At the Lamb's high feast we sing
Praise to our victorious King,
Who hath washed us in the tide
Flowing from his pierced side;
Praise we him whose love divine
Gives his sacred blood for wine,
Gives his body for the feast,
Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest.Where the paschal blood is poured,
Death's dark angel sheathes his sword;
Israel's hosts triumphant go
Through the wave that drowns the foe.
Praise we Christ, whose blood was shed,
Paschal Victim, Paschal Bread;
With sincerity and love
Eat we manna from above.Mighty Victim from the sky,
Pow'rs of hell beneath thee lie;
Death is conquered in the fight,
Thou hast brought us life and light:
Hymns of glory and of praise,
Risen Lord, to thee we raise;
Holy Father, praise to thee,
With the Spirit, ever be.- Anonymous Latin hymn writer, c. 6th century. English translation from the original Trinity Hymnal, #365.
This link is a little late in coming (my apologies), but Jeremy has included my post on hyper-Reformation theology in Christian Carnival CCVI (that's 206 to you barbarians) at Parableman.
I am increasingly of the belief that one of the biggest problems - and the root of many other problems - with contemporary Evangelicalism is what I call "hyper-Reformation theology." I don't mean hyper-Calvinism. I use the term "Reformation theology" to refer to five points which are far more fundamental to the Reformation that the points of Calvinism: namely, the five solas. By the term "hyper-Reformation theology," I mean a collection of exaggerated caricatures of these essential doctrines which are currently popular among Evangelicals. The most visible of these is "hyper-sola scriptura", which I have discussed before, but there are similar positions for each of the others: "sola fide" and "sola gratia" become an excuse for antinomianism; "solus Christus" and "soli deo gloria" mean we shouldn't ever mention any dead saints, and Mary the mother of Christ is not to be mentioned except at Christmas. Now, I deliberately state these absurdly, but I really think that these sorts of caricatures are behind a lot of the problems in contemporary Evangelicalism, and I know that, for my part, it was not until recently that I had any real idea of how to finish the sentences ("scripture alone ... what?"). Now Johnny-Dee is pointing to a very interesting article by J.P. Moreland on "hyper-sola scriptura" which he provocatively calls "Evangelical over-commitment to the Bible." I don't agree with everything he says, but I think he appreciates the nature of the problem and the fact that it can be addressed without rejecting inerrancy or "sola scriptura," properly understood. He also has some interesting reflections on how we got here, which have to do with the sociology of education.
Tim Troutman (formerly known as "The God Fearin' Fiddler") of The God Fearin' Forum has responded to my latest discussion of Eucharistic theology and Aristotle. Perhaps I have not been very clear. Whatever the case, Tim persistently misunderstands both my claim and my argument for it. I am going to try to make what I am claiming very clear here:
The doctrine of transubstantiation, as expounded by Trent, is rendered incoherent by any system of metaphysics sufficiently different from Aristotle's.
Now that I've cleared that up (I hope), let me further explicate my claim and argue for it again. In case you've forgotten, here is my claim:
The doctrine of transubstantiation, as expounded by Trent, is rendered incoherent by any system of metaphysics sufficiently different from Aristotle's.
A lot actually. I don't want to start making a list (I might not stop). Regular readers may wonder why I still use the title so prominently, given my concern for history and tradition, and frequent attempts to distance myself from many elements of popular Evangelicalism. The answer is that I agree with the statements of faith of all the major Evangelical para-church groups, including their view of Scripture (my increasingly great respect for tradition has not altered that), and I continue to believe (perhaps more strongly than before) in "generous orthodoxy" - the view that the collection of doctrines we require all of our church members and leaders to subscribe to should be closer to the length and level of detail of the Nicene Creed than to the length and level of detail of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or even the Westminster Confession. (I say "closer to the length and level of detail of the Nicene Creed" - I certainly don't think that affirming only the Nicene Creed is sufficient for church leadership, and I don't think it's probably enough for membership either - you need at least to hold a view of the authority of Scripture - but I certainly don't think that one should have to affirm a book length statement, even for leadership, unless that book is the Bible itself.)
The reason I bring this up (besides the need to define myself in relation to our recent fascinating Ecumenical discussion), is that I've just read a review by Carl Trueman of a book entitled Is The Reformation Over? on Reformation21 (the magazine not the blog), which was recommended to me by a friend. The review is very well written and I think it does a good job of describing some of the shortcomings of modern Evangelicalism, and giving reasons for nevertheless not giving up on the Reformation. I agree with nearly everything he says.
Patristic Carnival V is up at The God Fearin' Forum, with a link to my post on "Dionysius". It is a truly ecumenical venture, and I recommend that you all check it out.
Notable posts include:
The God Fearin' Fiddler has a post up on the historical significance of transubstantiation which has led to some interesting discussions. The principle problem with this post and the discussion that follows it, however, is that no one seems to understand the difference between transubstantiation and the Real Presence. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on this either, but I do think I know enough to clear up some historical and metaphysical confusion. I am going to use two principal sources - session 13 of the Council of Trent, and the relevant article from the Catholic Encyclopedia - to explain the historical development and specific content of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and then attempt to show two things: (1) no such doctrine is affirmed by Ambrose in the passage the Fiddler likes to quote in this connection, and (2) it would be very difficult for Christians with strong Platonist leanings, such as Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and most early Christian theologians, to even make sense of this doctrine, which renders it highly unlikely that they implicitly accepted it, or that they would have accepted it had it been explained to them.
Let us begin with an outline of the history. From the beginning, Christians used the words Christ himself used in describing the Eucharist. Christ himself said "this is my body" and "this is my blood." This is in essentially all of the records of the words of institution, including 1 Corinthians 11:23-29, the passage most churches read before serving the Eucharist. Christ also speaks this way in John 6, which is one of the most important texts on the theology of the Eucharist.
Now, all Christians, including even Zwingli, have used and still use this language in describing the Eucharist, so it is important to note that if Zwinglian or similar interpretations will work for the text of the New Testament, they will also work for most writers who merely adopt the New Testament's language and don't attempt to describe it in any more detail. Zwingli specifically argued for a symbolic interpretation by pointing out all the places in Scripture where "is" is used to mean "signifies." There appears to be a more or less uncontestable example of this even in the words of institution themselves, as they are recorded in Luke. Jesus says "this cup is the new covenant" (Luke 22:20, emphasis added), but the cup clearly isn't actually the new covenant (how could it be?). Rather, it is the sign and seal of the new covenant. I don't think that either Catholic and Orthodox believers, who like to interpret the words of institution literally, or fundamentalists, who like to interpret everything but the words of institution literally, would want to say that the cup literally is the new covenant.
I am not an expert on patristics (though I am working on it), but I suspect that most of the fathers, especially the earlier ones, simply used the same language as Christ and didn't provide or attempt to provide much further analysis. The question at issue here doesn't hinge on whether we affirm these words to be true. All Christians agree on that. We all agree that these words express some important truth; we don't agree about what truth they express. (Actually, there is some agreement, but there is a lot of disagreement about the details.)
That said, a case can probably be made that many of the fathers explicitly affirmed the doctrine of the Real Presence (certainly at least a few of them did), and that no writings survive from an otherwise orthodox writer in the early period of Christianity who denies this doctrine. The doctrine of the Real Presence is simply the claim that these words are to be interpreted literally: the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood of Christ. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, any attempt at further analysis meets with suspicion. However, as we shall see, the Roman Catholic Church has not only given a metaphysical theory of this doctrine, but has elevated that theory to the status of dogma (that is, all members of the Church are in principle required to assent to it).
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia article, transubstantiation properly so-called (at least the details of the theory) is a uniquely Western doctrine. The word was first used by Hildebert of Tours around 1079. Note that this is contemporary with Anselm, the first of the Scholastics, but before the wide availability of the words of the Arab Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes) and through him the works of Aristotle in the West. This will become significant later.
