Missiological Implications of Payton's Approach

For the past couple of weeks, I've been posting about James Payton's Light from the Christian East. On Facebook & Twitter as well as a few comments posted on this blog, there have been some strong reactions to Eastern Orthodoxy's tenets and whether they can really be called Christian. I still think Payton's book is a good starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about Orthodoxy or beginning to work in a predominant Orthodox culture. The strength of Payton’s approach is his historical perspective, something that is often lost in many interfaith conversation. He does a good job in explaining several of the key differences  between the diverging perspectives that generated as the East and the West (pardon the pun) went their own ways. This historical lens is necessary for the Eastern and Western missiological dialogue.

However, I also admit that Payton also exhibits several weaknesses in my opinion. Payton arguably places too much emphasis on the differences between Eastern and Western theologies. It is true that the historical contexts of each have led to a diversification in development, but he seems to embellish them to make his point. In a surprisingly naive way, he seems to stereotype all of Eastern Orthodoxy with the same beliefs, not allowing for varying views within the faith. He does the same with Western Protestantism. At times he makes the Eastern Church affirm the same things that the Western Church also affirms, but he identifies them as unique stances. In truth, there are simply some theological points that bind us together and other points that differentiate us.

I also disagree with Payton’s presumption that Eastern Orthodoxy encompasses all of Eastern Christianity. In doing so, I believe Payton fails to take into account the various other non-Orthodox Christian movements that have sprung up throughout history in Eastern Europe as well as the non-Orthodox divisions out of the officially sanctioned church. Albeit the numbers are significantly smaller than Protestants of Western Christianity, there have been some other Christian groups that exist besides Orthodoxy. It seems the very reason why the Protestant movement is included with the Roman Catholic Church in Western Christianity should give warrant to include the sectarian groups of the East. Having spent 13 years with evangelicals from the East gives me pause to simply whitewash the Eastern church as being stereotyped.

            Yet another significant missiological weakness is his blind insistence that both Eastern and Western Christian perspectives are equally valid. Without a biblical point of reference, he asserts that the “Orthodox approaches are legitimate interpretations of biblical revelation” (108). This seems to contradict the historical evidence that the two views are polarized on many points. Where there are areas for dialogue, a complete merging of the two without regard for theology is ecclesiologically dangerous at best and a negation of theology at worst. Or have we truly come to the point where every point of view is equally valid?

            Regardless of these weaknesses, Payton’s book is definitely useful as an introduction to the Eastern Church and for understanding its doctrines and practices. Payton argues that Orthodoxy can help the West overcome its own sabotaging wording in the creation-evolution debate. He believes it can deepen our recognition of the distance between God and his creation. He also believes that Orthodox can help make us aware of our own cultural mandate by appreciating creation’s holistic purpose for communion with God. The unique value of the text is how Payton ties human history to Christian theology. As such it is a worthy read with more than just academic significance.

Eastern Orthodox Doctrine of Sin

On Wednesday I introduced a brief overview of how Eastern Orthodoxy has historically differed from western evangelicalism in its view of God the Father. The historical division between the East and the West led to differences in the doctrine of sin as well. According to Orthodoxy, the impact of the fall of man was to detour God’s purposes for creation, and somehow Jesus corrected that. Orthodoxy now tends to take a more holistic approach in its doctrine of man.

The Eastern view of the human body comes into play within this historical development. For the Orthodox, the physical body “is a visible form that uniquely matches the invisible divine glory (although God has no body)” (James Payton, Light from the Christian East, 107- Kindle Edition Here). Although Orthodoxy differentiates between the image of God in man, which is a gift, and the likeness of God, which is a calling empowered by the Holy Spirit, the fall of man had some unique issues. Payton says we are “inescapably surrounded” (112) by these dying circumstances, and therefore we are influenced to sin. Orthodoxy denies that our human nature is depraved, something that radically differs from the historical development of John Calvin's teaching about man's total depravity.

The East also developed a new slant in terms of imputation of sin. Because Orthodoxy does not believe that anyone pays for any sin but their own, Adam’s sin is seen as just that, Adam’s sin. According to Orthodoxy, “no one can be guilty of another’s sin” (111). Sinfulness is not imputed in Orthodox harmatology, but all creation has inherited death as a consequence. Because of this, we have inherited physical corruption and everything that goes with it. However, “none of us bears or suffers from a depraved, corrupt or sinful human nature, according to Orthodoxy” (114). Thus, it is natural for humans by default to do good, but because of our external circumstances, we are influenced to do bad. Whereas the West tends to portray sin as breaking the rules, the East views it as a “violation of a personal relationship with God” (119).

