SPEAKER_00: Handout you'll see is headed Understanding Eastern Orthodoxy.
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin with a scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Please open up Exodus chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: Exodus chapter 20.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read verses four, uh verses one to six.
SPEAKER_00: So let's listen to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: You shall have no other gods before me.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
SPEAKER_00: So, Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have made us worshipers.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would teach us from your word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to understand and appreciate all that we have in Christ and through your word.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to think carefully, wisely about another corner of the Church of your Son, in whose name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Last year, a small independent church up in Yorkshire called Hope Church Halifax announced that it was leaving the FIEC, the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches, and that it was joining the Eastern Orthodox Church, and it's now called St Hilda's Orthodox Church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to many of our ears, that will sound a bit weird and maybe a bit concerning, but it's also not that unusual.
SPEAKER_00: I had my first such experience of this about 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: A retired Church of England minister who I knew really quite well.
SPEAKER_00: He was an evangelical.
SPEAKER_00: He ministered nearby to here.
SPEAKER_00: After his wife's tragic and sudden death, he left the Protestant faith.
SPEAKER_00: He joined the Eastern Orthodox Church.
SPEAKER_00: We spent a lot of time writing to each other, essentially trying to persuade the other that we were wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He is now a priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
SPEAKER_00: So we're thinking this morning about understanding Eastern Orthodoxy.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we had a kind of history of 2,000 years of the Church in 30 minutes, in which we are trying to understand some of the different branches of the Church of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And one of them that we mentioned last week was Eastern Orthodoxy.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're thinking about today, and hopefully in a few moments you'll see why.
SPEAKER_00: What, though, is even Eastern Orthodoxy?
SPEAKER_00: There's a technical definition.
SPEAKER_00: It is those churches that acknowledge the first ecumenical church councils, so seven gatherings of Christian leaders running from roughly the 300s through to the 700s AD.
SPEAKER_00: Churches that are in communion with the patriarchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople, all of which split from the Western Catholic Church in the year 1054.
SPEAKER_00: You can also describe Eastern Orthodoxy geographically.
SPEAKER_00: Eastern Orthodox churches have their homelands in what was long ago the Eastern Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: Plus, places like Russia and Georgia.
SPEAKER_00: Now through migration and various other historical factors, you find Eastern Orthodox Christians everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Supposedly 12% of Christians globally would call themselves Orthodox with a capital O.
SPEAKER_00: What does it sound, look, and smell like?
SPEAKER_00: If you were to walk into an Orthodox church service, which by the way you shouldn't do, for reasons that hopefully will become clear, you would find that all of your senses are immediately hit.
SPEAKER_00: You will find huge amounts of incense being burned.
SPEAKER_00: You will see the priest dressed in the most extraordinary vestments, candles absolutely everywhere, and also everywhere you will see icons, images of Christ, of Mary, of the saints, typically in gold with bright colours shown two-dimensionally, in that style associated with ancient Byzantine art.
SPEAKER_00: All around the church building, but especially on a screen that runs across the front, called the iconostasis, in the centre of which are golden royal doors, behind which is the sanctuary or the holy place where is kept the bread and the wine.
SPEAKER_00: During the service you would find that very little is said, with the possible exception of a short sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else that happens is chanted or sung, including Bible readings.
SPEAKER_00: Typically the service will be around two hours, and usually the people will stand for the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there is a pronounced physicality to much that happens.
SPEAKER_00: There is lots of physical movement and symbolism that goes with it.
SPEAKER_00: Deacons go in and out of the holy place through their own special doors to the side, symbolizing the angels that come backwards and forwards from heaven to earth.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel book is carried in, symbolizing the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: The bread and wine are brought in at the climax of the service, symbolizing Christ's passion.
SPEAKER_00: And communion, or Eucharist, as they call it, is the absolute purpose of everything.
SPEAKER_00: It is part of theosis or deification.
SPEAKER_00: More on that later.