Of course, the history of the word is not a history of the doctrine. I have already outlined the doctrine of the Real Presence (it really is that simple). The Catholic Encyclopedia states that "the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation sets up a mighty bulwark around the dogma of the Real Presence and constitutes in itself a distinct doctrinal article, which is not involved in that of the Real Presence, though the doctrine of the Real Presence is necessarily contained in that of Transubstantiation." So when did this distinct doctrine develop? Before or after the use of the word? Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find an answer to that question, and I don't know enough about Anselm and friends to know whether the philosophical commitments of the 11th and 12th century Western Christian philosophers and theologians left room for full transubstantiation. However, the Catholic Encyclopedia informs us that the word first entered Catholic dogmatic definitions at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, but the text of that council says only "[Christ's] body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed [Lat. transsubstantiatio] by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us." Here we do have the word "form" (presumably Latin "forma") which is often a synonym of "species", a Scholastic/Aritotelian technical term used in later discussions of the doctrine. Nevertheless, since outside the technical jargon of scholasticism, "forma" just means "shape" and "species" just means "appearance," in order to show that the Fourth Lateran Council actually affirms transubstantiation as we know it today, rather than just using the word, it would have to be shown that the word already had the present day meaning. On the other hand, the word itself would seem to have some Aristotelian baggage (I promise I'm about to explain all of this - I apologize if anyone has to read this long post twice due to my poor organization): the bread and wine are not trans-formed - they retain their original form. Rather they are trans-substanced. The form remains the same, but the substance changes. This is the essence (that's another loaded term in Aristotle/Aquinas talk) of the doctrine. So it is probably affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council.
At any rate, it is quite clear in the Council of Trent in 1563. Here are some excerpts from the thirteenth session (translated by Philip Schaff):
Chapter I ... after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ ... is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things ...Chapter IV On Transubstantiation. And because that Christ, our Redeemer, declared that which he offered under the species of bread to be truly his own body, therefore has it ever been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy Synod doth now declare it anew, that by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called transubstantiation.
The Canons anathematize anyone who disagrees with this (Canon II even anathematizes anyone who doesn't want to call it transubstantiation!), but don't really add anything.
Here is the metaphysical background: Aristotle was a proponent of what is called a "hylomorphic" metaphysics. That is, he affirmed that material objects were made up of "matter" (Gr. hylas) and "form" (Gr. morphos). There is a lot more complexity than this, but this is the basic idea. This is related to his distinction between "substance" or "essence" (Gr. ousia) and "accident" (I don't know the Greek word for this). The matter of an object is the stuff it's made out of, and it's form is its shape or organization. For the Scholastics, the Latin "species" seems to have been related to Aristotle's "form" but been more closely related to our cognition (the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this didn't make that much sense to me). Objects also have an essence, which is that in virtue of which it is the thing it is, and various accidents, or properties that could change without the object being destroyed. Often, the essence of an object is thought to be a collection of essential properties; thus I might be essentially human.
For the Scholastic/Aristotelian, the doctrine of transubstantiation is kind of weird, but no weirder than the Incarnation of the Trinity, and, more importantly, it is coherent. It is to be explained as follows: the substances or essences of the bread and wine are fully replaced by the substances or essences of the body and blood of Christ (I'm not sure if the matter is also replaced), but there is no change to the accidents, or to the form/species. Thus it still appears to be bread and wine, but it actually is the body and blood of Christ, since essence is what determines identity. Technically, the bread and wine are not changed into the body and blood, but replaced with the body and blood, since you can't change the essence of a thing and still have that same thing. Let me note that, while I'm not an expert on Aristotle, I suspect he would find it preposterous to claim that the essence of a material object could be replaced with another essence (and thus the material object be replaced with a different object) before our eyes without any perceptible difference in the matter before us.
Now we are going to examine Ambrose, and then the philosophical commitments of Augustine and his fellow Christian Platonists.
The Fiddler quotes Ambrose as saying:
Perhaps you will say, "I see something else, how is it that you assert that I receive the Body of Christ?" And this is the point which remains for us to prove. And what evidence shall we make use of? Let us prove that this is not what nature made, but what the blessing consecrated, and the power of blessing is greater than that of nature, because by blessing nature itself is changed.... [Ambrose discusses miracles performed by the prophets] ...
We observe, then, that grace has more power than nature, and yet so far we have only spoken of the grace of a prophet's blessing. But if the blessing of man had such power as to change nature, what are we to say of that divine consecration where the very words of the Lord and Saviour operate? For that sacrament which you receive is made what it is by the word of Christ. But if the word of Elijah had such power as to bring down fire from heaven, shall not the word of Christ have power to change the nature of the elements? You read concerning the making of the whole world: "He spoke and they were made, He commanded and they were created." Shall not the word of Christ, which was able to make out of nothing that which was not, be able to change things which already are into what they were not? For it is not less to give a new nature to things than to change them.
But why make use of arguments? Let us use the examples He gives, and by the example of the Incarnation prove the truth of the mystery. Did the course of nature proceed as usual when the Lord Jesus was born of Mary? If we look to the usual course, a woman ordinarily conceives after connection with a man. And this body which we make is that which was born of the Virgin. Why do you seek the order of nature in the Body of Christ, seeing that the Lord Jesus Himself was born of a Virgin, not according to nature? It is the true Flesh of Christ which crucified and buried, this is then truly the Sacrament of His Body.
The Lord Jesus Himself proclaims: "This is My Body." Before the blessing of the heavenly words another nature is spoken of, after the consecration the Body is signified. He Himself speaks of His Blood. Before the consecration it has another name,after it is called Blood. And you say, Amen, that is, It is true. Let the heart within confess what the mouth utters, let the soul feel what the voice speaks.
In order to show that Amborse accepts transubstantiation, we have to show that he explains the words "this is my body" by the claim that the form and accidents of the bread remain, but its essence has been replaced by the essence of the body of Christ. Do you see that in the above quotation? I don't see any such thing. Ambrose certainly affirms the Real Presence: he says that if God can become human flesh, certainly he can become bread. He says that we shouldn't be surprised if Christ's body doesn't follow the ordinary course of nature, since God often performs miracles in Scripture, and since even Christ's human birth did not follow the ordinary course of nature. But I see nothing here about form and matter, or about substance and accident, or about species. And I'm not just looking for the words, I'm looking for the content. All Ambrose says is "this may look like bread, but it's actually the body of Christ, and God certainly has the power to make what looks, feels, and tastes like bread into the body of Christ." That is the doctrine of the Real Presence.
The last thing I want to cover is the issue of the Platonist leanings of many of the early fathers, notably the Alexandrians and Augustine. I shouldn't have to take pains to show this, because the Catholic Encyclopedia says, "even Augustine was deprived of a clear conception of Transubstantiation, so long as he was held in the bonds of Platonism." Nevertheless, I will at least try to explain it.
Platonism holds that material objects are what they are in virtue of their "participation" (more literally: "having a share") in a transcendant, changeless, immaterial "form" (not morphos, but eidos or idea, which Aristotle also uses, but in a somewhat different meaning than morphos, I think). You and I are both human because we participate in the form of Human, or, as Plato often says Humanity Itself. The bread is bread because of its relationship to Bread Itself. Things are, of course, generally participants in multiple forms, and everything is a participant in Goodness Itself to a greater or lesser degree because Plato holds to a privation theory of evil (which is where Augustine got it), so anything that had no goodness at all would not exist. Christian Platonists generally want to avoid the idea that the forms are co-eternal with and independent of God, so they say that they exist in God's understanding.
