The End of the Beginning of the Beginning

Well it says it in the bulletin **(pdf file), and Father Pat referenced it in his sermon: one week from today, in God’s mercy, my daughters will be baptized and chrismated, and my wife and I will be chrismated, as our household is joined to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Orthodox Church. Today as we moved from the Liturgy of the Catechumens to the Liturgy of the Faithful, our daughters were called forward and the first prayers of the baptismal rite (up to the exorcisms) were prayed over them.

Priest: Let us pray to the Lord.

Choir: Lord, have mercy.

IN THY NAME, O Lord God of truth, and in the Name of Thine Only-begotten Son, and of Thy Holy Spirit, I lay my hand upon Thy servant, (name), who has been found worthy to flee unto Thy holy Name, and to take refuge under the shelter of Thy wings. Remove far from him his former delusion and fill him with the faith, hope and love which are in Thee; that he may know that Thou art the only true God with Thine Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and Thy Holy Spirit. Enable him to walk in all Thy commandments, and to fulfill those things which are well pleasing unto Thee; for if a man do those things, he shall find life in them.

Inscribe him in Thy Book of Life, and unite him to the flock of Thine inheritance. And may Thy holy Name be glorified in him, together with that of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and of Thy life-giving Spirit. Let Thine eyes ever regard him with mercy, and let Thine ears attend unto the voice of his supplication. Make him to rejoice in the works of his hands, and in all his generation; that he may render praise unto Thee, that he may sing, worship and glorify Thy great and exalted Name always, all the days of his life.

For all the Powers of Heaven sing praises unto Thee, and Thine is the Glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.

Choir: Amen.

I, for one, am feeling as though taken by surprise in all of this. For five years this has always been on the horizon, and I have settled my soul in patience to await the day. For so long I’ve steeled myself to the “someday” that it is difficult to realize the “someday” is now. Now that day is near. We are having a Memorial Day get together at our house, and I find myself thinking, “I’ll be Orthodox on that day.” During Holy Communion, as I watched the communicants receive the Body and Blood of Christ, I thought to myself, this is the last time I will stand watching and waiting, without the opportunity to prepare for and partake of the sacred Gifts. And yet, telling myself these things does not make it any easier to realize we are at last receiving that for which I have for so long waited.

I feel as if awakening from a dream, from some sort of stasis. I have begun to feel a new energy, new warmth of devotion, indeed, new feeling for spiritual things.

I will need to focus my energies toward next Sunday, and so, aside from a few pre-prepared posts for which almost the only thing left to do is to click “publish”, I will not be blogging this week.

I humbly ask for your prayers for me and my family, for our safety and health, our oneness of mind and spirit, and our energetic attention to God’s grace as we prepare this week to enter the Orthodox Church and complete our initiation into the Gospel of Christ. We have almost reached the end of the beginning of the beginning. Pray we make it safely to harbor.

**Well, okay, as Theodora Elizabeth points out, it doesn’t say it in the online version linked above. Silly me for not reading the file before linking it. But I have a hard copy with the evidence!

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Cutting to the Chase: Show Me Your Church

In my previous two posts engaging with the Triablogue’er Steve over criticism of the purported lack of an Orthodox canon, I have focused more on where Steve fails in his logic and argument. In both posts I have noted that Steve is actually quite ignorant of Orthodoxy. In this post I want to point out how Steve’s presuppositions with which he approaches this question actually keep him ignorant of Orthodoxy and will not allow him to get the answers to the questions he asks (but of course I doubt he really wants answers so much as he wants fuel for more online debating).

Steve’s big mistake is to approach Orthodoxy from the standpoint of epistemic presuppositions that Orthodoxy does not hold, and from which it does not argue. That is to say, Steve thinks (for various reasons) that his own epistemic position is the only epistemic position that is true, and since Orthodoxy steadfastly refuses to conform itself to Steve’s epistemic convictions, Steve gets to claim, so he thinks, that Orthodox have no certainty about their Scriptural canon, and therefore have no canon. 3 or 4 Maccabees? Psalm 151? 2 Esdras? Don’t different Orthodox groups think differently on these matters? And if the Orthodox are of different minds on the fundamental canon of Scripture how can Orthodox claim to have the mind of Christ? Would Christ have a different conviction on whether or not Psalm 151 was canonical?

The problem Steve has is in thinking that his convictions regarding the Protestant canon, essentially positivist in nature, are the same convictions that shaped the Church’s process of canonizing the Scriptures. He reads his canonization history through his positivist lenses–lists and conciliar decrees, and textual criticism–and thinks he can bind the rest of the Church to his own little set of rules.

But, in point of fact, the Church’s canon was not drawn up in Council and then delivered to the masses. Rather, as the local Churches read these books in their worship, and as they discerned the book’s apostolic origin or apostolic approval, and as these books were consonant with the living apostolic tradition, they became the canon. But this process was organic and fluid, not delivered by fiat. The Conciliar decisions simply clarify what the Church’s experience relative to and witness to these books is. But the shape of that canon was not always clear, even after Conciliar canons. So, while Revelation makes the list, it isn’t used in the Liturgy. So, while local Churches utilized Hermas or Barnabas for decades, those books do not make the list. And it’s why to this day, some books not used in the Liturgy are considered by some local Churches as part of the canon (4 Maccabees), and some books used in the Liturgy (Manasseh) are part of the canon.

Of course, Steve’s further problem is that since as Protestant he has no direct access to the mind of the Church (that is to say, the Protestant schisms prohibit a unified consensus that could approximate the mind of the Church), then the only place of authority, the only place of apostolic faith and tradition, he can attain is that of sola scriptura. In other words, Steve needs a clear, distinct and positivist canon or else he has nothing else on which to base his faith. Having cut himself off from the life and faith of the holy, catholic, apostolic and one Church, he can have no recourse to any other authority than the one the Scripture affords him. Therefore, he projects his desparation for an authority outward on those who have no such need as his and wonders why it is that they don’t kowtow to his little list of rules about the canon.

In other words, to heed the title of this post: Steve’s problem is not an epistemic one–though of course he must think so given the rejections he has already committed himself to–but, rather, an ecclesial one. Steve is without any authority save that of the Scriptures, and it is an authority he has in himself no power nor skill to wield–nor do any of us alone. Steve is desparate for a canon because he does not have the Church.

But we who have both the Church and the canon she has given us, have no such desperation or need. The Church gives us the canon we need. The canon does not gives us the Church. The canon is simply one integral part of the whole of the apostolic tradition and deposit of faith. When you have the whole of the deposit, you don’t worry if you don’t always understand the details of one single part of it. As a logician Steve should know: the fallacies of division and composition apply as much to arguments about the canon as to anything else. Simply because certain portions of the canon are unclear does not mean the canon as a whole is unclear. And simply because a canon has been articulated does not mean that all aspects of the canon can be articulated. The canon is not, contra Steve’s expectations, set theory. It is living breathing tradition.

It is that tradition Steve is parasitic of. He takes one part of the tradition and thinks to build his case with apostolic authority. But since he has distorted the whole by distorting the part, he distorts and invalidates the authority he claims.

One day, perhaps, Steve will give up his game of internet debate and truly seek out the answers he demands of his interlocutors.

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