Answers about Orthodoxy for my Nephew

A few days ago, my nephew was painting an aprtment for me. He asked me some questions about Orthodoxy and I did my usual sucky job giving answers. So, today I wrote him a letter that I hope does a better job answering his questions. The text of the letter is below.

Dear Daniel,

The other day when you were working on apartment 20 and we were talking about the Orthodox Christian Faith, you asked me a question to which I didn’t know the answer. I felt really bad about that. I should have been ready, per St. Paul’s command to give a good defense. I am also sorry, because you asked a sincere question and I was no of use in answering it. But, now that Advent and Nativity seasons are over I’ve been able to find the answer.
Your question, you’ll remember grew out of the discussion we were having about the rite of confession and the forgiveness of sins. It was “What about the tearing of the veil in the temple? Don’t you believe that that gives us access to God without having to go through priests?” My answer was, “I don’t know, I’ve only been Orthodox for two years.” And you were gracious toward me, not using my ignorance as a place of weakness for you to build an argument. But you also had other questions that I did not answer well. So, I will try to explain several things that I think I should have done a better job explaining:
I. The Orthodox explanation of the tearing of the temple veil
II. The Church and the Bible
III. Faith, Works, and Salvation


I: The Orthodox Explanation of the Tearing of the Temple Veil

Formerly, I did not know the answer to your question regarding the tearing of the veil, but, as I said above, I do now know the answer. I found it in the 11th century commentary on the Gospel of Matthew by the Blessed Theophylact. Archbishop Theophylact did not say anything new. Essentially, all he says throughout his commentaries is, “This is how the Church has always understood this passage.” In the case of the veil in Herod’s temple being torn (Matthew 27) Blessed Theophylact passes on to us several ideas that he received from those who came before him:
1) The veil was rent, and God thereby showed that the inaccessible and unseen temple, whose innermost part, the Holy of Holies, had been secluded by a veil, would be made common and profane so as to be visible and accessible to all.
2) The veil being rent indicated that the letter of the law had been stripped away to reveal the entirety of the law. What before had been obscure and enigmatic was made plainly visible.
3) The veil tearing in the temple revealed the temple’s true abhorrence of the blasphemy of the death of Christ. This is in contrast to the high priest tearing his clothes in pretended abhorrence of Jesus’ claim to divinity. (Matthew 26)
Personally, if I had to pick one of these three I’d go with the third one, but that is probably because I grew accustomed to literary interpretation of the Bible while sitting under Brian Morgan at Peninsula Bible Church.


II: The Church and the Bible

Several times when I mentioned the tradition that has been passed down to us, you said something like “but those are just men”, to which I said something like, “the Church is the body of Christ”. I think we were talking past each other. I wasn’t happy about that. I feel like we had a real chance for understanding but I blew it.

So, now I’ll try to explain (briefly and incompletely, because I have an amazing amount of homework to do this evening.) Orthodox thinking on the Church and the Bible.

We believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church. We do not see St. Mark or St. Paul or the other New Testament writers as being outside the Church rather we see them as being an organic part of the Church. Therefore, we see the Bible as the product of the Holy Spirit working through the Church. (I have a friend who has fun with this. Whenever someone asks her if the Orthodox Church believes in the Bible she answers, “Believe in it? Hell yes! We wrote it.”)
We do not believe that the Holy Spirit stopped speaking through the Church when the Apostle John died. We believe the Holy Spirit spoke through the Church when the Church wrote the Gospel of Matthew. But we also believe the Holy Spirit spoke through the Church when she decided to officially put the Gospel of Matthew in the canon and excluded the Gospel of Peter. We believe the Holy Spirit spoke through the Church when the Church included 3rd Macabees in the canon but excluded the book of Enoch.

We believe that the same Spirit that inspired the writers of the Biblical books also inspires Church Councils, as happened in Acts. You might remember that when Christianity had begun to spread throughout the Roman Empire and huge numbers of gentile began to accept the Christian faith, some Christians were troubled. Some Christians of Jewish lineage held that gentiles had to submit to the Moasaic Law before they could become Christians; it should be necessary to turn them first to the Jewish faith because otherwise they could not be saved. This led to heated disagreements among the Christians.

No one apostle was able to resolve such an important question alone. It was determined by the apostles together with the presbyters (or priests) to convene the first Council in Jerusalem in the year A.D. 51.

After long discussions, the issue was settled by a speech by St. Peter. He rose and said that the Lord having chosen him in the early days to preach to the gentiles did not make any distinction between Jews and gentiles but gave the Holy Spirit to all; and therefore, Christians converted from paganism did not have to keep the rituals of the law of Moses. "We believe," the Apostle finished his speech, "that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ."
The speech of the Apostle Peter created a deep impression and was then strengthened still more after the Apostles Paul and Barnabas related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

After this, St. James, the brother of the Lord, spoke to the council. The last word belonged to him as to bishop of the Jerusalem Church and president of the council. His opinions were furthermore important because he himself was a strict adherent of the Law. (Not only Christians but also the Jews called him the righteous or the just. In Hebrew this is t’sadic. If you’ve see the movie “The Chosen” based on Chiam Potok’s novel of the same name you will have some idea of the meaning of the title among the Jews.)