SPEAKER_00: Now, question: Why would that be attractive?
SPEAKER_00: Why would it be attractive to someone who was a Protestant and an evangelical?
SPEAKER_00: It seems very alien on the one hand, but on the other hand, different ones of us do have friends and family who have made that journey.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Often they are fed up with Protestant evangelical churches that have changed their doctrine with every single change in culture.
SPEAKER_00: Who have revised their worship style in response to surveys.
SPEAKER_00: They've had enough of it.
SPEAKER_00: They've had enough of God all-matey in congregational worship.
SPEAKER_00: Worship often resembles a contemporary pop concert.
SPEAKER_00: It's driven by feelings and emotionalism.
SPEAKER_00: You might find smoke machines, you might have motivational talks and very little Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I'm being honest, I actually have quite a lot of sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: You find someone typically who wants solidity, who wants order, who wants depth, who wants transcendence, a sense that you are meeting with the other.
SPEAKER_00: And you want historical rootedness.
SPEAKER_00: And Eastern Orthodoxy feels ancient.
SPEAKER_00: And they are completely unashamed about that.
SPEAKER_00: They are the complete opposite of a late 20th century seeker-sensitive church.
SPEAKER_00: Or think about people who are outside of the church, especially young men statistically, especially in the United States, they are joining Eastern Orthodox churches in noticeable numbers, going from zero background in the Christian faith to this kind of church.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, one suspects that they have seen through the godless culture in which they have been raised.
SPEAKER_00: This shifting, baseless, rootless, and unsatisfying culture.
SPEAKER_00: And they are attracted by the order and the structure and the rootedness.
SPEAKER_00: Here's one example.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Approximately half of the days in the year, according to the Eastern Orthodox Church, fasting is required, which typically means no meat, dairy, or oils.
SPEAKER_00: So there is regular and communal fasting built into the life of the church and into your calendar.
SPEAKER_00: Young men come along and they are now being told what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Your calendar, even your physical life, what you do with your body is ordered, it is structured by the church.
SPEAKER_00: To some, to many, coming out of disorder and chaos, that is actually immensely appealing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how do we assess this?
SPEAKER_00: I want to begin by looking at the central claim of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
SPEAKER_00: And here it is, I've summed it up like this.
SPEAKER_00: Eastern Orthodoxy is the original New Testament church.
SPEAKER_00: So the claim here is what we believe and what we do is what the true church has always believed and always done.
SPEAKER_00: One really common statement.
SPEAKER_00: So that comes from a chap who is one of very many online Orthodox priests who are very boldly selling their church to potential converts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, do you get the claim?
SPEAKER_00: What we believe and what we do is what the true church has always believed and always done.
SPEAKER_00: We are the true and the original church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is actually the Eastern Orthodox version of a very famous saying by Henry Newman.
SPEAKER_00: Back in the 19th century, he was a Church of England minister.
SPEAKER_00: He renounced his faith in favour of Roman Catholicism.
SPEAKER_00: And he made this same argument, though in favour of Roman Catholicism.
SPEAKER_00: He famously said to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.
SPEAKER_00: To be deep in history means you give up that which the reformers, Luther, Calvin, etc., began in the 16th century.
SPEAKER_00: That's the claim.
SPEAKER_00: Now this can be very unsettling for Reformed and Protestant Christians.
SPEAKER_00: We actually need to understand this and see how it is very badly wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Now, one obvious irony is kind of in brackets, both the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church actually make exactly the same claim.
SPEAKER_00: We are the only true church.
SPEAKER_00: Now those claims cannot both be true, they're mutually exclusive.
SPEAKER_00: But they would say that every other church on the planet has a moment of origin.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're a Baptist, you began in the mid-1600s.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a Presbyterian, much the same, Westminster Assembly.
SPEAKER_00: Anglicans, well, you began a bit earlier, but we never began.