So, is it either/or? Is it both/and? What effect does an understanding of sin have on truth? on salvation?

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?

Orthodoxy- Look at it from an Historical Viewpoint

Yesterday, I posted on James Payton's book, Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2007), and it brought an interesting reaction from another missions practitioner (whom I highly value).  Perhaps it would be helpful to shed some historical light on this contrasting form of Christianity. In his book Payton builds his argument on several elements to describe the division between the Eastern and Western Church. Linguistically, the East was influenced by the Greek language with all of its Hellenistic nuances while the West was influenced by the structure and Roman mindset of Latin. Ancient Greece gave the world an emphasis on human reason while Roman Empire insisted on law and justice. Payton believes these orientations are some of the deep roots in the later development of Eastern and Western psyches. With the development of large Hellenic cosmopolitan centers, the East moved philosophically into impersonality and “even what reason could not reach” (23). Roman philosophy evolved with a greater stress on practicality and utilitarianism. It only stands to reason that “during the early third century a significant difference arose between Christian leaders in the two halves of the empire as to how best to present the claims of Christianity” (24). The schism that followed could be traced politically and doctrinally.

Payton’s modus operandi in building his defense of Orthodoxy as a valid viewpoint is threefold. He first shows the argument and why the argument has taken place. Secondly, he refutes the argument with data or proofs. And finally he turns it around to argue that the same could be said of Western Christianity. As almost a postscript, he presents a statement on each point of how the west could benefit by looking at things from an eastern mindset.

Political Schism

Historically, the East and the West faced a schism based not only on doctrinal issues but on political moves. Payton argues that the political sacking of Constantinople in AD 1204 by Western Christians “led to the deep chasm between Western and Eastern Christianity that continues to the present” (34). This ultimately led Pope John Paul II to a public apology in 2001.

On doctrinal ends though, Payton says the way the East and the West differ in talking about God is even more “disconcerting and disorienting” than any other distinctive between the two (72). Even the varied influences led to a differing orientation in viewing the Trinity. 

Already by the fourth century, two contrasting approaches of setting forth Trinitarian doctrine had developed. Eastern Christianity followed the Cappadocian fathers, who started with the three persons and moved to the oneness of God. By contrast, Western Christianity took the path of St. Augustine, who began with the oneness of God and moved to the threeness of the persons (70).

This orientation eventually led to a huge doctrinal schism based on the West’s adherence to Augustinian pneumatology as proceeding from both the Father and the Son over against the East’s Cappadocian insistence that the Father was the source for both the Son and the Spirit. This filioque clause became the permanent rift between the two sides that has continued.

            The distrust continued as the Byzantine Empire became overrun by the Turkish Muslims

in 1453, and the “church became inextricably intertwined with nation” (38). The Turkish influence not only led to national churches that could not meet without imperial control, but it also led to a church leadership that was heavily influenced by that political regime. The only place where this did not happen was the Russian Orthodox Church, but the twentieth century brought a repressive empire of communism yet gave way to a general feeling that Moscow was the new Rome.

Doctrinal Schism

Payton believes that the major differences between the East and the West are doctrinal though, as does my missionary friend. The Western Church’s “attitudes toward doctrine lead to expectations of clarity and explanations in doctrine” (66). The East, on the other hand, sees creeds as forbidding warning signs. The goal in the Eastern Church “is not explanation of the Christian faith, but faithful adherence to its mysteries” (67). While some might argue that Orthodoxy has a flavor of Pagan philosophy, Payton successfully rebuts this argument by showing how Orthodoxy opposed Gnosticism and drew a clear distinction between the Creator and creation. He explains how Orthodoxy opposed to the Hellenic understanding of cosmos with an Orthodox proposal of God’s immutability. Moreover, Payton proposes that Orthodoxy is theology influenced by its historical Eastern development.

            So, if there are real differences, what are they? How does Orthodoxy differ in its view of God as Almighty Creator? What about the fall of mankind? What about how to be saved? In these concepts, the clearer picture of Orthodoxy emerges.

