JAMES J. STAMOOLIS 

“All generalizations are false, including this one.”1 Mark Twain’s pithy warning also applies to statements about complex theological issues. As well as being an easy temptation, generalization is a common response when encountering adherents of different Christian traditions. Yet the tendency to generalize belief and behavior, typically in a negative manner, obscures the opportunity not only to learn from one another, but also to discover areas of cooperation. 

Why is this tendency to generalize so commonplace? I have identified three major factors. 

1. Ignorance 

We Evangelicals rarely know Orthodox history. A survey of church histories on my bookshelf demonstrates the relative lack of attention to the Eastern Churches. The church history that was the textbook when I was a seminary student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago in the late 1960s barely mentioned the Orthodox Church.2 That was admittedly a long time ago, and perhaps students today use better textbooks. Yet my survey of a half dozen histories indicates that, while some contain discussions of the Eastern Churches, the coverage is still limited.3 The different trajectories of East and West mean that most histories only comment on Eastern Christianity whenever it interacted with the West. There might be coverage of the Council of Florence (1438-9), for example, in which the Byzantine Emperor attempted to promote ecclesiastical union between Rome and Constantinople to secure military aid against the Turks. 

In defense of lecturers in church history, there is not enough time allotted to the subject in the theological curriculum to allow for more than a cursory examination of all but the main protagonists, especially those who influenced one’s own denomination. Evangelical survey courses barely manage to teach about our founders, let alone engage in theological discussion about key figures in other traditions. Historical study consequently loses out to the more practical disciplines that are needed for pastoral formation. There appears to be a similar situation in Orthodox seminaries. For example, while a recent catalog of the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts, includes a course on the modern ecumenical movement, its church history course is devoted to the history of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church.4 Some Evangelicals also remain ignorant of the themes in Eastern Christian theology. I have seen in print misunderstanding about Orthodox interpretations of sin, justification, and sanctification, including inaccurate suggestions that the Orthodox do not have a doctrine of sin.

2. Insecurity 

Essentially, this comes in two forms. One is the insecurity of feeling that if the other person is right, then I must be wrong. This indicates that we are thinking in dualistic terms when we should be thinking in biblical terms, which allow for deeper understanding and nuance. Especially in the West, we tend to latch onto a biblical idea, make it the center of our theology and allow it to drive the rest of our theological understanding. We should rather accept the concept of mystery in order to help moderate our rationalism. 

The second type of insecurity stems from a sense of competition between traditions, which is fostered by an aggressive attitude found among both Evangelicals and Orthodox. It is understandable, and even admirable, for us to want individuals to experience the fullness of life in Christ. Yet our fear of losing actual or potential adherents to our own position causes us at times to absolutize our tradition, and to demonize the other tradition. 

Albeit founded on limited personal observation, it is my belief that some individuals thrive in one tradition and starve spiritually in the other. In the search for authenticity and meaningful worship, some find that Eastern Orthodoxy meets those needs, while others find what they are looking for in one of the Evangelical traditions. Are we able to accept this, or are we driven to prove, like the Pharisees whom Jesus condemned, that all converts must become like us? (Matt. 23:15) 

3. Intransigence 

Some of the tension between our respective Christian traditions comes from our unwillingness to consider that the other tradition might have something of value to show us. We often see this intransigence in an “all or nothing” attitude that excludes learning from another tradition. 

This does not require interreligious dialogue with non-Christian faiths. What I am advocating here is the willingness to examine the Bible from the different perspectives held by commonly recognized Church Fathers. Chrysostom and Augustine, for instance, were contemporaries in the early Church who found different but complementary insights in Paul’s writings. As things stand, Evangelicals have normalized certain hermeneutical traditions and elevated these to doctrine. Our interpretation restricts our ability to see Scripture through a different lens. 

Will reading Scripture through an Eastern lens lead to doctrinal confusion? Our human limitations and cultural contexts dictate our theology. We might agree on the basic doctrines of the faith, the Trinity, and the redemption accomplished by Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet part company on ways of worship, church structure, and eschatological understanding. 