SPEAKER_00: So we are the church that existed from Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: The same theology, the same liturgy, the same piety, no change.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are several ways in which this Eastern Orthodox claim falls down, and also actually, sort of the associated and similar Roman Catholic claim.
SPEAKER_00: And we're just going to work through this.
SPEAKER_00: Some distinctives of Eastern Orthodoxy clearly contradict the apostles who are the first fathers of the Church.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why do I put it like that?
SPEAKER_00: Often Eastern Orthodox evangelists will say to someone, go and read the Church Fathers, and then you will see that what we believe and do is true and original.
SPEAKER_00: By which they mean, go and read people from the second century and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh centuries, the fathers of the church.
SPEAKER_00: But the great problem here is that they forget that the original and definitive fathers of the church are actually the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, the authors of the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: The New Testament tells us, Ephesians 2.20, that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: Later writers, they are not the standard by which everything else to be measured.
SPEAKER_00: Their writings are not God breathed.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Timothy 3.16, all scripture is breathed out by God.
SPEAKER_00: And some distinctives of Eastern Orthodoxy actually and very clearly contradict the teaching of the Apostles and the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll go through some in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Note, though, at this point, that Eastern Orthodoxy is actually not really bothered by this.
SPEAKER_00: They reject what Protestants affirm and often call sola scriptura.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture alone rules us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we should be really thankful that Eastern Orthodoxy is not liberal on things like same-sex marriage, quite the opposite, in fact.
SPEAKER_00: We should be thankful that there is a lot of scripture in Eastern Orthodox worship services.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, there is far more than in many Protestant worship services.
SPEAKER_00: Just think on that one for a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But what they do with Scripture is what is key.
SPEAKER_00: It is not authoritative.
SPEAKER_00: For Eastern Orthodoxy, the Bible is just one part of a river of tradition and revelation.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine an unbroken living and dynamic stream which includes the liturgy of the church, those seven ecumenical or worldwide councils, the writings of the leading church fathers, icons, and the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And it all belongs together.
SPEAKER_00: And so they reject the Bible as being the final and supreme authority for the church and the Christian.
SPEAKER_00: And they're not embarrassed by that fact either.
SPEAKER_00: They would simply say, you Protestants are wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And woe betide any Eastern Orthodox theologian who attempted from the Bible to critique, say, icons.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the Reformed say, no, the Bible is God's authoritative words.
SPEAKER_00: Second side of the handout, I've put a section from the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 31, paragraph 4.
SPEAKER_00: All synods or councils since the apostles' time, whether general or particular, may err.
SPEAKER_00: And many have erred, they've gone astray.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both.
SPEAKER_00: So the sinfulness of man is such that you cannot trust the church on her own to determine things.
SPEAKER_00: Only the perfect, true, living, and ruling word of God can do that.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Some distinctives of Eastern Orthodoxy are actually contradicted by the post-apostolic fathers.
SPEAKER_00: That is, those fathers of the church on whom they put such stall, some of those writings actually very clearly contradict distinctives of Eastern Orthodoxy.
SPEAKER_00: Two examples.
SPEAKER_00: Icons.
SPEAKER_00: I'll say a bit more specifically about icons in a second, but contrary to Eastern Orthodoxy, there is no historical evidence that icons were used in worship in the first 500 years of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And fathers like Titulian, Irenaeus, and Oregon strongly warned against their use.
SPEAKER_00: So just worth clocking, one feature of Eastern Orthodoxy which appears to be very, very ancient, and it is pretty old, but it is clearly not original.
SPEAKER_00: It actually wasn't until the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
SPEAKER_00: So that was the seventh of those ecumenical councils that icons were both adopted and made mandatory.
SPEAKER_00: Worth noting too, this was not a worldwide or ecumenical council.
SPEAKER_00: It was actually only a gathering of Eastern churches who favoured icons.
SPEAKER_00: Small historical detail, but it's quite revealing.
SPEAKER_00: It was their own council, it was not ecumenical, and then out of that they made this a binding practice.
