Your criticism of those forms of natural law that are functionally the equivalent of deism is spot on. And I would also with you like to see natural law arguments extended and deepened in light of the anthropology of the Church.

Interestingly, your suggestion here is very much in line with the theological and philosophical scholarship of the late Pope John Paul II on the Catholic side and Christos Yannaras in the Orthodox side (though whether Yannaras would agree with how I characterize his work is another question 😆 ). Among Protestant theologians I think Stanley Hauerwas would be an interesting conversation partner for us.

As for jurisdictional diddling, yeah, well, there is that isn’t there 🙄 .

In Christ,

+FrG

Fr. Gregory, I am not wholly opposed to a natural law approach, but I think we need to take it even further and produce modern apologethics that relay on the unique anthropology of the Church.

When I give tours of my parish to others, I always stress the affirmative aspects of our approach to the person of Jesus Christ (based on His Incarnation) in love and communion and the healing nature of confession (rather than punitive).

The big failing I have found with most natural law arguments is that they often devolve into a defacto deism rather than proclaiming “God is with us” in a living way that is available to anyone who wants to partake of His life. The Protestants realize the relational diminsion in a way that can make the faith attractive–particularly in a culture formed by their theology to begin with. However, as you point out, they lack the sacramental dimension that allows for a more complete and full inter-relationship with Christ and each other.

I find it exceptionally frustrating that we keep diddling about with jurisdictions, and a calcified hierarchy when we have the balm everyone needs. We all to often lock up the door and don’t enter in ourselves while making it unnecessarily difficult for those already in the Church to “taste and see that the Lord is good”.

Michael’s distinction in 4.1.1. is my own and is generally accepted by most pastoral theologians and scholars in religion. It is, to be sure, an arbitrary distinction but it is useful nonetheless to get at the difference between an invitation to faith that is offered without as Michael say manipulation. I would contend that many of the apologetic materials we use in the US seem to be concerned more with proseletyzing than evangelizing. That’s harsh sounding I know, but a lot of what we produce presents the Orthodox faith in contrast to other Christian traditions. Additionally, the comparison is never favorable for the non-Orthodox confession and really risks leaving people with the impression that what we have to offer is more a rejection of what others believe rather than offering a positive, attractive message.

Doing this, I think, not undermines our witness it helps explain why some many converts defect and why so many Orthodox Christians baptized as infants grow up estranged from the Church. I find the Orthodox faith to be very positive, very hopeful and attractive–I don’t think we need to point out why we think others are wrong or try to undermine some else’s faith.

Nick, I agree with your response following 2.1.1–we don’t have to have theological agreement to make common cause with others in reasserting a Christian voice in the public square. But I stand by what I said, I don’t think in the main the intellectual substance that is needed is going to be found among most mainline Protestant and Evangelical Christians. It is worth noting that in one of the key issues of the culture wars–abortion–Evangelical Christians came rather late to the party (the early 80’s).

Like I said in response to Michael, what is necessary (I think) for us to reclaim our voice in the public square is the ability to present a positive message. The center of this message is a clear, systematic presentation of the truth of what it means to be distinctively rather than merely human. Catholic Social Teaching rooted as it is in a sound understanding of natural law is really what I think we as Orthodox Christians need to learn.

Your other point about shifts in the Catholic Church in the 1960’s points to what I think we as Orthodox Christians can bring to the table: A clear and assertive vision of the sacramentality of creation. In effect, if Rome builds the foundation, we can put up the walls and roof. Together our two Churches can build a solid framework within which not only we but other Christians and people of good will can work together.

But that’s just my opinion.

In Christ,

+FrG

Nick, I make a distinction between proseletyzing and evangelizing. Proseletysing is all to often a manipulative sales job intent on adding numbers to one’s own belief. Evangelizing is being a witness to the truth and allowing people to make their own decisions praying that they be open to the Holy Spirit.

We should always be evangelizying even in the midst of scandal, dysfunction and confusion.

Fr Gregory brings up an excellent point that I never considered as I’m not a theologian. If true (and I grant Fr Gregory the point), then we should keep in mind that for all the Evangelicals that join us in this strategic cooperation, we shall lose others. Because of their lack of an authentic priesthood and sacraments, their devotion to the truth is at base intellectual rather than foundational. We need them in other words, but they need us more because our kerygma is indivisible from the Eucharist.