A Platonist does not have a concept of an essence as an Aristotelian does. Furthermore, Plato himself, and I believe most Platonists following him, generally cashes out "participation" in terms of "being patterned after." It is very difficult to see how the bread could change from being patterned after bread to being patterned after the body of Christ without any perceptible change. In what would the patterning consist? How does this object resemble a human body, and how Christ's body in particular? Now, there must be some way of getting this to work, because Father Nicolas Malebranche was a very intelligent Platonist Catholic priest in the 17th/18th century, after the Council of Trent, and he must have come up with something, but I don't know what he said.
At any rate, it is highly unlikely that any Christian Platonist held to anything like transubstantiation prior to Malebranche, and a great many of the early fathers, including, as I have said, the Alexandrian school and Augustine, were Platonists.
The situation is even worse for idealists such as myself (or 18th century Anglican Bishop George Berkeley). We don't believe that there is any such thing as the essence or substance or matter of the bread. All that exists, according to idealism, is what the Scholastics would call the "species." Transubstantiation is thus puzzling for the Aristotelian, more puzzling for the Platonist, and completely incoherent for the idealist. I should also note that most contemporary philosophers don't believe in any of these three theories, but transubstantiation is probably also incoherent for them, since material objects don't have undetectible essences (though they may have essential properties).
Now, a Christian idealist does have to come up with some explanation for the bodily resurrection and be able to say that the body that is raised is in some sense the same body although it is radically transformed in terms of its phenomenal properties. Whatever solution one comes up with for this problem could probably also be used to make sense of the doctrine of the Real Presence. However, this view cannot possibly look anything like transubstantiation, for the reasons discussed above.
Last night, I had a brief friendly debate with some Calvinists, which has me thinking about theological method. Briefly, I approach the issue of Calvinism and Arminianism from the perspective primarily of philosophy rather than revealed theology. That is, I argue that libertarian free will, which is incompatible with most (but, surprisingly, not all) versions of Calvinism, but is central to Arminianism, is a philosophically attractive thesis on grounds of, for instance, human moral responsibility, the problem of evil, and the phenomenology of choice. (I don't claim that Calvinists can't provide accounts of these things, I simply claim that Arminians are able to provide better accounts. I also acknowledge that Calvinists might have better accounts of other things.) As an Evangelical, I have to justify this approach, and I generally justify it by arguing that the answer is simply not, or at least not clearly, revealed to us; that the Scriptural arguments pro and con balance, or at least nearly balance. Because I don't believe the answer is revealed to us, and also because of the nature of the question, I don't think this issue is that important, as theological claims go (but it is still a theological claim, and therefore matters). As a result, when it comes up in theological contexts my approach is generally to argue for a claim that I do think is important: the claim that this is not a matter of dogma, i.e. that churches ought not to enforce uniformity of belief on this issue among their members or even among their leadership. I've been trying to think through my reasons for this, and I've realized that they have a lot to do with theological method, so in this post I am going to develop an account of an idealized theological method (still very much a work in progress - objections or suggestions are extremely welcome!), then briefly attempt to identify where in this method Calvinism and Arminianism enter the picture, and suggest that their position ought to disqualify them from being considered dogma. (Wayne Leman's five part series on what the Bible "explicitly" teaches about headship and submission, discusses what it means for the Bible to explicitly teach something and so has also helped to get me thinking about this subject.)
I have wrestled on this blog with questions about Scripture and tradition, and have usually been short on answers. In the context of the present discussion, I am going to venture an answer to the question of how the two relate to one another: tradition, I claim, enters the picture in that the method described below is to be applied primarily by the Church rather than the individual. In saying it is applied by the Church, I mean to include the entire Church, from the beginning to the present. Because the process is iterative and further stages build on past stages, awareness of Christian tradition will be critical if an individual's efforts are to contribute to the total process. (It should be noted that this is not a general answer to the question of the relationship between Scripture and tradition because, as those who have read my Why Believe the Bible? series are aware, I think that the Church and its traditions have something to do with how we know that the Bible should be central to our theological method.) It is a good intellectual exercise, I think, for an individual to start, as it were, from scratch in theology, but we ought not to base our doctrine or our lives on the conclusions that we have drawn from scratch without awareness of the total process being done by the Church.
Although tradition thus has an important place in theology, I suspect that the nature of the method is such that anyone who believes that this is the correct method for the Church to apply agrees with what the Reformers meant by sola scriptura (but I am not an expert on Reformation theology). Also, it is critical to realize that the individual and, especially, the Church is to be guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the process.
Here, then, are the steps in my proposed theological method:
Step 1 is harder than it sounds. For one thing, language and culture come in here. (Fortunately, the Church started the process when the cultural and linguistic context of at least the New Testament was familiar.) For another, we have to be careful not to take things out of context. However, I'm pretty confident that even an individual acting alone could read through the Bible, especially the epistles which are the most explicitly theological portions, and take the general points (without getting bogged down in details) and have enough to go on to get started, and a significant enough percentage of this would be correct that the process would be able to self-correct in later iterations.
In step 2 our primary concern is to form general theories, resolve apparent contradictions, and interpret at a slightly deeper level. In step 3, we wish to know if there are any further points to which we are rationally comitted by accepting the theological points we have earlier discovered. At either of these steps, we may decide that what we previously thought was clear is no longer so clear. Finally, we return to Scripture and begin again by looking at those portions which were previously unclear to us to see if further learning has made them any clearer. From here, we iterate through the process again. Further iterations may lead to modify our previous conclusions, and this is ok.
This is a process that the Church is to undertake communally. We might try (but there are a lot of fuzzy concepts here) to say that someone is within the bounds of historical orthodoxy if and only if he or she shares the general views of the community to a great enough degree to be able to participate meaningfully in the process.
Now, the claim of a belief to be dogma should, it seems, be judged on two closely related issues: first, how early in the process is it discovered, and, second, how confident is the Church about it. These are closely related, because the Church is, in general, most confident about things that can be drawn immediately out of Scripture or derived with very little interpretation and which have not been subject to credible challenges in later iterations. (A third issue, which I will ignore here, is the degree of practical importance attached to the doctrine; if a doctrine has a lot of practical importance in terms of ethics or religious practice churches may be forced to take a position on it.)
As an example, doctrines like "all humans are sinners" (Romans 3:23, etc.) or "those who trust Jesus are not condemned for their sin" (John 3:18, etc.) come from step 1. On the first iteration of step 2, we might get doctrines like the trinity, a basic concept of propitiation (subject to refinement in future cycles), and such things. Then we'll go back and read confusing passages in light of these discoveries.
Now, my claim is that Calvinism and Arminianism are late-comers in this process; an ideal reasoner might get one or the other on the third iteration of steps 2 and 3. One point in support of this is simply that basic exegesis and preaching is rarely directly effected by one's views on this issues; they come in at the level of systematic theology (steps 2 and 3), and even then they are relatively advanced subjects in systematic theology. Another point is that they are late-comers historically. Now, it is important to note that the discussion is not without precedent in Church history, but before Arminius challenged Calvin's views on the subject, the debate was not carried on the way it is today, and it wasn't nearly as focal. Thus, even though some of the issues were around earlier, the actual debate is relatively recent. However, this could have at least two other explanations (and there exist debates having each of these explanations): the first is that prior to that time it was simply assumed that everyone held one view rather than the other, and the second is that some outside circumstance cause the debate to come to prominence. The first I find implausible (though if it were the case, it wouldn't go well for the Calvinists, as their position is an extreme one in the total context of Church history). The second is possible, since the discussion is partially a reaction against perceived Pelagianism in the Roman Catholic church. In short, between the antecedent debates and the outside circumstances, the recentness argument is a relatively minor consideration.
I do think, however, that, on balance, this discussion shows some reason to suppose that the issue of Calvinism or Arminianism is not a good candidate for the status of dogma.