SPEAKER_00: Second example, the heresy of Pelagianism.
SPEAKER_00: This was condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431.
SPEAKER_00: So that was the third of these seven councils.
SPEAKER_00: It was a genuinely ecumenical or worldwide council.
SPEAKER_00: And they condemned the false teaching of Pelagius.
SPEAKER_00: This is conveniently forgotten by the Eastern Orthodox because they actually have a weak and semi-Pelagian view of sin.
SPEAKER_00: Now, one response to all of that is simply to appeal to the idea of ongoing revelation.
SPEAKER_00: So don't worry too much about contradictions between what we believe and what you find in Scripture and in some of the fathers, because God is continuing to lead and speak and reveal in this ongoing river of tradition.
SPEAKER_00: And here is a really key point.
SPEAKER_00: The logical implications of Scripture are not new revelations of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul says 2 Timothy 1.13, follow the pattern or the form of the sound words that you have heard from me.
SPEAKER_00: So in other words, the Bible has a form, it has a framework, it has a pattern.
SPEAKER_00: And the job of the church is to draw that pattern out.
SPEAKER_00: You do it by reading what is explicitly taught, but also by following what comes by good and necessary consequence.
SPEAKER_00: You can see that phrase in Westminster Confession 1.6.
SPEAKER_00: We follow what is set down expressly in Scripture or what follows from it by good and necessary consequence.
SPEAKER_00: So one example of that, the church in the 300s reflected hard on Scripture and they produced a creedal statement that we call the Nicene Creed.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read that in worship today.
SPEAKER_00: That is light years away from believing that, to use the Westminster phrase, that God gives new revelations of the Spirit, revelations which might actually contradict the word of God or previous, genuinely true statements.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this view of ongoing and evolving revelation in tradition, it's very similar to what is taught in Roman Catholicism.
SPEAKER_00: It's similar to what you find in Protestant liberalism.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit's doing a new thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's also similar to what you find in different forms of Pentecostalism.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some other details.
SPEAKER_00: Next big heading worship.
SPEAKER_00: The Eastern Orthodox Church has seven sacraments, at least.
SPEAKER_00: A bit more I could say about that, but won't.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the New Testament only knows two, baptism and the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just think for a moment about communion.
SPEAKER_00: Like several traditions, Holy Communion in Orthodoxy is known as the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_00: Eastern Orthodox priests will often criticize Protestant churches as having a view of the Lord's Supper that is merely a memorial.
SPEAKER_00: It's a bit like tying a knot your handkerchief so you don't forget that Jesus died.
SPEAKER_00: Now, sadly, many Protestant churches do actually have a very small and inadequate view of the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: However, the Eastern Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist is deeply unscriptural.
SPEAKER_00: At a key point in the service called the epiclasis, the priest calls down the Holy Spirit who transforms what they call the gifts, the bread and the wine, they transform it into Christ's body and blood.
SPEAKER_00: Orthodoxy does not have a developed philosophy of what is happening at that moment, like the Roman Catholic heresy of transubstantiation, that they never have to nail it down against the objection of the reformers.
SPEAKER_00: But it is in practice very like, indistinguishable from that Catholic doctrine.
SPEAKER_00: And it is a heresy.
SPEAKER_00: Christ's work on the cross is finished, he cannot be re-sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: The table at the front of the church is not an altar.
SPEAKER_00: And Christ cannot be made present by a human priest.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about the priesthood.
SPEAKER_00: Um for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: The first striking thing about an Eastern Orthodox priest, even before he opens his mouth to chant or sing or speak, is his vestments.
SPEAKER_00: They are exceedingly ornate.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, he is a priest.
SPEAKER_00: That is, he enters into the holy place on behalf of the people.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: He actually does that every Sunday in worship.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, he is modelled on the priests of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And worship generally in Eastern Orthodoxy has something of an Old Testament feel about it, though with massive differences as well, like icons everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And you do not have icons, you don't have images in Old Testament worship.
