Table of Contents
Parent: JesusWordsOnly
The Eastern Orthodox Church and Paul
- A little known fact about Pelagius is that he taught salvation was by faith alone. In Augustine's attacks on him as a heretic, he focused on Pelagius' belief that human free-will could, in theory, permit one to live a sinless life. Augustine never revealed what truly made Pelagius dangerous. Pelagius was resorting to Marcion's doctrine that Paul taught salvation by faith alone. Zimmer in the modern era discovered a work by Pelagius that was spared destruction. It survived because it was miscatalogued as a work of Jerome. In it, Pelagius defends that free-will allows one to live a sinless life. However, in this same book entitled Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul (410 A.D.), Pelagius is a proponent of salvation by faith alone, without repentance. Pelagius even ridiculed James' doctrines. The Catholic Encyclopedia comments on this modern discovery, noting Pelagius taught: "By justification we are indeed cleansed of our personal sins through faith alone (loc. cit., 663, 'p er solam fidem justificat Deus impium convertendum'), but this pardon (gratia remissionis) implies no interior renovation of sanctification of the soul.'' (Zimmer, "Realencyklopadies fur protest," Theologie XV, 753 (Leipzig, 1904.) The Catholic Encyclopedia comments: "Luther's boast of having been the first to proclaim the doctrine of abiding faith [must be re-evaluated because] Pelagius [earlier] insists expressly (loc. cit. 812), 'Ceterum sine operibus fidei, non legis, mortua est fides.' [transl. "Moreover, without the work of faith, not of law, faith is dead."] Pelagius was making fun of James by twisting his words around to sound Pauline. This raises the question whether Augustine went after Pelagius merely on the issue of capacity of freewill to avoid sin or because Pelagius rejected James' teaching in favor of Paul's on salvation. For more on this, see "Pelagius," Catholic Encyclopedia, reprinted at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11604a.htm (last visited 2005).
We in the West often ignore there was an older and wider church than Roman Catholicism: the Orthodox. Its view on Pauline doctrine deserves great respect due to its antiquity. This original church is still going strong with 250 million members. (Protestantism represents, by comparison, only 350 million members worldwide.) We know the Orthodox today in the West as the Eastern Orthodox church.
The Orthodox church has continuously flourished from the first century in Israel, Ethiopia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, etc. Each national church traces their roots to James as the first bishop of Jerusalem. They insist it was to him alone that the original bishops looked to for guidance. ("Eastern Orthodox Church," Encarta.) The Orthodox maintain an unbroken list of bishops in all its original territories (including Rome), tracing back name-by-name right down to the period of James and Paul. As Paul says, the Jerusalem church, in those earliest days, was regarded as the "mother of us all." (Gal. 4:21-26).
But isn't the Roman Catholic Church the original church? No. This is pure myth. The original church was the one founded at Jerusalem and led by James, described in Acts chapter 15. Ten years later, Peter went to Rome and founded a church there. Peter also had founded a church at Antioch in Syria. Neither the one at Rome nor at Antioch could claim superiority over the other. Each was founded by Peter.
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In 1520, Luther attacked the doctrine of free-will. Pope Leo X condemned Luther's claims. Erasmus, a Catholic reformer, in 1524 rebutted Luther, pointing out that if man lacks a free-will ability to do good, then God is unjust to condemn man for sin. Luther's response in 1525 was to say that Paul's doctrine of grace excludes any ability of man to contribute positively toward his salvation. Otherwise salvation would be by works. However, Luther's response did not address the question posed by Erasmus: how can God condemn the lost if they have no freewill ability to do good? Regardless, this episode demonstrates that Paul's doctrines are used to defend the notion that man lacks free-will to do good. Paul teaches God gives man a will bound to evil unless God 'in His infinite wisdom' having nothing to do with our behavior decides to spare some. God then infuses the few with the will to believe and be saved. Then, and only then, can man do good. For Jesus' contrary teaching, see Jesus ' Idea of Faith at www.jesuswordsonly.com.
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See discussion of the Jerusalem church at 242, 295, 298, and 304.
Furthermore, prior to the 300s, the bishops throughout the Roman and non-Roman world operated as one inter-connected Christian church. There was no single head except initially James at Jerusalem. In the 300s, the Roman bishop, with the power of the Emperor behind him, began to exert direct control over churches within the Roman territories. This led to the Roman bishop (aka the pope) developing doctrines divergent from the bishops outside of Roman territorial control. These Orthodox Christian bishops outside the control of Rome in 1054 excommunicated the bishop of Rome (aka the pope). Particularly irksome to the original church of Christ was that the Roman bishop (aka the pope) had developed doctrines on purgatory and original sin which the Eastern bishops rejected. However, the grounds of divorce in 1054, also known as the Great Schism, rested upon the fact that the bishop of Rome (aka the pope) altered the Nicene Creed. Since then, the bishops outside of Roman influence have called themselves the Orthodox Church. As already noted, we in the West call them and their 250 million members the Eastern Orthodox Church.
