Orthodoxy & Evangelicalism: Comparative Theology

Ok, so my buddy Larry brings up an interesting point about Eastern Orthodoxy's basic theological framework. To the Orthodox, God is defined in two aspects–the aspect of God’s essence, or who He is on the inside, and the aspect of His energies or His outworking, the things that he does. Even this mystery involves God being present in His energies or His outworking. James Payton, the author of Light from the Christian East I've been recommending in my previous two posts, attempts to define the Orthodox presentation of God by saying that there are two categories of existence. There are things that have been created and things that have not been created. Anything never created is God, whereas anything defined as never having been created is God, including all godly attributes like love and justice. The actions of God are not created things, because He inhabits his energies or His actions.

Eastern Orthodoxy’s theology can be divided into two categories. Positive or cataphatic theology is what can be affirmed about God.  Negative or apophatic theology is saying what God is not. Eastern Orthodox theology has developed due to a understanding that our words about God are “inadequate to contain him” (Payton, 76). “Thus, in Orthodoxy, theology- ‘talking about God’- done rightly leads to silence before God, to serene contemplation of God” (78). Eastern Orthodoxy takes a very skeptical view of the rational mind and its capabilities. This is what Payton says is exhibitive of the differences between how the East and West historically developed.

What can be said about God is limited according to Eastern Orthodoxy. “Since he is God, there is no way that we as mere human beings, as his creatures, can understand him” (73-74). Payton explains this Orthodox limitation to human speech:

In all this, God speaks truly as he reveals himself to us, but he does not speak exhaustively and penetratingly, such that we could comprehend him. Thus, God’s revelation in Scripture is true, although it does not say everything about God. It is adequate for God’s purposes and for our needs, but not sufficient to enable us mere limited human beings, his creatures, to obtain discursive knowledge of him (74).

Historically, the Orthodox Church would much rather err on the side of not saying something

untrue about God than naively espousing small truth statements.

This historical development of doctrinal differences can be seen further in how God relates to his creation. The West saw the development of an understanding of the ad intra interrelationship in the Trinity as opposed to how God relates to his creation ad extra. But the East created other categories. God’s essence is unknowable, reflective of the East’s distrust of rationality. God’s actions are knowable. Although these are distinct categories, God inhabits both.

            There is yet another distinctive and more personal experience based on God’s energies. Orthodoxy contends that we can only know God in his energies, never in his essence. It is not possible for mortals to know or understand God completely in his being only in what he does. And this is only possible through a corporate relationship within the Eastern Church. So, I guess the bigger question is: can knowing God only in his energies be sufficiently salvific?

            There is a big distinction in Orthodoxy between the Creator and his creation. Our “human inability to conceive of and speak appropriately about God in his relationship to the creation” (88) is what defines this distinction. Orthodoxy places parameters around what was created and what was not created. Time did not exist prior to creation. Yet there was existence prior to creation. The Creator is “totally other than his creation” (89). Orthodoxy developed a belief that humans cannot truly understand the Creator, therefore they can never truly speak about him.

The way that Orthodoxy describes intra-trinitarian relationships is different than the way it describes the relationship between Creator and creation however. The internal essence of God cannot be understood, but the external energies are God’s divine will. It says that “in creation we are not confronted with the divine nature, but with the divine will” (90). God necessarily exists, while creation does not. Creation was made ex nihilo. Orthodox believers hold to God’s utter transcendence in his essence, but they insist that “he is absolutely immanent in his energies” (91).

Payton points to the first chapters of Genesis and John to explain the Orthodox differential between God the Logos, or the ultimate purpose, and our logoi, or God’s purposes within us. With a uniquely Eastern stance, Payton says that “each created nature has that logos within himself, herself or itself ” (95). Creatures must “live up to [our] divinely implanted logos” (95).

Payton shows various potentials whereby the western church can be informed by the Eastern Church. He says that “Western Christians can learn more measured respect for ‘positive’ theology” (85). He also says that “we might sense the futility of some of our western Christian wrangling about Scripture” (85) if we will allow Eastern Christianity to inform our theology. If somehow the Western Church might “appropriate negative theology in some measure as it practiced within Eastern Orthodoxy, we would end up with a richer sense of who God is, on the one hand, and a greater humility for what we say about him, on the other” (85-86). But what about the reverse? Within the Eastern church, would there be any redemptive value in western evangelicalism's emphasis on man-God intimacy that leads to enlightened understanding of God the Creator?