SPEAKER_00: But Christ has come.
SPEAKER_00: Christ, our high priest, has come.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, we are all priests unto God.
SPEAKER_00: So there's one high priest, and there is a priesthood of all believers.
SPEAKER_00: And we just have to say really directly the role of the Eastern Orthodox priest is a blasphemous one.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a section from the Westminster Confession talking about the true nature of New Covenant worship.
SPEAKER_00: Under the Gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, so Christ was the substance of all of Old Testament worship.
SPEAKER_00: It actually was him.
SPEAKER_00: Old Testament worship is worshipped Christ, you know, through the Passover Lamb, through the sacrifices, and so on.
SPEAKER_00: But under the Gospel, when Christ the substance was exhibited, he's actually come now, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which, now this is quite important.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just theology, this is also psychology, which, though fewer in number and administered with more simplicity and less outward glory, yet in them it is held forth in morefulness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me put that simply, and this is quite important.
SPEAKER_00: New covenant worship looks less fancy, but it is more real.
SPEAKER_00: It looks less fancy.
SPEAKER_00: And when you go into an Orthodox or a Catholic service, it is fancy with a capital F.
SPEAKER_00: All of your senses being assaulted, so much is being done, there is an outward glory, but now that Christ has come, it is not just false, but it's actually blasphemous.
SPEAKER_00: New covenant worship, it is infinitely more real.
SPEAKER_00: Let's think about icons.
SPEAKER_00: This is probably what would most think strike us about Eastern Orthodox worship and piety.
SPEAKER_00: They would insist icons are not idols, but they are windows to God.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's an icon of Jesus or of Mary and the saints.
SPEAKER_00: I stuck one of the Virgin Mary on the front of the handout there.
SPEAKER_00: And they would say, we do not worship the icon, we venerate it, and that's a really key distinction.
SPEAKER_00: But it is one that is very hard to actually understand, let alone justify.
SPEAKER_00: So stroking or kissing an image and praying to that saint or Mary whose image is depicted, that is just a window to bring us to God.
SPEAKER_00: One key figure, John of Damascus, in the 7th century, he said this of icons.
SPEAKER_00: They are materials laden with divine energy and gracious power.
SPEAKER_00: From them we draw the grace of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And orthodoxy argues for the legitimacy of icons from the incarnation of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a little bit weird.
SPEAKER_00: God the Son became a man, and that house somehow sanctifies nature and the use of things in nature, physical things, like an icon or a picture, to mediate the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now that is obviously a completely fake argument from the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: Icons really exist because Eastern Orthodoxy has been hugely influenced by Neoplatonism.
SPEAKER_00: That's a bit fancy for 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning, but just briefly, try and imagine this.
SPEAKER_00: You live in a world where there is a reality, but this is not it.
SPEAKER_00: There is, if you like, a parallel reality which looks like this, but it is real.
SPEAKER_00: This world is a shadow world.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a dark but mirror image of the real reality.
SPEAKER_00: And there are connection points between the two.
SPEAKER_00: There are windows here which allow you to access that which is real.
SPEAKER_00: Now that is not Christian philosophy.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible does teach a philosophy, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: That's Neoplatonism.
SPEAKER_00: How should we think about icons?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we read, didn't we, the first and the second commandment.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you've still got Exodus chapter 20 open in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: Very simply, the Lord says, Exodus 20, verse 4, you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, you shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.
SPEAKER_00: God hates it when we worship other gods, but he also hates it when we worship the true God wrongly.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a technical, fiddly little error.
SPEAKER_00: It is actually hateful.
SPEAKER_00: He is a jealous God, and it appalls him.
SPEAKER_00: He's provided a mediator, hasn't he, as well?
SPEAKER_00: He has provided one mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Mary and the saints.
SPEAKER_00: They do not, they cannot supplant Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And all of this raises really the bigger question: who decides what is acceptable worship anyway?