Here it is, finally! Almost exactly 13 months after the last post, I am finally continuing my series. For those of you who have forgotten (probably most of you), in May of 2006 I outlined a proposed series providing an argument for belief in the Bible. I'm going to give a fairly detailed recap here because it has been so long since my last post. In Part 1: Plan of Attack I outlined the argument I intended to give. The basic claim of the argument is that historical investigation renders the idea that the canon of Scripture as we have it is divinely inspired a live option, and personal experience in the life of an individual can provide the kind of confirmation that will lead one to reasonably believe in inspiration. I have added to the plan of attack two proposed appendices: the first will deal with the question of what to believe about the Bible, and the second will deal with which Bible to believe in (i.e. with determining the canon). Because they will be dealt with later, I will skirt these issues as much as possible in the current post, though they will have to be addressed in some degree.
In Part 2: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth we assumed that a super-human conscious entity had created the world and wanted to live in community with other minds (we didn't assume the Christian God as such, but decided to call him God for convenience). We argued that, if such a being exists, he may well be trying to get our attention, and may perhaps choose to use human language to speak to us. Such a revelation would be validated by a 'signature,' which would be something easy for God but difficult or impossible to counterfeit. We argued that the historical evidence points to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as such an event, and therefore concluded that his life and teachings constituted such a revelation. (The whole argument, but this part especially, is indebted to Richard Swinburne and his book Revelation.)
In Part 3: Jesus' Witness to the Hebrew Bible we argued that certain New Testament texts (especially the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) could, without assuming inerrancy or inspiration, be treated as reliable historical sources about the life and teachings of Jesus and that these sources tell us that Jesus regarded the Hebrew Bible as a divine revelation to mankind. As a result, the Hebrew Bible is included by reference in God's revelation to mankind in the life and teachings of Jesus.
This post will assume all these things. If you find any of these claims questionable (and I hope some people who find these claims questionable are reading!) you are encouraged to go back and read the previous post and comment on it. For now, however, we've got the Hebrew Bible, and we've got the life and teachings of Jesus as far as we can determine them from the historical sources as a revelation of God (now that we've got the Hebrew Bible he can, without qualification, be called God) to mankind. The next step is the witness of the Church. What do I mean by this?
Our sources (which, recall, are primarily the synoptic gospels, Acts, and 1 Corinthians) are indisputably clear about one thing: Jesus had twelve particularly close followers, and he ultimately named these men as his "apostles." The Greek word apostolos means "emissary" or "ambassador." Now these guys were sent out, it is pretty clear, to continue Jesus' work of proclaiming the good news and so forth after he left. Furthermore, it is also pretty clear that they were to get others to join them in this task, and this was to continue until Jesus returned (for all of this, see Matthew 28:18-20; it's also stated in many other places). This group or organization or whatever it might be, is called the Church, and Jesus himself - whose teachings are the revelation of God to mankind - taught that this group was the divinely authorized and enabled proclaimer of God's revelation to mankind in himself. It is by the witness of the Church that we know a great many things about God, including the canon of Scripture and its status as divine revelation.
My fellow Protestants are getting nervous at this point, but never fear! My Protestant credentials are, on this issue, impeccable: the Westminster Confession is on my side. The beginng of 1.5 reads, "We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture." Some will be quick to point to 1.4 which says, "The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, depends not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God." This, however, is a different issue. This says (and, incidentally, Catholic and Orthodox believers generally agree) that the testimony of the Church does not efficaciously make Scripture Scripture. Rather, as 1.5 says, the testimony of the Church "moves" and "induces" us to believe that Scripture is Scripture (but it would be the Word of God whether we were moved to believe that it was or not). I hope to discuss some other parts of WCF chapter 1 in part 5 and appendix B.
Now, we don't yet know much about this Church, but we know that its first members were Jesus' twelve apostles, and we know that it was out telling the world about God's revelation as soon as Jesus ascended, and it's still at it today, and will be until Jesus returns. I recently listed four aspects of ecclesiology (theory of the Church): somatic, apostolic, evangelistic, and eucharistic. Jeremy pointed out a fourth aspect that I can't believe I initially missed: ecclesiastic ecclesiology! That is, the Church is also the assembly of the called, and, as such, one can say that it is most fully the Church when it is assembled.
Be that as it may, all of these accounts are developed with a lot of assumptions already on the table, and at this point in our argument we don't have many assumptions available to us (comparatively speaking). We do, however, know that the Church proclaims the revelation, and the book of Acts tells us a lot about what the Church was like. One passage stands out to me:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers. Then fear came over everyone, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. Now all the believers were together and had everything in common. So they sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as anyone had need. And every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple complex, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to them those who were being saved. (2:42-47)
Suppose we begin our inquiry with the apostles themselves, then look to people like Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Papias, and Ignatius whom the apostles recognized as members of the same Church as themselves, and then look to the next generation, and the next, and the next, until the present day. In other words, suppose we assume (1) that being recognized as a member of the Church by a known member of the Church is a sufficient condition for Church membership, and (2) that the "is a member of the same church as" relation is transitive. This could, but need not, take the form of the doctrine of apostolic succession as understood by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, in which we work with the process of ordination of bishops. If we could do this, then we would know where the Church was today and we could just go ask about the Scripture (of course, there are some ways the Church could conceivably be such that even once we identified it, it wouldn't be that easy to find out what it's official proclamations were - for instance, what if the Anglican Communion came out on top? or, what would be even more confusing, what if it was the American Baptist Church? - but leave that aside for now). This, however, will not work.
The first problem is that, in general, organizational membership is (1) vague and (2) not transitive. Consider Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton. Are they members of the same political party? Personally, I think not. But Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party is unproblematically historically continuous with the modern Democratic Party. Furthermore, no point of discontinuity can be identified at which the Democratic-Republican Party ceased and was replaced by the Democratic Party. Surely the name change is irrelevant here. But Thomas Jefferson and Hillary Clinton are nevertheless not members of the same political party. Why? Because something more than historical continuity is required for the persistence of political parties through time. This requirement includes at least some kind of continuity of platform. There comes a point when the platform is so different that, totally regardless of history, it just can't be the same party, and this is the case with the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson as opposed to the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton. Vagueness enters, because there is no point, no single person or event, that can be singled out as the point where it was no longer the party of Thomas Jefferson. Non-transitivity enters here too: for any person in the Demcratic Party, we can, in principle, come up with a chain of recognition as members of the same party leading back to Thomas Jefferson.
As a political party can't survive a complete change of platform, so the Church could not survive a complete change of mission. Furthermore, a less than complete change could cast doubt on the persistence of the Church, and any change in doctrine will necessarily be a change in mission, since the Church's mission is the preaching of that doctrine. There are other essential characteristics that the Church, or a political party, would not persist through a change in, but these are certainly among the essential characteristics.
Now, suppose a group of people in the Democratic Party today discovered (to their shock!) that the principles of the Democratic Party were not the principles of its founder (or, rather, the founder of its predecessor, the Democratic-Republican Party), and decided to break away into another group, the Jeffersonian Democrats, which would embrace his principles. (I use this example because I have heard friends of mine suggest this very thing - though I suppose they probably weren't shocked by their discovery.) They claim to be the real modern Democratic-Republican Party since, on the one hand, they have historical continuity (through the Democratic Party), and, on the other hand, they have continuity of platform with Thomas Jefferson. However, the Democratic Party leadership doesn't recognize them and this leadership has been passed on through generations according to by-laws. The by-laws weren't around in the time of Jefferson, but they were around in times when he would certainly have recognized the party as still his own, and since they were instituted they were changed only according to their own rules. These grant the leaders legitimacy, but if a party can't survive through too great a change in platform, and the leaders preside over a party whose change in platform was too great, then they don't preside over the party of Thomas Jefferson. Of course, the Jeffersonian Democrats also have a problem, that their historical continuity goes through a party that is not identical with the original, but at least they are an eligible candidate, since they have the original platform (or, at least, continuity with it).
Now, there was one group of Christians, the Reformers, who believed they were in the position of the modern Jeffersonian Democrats in our example. My point is not that they were right (though I think they were, more or less), but that the underlying ideas about the persistence of organizations through time are credible, so that this possibility must be examined. That is, the very nature of the Church, as far as we know it at this point in our argument, is not such as to render their claim absurd.
Furthermore, the history of the Church is much more complicated than the history of the Democratic Party (of course, there is a lot I don't know about the history of the Democratic Party, so perhaps it is more complicated than I think it is). We have a lot of splintering all over the place starting pretty early, and all sorts of rival groups claiming to be the Church. Furthermore, the identity of the Church is complicated by another factor: its spiritual nature. We have all kinds of strange statements in the New Testament like "you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:5). The deeply spiritual nature of the Church might be thought to cast doubt on the degree to which its continuity is of the same sort as the continuity of a purely human organization. After all, if the Church is a spiritual entity, mightn't it spring up on earth just wherever it pleases? Mightn't it just suddenly spring up at Azusa Street in 1906 or in Toronto in 1994? Well, I suppose so. That is, if the Church is supposed to be simply that group of people that Jesus has commissioned to continue his mission of announcing the divine revelation (which is all we've argued it is so far), then we can't really prove that it needs historical continuity and doesn't just spontaneously spring up wherever Jesus happens to commission people to preach the revelation. So, if we are to remain suitably general and not beg the question, we are going to have to, in looking for the modern Church, focus on the essential characteristics of the Church rather than on history. (This is not intended to assume that just any group that has these characteristics - or, in particular, the one characteristic already mentioned: announcing the revelation - is the Church, but only that, for all we know at this point in our argument, any of those groups might be.) Nevertheless, we can learn from the diachronic approach. The argument I've given only shows that the further away from the apostles we get, the more uncertain things become. We can, however, safely consider the first few generations of the Church and ask what it proclaimed.
To begin with, we can say that, like Jesus, the first few generations of the Church regarded the Hebrew Bible as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, they don't seem to take the traditional Jewish view which I worried in part 3 that Jesus may have taken. We can see this in Acts 4:24-25, where Peter and John are recorded introducing a quotation with the phrase, "Master, You are the One who made the heaven, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them. You said..." The quotation which follows is from Psalm 2, part of the Ketuvim.
The most important person the original apostles recognize as a member of the Church is Paul (Galatians 2:9). Mark (Acts 12), Luke (Colossians 4:14), and James the brother of Jesus (Acts 12:17, 15:13-21; James the apostle, the brother of John had already died, in 12:2) are also recognized. This will get us most of the New Testament as the most important writings of the early Church. In terms of authorship by either an apostle or one of these people recognized by the apostles, and historical evidence of this authorship, we've now got all four gospels, Acts, the ten Pauline epistles (excluding the pastorals), James, 1 Peter, and 1 John. That's 18 out of 27 in the canon agreed upon by the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches. We are missing due to disputed authorship 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation and due to authorship by someone not well attested as a Church member we are missing Jude.
Note something very important here: we have not established that the Church proclaims these books as inspired accounts of the revelation. Rather, we have established that these books are all written by people who were very clearly members of the Church. Now, the next thing we should say is that it is obvious that these books were treated as authoritative from a very early date. We can pretty safely say that these essentially undisputed books constitute at least the Church's proclamation of the revelation. That's enough to say that if any of these books says something about the revelation of God to mankind in Christ, the fact that it's written there is good reason to believe it, and this might reasonably be called "believing in the Bible." But it isn't enough to say that the books are inspired and absolutely inerrant.
So, what do these books say that is relevant to our question? Well, we don't have 2 Timothy 3:16 yet, because 2 Timothy's authorship is disputed (I know all my fellow believers were just dying to use that one - sorry!), nor do we have 2 Peter 1:20-21, which is also of disputed authorship. There is also 1 Timothy 5:18, where Paul says "the Scripture says," and then quotes Luke 10:7, and 2 Peter 3:15-16, where Peter speaks of Paul's letters and "the other Scriptures." However, if these weren't written by Paul and Peter - and we haven't established that they are - then they don't do us any good, so we're going to have to move on to the next generation. (Of course, if your historical investigations led you to believe that 1 Timothy and 2 Peter were genuine - as many scholars do, in fact, think - then you would already be most of the way to the end of the argument.)
Moving on to the second century already complicates things because by that time we already have the fairly well-attested view that the Septuagint (which includes the Deuterocanon) is the Old Testament, as opposed to the Hebrew Bible. We even have some people, including Justin Martyr, claiming that the Hebrew text has been corrupted and the Septuagint is the only reliable version. However, I will, as I said, be skirting this issue as much as possible for the present.
Writing in the mid-second century, Justin Martyr gives us a window into an early Christian worship service, which is quite relevant to the place of the New Testament:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. (First Apology chapter 67)
By the end of the second century, we have a number of writers (e.g., Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, a disciple of John) who are not far removed from the apostles who use the New Testament in their theological writings in much the same way they use the Old Testament, and treat them as absolutely authoritative in all theological disputes (see Bruce, The Canon, chapts. 13 and 14). What is relevant here is that by the second century the Church, in proclaiming the revelation, relied on the Bible - both the Old and New Testaments - as its principle source; it proclaims authoritatively, citing the Scripture as its authoritative source.
The synchronic approach, as has been said, involves examining the claims of various present-day groups claiming the be the Church. It is limited primarily in that there are so many claimants we cannot possibly examine them all. However, we have a bit of luck here: there is substantial agreement among nearly all of them, especially if we ignore for now, as we have resolved to do, disputes among the claimants about certain specific books, and only examine the broad general claim. (There are still disputed books, besides just the duetero-canon - the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, for instance, has a number of additional books; it is also worth considering how one should think about the Book of Mormon in this sort of discussion, seeing as the LDS church is also a claimant here.) All of the major Christian groups agree that Scripture is inspired, and that it includes both the Old and New Testaments. This means that, regardless of precisely what the Church is and how it is manifested in history just at present, we can know that it has indeed proclaimed that the Scriptures are inspired by God, and that we should believe what they say.
I want to note, in closing, the relationship I think this has to how actual converts to Christianity have come to believe in the Bible. I am of the opinion that many of the problems in philosophy (consider, for instance, the refutation of solipsism) are problems of attempting to formalize rational inferences which we draw on an almost instinctive level (solipsism strikes me as a case where our inference is almost indisputably rational, and yet philosophy has had enormous difficulty trying to formalize the inference to prove that it's rational). This, I think, is the case here. Most people who believe in the Bible have, I think, come to believe in it in much the same way: someone told them that they ought to believe in the Bible, for some reason they took that claim seriously and, upon looking closely at it for themselves, some sort of experience they had in connection with the Bible led them to accept the claim originally presented to them regarding its inspiration. Parts two through four have been an attempt to make more explicit some of the lines of reasoning that might lead someone to take a claim like that seriously. I don't think that most people have done these sorts of historical explorations. Rather, I think they have probably simply been told about the Bible by people who have some kind of credibility in spiritual matters due to intelligence, or insight, or, more likely, the kinds of lives they lead. (This, of course, applies to taking Christianity seriously in general, and not just the claim of the inspiration of Scripture.) I hold that this line of reasoning is rational, but I'm skeptical about it getting you much farther than taking the claim seriously. Actually believing it will likely require some personal experience, and that will be the subject of part 5, which I hope to write less than 13 months from now!
