II' Church, Scripture,

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II. Church, Scripture,

• and Tradition
• in Orthodoxy

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II.A. Authority?

• Or Life?

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 1. The question of authority
• Who speaks for God?
• The biblical authors alone?
• The Church hierarchy?
• The councils?

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 2. Eastern theologians on authority
• This lack in Orthodox ecclesiology of a clearly
  defined, precise, and permanent criterion of
  Truth besides God Himself, Christ, and the Holy
  Spirit, is certainly one of the major contrasts
  between Orthodoxy and all classical Western
  ecclesiologies.
• -- John Meyendorff

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 2. Eastern theologians on authority
• Infallibility resides solely in the ecumenical
  fellowship of the Church united by mutual love
  the guardianship of dogmas and the purity of
  rites is entrusted, not to the hierarchy alone
  but to all members of the Church who are the body
  of Christ.
• -- Alexey Khomiakov

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 2. Eastern theologians on authority
• The Eastern Church recognises no formal,
  juridical authority. For her, Christ, the
  apostles, the Church councils are not
  authority. There is no question here of
  authority, but of an infinite stream of the life
  of grace, which has its source in Christ and with
  which each individual is borne along as a drop or
  as a ripple.
• -- Nicolas Arseniev

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 3. How can one NOT have a view of authority?
• Corporate perspective rather than individual
  mindset
• Mystical perspective rather than legal mindset

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 4. But what about the priority of Scripture?
• Scripture is a body of knowledge passed down in
  the Church in many forms. The holy ecumenical
  synods, the Fathers of the Church, their inspired
  writings, and the corpus of tradition that
  constitutes Orthodoxy are, in many ways,
  Scripture itself, completing and witnessing, yet
  never supplanting or contradicting, the written
  biblical canon.
• -- Archimandrite Chrysostomos

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 4. The priority of Scripture?
• It the Bible must not be regarded as something
  set up over the Church, but as something that
  lives and is understood within the Church (that
  is why one should not separate Scripture and
  Tradition). It is from the Church that the Bible
  ultimately derives its authority, for it was the
  Church which originally decided which books form
  a part of Holy Scripture and it is the Church
  alone which can interpret Holy Scripture with
  authority.
• -- Kallistos Ware

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 4. The priority of Scripture?
• Scripture, while complete in itself, presupposes
  Tradition, not as an addition, but as a milieu in
  which it becomes understandable and meaningful.
• -- John Meyendorff

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 4. The priority of Scripture?
• Western thought always dwells in the past, with
  such intensity of historical recollection that it
  seems to be compensating for unhealthy defects in
  its mystical memory. The Orthodox theologian must
  also offer his own testimony to this world a
  testimony arising from the inner memory of the
  Church and resolve the question with his
  historical findings. Only the inner memory of the
  Church fully brings to life the silent testimony
  of the texts.
• -- Georges Florovsky

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 5. What is tradition?
• Not something set over against Scripture
• Not a set of texts in addition to Scripture

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 5. What is tradition?
• It is not enough simply to quote the Fathers, to
  make them into authorities certifying our every
  theological proposition, for it is not
  quotations, be they scriptural or patristic, that
  constitute the ground of theology, but the
  experience of the Church. And since, in the
  ultimate analysis, she has no other experience
  but that of the Kingdom, since her whole life is
  rooted in that unique experience, there can be no
  other source, no other ground and no other
  criterion for theology, if it is truly to be the
  expression of the Churchs faith and the
  reflection on that faith.
• -- Alexander Schmemann

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II.A. Authority? Or Life?

• 5. What is tradition?
• If the Scriptures and all that the Church can
  produce in words written or pronounced, in images
  or in symbols liturgical or otherwise, represent
  the different modes of expression of the Truth,
  Tradition is the unique mode of receiving it. We
  say specifically unique mode, and not uniform
  mode, for to Tradition in its pure notion there
  belongs nothing formal. It is not the word, but
  the living breath which makes the word heard at
  the same time as the silence from which it came
  it is not the Truth, but a communication of the
  Spirit of Truth, outside which the Truth cannot
  be received.
• -- Vladimir Lossky

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II.B. Ecclesiology,

• Sacraments,
• and Eschatology

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• If tradition is the life of the Church, then what
  is the Church?
• Not the fellowship of believers
• Not the place where the Word is truly preached
• Not the structure of pope and bishops

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• What is the Church?
• The fullness of the Holy Spirit
• The body of Christ

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• Church as fullness (sobornost)
• A reflection of trinitarian life (Jn. 1720-22)
• Called by God the Father as his holy people,
  being in Christ and the body of Christ justified
  by him, sanctified by Gods Holy Spirit whose
  temple it is, the church of Christ is founded on
  the life of the three divine hypostases, the life
  of the all blessed and Holy Trinity. As a sacred
  society of members, constituted as such by this
  communion with the three divine persons, the
  church is a reflection of the life of the Holy
  Trinity.
• -- Maximos Aghiorgoussis

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• Church as fullness (sobornost)
• The liturgy of the Church is always and
  primarily a preparation it always points and
  tends beyond itself, beyond the present, and its
  function is to make us enter into that
  preparation and thus to transform our life by
  referring it to its fulfillment in the Kingdom of
  God. The Holy Spirit has come and His coming has
  inaugurated the Kingdom of God. Grace has been
  given and the Church truly is heaven on earth,
  for in her we have access to Christs table in
  His Kingdom. We have received the Holy Spirit and
  can partake, here and now, of the new life and be
  in communion with God.
• -- Alexander Schmemann

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 2. Church as body (sacramental community)
• The eucharistic bread as body of Christ (Matt.
  2626)
• The Church as body of Christ (Rom. 125)