SPEAKER_00: So in Eastern Orthodoxy, they've decided to employ all of our senses, so smell, incense, our eyes, candles, art, taste, the Eucharist, our ears, chanting.
SPEAKER_00: And they say that all of this is a way to deeper communion with God.
SPEAKER_00: Eastern Orthodoxy has in practice an almost unlimited number of sacraments.
SPEAKER_00: Almost anything can take on a kind of spiritual symbolism.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the question: who decides?
SPEAKER_00: Who decides what is acceptable worship?
SPEAKER_00: You know, they might say, maybe we might say, hmm, some people are visual learners, so let's not worry about words on the page, let's have pictures instead.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you decide whether that is in court or out of court?
SPEAKER_00: Very simply, we do not make that call.
SPEAKER_00: We do not have the right to determine how we worship.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe something has been done for a thousand years in different corners of the church, but that does not make it okay.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, in places like Colossians 2.23, we are warned against what the Apostle Paul calls will worship, by which he means worship that arises from the will of man.
SPEAKER_00: That is to say, its origin is not from God, it arises from the will of man.
SPEAKER_00: So in the ESV, it translates it as self-made religion, which goes along with asceticism and severity to the body.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says it's useless, it's of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: But he warns against it because it's actually deeply attractive.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas, and here's the Westminster Confessions summary, the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself.
SPEAKER_00: And it is so limited to his own revealed will that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men or the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Now that sums up what is sometimes called the regulative principle of worship.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes folk get a bit kind of um nervous about the regulative principle, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: A bit too sort of uptight and restrictive.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the response to that really goes in two directions.
SPEAKER_00: Say you manage a nuclear power station.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be uptight and pretty restrictive.
SPEAKER_00: You don't go all free for all in the control room, do you?
SPEAKER_00: When you approach the holy God, you do so on his terms.
SPEAKER_00: Then you look at something like Eastern Orthodox worship, and I think that should illustrate for us, without the mentality that's summed up as the rep the regulative principle, this is how far wrong you can go.
SPEAKER_00: Just multiplying human ideas.
SPEAKER_00: This would be a great symbol, this would be a great way to represent this.
SPEAKER_00: Yet often trying to convey true things, sometimes false things, but not conveying them truthfully from and by the book of God.
SPEAKER_00: Back of the handout, let's think quite briefly, too briefly, about God and salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Can you really know God?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you would answer that question.
SPEAKER_00: If someone said to you, do you know God?
SPEAKER_00: Do you actually know God?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know God as He really is?
SPEAKER_00: Eastern Orthodoxy teaches that God is essentially unknowable.
SPEAKER_00: The essence of God, the godness of God, it may not, it cannot be known.
SPEAKER_00: And central to the Orthodox doctrine of God is this distinction between God's essence, which is unknowable, and God's energies, which are knowable.
SPEAKER_00: Now you won't find that distinction in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a neoplatonic distinction.
SPEAKER_00: One result is that in Eastern Orthodoxy there is a massive sense of unknowability, of mystery that actually can be profoundly attractive to people as well.
SPEAKER_00: You're in the realm of contemplation, words fail, hence images, asceticism, doing certain things with your bodies, not doing certain things with your bodies, and all of that draws you into these divine energies.
SPEAKER_00: Now, scripturally, we have a holy God, we have an unapproachable God, but, but, but, but, through the gospel, he becomes knowable.
SPEAKER_00: I'll say something more about that in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Connected to the Orthodox faulty doctrine of God, and this is maybe the central idea to orthodoxy, it is theosis, which means deification.
SPEAKER_00: That does not mean becoming God in his essence or being.
SPEAKER_00: It's not as heretical as it sounds initially.
SPEAKER_00: It means participating in these divine energies.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's said to involve actual transfiguration of the body.
SPEAKER_00: You start shining literally.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there is a very different emphasis, and there's a bit of a contradiction here, not on the body, in fact, the denial of the body, your asceticism, punishing the body, connected to the monastic movement as a way to experience this theosis.