Yet God accommodates Himself to us. Calvin, speaking about how God dealt with the people of the Old Covenant and how He deals with the New Covenant in Christ, says: 

Thus, God’s constancy shines forth in the fact that He taught the same doctrine to all ages, and has continued to require the same worship of His name that He enjoined from the beginning. In the fact that he has changed the outward form and manner, He does not show himself subject to change. Rather, he has accommodated Himself to men’s capacity, which is varied and changeable.5 

In discussing the principles of Patristic exegesis, Fr. John Breck, sometime professor at both St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York and St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, makes a very important point that is all too often forgotten by both Orthodox and Evangelicals. “As a theandric or divine-human reality, Scripture contains elements that are historically, culturally and linguistically conditioned. Consequently, it must be reinterpreted in every new generation of the Church’s life, under the inspirational guidance of the Holy Spirit.”6 

One example of what Fr. Breck is speaking about might be found in a recent essay by George Demacopoulos in which he suggests updating the language of the Greek liturgy: 

Given the Church’s historical practice of employing indigenous languages, given the fact that the majority of young Orthodox in the GOA [Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America] do not know Greek, given that fluent Greek speakers struggle with Liturgical Greek, and given that our young people are leaving the Church in droves, it is time that our hierarchs, priests, and lay leaders take a hard look at the continued relevance of Liturgical Greek.7 

Symeon the New Theologian is clear about the role of the Holy Spirit in opening up the Scriptures: 

How then will those who claim that they have never known at all the Holy Spirit’s presence, radiance, illumination, and His coming to dwell in them have the power to know or perceive or think of them in any way? How shall they apprehend such mysteries, who have never at all experienced in themselves the recasting, renewal, transformation, reshaping, regeneration, that He brings about? ... Those who have not been “Born from above” (Jn. 3:3), how shall they see the glory of those who have been “born from above”, ... tell me, what knowledge will enable them to understand or in any way imagine what the others have become?8 

Are we, in each of our traditions, in danger of quenching the Holy Spirit? (1 Thess. 5:19) The International Standard Version of the Bible translates the verse as “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire.” This suggests that we are afraid of it. 

Each tradition leaves room for the miraculous. While Evangelicals and Orthodox can agree on healing as a sign of God’s work, we would disagree over whether this were granted via the intercession of a saint. Many Evangelicals find it difficult to accept as miracles phenomena such as weeping icons9 or the Holy Fire, an annual occurrence many centuries old in which a light descends upon the site of Christ’s tomb in Jerusalem on the Holy Saturday before Orthodox Easter.10 

Could it be that God would use such phenomena to draw the faithful to a deeper understanding of His reality? After all, some of our Evangelical traditions practice prayer for healing and claim supernatural results. Can we be open to understanding that God can choose to act as He wills and to use instruments that might offend or disturb us in order to accomplish His stated purpose, that “God our Savior ... wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth”? (I Tim. 2:3).

Notes: 

1. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain137872.html.
2. Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church, revised ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959).
3. The best coverage is found in edited volumes with multiple contributors, such as John McManners, ed., The Oxford History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). Even then, only two chapters deal with the Eastern Church, accounting for 68 out of 684 pages. Adrian Hastings, ed., A World History of Christianity (London: Cassell, 1999) has two chapters with a total of 90 pages out of 536. David Chidester, ed., Christianity: A Global History (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2000) has 17 pages out of 704. Tim Dowley, ed., Introduction to the History of Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) has 12 pages out of 616. Bruce L. Shelley, Church History in Plain Language (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995) has 10 pages out of 495. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976) mentions the East in passim. The same can be said for Martin E. Marty, A Short History of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), where he only mentions the Orthodox Church in the modern period. (But then, it is a short history.) 
4. https://www.hchc.edu/assets/files/Catalogues/SOTCatalog2017.pdf.
5.  Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.2.13 (Ford Lewis Battles translation). 
6. John Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 45. 
7. George Demacopoulos, “Is It Time to Relinquish Liturgical Greek?”, Public Orthodoxy, 12 December 2016, https://publicorthodoxy.org/2016/12/12/relinquishing-liturgicalgreek.
8. C.J. deCatanzaro, trans., Symeon The New Theologian: The Discourses (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 264. 
9. For example, “Virgin Mary Icon In Honolulu Produces Myrrh, Cures Man Of Blindness,” Huffington Post, 26 November 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/virgin-maryicon-honolulu_n_4346591.html. As Fr. Paul O’Callaghan explains: “Tears are pivotally associated in the tradition of the Church with the grace of the Holy Spirit. Those who strive for perfect prayer recognize genuine tears of compunction (not emotional tears) as a great gift of the Spirit. In this connection, the weeping icons are a call for all of us to reawaken to the Spirit-filled and grace-bearing nature of the Orthodox Church.” http://ww1.antiochian.org/Orthodox_Church_Who_What_Where_Why/Why_Do_Icons_Weep. Htm.
10.  Haris Skarlakidis, Holy Fire: The Miracle of Holy Saturday at the Tomb of Christ, Forty-Five Historical Accounts (9th-16th c.) (Athens: Elaia Editions, 2011), 11.

James J. Stamoolis, author of Eastern Orthodox Mission Theology Today (Orbis), is an educational and missions consultant. He formerly served as dean of the Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, Illinois, and senior vice-president for academic affairs at Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois.