The Loose Brick
Do you know that game, Jenga, where you have to keep removing blocks from a tower until they all come tumbling down? I had a theological Jenga tower, and Orthodoxy was finding its weak spots.
Every week I would go to catechumen class and our pastor would start by asking “does anyone have any questions?” I always had at least one, with follow-ups. Sometimes it seemed he was talking directly to me and watching my face to gauge my reactions. Maybe he actually was. But one day, in the midst of a lengthy answer to some question that had been asked, he looked at me straight and said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “You know we don’t believe in sola scriptura, right?” He sat there, smiling and nodding as he watched my mouth drop open like a marionette.
I know, I know…if you are like me, and you did not know this about Orthodoxy, you might be heading for that “x” in the corner of your screen to close out this blog and not read any further.
Hang on—don’t go. Hear me out.
My head was spinning—how is it possible to determine what is true if the principle of “sola scriptura” is not applied to the question. Don’t we need that one, unerring, inviolable, standard against which we measure our theology? How are we to recognize heresy? As I sat there dumbfounded, he continued. He explained that in Orthodoxy scripture is authoritative, however, (and I would argue that this is the missing link for Protestants) scripture was written in the context of the Church, for the Church, by the Church, therefore it cannot be separated from that Tradition that was handed down from the apostles and church fathers.
Well, There went my Jenga tower. (Here is an excellent article which will further illuminate the position of the Orthodox Church on the doctrine of sola scriptura1)
What I now understand all this to mean is that all scripture, including the Old Testament, has been handed down in a context in which the people of God would comprehend what is written based on the traditions of their lived community of faith. Therefore, when the apostles who were ordained and commissioned by Christ himself began their ministry, they were beginning with an understanding of the Torah within a continuing tradition of the religion of the Hebrew people.2 They had traditions, liturgy, hymns, and prayers all in place that had been established since the giving of the law on Sinai. Their forefathers knew what sacrifice was. They knew what it meant to worship God. They knew that they were different from the nations around them. Even before the law, they knew that in Egypt they were not free to worship as they desired and retained that separate identity. They identified themselves with the Patriarchs as far back as Eden. This was all known and therefore the faith of the apostles was not born in a vacuum. The story of the Church begins with creation. In Pentecost the story reaches its climax.
What the apostles did not yet have when they were commissioned by Christ and received the Holy Spirit was the canon of the New Testament, the gospels and epistles that were yet to be written (by them!) or the Revelation of St. John, but they had been with Christ and were instructed by him for three years. They knew and loved his mother, his family, and his friends. They had watched him in synagogues and at the temple. They had observed him and participated with him in liturgical services. He had entered their context, joined in and in so doing, fulfilled and embodied it. He used their familiar texts and traditions and announced His incarnation within them. The apostles were commissioned to do what he did. His words and his actions were imprinted upon them. He didn’t instruct them to go write everything down. He said,
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matt. 18:18-20)
While the apostles’ writing became a means to remind the nascent Church of what had been handed down to them, there had to be something upon which to pin those reminders. Under the power of the Holy Spirit, the apostles preached the Gospel at Pentecost which was an established feast with prayers and liturgies, then proceeded to baptize thousands of people. We read in Acts (2:41) “So those who received his [Peter’s] word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” A tidal wave of the newly illumined (what Orthodox call the newly baptized) was unleashed that would establish Christendom within the Roman empire. The Tradition of the eucharist was being established and liturgical prayer was the glue that held it all together. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42 ESV)
Paradigm Shift
This new perspective produced a tectonic paradigm shift in my mind. Was all of this information new to me? Certainly not the part about Pentecost and the church and its roots that went back to Sinai. I had never reached back as far as Eden—I just hadn’t made that connection. I had read the entirety of the Protestant Bible many times over, but I had lacked a certain context. As a Protestant, any Church history worth examining began in 1517, when Martin Luther nailed 95 theses onto the door of the Wittenburg Castle Church, upending the tables of the Pope and his corrupt practices. My context was completely western.
I have never taken issue with whether there were serious problems within the Roman Catholic Church. It’s just that we were never taught to look beyond it. It was “Pope and Catholic Church BAD” and “Martin Luther and the Reformers GOOD” and there was little nuance. Anglicans would even sweep Henry VIII under the rug and admit that he was a cad but Hey! God used him!
What I had most admired in Luther was his stance against the Diet of Worms in which he made his famous “Here I Stand” speech. He was the German / Christian / Renaissance version of Patrick Henry. It makes sense that Americans love the Original Protestant—the solitary, yet passionate monk standing against the behemoth of the corrupt Catholic Church. Americans get that. We admire that.
