Ecumenical Thoughts
Mr Turk makes an interesting point in the conversation about ecumenical conversations, although I’m not entirely sure it’s the point he wants to make. A week or so ago he offered that those of other denominations, specifically the Roman and Easter churches were right with God only if they (accidentally) held to a Evangelical belief/approach to the Gospel. I think this point of view is held far more often by most people in every church/denomination. That is to say that any Christian church X thinks that members of church Y are in the soteriological pink inasmuch as those members in church Y (accidentally) hold to beliefs that are held in church X. That is, Mr Turk as an Evangelical thinks that the Catholic and Orthodox are saved if they hold an Evangelical understanding of the Gospel and those in the Roman hold that the Evangelical and Eastern are likewise correct when and where they (accidentally) hold to the Roman understanding of Gospel. And so on. Now I had been under the impression that I was “above the fray” in this regard. But on reflection, I am not.
An example of this is Mr Turk’s latest series of Nativity posts. He’s penned several essays as Church (small “c”) catholic nears the celebration of an anniversary celebration of the Nativity on the wrath of God. Just a few years ago, in the seventh century, a man named John became a hero of the Eastern (and Western) churches, heroes of the Church are called Saints. St. John Scholasticus (or St. John Climacus) wrote a book, John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent. This book lists practices that one might undertake in order to strive to become a better Christian. Oddly enough step 6, entitled “on remembrance of death” notes much of the things which Mr Turk emphasizes in his talk of the wrath of God and how being aware of how far we fall from a reasonable (or worse God’s) expectation for behaviour is a first step in Christian awareness. This feature too is not unrelated. The point here is that Mr Turk’s posts on the wrath of God seem words well said by such as myself is because they are in step with the the teachings internalized within my own tradition.
But this misses the larger point. Is this the right way to evaluate another tradition or individual? To suggest it is only “valid” in the overlap with what you see as right within your own. I would suggest that this is not the correct method, that in general externally evaluating whether a tradition or denomination is small “o” orthodox from outside is a process which is fraught with danger, specifically being misinterpretation or assigning incorrectly the importance and meaning of particular elements which you find in or out of synch with your own.
In the first centuries, the church found itself with a rich array of religious writing. Gnosticism was a heresy produced a great deal of writing. The popular conception is that the early church repressed gnostic writings. While they early church wrote much against these heresies … the repression charge is somewhat hard to sustain given that the extant surviving gnostic literature is found in monastic libraries. The Early church theologians and monastics did not discard these writings because while much in them was heretical and wrong … you could find in them valuable alternative ways of writing about or thinking about the Gospel and God. To put it crudely, they panned and filtered these for the gold they contained discarding the dross. This might be a better analogy when approaching another tradition. Let, “Look for the gold” be your motto.
Filed under: Catholicism • Christianity • Mark O. • Orthodox • Protestantism • Religion
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Hi Mark,
I hope your experience in debating Frank Turk is much better than mine. As far as my experience goes with him, he misrepresents and distorts his interlocutor’s positions by which to score cheap strawman points with his sychophants.
It’s odd or peculiar in that I’m a conservative Protestant, and I perforce agree with the essence of Frank Turk’s arguments, but yet he is sooOOOO odious and foul in his argumentation that he totally undermines the Gospel that he screeches about, and so I don’t even want to be associated with him at all. I’m no wilting violet, but his style of polemics makes me think of him as the Fred Phelps of blogdom. He is a living example of a clanging cymbal.
Look at this thread he wrote which seems like a pretext to attack the Evangel blog and his co-bloggers, including you:
“”Yeah, cent: we’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” comes the very concerned and troubled brethren. “You seem to have sort of chummed up with those Colsonesque wobblies over there, and your total blogging in other venues has dropped off radically. Especially here. And what puzzles us most, dear brother, is that while you didn’t sign the MD, you are willing to co-bloggitate with all manner of theological canoodlers at Evangel.”
After a long and solemn pause, the question comes, “What gives?”
Sheesh.
Yeah, first of all, the canoodlers over there don’t like my brand of blogging any better than they ever did, as you can see by the strange alliance of people lining up behind Mark Olson to tell me my Gospel isn’t big enough.
Yeah, I know: don’t laugh at them. They’re serious.
…
This relates to my co-bloggitating in this way: I think people need to see more Jesus. I’m not at liberty to list all the names which were on Joe Carter’s original invite to come and make merry with the Ecumeniacal, but I didn’t see a lot of people from our neck of the woods on the list. I did see plenty of the priests in the temple, and the scribes, and the rulers of the people, and the Hewittites, and the Colsonites, and maybe one or two who were eating locusts and wild honey. In that mix, given that I would have the free reign to blog what was necessary and what I was willing to say, this was like going to Jerusalem to ask around, “excuse me – someone was just born King of the Jews. Do you know about that?”
This has plainly caused unrest in the Ecumenicamp.”
And Mark, I thought Frank Turk’s comment to Craig Payne on this Evangel post was particularly offensive and detestable:
“Craig –
One of the significant differences between you and anyone else who has “tried that” here at Evangel is that no one is actually talking to you or about you.
It seems clear to me that Mark is working hard to overcome the objection that EO and EV theologies are incompatible — something which was inevitable, given the trajectory all the conversations here involving his name and mine. But in doing that, he has framed many of his points around what I have said.
The last time I responded to the long list of things I allegedly said, I was called a lot of names for lining up the questions and answering them — probably because I didn’t let someone else administrate the interview.
Fair enough: now I have asked Mark to do me the favor of exchanging Q&A with me in order to do two things –
[1] To answer directly some of the reproachments offered up against my point of view, including charges of ignorance and indifference.
[2] To have a productive dialog with someone who disagrees with me, and with whom I disagree.
Your response is simply a piece of evidence to show that this dialog is sorely needed. That you can post something as inherently-unproductive as that sort of accusation with a clean conscience is telling; that civil dialog without sophomoric interruptions is now classed as some kind of dodge is simply ridiculous.”
It’s so sad that Joe Carter had me banned, but he allows Frank Turk to abuse Craig Payne like that. On a blog called “Evangel”, no less. What a farce.