Peter Kirk has posted a discussion of the Latin text Augustine was familiar with and its effect on his doctrine of original sin. The claim is, effectively, this: Augustine believed in the doctrine of original guilt because of an ambiguity introduced by an excessively literal Latin Bible which persists in the Vulgate and later theologians have a propensity to read original guilt into the text of Scripture because Augustine did. The passage in question is the end of Romans 5:12. The English translations are pretty much all the same: "in this way death spread to all men, because all sinned." But Augustine's translation says "in whom all sinned." The English translations are certainly more accurate. It is true, however, that many theologians, following Augustine, have claimed that everyone sinned in Adam. For instance, Michael Rea's paper "The Metaphysics of Original Sin" (which I highly recommend, if for no other reason than because it's fun) discusses several Western accounts of original sin and finds it necessary to examine various accounts of personal identity, since some of these theories require that we actually each be identical with Adam at the time of his first sin, and not identical with him at his second sin, i.e. that in Adam's eating of the fruit we literally all sin in him.
Now, in the comments, Jeremy and others argue, and Peter concedes, that no contemporary Protestant theologian actually makes the argument Augustine makes and, in fact, have other arguments for this conclusion, but Peter nevertheless (plausibly) claims that we tend to be more inclined to accept this view because of Augustine's influence on the tradition.
Peter's claim is supported by the fact that in the Christian East, where Augustine's influence is considerably less (though he is still a canonized saint), theologians have generally accepted original sin while denying original guilt, which, if I read him correctly, is also Peter's view. I have been told that this view was also held by John Wesley who got it from the various Eastern Christian writers he read (he was particularly fond of the Macarian Homilies). The view is this: because of Adam's sin, human nature is corrupted so that none of us is able not to sin (Romans 3:23); however, contra Augustine, we are held guilty only for our own particular acts of sin (which we all necessarily commit due to the corruption of our natures) and not for Adam's sin.
Now, I see the doctrine of original sin as very strongly supported by Scripture, whereas I think the doctrine of original guilt is something that comes primarily out of systematic theology rather than the clear teaching of specific passages of Scripture. (Augustine, of course, had a specific passage teaching this view in his Bible, but that was due to a misleading translation.) In fact, Romans 5:12 seems rather supportive of the original-sin-without-original-guilt view under consideration as against the Augustinian view. For the record, I regard both views as plausible and orthodox, provided that those who deny original guilt make strong enough claims about depravity.
Throughout Romans 5, Paul sets up a parallel between Adam and Christ, the new Adam. "if by the one man's trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift overflowed to the many by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ ... from one sin came the judgment, resulting in condemnation, but from the many trespasses came the gift, resulting in justification." (vv. 15 and 16) And the correspondance is real: indeed, there is a theological debate directly parallel to the debate about original guilt, and this is the debate about imputation of righteousness. "To impute" is a King James term for the Greek logizomai which can mean "to charge to one's account" (the word at Romans 5:13 is ellogeo, a cognate that means just exactly and only "to charge to one's account", whereas logizomai is a broader term and can also mean "to reckon," "to add up," "to consider," "to think," etc.). The doctrine of imputation of righteousness says that we are credited ("to credit" is a good translation of logizomai when used with a positive connotaton in some contexts) with Christ's righteousness; that is, in judging us, God considers Christ's righteous life as if it were ours and so acquits ("justifies" - Greek dikaioo) us, rather than condemning us for our sins.
(A brief note on this word: "justified" is often glossed as "declared righteous," and that's not so bad, except that "righteous" is also a technical theological term, and is also originally a legal term in the Greek, and we don't necessarily know what it means. To be righteous is to be on the right side of the law. To be justified means to have a judicial declaration state that you owe no (further) civil or criminal penalty. This can mean one of two things: either you have been found innocent or the penalty has been paid in full and you can now be released. I've used the translation "acquitted," which is footnoted in the HCSB, because it is easy to understand in this context, but I think Paul plays on the broader semantic range of the Greek word: on the one hand, we are acquitted because of Christ's innocence, but on the other hand, we were guilty and Christ paid our penalty for us. I think these are two different metaphors that Paul intentionally merges in his overally view of "justification.")
While Paul speaks of God "imputing" (or, rather, not imputing) sin in several places, the only talk of "imputing" righteousness in the New Testament centers around Genesis 15:6, which uses that wording in the Septuagint. The longest such discussion is Romans 4, immediately before our passage. This verse, as quoted by Paul at Romans 4:3, reads "But Abraham trusted God, and it was counted toward his [being] on the right side of the law" (my translation - traditionally, "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness"). At 4:24-25, Paul connects this back to us and to Christ: "[Our trust] is about to be counted in our [favor], since we place our trust in the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead. [Jesus] was betrayed on account of our violations [of God's law] and raised on account of the full payment of our penalty [or 'on account of our acquittal']." (With the traditional theological vocabulary: "[Our faith] is about to be imputed to us [as righteousness], since we have faith in the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead. [Jesus] was betrayed on account of our transgressions and raised on account of our justification.")
This, as I said, leads directly into Romans 5, the first verse of which says, "Therefore, since our penalty has been declared 'paid in full' because we have trusted him [lit. 'from trust' or 'because of trust'], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Side note: I'm beginning to understand why translators use the traditional theological vocabulary - translating into plain English is hard work, and I'm not sure I'm even succeeding!) The traditional Protestant view can be seen as a pretty straightforward inference from this passage: because we trust in Christ's rigtheousness rather than our own, God judges us on the basis of Christ's righteousness, rather than on the basis of our own. There is a lot of Biblical support for this kind of idea, especially in the prophetic books, often with the metaphor of clothing (e.g. Isaiah 61:10, 64:6, Zechariah 3) - I have no intention of tracking down every passage to this effect, because there are a lot of them. In fact, I think this is strongly enough supported that the parallel to imputation of righteousness can be used as an argument in favor of original guilt! Nevertheless, it remains an inference from the text, rather than the immediate teaching of the text. The immediate teaching of the text is something more vague and general, as original sin is more vague and general than original guilt. The text teaches that Adam's sin brought sin and death into the world for everyone, and Christ's righteousness brings life, peace, and justification into the world for everyone who believes.
As this is an inference, there is room for a view parallel to the original-sin-without-original-guilt view: the Christ's-righteousness-without-imputation view which, if I understand this article correctly, may be the view of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The author says "For a Christian, the beginning of eternal-life is the beginning of his belief in Jesus Christ. For him a promise has been given, a reward for eternity because, 'Who soever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die' (John 11:26)." Later he also says, "Repentance is the exercise of the free will of man, without which there is no salvation ... Repentance is ... the human reaction to the appeal of Jesus Christ." Christ, his righteous life and sacrificial death, his promise, and our trust in him are thus all seen as essential ingredients in salvation. Later, however, judgment is said to be according to "faith and deeds on earth" and reference is made to "the moral progress of the soul." Now, this is admittedly a little vague, and I'm going to interpret it charitably, keeping in mind that the Orthodox theologians who say these things intend them to be compatible with Scripture, including Romans. What could this possibly mean that would be compatible? Well, first we note that repentance and faith are seen as the beginning of this process - no good deed or "moral progress" occurring before this can please God in such a way as to acheive salvation - and that repentance is seen as a "reaction to the appeal of Jesus Christ." We further note that Pelagianism - the view that man is capable of initiating and/or accomplishing his own salvation - is regarded as a heresy in the East just as in the West. The story of salvation begins with "the appeal of Jesus Christ." Only after Christ makes his appeal to us can there be good deeds and "moral progress." We can then understand this Christ's-righteousness-without-imputation view by comparison with the original-sin-without-original-guilt view. Remember that because of Romans 5 we ought to say that we have Christ's righteousness in the same way we once had Adam's sin. As a result of Adam's sin, "death spread to all men because all sinned." We now claim that because of Christ's righteousness life can spread to all who believe, because all can live righteous lives. After repentance and the new birth, the believer can say "I have been crucified with Christ; and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:19-20) Christ in the believer now does what the believer could not do for himself - lives the life pleasing to God. On account of this life, the believer is judged to be righteous and acquitted of his sin. (Everyone who has begun the process - who has repented and believed - counts as "saved" in the Evangelical sense of that term. The Orthodox writer combines the "Great White Throne" judgment by which one enters heaven [Revelation 20:11-15] with the bema judgment for the heavenly reward [2 Corinthians 5:10].)