St. James approved the opinion of the St. Peter and He showed that it agreed with prophecy (Amos 9:11-12) and he proposed, "we should not trouble those of the gentiles, who turn to God, with keeping the rituals of the Law of Moses; but they must refrain from idol worship, from fornication, and from things strangled and blood."

This proposal of the Apostle James was accepted by the apostles, priests, and the whole Council unanimously as a resolution of the Council. It was made known to all Christians in a conciliar decree which began with the words, "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..." and continued, “to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well.”

From then until now, when a Council of the Orthodox Church reaches a decision we begin the proclamation with the same words used in Jerusalem, “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…”
So, how can we speak for the Holy Spirit? How can we be brave enough to say gentiles can ignore the law of Moses? How can we be brave enough to say the letter of St. Jude is acceptable for reading in the services but the letter of St. Barnabas is not? Because we believe we are the Body of Christ (We do not mean that as a mere metaphor.) the foundation and pillar of the truth and that the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth.
This kind of goes to the question of the Church today versus the early Church. The Orthodox do not see any difference. It is the same Church. If you don’t mind, I can use a physiological analogy, it is like a body, your body has few if any of the cells it was born with, but is still your body and has been from conception until this today. Sure, St. James is not on earth anymore. St. John Chrysostom is long gone. Blessed Theophylact is in Heaven with the others, but the Church is still here.



III

Faith, Works, and Salvation


Of all the questions you asked, it was your questions about faith, works and salvation that I found the most difficult to answer. Part of what makes it hard to answer is that the Orthodox experience of Salvation does not fit into the familiar categories of Calvinist or Arminian, Roman Catholic or Reformed. Orthodox soteriology was most clearly stated in the short book “On the Incarnation” by St. Athanasius of Alexandria in the Fourth Century, 1,200 years before either John Calvin or Jacob Arminius lived.
Roman Catholics and Protestants tend to think God became a man in order to die for our sins. This can be seen in a song we used to sing at Peninsula Bible Church:

Lord, I lift Your name on high.
Lord, I love to sing Your praises.
I'm so glad You're in my life.
I'm so glad You came to save us.
You came from Heaven to earth to show the way,
From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay;
From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky;
Lord, I lift Your name on high.


Orthodox Christians believe God became man so that we can experience His nature, and that he died and conquered death in order to get us back to the place where we could begin to experience that mystical union. Here are songs from the feast of Nativity that proclaim this doctrine:

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God,
Has illumined the world like the Light of Wisdom
Today the whole creation rejoices and is jubilant,
For Christ is born of the Virgin
Heaven and earth now are united through Christ's Birth!
Now is God come down to earthAnd man arisen to the heaven
Today Christ is born in Bethlehem of the Virgin.
Today He who is without a beginning begins,
And the Word is made flesh.The powers of Heaven rejoice,
The earth and her people are jubilant;
The Wise Men bring gifts to the Lord,
The shepherds marvel at the One who is born;
And we sing without ceasing:"Glory to God in the Highest, And on earth peace, good will toward men".


Also, both Calvin and Arminius were heavily influenced by two heterodox thinkers: Anselm of Canterbury, an 11th Century Roman Catholic, and Tertullian, a 2nd century Roman lawyer and Orthodox priest who left the Church for the Montanist heresy. His early writings are considered Orthodox if a bit legalistic, but since he wrote in Latin he didn’t have much influence on Christians in the east.

The main effect of Tertullian and Anselm on Calvin and Arminius (actually, on all Protestants and Roman Catholics) was in thinking of salvation in mainly legal terms. From this springs questions such as “Can I earn Salvation?”, “Is Christ’s death effective enough to save me or do I need to add my good works to it?” “How, exactly, does God justify me? ”. Those aren’t questions Orthodox even think about, let alone write books about.

The Orthodox look at Calvinists and Arminians and say, “you are missing the point.” Whereas, both of their systems are mainly concerned with escaping Hell, which is the just compensation for sin, the Orthodox Christian understanding of salvation is not the acquittal for sin that allowed man to gain salvation through “good works” (900 year old Roman Catholic idea) or the acquittal of sin by “faith alone” (500 year old Protestant idea). Instead, it is about being transformed, by Christ, into His likeness and partaking of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:1-4).

This transformation takes place in the life of the Church, the living revelation of Christ. We do not pretend to understand this. We call it a Mystery. And the life of the Church is filled with discreet acts we call the Holy Mysteries. Some of these are:
1) Baptism in which Christ makes us participants in his death and resurrection, and clothes us with Himself. (Galatians 3:27, John 3:5)
2) Chrismation in which Jesus seals us with the gift of the Holy Spirit who enables to do the work of Christ in the world (2 Corinthians 1:21-22)
2) Communion (John 6:53-58, 1 Corinthians 10:16-17) in which Jesus feeds us with His own flesh and blood of Jesus, thereby bringing His body into our bodies, we being joined to Him and to each other, forming the Church, the Body of Christ.

With much affection, your Uncle, Matt