SPEAKER_00: Now, very simply, that is not what the Bible teaches about communion with God.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture gives us the joyful, extraordinary reality of union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: It gives to us a true knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: It is not rooted in mysticism, in our ascending into the energies of God, whatever that means.
SPEAKER_00: It is actually rooted in God's covenant.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us, he draws us to him, he binds himself to us by the Holy Spirit and in union with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: See, our knowledge of God, our relationship with him is covenantal.
SPEAKER_00: And it will climax in us actually beholding God.
SPEAKER_00: We see through a glass darkly right now, one day in glory we will see God.
SPEAKER_00: We will actually see him as he is.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, sin, salvation, and justification.
SPEAKER_00: There is a place for sin in Eastern Orthodox thought.
SPEAKER_00: In the divine liturgy, you will often hear people repeatedly saying, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And yet they reject the Augustinian doctrine of original sin.
SPEAKER_00: Basically semi-pelagian, diseased but dead.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, diseased but not dead, is how one commentator sums it up.
SPEAKER_00: And that means you can respond to God's grace, even if you're marred by sin.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the Bible says, no, you are dead in your transgressions and sins until God the Holy Spirit steps in and regenerates you.
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, Orthodoxy teaches synergism, that is, conversion is you and God working together.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I think lots of Protestants actually think that too.
SPEAKER_00: That's wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible teaches monogism, that is, it is God's word alone, God's work alone to breathe life into a new creature.
SPEAKER_00: The atonement is not nearly as significant as the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: There is not really any doctrine of justification by faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that it's really denied, it's just not important.
SPEAKER_00: Legal, our legal plight, condemned and guilty, needing imputed righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: It is just not the way that they think about salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Just a couple of final reflections.
SPEAKER_00: The reformers generally, so wind back 500 years, the reformers generally had a more positive view of the Orthodox Church than they did of the Roman Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: It is still dangerously wrong, but it's also dangerously attractive.
SPEAKER_00: So one warning is in your own soul, just watch out for the danger of dissatisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: It is a constant danger.
SPEAKER_00: You're looking for more.
SPEAKER_00: Looking for Christ in places he has not promised to be.
SPEAKER_00: But I'd also say watch out for thin and weak and worldly versions of Protestantism.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to commend here, therefore, the reformed tradition of the church.
SPEAKER_00: We are part of the historical stream and tradition.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is, actually.
SPEAKER_00: We stand amid a great cloud of witnesses, Puritans and Reformers, good guys among the medievals and in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: We actually do ourselves a massive disservice if we know little of our family history and we use it little.
SPEAKER_00: It's really striking how much of the reformers did not think they were doing anything new.
SPEAKER_00: They just thought they were going back to the true faith.
SPEAKER_00: Second, worship.
SPEAKER_00: Reformed worship should have a sense of awe and reverence as well as familiarity.
SPEAKER_00: And we actually crave that.
SPEAKER_00: We crave and we need both.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't be casual, shouldn't be lacking in a sense of wonder.
SPEAKER_00: In worship, we commune with God.
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't be shy about thinking that, praying for it, expecting it.
SPEAKER_00: God actually turns up.
SPEAKER_00: So let's be in those places where he has promised to be, in the word and in the sacraments.
SPEAKER_00: So in the sacraments, we receive Christ, not substantially, but we receive him by the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: There is a sense of true mystery in that.
SPEAKER_00: Take communion, even preaching, actually.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how it is that God comes to us in the Word and the Sacraments?
SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you, but all I can tell you is that He does, because He's promised liturgy.
SPEAKER_00: With good reason, a service should be structured, participatory, to portray the whole gospel from beginning to end, and at its best, that is what you'll find in the reform of the tradition.
SPEAKER_00: You do find certain aspects of mystical spirituality which sounds very much like this.