Now, what this theory needs, which is not mentioned in the article I linked, is an account of atonement. I don't necessarily mean penal substitution - I regard the doctrine of the atonement as an essential point of orthdoxy, but penal substitution as a probably correct but certainly incomplete account of the atonement. If this theory is to work, we cannot claim simply that the believer is "a new creation ... the new things have come;" we must also claim that "old things have passed away" (2 Corinthians 5:17), and the clear Biblical teaching is that, one way or another, it is the death of Christ that takes away our old sins (Romans 6:1-11, Ephesians 2:14-16, etc.).
By way of conclusion, let me say that I regard the traditional Protestant view as solidly Biblically and historically orthodox, whereas the view that I've been sketching here I say might be made to be both plausible and orthodox if sufficiently strong pictures of depravity and atonement can be annexed to it. This is far from an endorsement of this theory, but I present it for your consideration in the hope that it will cause you to reexamine your assumptions and think through the Biblical and rational grounds of your beliefs. Good luck!
Some time ago, I posted on icons and discussed my attempt to understand the difference between what Catholic and Orthodox believers call "relative worship" or "veneration" and the "true worship" which belongs to God alone. I mostly failed to understand any real difference here.
Today, I did something I should have done a long time ago: I read the decree of the Second Council of Nicea (the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which reinstated the veneration of icons). I found something interesting. In the Greek, the council makes a distinction between veneration and worship, as is to be expected. However, the words used are the Greek proskuneo for "venerate" and latreuo for "worship". The words are used together in Scripture in both Matthew 4:10 and Luke 4:8, which are identical quotations of Deuteronomy 6:13: "You shall worship [proskuneo] the Lord your God and him only shall you serve [latreuo." It's interesting that both Matthew and Luke use the word proskuneo (whose meaning we shall discuss below), when the Septuagint uses phobeomai which means "fear" (the verse is otherwise identical).
So what does proskuneo mean? Well, in Homeric and Classical Greek it usually refers to making obeisance to a king (in Attic, usually the King of Persia - the Greeks, especially the Athenians, prided themselves on the fact that they didn't make obeisance to kings like slaves). It can refer to any of various reverential acts, most commonly falling prostrate on the ground. Now this is just etymology - the Second Council of Nicea was in the 8th century, some 1200 years after the classical period. However, the word probably became a technical term with a pretty crystalized definition at least a few centuries earlier. In the New Testament and the ante-Nicene Fathers (that is, the period from the beginning of Christianity to AD 325) according to BDAG it means "(fall down and) worship, do obeisance to, prostrate oneself before, do reverence to, welcome respectfully." Examples are given of uses regarding human beings who are recognized as "belonging to a superhuman realm," kings, God or gods, idols, the devel or Satanic beings, and Jesus. It seems to have a religious overtone of sorts.
Philip Schaff's Introduction to the Seventh Ecumenical Council seems to imply that the word was in use with regard to the honor paid to the Byzantine Emperor. He remarks that "The council decreed that similar veneration and honour should be paid to the representations of the Lord and of the Saints as was accustomed to be paid to the 'laurata' and tablets representing the Christian emperors, to wit, that they should be bowed to, and saluted with kisses, and attended with lights and the offering of incense." Later he also says, "To those accustomed to kiss the earth on which the Emperor had trodden, it would be natural to kiss the feet of the image of the King of Kings. The same is manifestly true of any outward acts whatever, such as bowing, kneeling, burning of lights, and offering of incense."
Now, here's the point, and it's a good one: if you perform some act of reverence to the emperor, then why not to the saints? And if to the symbol of the emperor, why not to the symbols of the saints? And if to the saints and their symbols, how much more to God and his symbols, whether these are the cross and the Bible (the two most important icons in Orthodoxy) or paintings seeking to represent Christ according to his humanity. This sounds good, but it leaves me with three questions: (1) is the treatment of the emperor and his symbols idolatry to begin with? If it is, the whole argument will collapse. (2) Can one still apply this as an American who is not accustomed to making obeisance to anyone? (3) Is this actually the doctrine and practice of the Eastern Orthodox Church today? I'm going to answer these questions as "maybe", "yes", and "no", respectively.
Regarding question (1), it is not at all clear to me, but I would be very uncomfortable with undue reverence being shown to a ruler. On the other hand, it is not clear to what degree my discomfort is based on my biases as a Protestant or my biases as an American and to what degree it is based on my faith as a Christian. In any case, it is clear that it is possible to pay excessive reverence to political leaders and symbols so that this becomes idolatry, and many Christians were executed prior to Constantine for refusing to burn incense (or whatever) before the image of the Pagan emperor. Is the case with the Christian emperor so much different? Nevertheless, as I shall discuss next, we do appropriately give reverence and respect to political leaders and symbols in ways that are clearly not idolatrous, so the argument must in some degree be successful.
Regarding question (2), it is indeed true that Americans are not accustomed to paying obeisance to anyone. If you meet the President, you shake his hand and call him "Mr. President" - not "your highness" or "your excellency." They say that people used to bow to George Washington, but that's been a while back. However, there is a political object to which many Americans do give a kind of reverence: the flag. There is a complex etiquette, not enforced by legal penalties, but frequently followed nonetheless, about respecting the flag. Flags are not to be thrown away, but rather "retired." A flag is not supposed to touch the ground, and if it does it is to be retired immediately. Flags are retired by ceremonially burning them, and the burning is to be carried out by certain specified groups (I believe the only groups are military units and boy scout troops). The flag is folded a particular way, and hoisted on a pole ceremonially in a particular way. There are varying degrees of ceremony depending on what group you are in. I believe regulations do require that government departments treat flags in this way.
Honoring the flag is a way of honoring the country and the ideals it stands for. People have different ideas about what those ideals might be, but they people with many different political stances honor those ideals by honoring the flag.
My conclusion is that we American Protestants ought to treat the Bible, the cross, and perhaps also any images of Jesus or the saints we might have (we tend not to have them, but let that go) with at least the degree of reverence and honor with which we treat the flag. We ought, in fact, to treat the Bible and the cross with the very highest degree of reverence and honor with whcih it is permissible to treat any material symbol - but we must continue to gaurd against idolatry.
With regard to question (3), I believe, as I have indicated above, that Eastern Orthodox Christians want to say something stronger than what I have just said. Here's twentieth century Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov:
The veneration of the holy icons is based not merely on the nature of the subjects represented in them, but also on the faith in that gracious presence which the Church calls forth by the power of the sanctification of the icon. The rite of the blessing of the icon establishes a connection between the image and its prototype, between that which is represented and the representation itself. (The Orthodox Church, p. 163)
Finally, the icon has a liturgical function, it is a means of worship and veneration. This is one of its primary functions, more important than the first. Like sacred hymns and music, the icon is used as a means of worshipping God and venerating His saints. As such, it is essentially symbolic, leading the soul from the visible to the invisible, from the material to the spiritual, from the symbol to the prototype or original which it represents.
In sum, I conclude that it is quite proper to show great respect to objects which in any way represent or symbolize God or, to a lesser degree, the great saints of ages past, and likewise there is nothing wrong, per se, with having such objects, but this is not sufficient to justify the practice of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Now that everything is all wrapped up in a nice conclusion, I want to add two relevant points that I couldn't figure out how to fit into the main part but thought I should mention.
Firstly, there is a precedent for what I'm talking about in Judaism: the reason most Orthodox Jews will not write out the word 'God' (they typically write 'G-D' instead) is that when something has the word 'God' written on it it becomes a holy object and must be treated according to all sorts of rules for respect, much like the flag rules only more intense (I'm not familiar with the specifics).
