After exodus of conservative congregations, United Methodist Church lifts restriction on LGBT clergy

[RINO Tom]

Just an impression from an outsider, and it might be wrong, but my impression is that evangelicalism is more Biblicist and consequently more appreciative of the Old Testament heritage of Christianity than Eastern Orthodoxy or other non-Protestant branches. (This of course fed into the much maligned dispensationalism.) One might be more likely to hear a homily on Gregory Palamas at an Eastern Orthodox church, but I'd think one would be more likely to hear a sermon about the story of Bathsheba at an evangelical one. So to me it seems like depth of history is a matter of perspective. (It's also often said that evangelicals have a more intense reading and centring of the Gospel text itself than other denominations, but putting that to the side because it's a more controversial claim)

The more general point I think is that the history of Christianity is so long, it would be impossible for any church to assimilate it all equally. Each one has to choose a period as a point of emphasis. I remember reading somewhere that for EOs their conception of history is centred on the Nicene Fathers of the 4th century, Roman Catholics are centred on the 13th century and the Lateran Councils, and classical Protestants are centred on the 16th century and the Reformers. Each is a decision, and a decision that necessarily excludes parts of the history of Christianity at other times.

     Point taken, though my experience sitting through a few sermons at my wife's Evangelical church is that the preacher is more likely to interact with the event from a strictly literary standpoint wherein everything we know about it is simply what is stated in the text, whereas an Orthodox priest will talk about historical context and highlight commentaries in order to demonstrate more about the topic (and with something like the Triumph of Orthodoxy the event is incomprehensible unless you do that). It probably does make a difference versus not covering these topics at all, but I think there is a big difference between reading history as a book and reading a book as history.

^ Anecdotally, I feel like there is a HUGE void that could be filled by more liturgical Protestantism right now among young, impressionable American Christians.  I have heard of so many low church evangelicals online who are super pumped for their conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, MOSTLY anchored by a desire to be more in touch with traditional worship style and church history.  A jump to Lutheranism, Anglicanism or even "middle church" denominations like Methodism and Presbyterianism would be a much more natural home for these folks, culturally and theologically.

Modern American Protestantism really is a mess, and I anecdotally see a lot of younger Christians who crave a traditional setting ... and they're under the false impression that their main two options are contemporary Evangelicalism or Catholicism/Eastern Orthodoxy.  It's actually quite frustrating that the Mainline churches - even as they shed membership at rapid rates - are not aggressively promoting their tradition to these folks.

     Part of the issue though is that Orthodoxy and Catholicism have very strong claims on the deep history of Christianity. During the Sundays of Great Lent I can hear homilies about St. Mary of Egypt (4th Century), St. John of the Ladder (6th Century), the Triumph of Orthodoxy (9th Century), and St. Gregory Palamas (14th Century). While I agree that Protestantism can regain some appeal by going back to the roots of the Reformation, there is still the elephant in the room that that comes quite late and efforts to claim earlier events and figures as part of the Protestant tradition are rather tortured. I will say that I have seen some very intelligent Protestants argue that they have a real claim to the historic faith of the Church, mainly by gleaning support for Sola Scriptura from the writings of the Church Fathers. Maybe it's due to a lack of support, but these arguments never seem to gain traction.

     Perhaps of interest to you, on Twitter there has been a debate recently between Western Rite and Eastern Rite Orthodox Christians over the point of cultural familiarity. The Western Rite's supporters are convinced that they can convert Americans much more easily because it's less of a divergence from what they are used to. Some of them get into weird theories wherein Roman Rite liturgies have epigenetically modified the peoples of Western Europe to respond positively to them. I don't think there is much credence to that, but there is a nonzero segment of people who genuinely resonate with traditional Western liturgics and enjoy a church that embraces those.

But just as everything from the Early Church (pre-Great Schism) is the heritage of both the Roman Catholic AND Eastern Orthodox Churches (e.g., the Council of Nicea), so too it is our perspective that everything in the Western Church from the Great Schism to the Reformation - not to mention everything before that - is OUR heritage, too!  The Lutheran state churches in Germany and Scandinavia, the Presbyterian state church in Scotland, the Anglican Church of England, etc. didn’t just pop up in the 1500s.  They viewed Rome as the corrupt one who’d strayed and ex-communicated THEM … they remained the same catholic churches as before.  In other words, the history and heritage of Protestantism is much older than 500 years, even if no one felt the need to give us a name before that (a name we never wanted, as we truly believed and still believe that we are reformed catholics).

One can take issue with this perspective, but it’s undeniable that modern American Protestants do a terrible job at articulating it!

     I've seen Protestants propound that view, but I think the big difficulty there is that if you look at pretty much any pre-Reformation Western saint they diverge from Protestant views in a pretty big way. Even St. Augustine, who is most often cited, clearly believed in the necessity of maintaining communion with the various apostolic sees. The most common approach is to try to read Sola Scriptura into various Church Fathers and proceed from there, but if we accept that and thus add their various other positions to the realm of what Sola Scriptura can lead one to, it seems to only increase the chaos that exists in the realm of Protestantism.

     Mind you I speak from a position of not being and never having been Protestant, so maybe this critique doesn't bother someone on the inside of that movement. I do think Anglicans can square the circle I described most easily, since they already are explicit that their conception of the Church includes Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and they prefer to define their exegetical approach as Prima Scriptura instead of Sola Scriptura.

The Catholic Church doesn't teach Prima Scriptura per se.

The emphasis on the Church in the Catholic Tradition, really I think forms how Catholics view scripture.

In the Catholic Worldview, Christ did not make the bible. Christ created the church, he established the church. A visible functioning insitution in the world. The church existed before the creation of the bibical canon which itself, a written witness to Divine Revelation, which was accomplished through the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, but it's not divine revelation itself.

The New Testament came out of the Church. It was written by members of the Church. What is written in the New Testament was spoken before it was written down. The books that were placed in the New Testament were selected by the Church.

In a sense, the Old Testament also came out of the Church, which had adopted the Septuagint version of the Old Testament that was in use at the time of Christ and actually confirmed a canon in writing of the Old Testament before Jews confirmed a formal Hebrew canon in writing.




The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), defines Sacred Tradition as what

“the apostles who, by their oral preaching, by example, and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with him, and from what he did, or what they learned from the prompting of the Holy Spirit”

So Apostolic Tradition consists of:

Oral transmission of Divine Revelation

Demonstrated practices (how to baptize, how to ordain, how to celebrate the Holy Bread and Sacred Chalice, etc.)

What the Holy Spirit had revealed to them after Pentecost.

So there can't be sola scriptura, OR Prima scriptura, because the new testament did not exist at the time of first apostles. Divine relevation in the Catholic World view, comes through, and is the church.

The Protestant response to this is that Jesus quite literally used the Scriptures of his day to correct and argue against the very Jewish authorities that assembled them.  The Protestant POV is that the fact that the Church assembled the Scriptures is important and why Church tradition should be held in high regard, but it doesn’t logically follow that men in the Church or the institiution itself would thus gain infallible authority.  Thus, Sola Scriptura, which claims that the Bible is the only ULTIMATE/infallible authority, NOT that it is the “only” authority.