Since your most serene majesty and your highnesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. (cite)
Even now, I find this compelling. The text of the whole speech is compelling. But what I see and feel today in response to the speech is so different than before. In the past I would have considered Luther a hero—and perhaps on some level he was—he was certainly learned, passionate, and committed to the Scriptures and the Church. But as I took steps toward Orthodoxy, a shadow was cast over his legacy that revealed him to be merely a continuation of the rupture of the church that had taken place in 1054, nearly 500 years earlier. For 1000 years the church was one, from 1000-1500 A.D. it was broken in two, and now, since the Reformation, it is shattered and nearly unrecognizable.
Academically speaking I am not a historian, and my goal here is not to make a critique of Luther or of the Roman Catholic Church. I am simply one who has recently walked from one side of history onto another side. The side on which I stood previously, that of Reformation-backed Christianity, looked at Scripture as the highest authority, and agreed that the Word of God was sufficient to instruct every Pope, bishop, priest, pastor, elder, deacon, and layman. If I, a layman, disagreed with my pastor, I could in theory confront him with his error, and expect him to listen, because I was a mature Christian “armed” with scripture. If he didn’t listen to me or interpreted the same scripture differently, I could find a different church. Martin Luther himself had said,
A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it…neither the Church nor the pope can establish articles of faith. These must come from Scripture. For the sake of Scripture we should reject pope and councils.(cite)
and elsewhere he wrote
If it were to happen that the pope and his cohorts were wicked and not true Christians, were not taught by God and were without understanding, and at the same time some obscure person had a right understanding, why should the people not follow the obscure man? Has not the pope erred many times? Who would help Christendom when the pope erred if we did not have somebody we could trust more than him, somebody who had the Scriptures on his side.(cite)
It is well known that Luther did not intend to divide the Church, but unfortunately, that was the outcome of the cause that he led, and with statements such as this he had begun a movement away from the authority of the tradition of the Church in the west, and the later Reformers would further dismantle her ancient practices and beliefs until they were a shell of its former glory. An Orthodox person’s response to Luther’s desperate question is “well, The Church would help,” but in 1054 AD the Pope had taken a wrecking ball to his accountability partners. He had excommunicated his peers and removed the checks and balances that come with a conciliar Church that made decisions with other bishops as equals in council. Though separated from Rome, the Orthodox church retains this conciliar nature, and therefore we do not need to divorce the sacred scripture from the continuing practices of the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It remains precisely where it has been all along—central, authoritative, and in its proper context.
In 1672 a Synod was convened in Jerusalem to draft an answer to reformed theology and predicted the very situation that we now encounter—endless fragmentation of the Church, the result of every man believing himself to have the proper authority to interpret the scriptures.3 “Every man his own pope” is a phrase that Orthodox believers are well familiar with when examining the Protestant theology of sola scriptura, but coming into the Church and hearing it for the first time, it shook me and I was convicted of the correctness of the expression. The authority of the Tradition of the Orthodox church was asserted in The Confession of Dositheus, the document that was drafted in response Protestant theology at the Jerusalem Synod in 1672.
Wherefore, the witness also of the Catholic Church is, we believe, not of inferior authority to that of the Divine Scriptures. For one and the same Holy Spirit being the author of both, it is quite the same to be taught by the Scriptures and by the Catholic Church. Moreover, when any man speaks from himself he is liable to err, and to deceive, and be deceived; but the Catholic Church, as never having spoken, or speaking from herself, but from the Spirit of God — who being her teacher, she is ever unfailingly rich — it is impossible for her to in any wise err, or to at all deceive, or be deceived; but like the Divine Scriptures, is infallible, and has perpetual authority.4
So, that loose brick came out, the tower came crashing down, and sola scriptura was put in its place. With the barrier between myself and the Tradition of the Church removed, I was now able to move forward and consider all of the teachings and practices of Orthodoxy within their proper context. Glory to God!
More Resources for exploration:
The Religion of the Apostles, Fr. Stephen DeYoung
The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware
Rock and Sand, Fr. Josiah Trenham
The Age of Paradise, John Strickland
The Age of Division, John Strickland
Robert Arkaki, Orthodoxy’s Official Response to Calvinism — The Confession of Dositheus (1673), November 9, 2018, Orthodox-Reformed Bridge, viewed July 2, 2022 https://orthodoxbridge.com/2018/11/09/orthodoxys-official-response-to-calvinism-the-confession-of-dositheus-1673/
Young, De Stephen. The Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century. Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021.
Robert Arkaki, Orthodoxy’s Official Response to Calvinism — The Confession of Dositheus (1673), November 9, 2018, Orthodox-Reformed Bridge, viewed July 2, 2022 https://orthodoxbridge.com/2018/11/09/orthodoxys-official-response-to-calvinism-the-confession-of-dositheus-1673/
Dennis Bratcher, ed., The Confession of Dositheus, Christian Resource Institute, The Voice, viewed July 2, 2022 The Confession of Dositheus, 1673. http://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html
This was very helpful as I’ve been thinking a lot about the solo scriptura thing of late. What you shared here blew my mind and made so much sense