SPEAKER_00: You find it cropping up in Protestant churches where you shouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: Is it a direct influence?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know quite how it's found its way there.
SPEAKER_00: But it it is there and it shouldn't be there.
SPEAKER_00: Frequency of communion in the Reformed tradition.
SPEAKER_00: Different people over the centuries have taken different views.
SPEAKER_00: Calvin thought you should have it every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: He never won the argument in Geneva.
SPEAKER_00: And often you will find it not every Sunday in Reformed churches.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think there is a very good reason for not doing it very regularly.
SPEAKER_00: This is something we've actually talked about as an eldercy.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate the Lord's Supper monthly.
SPEAKER_00: At some point or other, we will probably increase the frequency of it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: When and how we do that, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you want to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, God has prescribed certain physical things as means of grace.
SPEAKER_00: So there is a physicality as part of our walk with Christ, but it's it's what's given to us in its baptism and it's the supper, so you should use them.
SPEAKER_00: So more on that anon.
SPEAKER_00: Second, using tradition to refute tradition.
SPEAKER_00: There is a right use of tradition, and that I think is what is summed up in 2 Timothy 1.13.
SPEAKER_00: There is a pattern within scripture, and that is where creeds, that is where godly councils, that's where uh correct confessions of faith come from.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible-only movement is actually a heresy.
SPEAKER_00: You think, hold on, you've just taught scripture alone.
SPEAKER_00: No, scripture rules us, but scripture also requires us as a subordinate authority underneath it to have things like creeds and confessions of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And one reason is that they are so helpful as a defense against the dark arts.
SPEAKER_00: Um they they help to define in succinct and really clear ways what is true and what is false.
SPEAKER_00: You could go back to first principles every single time.
SPEAKER_00: That would be quite exhausting, but it's also unnecessary.
SPEAKER_00: So God has given us that that pattern, and you know, fathers in the faith, and we don't treat them uncritically, the Westminster Confession can err.
SPEAKER_00: It's not inspired by scripture, but it's pretty good, so we do well to use it.
SPEAKER_00: Those of us who have friends who have converted are not brought up in it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they're they're not ethnically Greek or Russian or Serbian, and maybe there is more of an openness to dialogue.
SPEAKER_00: So I've had quite a lot of to and forth with a couple of people over the years.
SPEAKER_00: But you're right, so people who minister in places like, I don't know, North London, loads of Greek Cypriots or whatever, very exactly what you've just described, albeit some indications of progress, I think, among young men, some some degree of openness.
SPEAKER_00: I guess it's just talking about Jesus and it's trying to get people to look at the Bible, look at the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't I wouldn't dive in with, hey, icons are heretical.
SPEAKER_00: I think I'd be incredibly unwise.
SPEAKER_00: But I guess what you want to do positively is introduce the scriptures, which is where you meet Christ, but also the scriptures are self-authenticating, they come with their own power to convince and persuade.
SPEAKER_00: So in a sense, it's this it's the same as trying to evangelize anyone.
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to get people's noses into the Bible and to talk about and meet Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got other questions, um please ask them.
SPEAKER_00: Uh resources, things there on the bottom of the handout that are good to read.
SPEAKER_00: Regulars, you'll have seen that I sent round during the week a PDF of a Table Talk magazine.
SPEAKER_00: And it's got some really excellent essays at the start of it, not difficult to read, just sort of giving some approaches to uh the ancient tradition of the church, so-called.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to if you want to subscribe to Table Talk, as per that email, just give your name to me.
SPEAKER_00: Got some uh back copies as well, we can take one if you want.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Heavenly Father, we want to think your thoughts about uh everything, about the world, about the wider church, about uh most of all you and how we draw near to you.
SPEAKER_00: Would you continue to uh teach us?
SPEAKER_00: Would you inflame our hearts that we would love you?
SPEAKER_00: We know that's what we are made for, and we pray for a growing uh discernment and also wisdom as we share Christ with many shapes and sizes of people in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.