Entering Orthodoxy

June 4, 2012 By 7 Comments

Chrismation of PaulYesterday I was sealed with the Holy Spirit and became an Orthodox Christian. What does this mean? As Father Deacon and I were making our way down to the church I told him that one thing that bothered me about so much Theology in the West is the continual insistence on trying to figure things out. With that said, he reminded me that the East has a problem with over-speculation which is why most of the heresies come from the East. To be sure, I know I am new to this way and need to be careful lest I’m a little over-zealous or just a blabbering romantic.

Yesterday in so many Western churches it was Trinity Sunday or the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Today I no longer call this a “doctrine” as much as the discovery of the nature of God as Three persons who are yet co-eternal in one substance and therefore in One God. I am no longer in the business of debating what it means as much as accepting that the way I have chosen is about experiencing the Trinity in worship. I can only describe God in my experience and through the experiences of the saints.

Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity so it makes sense? Good luck. The truth is that it makes no sense to any capability of human reason we can muster up. It is a mystery. It is no doubt the greatest mystery of the Christian faith and at the same time the most fundamental. Yet the nature of God is the most debated and discussed issue in all of Christianity. It’s why we have theology or “reasoning out God.” Here’s a little secret about the Eastern Orthodox tradition though: there aren’t many saints who are called “theologian.”

Theology isn’t so much about debating and reasoning out God as it is bearing witness to one’s experience with God. There are three saints recognized as theologian in the East: St. John the Evangelist, St. Gregory Nazianus, and St. Symeon the New Theologian. Why? The reason is that these three are recognized as having the authentic experience of union with God and it is from this union and mystical experience that their understanding of God emerges. Theology is the creative process of God working within us. It is a giving and receiving of the presence of God that we share with each other. Through the Eucharist, God literally communicates God’s very being with us.

As Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh writes:

What counts when speaking about God is not how much we can understand of His Mystery and how much we can say; what counts is the mystical experience itself as we encounter God beyond concepts and ideas. Such experience cannot be fully conceptualized. However, something has to be said about our mystical experience of God in God’s communion and Presence, as God communicates Himself to us in His “energies.” That “something” is our share in “theologizing,” and our poor way of speaking about God’s Mystery, always inadequate and always imperfect.

Yesterday I took my first communion. The Holy Spirit was sealed in me with the anointing of the oil. It was a confirmation of my baptism and recognition that I have chosen a new way of relating to God. Father said before I partook of the mystery that as a long student trained in Reformed theology, as he once was, I had to unlearn a lot. This has been very true. But for every thing I have unlearned I have learned that those questions that didn’t have answers no longer need rational explanations. Those questions require participation in the very being of God.

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  • http://nateduffy.blogspot.com Nathan Duffy

    I’m not exactly an expert, but even with my limited expertise, you seem to be way downplaying the rational and philosophical elements of the Eastern tradition, especially the Cappadocian fathers and especially as it relates to Trinitarian dogmatics.

    “Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity so it makes sense? Good luck. The truth is that it makes no sense to any capability of human reason we can muster up. It is a mystery.” — As I say, I’m not quite sure thisline of thinking comports closely w/ the Eastern tradition. The infinite Triune God is of course not ultimately, wholly subdue-able, and therefore mysterious to some degree, but not entirely. If it were wholly, utterly mystery we wouldn’t know that subordinationism, modalism, tritheism etc. are in fact heresies, but we do know that and one of the main reasons we know that is because of the speculative-theological contributions of your new tradition.

    • http://notes-from-off-center.com drewtatusko

      Nathan,

      Thank you for your comment. I think continuing to read offers a partial answer to your issue with the post. To wit, Metr. Maximos’ quote here: “That “something” is our share in “theologizing,” and our poor way of speaking about God’s Mystery, always inadequate and always imperfect.” I did not say the Trinity is entirely unknowable and the mysteries are not entirely unknowable. The point is that reason alone cannot make sense of it because it is a paradox. Hence the necessity of experience through the Liturgy. Heresies rose up when the question of union with God was at stake. This is a point emphasized by Lossky among others. The life of the theology flows from the Liturgy itself which contains the theology of the church unto that end. Hope this helps clarify a bit.

      • http://nateduffy.blogspot.com Nathan Duffy

        I agree that partaking of the sacraments and the life of the Church can’t be properly separated from one’s “theologizing”, and that the latter is fed by the former etc. The thrust of the post seemed to be eschewing rational theology altogether, or at least overly so, and favoring ‘mystery’ over-against theology.

        • http://notes-from-off-center.com drewtatusko

          “The West” is an over-simplification too. What I have seen over a long stretch of time is that, as you point out, post-Enlightenment (and arguably before that in the rise of Calvinism or even before) there seems to be a trend of seeking other resources to work out the fundamental issue of the relationship of reason to mystery. That wasn’t the aim of this post however. Only the start here :-) The Fathers didn’t eschew rational thought either. But they understood its limits and then were wise to leave it be. That’s not limited to the Fathers and Mothers either. It plays out in many others through the East and West. It’s really a redefinition of what we mean by “theology” that is at stake in my judgment rather than favoring an idea of what reason is and how it functions in what we can say about about God.

  • http://nateduffy.blogspot.com Nathan Duffy

    The difference between East and West isn’t between mystery and unreason on one hand and dogma and doctrine on the other. The West has perhaps adopted too much of Enlightenment’s categories, language, and concepts, while the East wisely avoided them, but the extreme dichotomy being sketched between ‘reason’ and ‘mystery’ seems to be false, or — minimally — exaggerated.

    • http://nateduffy.blogspot.com Nathan Duffy

      ^^ Not a reply to your reply, just an addendum to initial comment I thought of

  • Scott Cairns

    I think the difference the author speaks to is not so much one of less theological inquiry in the East, but has more to do with the disposition most often privileged within that inquiry, a nearly rabbinic modesty, as if the theologian prefaced his speculation with “and another interpretation might be….”