Secondly, the word proskuneo is used in Revelation 19:10 where a voice (presumably of an angel?) instructs John not to 'venerate' him. His instruction, however, doesn't seem to be on the grounds that this would be idolatry, but rather on the grounds that he and John are to be regarded as equals: "I am a fellow slave with you and your brothers who have the testimony about Jesus." John is then instructed to 'venerate' God instead, "because the testimony about Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." (Whatever that means.) This verse does provide important considerations against the veneration of saints, I think, but not against the veneration of icons of Christ.
In the course of a bit of research on Berkeley's views on the epistemology of religion, I have just come across a little letter Berkeley wrote to one Sir John James, dated June 7, 1741. James was, apparently, an Anglican living in Boston who was considering converting to Roman Catholicism. While for some reason (perhaps because he was Irish) Berkeley is often mistakenly believed to have been a member of the Roman Catholic Church, he was, in fact, a member of the clergy of the Church of England, and wrote against Roman Catholicism on a number of occasions, this being one of them. His writings on the subject are, however, admirably balanced, respectful, and civil as compared with many of the polemics produced by his Protestant contemporaries. The letter to James, published in vol. 7, pp. 143-155 of The Works of George Berkeley, ed. Luce and Jessop, contains some wonderful reflections on individual knowledge and experience of God, the nature and authority of the Church, and the Christian life. Below are some passages that stuck out to me. I've copied quite a lot of text here (hurray for the public domain!) because that much of it was that God and Berkeley's theology is a very neglected topic. Most of the references in brackets are found in Luce's footnotes; a few that Luce missed were added by me.
You observe very justly that Christ's religion is spiritual, and the Christian life supernatural; and that there is no judge of spiritual things but the spirit of God. We have need, therefore, of aid and light from above. Accordingly we have the Spirit of God to guide us into all truth. [John 16:3] If we are sanctified and enlightened by the Holy Ghost & by Christ, this will make up for our defects without the Pope's assistance. And why our Church and her pious members may not hope for this help as well as others I see no reason. That Author of our faith tells us, He that will do the will of God, shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God. [John 7:17]There is an indwelling of Chirst and the Holy Spirit, there is an inward light
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There is an invisible Church whereof Christ is the head, the members of which are linked together by faith, hope, & charity. By faith in Christ, not in the Pope.
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Men travelling in day-light see by one common light, though each with his own eyes. If one man shou'd say to the rest, Shut your eyes and follow me who see better than you all. This wou'd not be well taken. The sincere Christians of our communion are governed or led by the inward light of God's grace, by the outward light of his written word, by the ancient and Catholic traditions of Christ's church, by the ordinances of our National Church which we take to consist all and hang together. But then we see, as all must do with out own eyes, by a common llight but each with his own private eyes. And so must you too or you will not see at all. And not seeing at all how can you too chuse a Church? Why prefer that of Rom to that of England? Thus far, and in this sense every man's judgment is private as well as ours. Some indeed go farther and without regard to the holy Spirit or the word of God, or the writings of the primitive fathers, or the universal uninterrupt'd traditions of the Church, will pretend to canvass every mystery, every step of Providence, and reduce it to the private standard of their own fancy, for reason reaches not those things. Such as these I give up and disown as well as you do.
I grant it is meet the Law of Christ shou'd like other laws have magistrates to explain and apply it. But then as in the civil State a private man may know the law enough to avoid transgressing it, and also to see whether the magistrates deviate into tyrrany: Even so, in the other case a private Christian may know and ought to know the written law of God and not give himself up blindly tot he dictates of the Pope and his assessors.
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Light and heat are both found in a religious mind duly disposed. Light in due order goes first. It is dangerous to begin with heat, that is with affections. To ballance earthly affections by spiritual affections is right. But our affections shou'd grow from inquiry and deliberation else there is danger of our being superstitious or Enthusiasts. An affection conceived towards a particular Church, upon reading some spiritual authors of that Communion which might have left a bias in the mind is I apprehend to be suspected. Most men act with a byas. God knows how far my education may have byassed me against the Church of Rome ... It is our duty to strive to divest our selves of all byas whatsoever.
Whatever unguarded expressions may be found in this or that Protestant Divine, it is certainly the Doctrine of our Church that no particular church or congregation of Believers is infallible. We hold all mankind to be peccable and errable, even the Pope himself with all that belong to him. We are like men in a cave in this present life seeing by a dim light through such chinks as the divine goodness hath open'd to us. We dare not talk in the high unerring positive style of the Romanists. We confess that we see through a glass darkly [1 Cor. 13:12]: and rejoice that we see enough to determine our practice and excite our hopes.
...There is indeed an invisible Church, whereof Christ is head, linked together by charity, animated with the same hope, sanctifyed by the same Spirit, heirs of the same promise. This is the universal church militant and triumphant: the militant dispersed in all parts of Christendom partaking of the same word and sacraments. There are also visible, political or national churches: none of which is universal ... The members of this universal church are not visible by outward makrs, but certainly known only to God whose Spirit will sanctifie and maintain it to the end of time.
The church is a calling ekklesia. Many are called by few are chosen. [Matt. 22:14] Therefore there is no reckoning the elect by the number of visible members. There must be the invisible grace, as well as the outward sign; the spiritual life and holy unction to make a real member of Christ's invisible church. The particular churches of Jersualem Antioch Alexandria Rome &c have all fallen into error. And yet in their most corrupt and erroneous state I believe they have included some true members of that body whereof Christ is head, of that building whereof He is the corner stone. [Eph. 2:20] Other foundation shall no man lay, but on this foundation there may be superstructures of hay stubble [1 Cor. 3:11-12] and much combustible trash without absolutely annihilating the church. This I take to have been evidently the case. Christ's religion is spiritual and supernatural, and there is an unseen cement of the faithful who draw grace from the same source, are enlightened by the same father of lights [James 1:17] and sanctified by the same Spirit. And this, although they may be members of different political or visible congregations, may be estranged or suspected or even excommunicate to each other. They may be loyal to Christ however divided among themselves.
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But perhaps you will say there is need of an infallible visible guide for the soul's quiet. But, of what use is an infallible guide without an infallible sign to know him by? We have often seen Pope against Pope and Council against Council. What or whom shall we follow in these contests by the written word of God, the Apostolical traditions, and the internal light of the logos that irradiates every mind but is not equally observed by all?
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As Plato thanked the gods that he was born an Athenian, so I think it a peculiar blessing to have been educated in the Church of England. My prayer nevertheless and trust in God is, not that I shall live and die in this church, but in the true church. For, after all, in respect of religion our attachment shou'd be only to the truth.
I am no feminist (my wife will confirm my impeccable Neanderthal credentials); I have strong views on women's ordination; but I am saddened by the way Reformed church culture so often tramples its women underfoot with its mindless identification of biblical manhood with something akin to John Wayne and its assumption that all Christian women should make Mary Poppins look domestically incompetent. - Carl Trueman, Reformation21.
I'm not sure where these attitudes come from, or whether they are specifically 'Reformed' tendencies. I know that I sometimes see them in Evangelical circles at Penn, but I would estimate that over half of my Christian friends here are Presbyterian. What's strange to me is that most of the people I come across who have these kinds of ideas are unmarried women. Because I don't know very many men who have these sorts of ideas, I have to wonder where they are getting it from. Quite possibly: each other. Out in the world, I think a lot of the pressure in terms of clothes, makeup, etc., is coming not from men but from other women. It would not be surprising if the same was true of the pressure in certain Christian circles to be "super-Mom." The pressure could also be coming from some segment I don't encounter - perhaps, for instance, from parents. I don't know.
Lauren is going into physics. Not that women who stay home and take care of the kids and the house are not doing something worthwhile, but Lauren has gifts that would be left unused if she did this, and the same is true of many, many other women. The Church, including complementarians, needs to learn to really encourage this, and not criticize these women or make them feel guilty.