What is the Orthodox Church's view on Paul's teachings? Despite Paul's presence in their New Testament canon, the Orthodox church's official salvation doctrine as far back as the post-apostolic records take us (125 A.D.) up through today completely ignores Paul. Not a single doctrine of Paul surfaces in the Orthodox' church doctrine. Not the doctrine of original sin from Romans chapter 5 (which the Orthodox specifically reject). Not predestination of the will. Not total depravity. Not grace alone. Not faith alone. Not one iota of anything uniquely Pauline appears in the official teachings of the Orthodox church from the earliest post-apostolic records to the present. As one Calvinist Reformed writer puts it in his critique of the Eastern Orthodox:
Eastern Orthodox Christians reject the Reformed [i.e., Pauline]
teaching of the natural man's bondage of the will as well as the
Doctrines of Grace.
They reject the Reformed view of Predestination....They reject the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. The Orthodox reject the biblical idea ((Rom. 5)) of inherited (imputed) guilt... Orthodox hold to baptismal regeneration-no one can be saved unless he is baptized with water. 30
For the Orthodox, only the words of Christ and His twelve apostles have influence over belief and practice. Their foremost creed was the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.). To this day, they insist it is the most accurate summary of the faith of the Church. Yet, this Creed too contains nothing uniquely from Paul!
So what does the Eastern Orthodox church teach about salvation? Most succinctly, it teaches you have to stay on the narrow road of following Jesus. This aims at being perfect in conduct, obeying all of Jesus' commands. We will never be perfect while on earth, but starting with baptism and following Jesus we will become more and more like God in perfection. This is called theosis. It means becoming like God by imitation, not like God in one's nature. For support, they rely upon Jesus' words: "whoever obeys my teaching should never ever die." (John 8:51). When one sins, the Orthodox urge repentance and penance. Their doctrines are heavily focused therefore on Jesus' teachings. The Orthodox wholly ignore Paul's unique doctrines.
In fact, perhaps most startlingly of all, the Orthodox have an unbroken string of twenty centuries of ongoing belief in the validity of the true Saturday Sabbath. This is hardly a Pauline view. This was the early church's practice as well.
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/topic (last visited 2004).
The Orthodox' views on salvation are hard to amalgamate in our way of thinking because of our long conditioning to Paulinism. We need to mull over their ideas. They are calling for an internal transfonnation, not merely a verbal or internal confession of some knowledge about Jesus. When we realize this is their point, it is truly closer to Christ's teaching. It completely ignores the Paulunist-inspired teachings of the Western church that focus on a mental belief change.
Regardless, what cannot be denied is the Orthodox represent a longer tradition than Roman Catholicism. Their doctrines are deeply rooted in the post-apostolic period of 125 A.D. to 325 A.D. Yet, it thoroughly rejects everything that Paul uniquely stands for. Are all 250 million Orthodox Christians lost because they emphasize Jesus' words? Whatever the answer, the history of the Orthodox church proves one thing: Paul early on and a long time thereafter was never taken seriously.
31 .As one encyclopedia says, the "Eastern Orthodox churches distinguish between 'the sabbath' (Saturday) and 'the Lord's day' (Sunday), and both continue to play a special role for the believers...though the Lord's day with the weekly Liturgy is clearly given more emphasis. Catholics put little emphasis on that distinction and most of them, at least in colloquial language, speak of Sunday as the sabbath." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath.) Thus, the Orthodox not only reject all uniquely Pauline teachings, they also reject Paul's fright over the Galatians observing "days" (Sabbath). (Gal.4:10). Irenaeus (130-202 A.D.) of Lyon, France gave the early rationale at total odds with Paul. "The decalogue [Ten Commandments] however was not cancelled by Christ, but is always in force: men were never released from its commandments." ("Against Fleresies," Anti-Nicene Fathers, Bk. IV, Ch. XVI, at 480.) He then explains the Sabbath must be kept on Saturday as a sign. This explains why the earliest Christian tradition followed Saturday Sabbath except at Rome and Alexandria. Socrates the Historian (b. 380 A.D.) wrote: "For although almost all Churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries [the Lord's Supper] on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this."(Socrates, Ecclesiastical History', Bk 5, Ch. 22.289). Likewise Bingham summarizes numerous ancient sources: "The ancient Christians were very careful in the observation of Saturday, or the seventh day... It is plain that all the Oriental [Eastern] churches, and the greatest part of the world, observed the Sabbath as a festival... Athanasius likewise tells us that they held religious assemblies on the Sabbath, not because they were infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, Epiphanius says the same." (Joseph Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church (1878) Vol. II, Bk. xx, Ch. 3, Sec. 1, 66. 1137,1136).