’s words. You’ll note that there’s nothing in there about visiting prisoners.
Regarding the Gospel of John, the main issue is how much of the Gospel of John is historical versus theological, whether the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John actually trace back to something Jesus said.
John is considered the last of the Gospels to have been written.
I take it your position is that the only words that are accurate are the ones that support your conclusion?
Not really.
But let me admit at the outset that I don’t really know which words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were actually spoken by Jesus. Nor do I know which events depicted in the Bible actually happened.
It’s possible that Jesus didn’t get a trial prior to this crucifixion and that the Gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus were just an invention of the authors.
Now, you don’t have to accept that version of history. But some New Testament scholars don’t think that Jesus was even buried in a tomb and that Joseph of Arimathea didn’t actually exist as a real historical person.
One New Testament scholar said that Jesus’s body stayed on the cross and was eaten by dogs. I don’t know how we will ever know one way or the other.
But you can manage a simple balance of probabilities, can’t you? If I quote Paul, and you say we can’t trust Paul, and if I quote John, and you say we can’t trust John, and if I quote Peter, and you say we can’t trust Peter, and if I quote Mark, but you say you don’t trust those manuscripts, and if I quote Luke, and you say that we can’t trust him because technically speaking he wasn’t one of the twelve, well, sooner or later you’ve got to wonder if what you’re objecting to isn’t the quality of the sources but the contents of the message.
You forgot to mention the Koran, the book of Mormon and a host of other books people have written.
Clearly, not everything written in a book is historically accurate. Yet it’s often very difficult to know what actually happened versus what was non-historical.
We can only do our best given the source material we have. Until we obtain access to a time machine, we will just have to make do.
And our best includes arbitrarily accepting some and throwing other stuff out based on preconceived notions? You can do better than that.
I don’t think we should do this arbitrarily.
Sure, I have talked to Mormons who really seem to believe what they have been told about their Mormon beliefs. But that doesn’t mean that they are correct.
Similarly with those very hard core Catholics who say that you can not obtain salvation outside of the Catholic church and that all churches other than the Catholic church are false churches.
People say all kinds of things.
People write all kinds of things.
It doesn’t mean they are true.