Understanding Russian Orthodoxy

This week one of my good friends was ordained to be the pastor of a Russian congregation in Eastern Atlanta, so naturally we had some Russian guests who were not evangelicals. Again my thoughts were taken back to the growing interaction between Western Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy. In essence there is a great need to understand the Christian East, the culture, the language, the world view and the religion. For a Baptist, it's almost like having Lutherans over for dinner: you know that there are similarities, and you are keenly aware that there are differences, but what are they? One of the best resources on the subject is a book by James Payton, Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2007).  Its stated purpose is to “introduce Western Christian reader to some of the distinctive perspectives and emphases of Eastern Orthodoxy in a way that facilitates understanding and appreciation” (15). Payton contends that Orthodoxy has been “shaped by significantly different questions” (12) than those that have shaped Western Christianity. In fact, he places a large emphasis on what he suggests has been a vastly overlooked half of Christian history, the Eastern half, but he also gives a brief survey of Western reactions to Orthodoxy’s suppositions. Having lived in a predominantly Russian Orthodox environment for 13 years, I can attest to the contrasting starting points that make up the eastern and western theological matrices.

Payton lays the groundwork for discussing the larger distinctions between the Eastern and Western church. It could be argued that he writes this book from a western perspective with a sole intent of making a western protestant at least aware of Eastern Orthodoxy or the Eastern Church but not to critique it. I would go so far as to say that they attempt is more to help westerners understand Eastern Orthodoxy, and it is not a reciprocal conversation. Perhaps more accurately, he attempts to see where Eastern Church might inform western theology and thereby gain an appreciation for how the East has developed; therefore, he ends each chapter with lessons that western Christians could learn from the East. His book could be praiseworthy on the sole basis that it links the beliefs of the Eastern Church with its historical development, but as a theological survey it also has merit. This book is best served as a survey of how the historical development of the East and West affected specific doctrines like Trinitarian theology, harmatology and soteriology. Whenever I'm asked to name a good resource for Americans going to serve as missionaries in Russia, I always mention this book as one of the best primers for understanding the larger culture.  

Payton believes that the East and the West have formed their theologies in two radically separate spheres. They have been influenced by their environments and thereby been crafted by those influences. The West, for example, he shows to be influenced by a very legal-oriented Roman mentality, something that he contends thereby affects our understanding of God from a legal mindset. Therefore the court room genre of justification as evidenced in all of our literature from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries up to today affects the way we make presentations of the plan of salvation from a legal perspective. Because the west has a very rational mindset, we tend to approach our theology from a different definition of theology from the East. Payton posits that the West tends to approach theology within categories for understanding God and theologies are built upon logical arguments that must be defeated or proven. 

The East is different. Thought processes are not typically linear nor progressive. Instead they are crafted with more of an aesthetic goal; thus, to the westerner they might seem more circular or haphazard. Perhaps a better, albeit over-simplistic, example would be to say that Russians enter into a conversation with the goal to experience the conversation, whereas an American would enter the same conversation in order to come to some agreement or decision. Similarly, the foundation for Russian theology is more of an experience than a dogma, and often the greater study of God is not confined to logical human arguments that place parameters on the Creator. 

            Payton introduces his book by listing four preliminary thoughts serve to guide this discussion on the historical divergence of Eastern and Western Christianity. He says that each side has differing questions regarding theology. He dislikes the term Eastern Orthodox and would prefer to call Eastern Christianity simply Orthodox. To Payton, Eastern Orthodoxy is Eastern Christianity. And he defines Western Christianity simply on geographic terms. Payton deals with theological issues like doctrines of God, mankind, original sin, salvation, church, and authority; yet he does so from a historical developmental perspective. If Payton’s desire is to give Western Christian thinkers an appreciation for Eastern Orthodoxy, then he achieves his goal. If his purpose is to help the West to become acquainted with those main topics that surround Eastern Orthodox thought and why they became the way they did, then he also succeeds. It is not Payton’s stated goal to convince in either direction, but he does desire to create an atmosphere for dialogue whereby the West and the East can learn to appreciate each other. Payton’s book, although a survey of a historic journey from the early church into what we see today as the Eastern Church, creates a platform for discussing the differences and appreciating them for how they originated.

            In many ways, Russians living in America have become affected by their interaction with a new worldview. Some have taken on the step-by-step framework that western society has built. Others have recoiled into a fortress of Russian Orthodoxy, complete with nationalistic traditions and impatience toward outside theologians. Whenever Russians and Americans do have a dialogue about God, I have found it enriching for mutual discipleship and giving greater definition to our limited perspectives.