Mike: If I understand your thought properly, then Paul should have been at a synagogue and then to a eucharistic gathering with Christians in Athens but should not have proseltyzed at the Aeropagus. Perhaps we have a semantic problem here but Paul talking to a bunch of philosophers about the “Unknown God” to convince them that He can become known through Jesus Christ is within my definition (and the dictionary’s) of “prostelytize”. Am I in some kind of a definitional maze?

If we live lives of repentence/forgivness, prayer, almsgiving and fasting while partaing of the Holy Mysteries, our lives will be transformed and we will be witnesses.

Fr. Gregory, you are correct, the Holy Mysteries hold the center, but the key word is sacrifice. Whom do we serve: God or mammon?

Father: Your point on the sacramental priesthood is well taken. However, we can still have them join us in engaging the battle against secularism. As the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. One thing that they are better at than others is political action as they have demonstrated from time to time, especially during the time of Ronald Regan. This is not true in Europe where the Roman confession has been predominant in the cultural wars from the time of the so-called “Enlightenment”. It is interesting to note that Robert Bork in his “Slouching Towards Gammorah” sees the cultural decline that started in the 1960’s both here and in Europe not uncoincidentally occuring during a time that the Roman confession as an “institution” commenced to decline. The battle being waged by the secularists is to remove “God” from our psyche altogether. Those who still have “God” in their psyche (even though of a totally different confession than ours) are our natural allies in this battle. We cannot think of this as an Orthodox fight alone. Otherwise, the words of Yeats in his “Second Coming” may become all too prophetic:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Nick,

I agree with you to a point. There are many, many, Protestant Christians who hold to traditional Christian morality. Where you and I (may) disagree is whether or not the various Protestant traditions and confessions have the internal resources to stand up to militant secularism. I don’t think as traditions they have the internal resources. Specifically, I think what they lack is the priesthood and so the Eucharist. Yes, there is much to admire in Protestantism, but the lack of the sacramental priesthood is a deficit that we cannot overlook. Without the priesthood there is no sacrifice and without the Eucharistic sacrifice, even the best morality cannot hope to triumph over the powers of sin and death.

Your thoughts?

+FrG

Father: I agree with your comments with respect to the Roman confession. But there are a lot of people in the plethora of Protestant confessions that share similar views on “moral” issues. They should not be disregarded or dismissed out of hand. We are dealing here with a militant secularism that Hilarion finds more nefarious than the communistic militant atheism. This is an assault on all Christian confessions and 2,000 years of our common west/east moral culture. Everyone that worships the Father, Son and Holy Spirit unambiguously needs to join in the resistence. I agree that this is different than proselytizing and is of more immediate urgency. If the cultural norm becomes the militant secularist model, there may be no one left to proselytize, assuming that it remains legal to do so in the new order of things.

With the large influx of Evangelical Christians has come as well not only the spirit of “savage competition” to which his Eminence refers but also strains of anti-intellectualism and anti-Catholicism (or at least anti-Westernism) that undermine our witness. It is more than a little interesting to me that there is almost nothing in “The foundations of the social doctrine of the Russian Orthodox Church,” that is not also found in the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church.”

Bottom line is I think the Orthodox Church in this country needs to move away from our love affair with popular Evangelical Christianity and enter into a more serious conversation not only with our own tradition but also Catholic social and moral teaching. Yes, Evangelical Christianity is an important part of American popular culture but there is little substance there. Thank God for the Manhattan Declaration but substantive Christian thought is Orthodox and Catholic not mainline Protestant or Evangelical. The latter two traditions do not have the internal resources to withstand modernity, to say nothing of post-modernity. One negative lesson I think we can learn from the Catholic Church is that we court the favor of American Protestant and Evangelical Christianity to our detriment. Wiser, it seems to me, to follow the course outlined by Archbishop Hilarion and work with the Catholic Church and take point on a robust Christian witness in the public square. As Neuhaus argued, this witness must–necessarily–be not simply moral but sacramental. To this I would add as well ascetical. Disconnected from its sacramental and ascetical foundations, morality will eventually cease not simply to be biblical and Christian but even moral.

God grant His Eminence, Archbishop Hiliarion many years!

In Christ,

+FrG