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 2. Church as body (sacramental community)
• The Eucharist is the Sacrament of the Church,
  i.e. her eternal actualization as the Body of
  Christ, united in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
  Therefore, the Eucharist is also source and
  goal of the entire liturgical life of the
  Church. It is the parousia, the presence of the
  Risen and Glorified Lord in the midst of His
  own, those who in Him constitute the Church and
  are already not of this world but partakers of
  the new life of the New Aeon. The day of the
  Eucharist is the day of the actualization or
  manifestation in time of the day of the Lord as
  the Kingdom of Christ.
• -- Alexander Schmemann

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 2. Church as body (sacramental community)
• Wherever there is the fullness of this
  sacramental organism, there is Christ, there is
  the Church of God, established on Peter.
• -- John Meyendorff

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 3. Church as body headed by the bishop
• Church is primarily a eucharistic assembly.
• In such an assembly, someone must stand in the
  place of Christ.
• The bishop is this person.

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 3. The Church as body headed by the bishop
• He the bishop was the head and source of the
  Churchs life. His special gift consisted in
  transforming the gathering of Christians through
  the Sacrament into the Body of Christ and in
  uniting them in an indivisible union of new life.
  The power to dispense the sacraments was
  indissolubly linked with the power to teach he
  taught at the meeting, not by his own initiative
  but according to the Spirit he was the guardian
  of the apostolic tradition, the witness of the
  universal unity of the Church.
• -- Alexander Schmemann

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 3. The Church as body headed by the bishop
• Two qualifiers
• The bishop has no power of his own.
• The bishop seeks to preserve sacramental life,
  not just truth.

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 4. The Church and eschatology
• Two views of apostolic succession
• Historical (Roman Catholic)
• Eschatological (Eastern Orthodox)

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II.B. Ecclesiology

• 4. The Church and eschatology
• In this historical approach to apostolic
  succession the apostles are the creators of
  history whereas in the eschatological approach
  they are the judges of history. Correspondingly,
  in the first case the Church is apostolic when
  she faithfully transmits the apostolic kerygma
  in the second case she is apostolic when she
  applies it to a particular historical context
  and then judges this context in a prophetic way
  through the vision of the eschata which she is
  supposed to maintain.
• -- John Zizioulas

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II.C. Tradition

• and Its Expressions

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 1. Scripture
• 2. Doctrine of the fathers
• 3. Decrees of ecumenical and local councils
• 4. Divine liturgy
• 5. Architecture and iconography of the church
  buildings

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 1. Scripture
• The dominant expression of tradition
• The heart of the liturgy
• The Orthodox service books as a whole are in the
  last analysis little else than one vast and
  extended meditation upon Holy Scripture.
• -- Kallistos Ware

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 1. Scripture
• Byzantine text of NT (similar to KJV)
• Frequent use of LXX OT
• Willingness to live with ambiguity about the
  exact text of Scripture

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 1. Scripture
• Not tied to a single language
• Emphasis on Scripture and liturgy in the
  vernacular
• Reverence for traditional translations undermines
  this emphasis.

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 2. Doctrine of the fathers
• Primarily, the great theologians of the patristic
  period (up to ca. A.D. 800)
• But
• Not just from the patristic period
• Not just theologians
• Not just men

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 3. Decrees of ecumenical and local councils
• Not authorities which determine what the Church
  must believe
• Rather, witnesses to what the whole Church does
  believe
• Not ecumenical unless accepted by the whole
  Church

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 4. Divine liturgy
• Four forms of the liturgy
• Liturgy of St. Basil
• Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
• Liturgy of St. James
• Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified Gifts

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 4. Divine liturgy
• Three major parts of the liturgy
• Proskomede (Office of Preparation)
• Liturgy of the Catechumens
• Liturgy of the Faithful

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 5. Architecture and iconography of the church
  buildings
• Narthex
• Transept
• Iconostasis
• Sanctuary

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 5. Architecture and iconography of the church
  buildings
• The iconostasis

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II.C. Tradition and Expressions

• 5. Architecture and iconography of the church
  buildings
• From God to man, from above downwards there goes
  the ray of Divine revelation gradually, through
  the preparation of the Old Testament, through
  things foreshadowed in the patriarchs and
  foretold by the prophets, towards the series of
  holy days, the fulfilment of what the Old
  Testament was preparing for, and through this
  storey towards the coming completion of the
  Dispensation, the image of the Kingdom of God
  the Tchin. Below this there takes place the
  direct communion between God and man. These are
  the ways of the ascent of man. They proceed from
  below upwards. Through receiving the preaching of
  the Gospels and communion by prayer, through the
  union of the will of man with the will of God,
  and finally, through communion in the sacrament
  of the Eucharist man accomplishes his ascent to
  the Tchin.

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Discussion

• Worship and the Church
• The Nature of Theology
• Scripture and Tradition

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Discussion

• Worship and the Church
• 1) People as primarily worshipers
• 2) Sacrament, rather than Word, as the central
  aspect of worship
• 3) The bishopric as a central aspect of
  Church/worship
• 4) Necessity vs. love

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Discussion

• The Nature of Theology
• 1) East-West antitheses
• Communion, not authority
• Sanctification, not justification
• Experience, not proof
• Consensus, not obedience
• 2) The problem of interpretation

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Discussion

• Scripture and Tradition
• 1) God as object vs. God as subject
• 2) Tradition as something not separate from
  Scripture
• 3) Tradition as divine, not human
• 4) The Church as pillar and foundation of the
  truth (1 Tim. 315)

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Discussion

• Given that we will affirm sola scriptura,
• 1) Where does the authority to interpret
  Scripture lie?
• 2) Should we not listen to those who deny sola
  scriptura?
• 3) How will we prevent people from seeing
  Scripture as a means in itself?