Orthodoxy will likely never gain a strong foothold in post-modern, over-Christianized and post-Christian America until it is able to expunge from the societal consciousness of our ailing nation the jello-like adherence to “relativism.” A close cousin to this nonsensicality is that of pluralism, of course, but that is a discussion for another day. I realize I’m painting with broad strokes here, so forgive the broadness, the boldness and the matter-of-fact-ness, if you will. Forgive the use of “-isms,” in general, please.
When the Orthodox Christian approaches the “average American,” the idea that there could be only one Church, with one Gospel, one right way of doing things and one right way to believe, the Orthodox person is often faced with sentiments of absolute horror, disgust and rebuke. “How dare you claim that you’re the only true Church!” they say. Indeed — How dare we. But the fact of the matter is simply this: it’s true.
Now, without debarking onto an extant diatribe on the one-ness of the Church, apostolic succession and the like, I will regain my focus and get to the point: Truth has become the red-headed stepchild (please forgive me, all red-headed stepchildren) of present day American/Western culture. Truth is no longer absolute, it is no longer particular and it is no longer personal. Truth exists somewhere in the world of abstractions and is impossible to nail down with any certainty. It has become completely dependent upon the whims of time, culture, circumstance and necessity. It has become wholly relative. In fact, it seems that the only absolute truth of our present, evil age is that truth is relative.
David Bazan is an indie-rock musician that once fronted and originated a musical group called “Pedro the Lion,” an easy-listening indie band with some distinctly religious overtones.
Textual Criticism is a discipline that has gained much popularity over the last one hundred years or so, especially as related to the so-called “Bible” of the Christian faith.
Let’s be honest — most converts to the Orthodox Faith that have arrived from an evangelical or Protestant background are faced with quite a challenge when it comes to the subject of Icons.
A friend of mine recently forwarded an email with a few questions on the canon and the textual tradition of the Church my way, and I was happy to attempt a satisfactory answer to said questions.
When a Protestant approaches the scriptures in order to rightly interpret them and apply them to their lives, the approach is typically that of a scientist and a historian – they are attempting to abstract and be removed from the context of today’s western world and be found within the culture, language and context of the original authors of divine literature. There is rooted in this approach not only a reliance upon Nominalism (as with all things Western and/or Protestant) but also the fundamental belief that we are “separate from” both these original authors and from God Himself (He is the “Man upstairs” and Protestant worship focuses on asking God to be present or “show up”). As such, Protestant hermeneutics, if you will, is an exercise in textual archaeology.
I’ve been slowly making my way through Lester Grabbe’s Introduction to Second Temple Judaism. Grabbe is a professor of Hebrew Scripture and Judaism at the University of Hull (UK), and he is what most conservative, Orthodox people would call “a liberal.” That might be an understatement for the more fundamentalist amongst us, as many would take some of his beliefs to be the utmost of heresy.
Among those who adhere to a radical “end times” philosophy (especially in our day), there is much attention paid to the Apocalypse to St John, or the book of Revelation.
And now, we shall turn our attention to the shorter of the testaments, composed in the Greek language during the apostolic age. The “new testament,” as Christians call it, is a collection of 27 books that was gradually recognized over the first 600-700 years of the Church.
