Tag Archives: Eastern Orthodox

Eastern Orthodox, Theology

What Does The Burning Bush Symbolize?

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Post Author:  Darrell

I have long cherished the story of the Lord’s appearance to Moses in the Burning Bush from Exodus Chapter 3.  I am sure you know the story. Moses left Egypt and set up his home in Midian.  The Lord appeared to him in the midst of the burning bush in an effort to get his attention and call him back into His service to free the Children of Israel from the Egyptians.  At first glance, the use of a burning bush appears to be nothing more than a tool to get Moses’ attention.  It seems to be a way of saying, “Hey you!  Pay attention!  This is not just your run-of-the-mill conversation.  I am serious!”  However, I have to admit that in the back of my mind I have often wondered if there is a deeper meaning in the Lord’s choice of a bush that burns with fire yet remains unconsumed.  It seems to be a very specific choice.  So why did He choose it?

As some of you know, my wife and I have become catechumens in the Eastern Orthodox Church.  As a result, I have spent some time this Christmas season reading the hymns of the Church as they relate to the birth of Christ, and I have come across an interpretation of the Burning Bush that has really intrigued me.

The Orthodox Church makes heavy use of typology, a method of exegesis that views older biblical events, places, and things as a foreshadow or prefiguration of later biblical events, places, and things.  There is an ancient teaching that the burning bush is a Type of the Virgin Mary and the Church.  The reasoning goes like this:

  1. God is referred to numerous times in the Bible as the Consuming Fire, e.g., Exodus 24:17, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 9:3, and Hebrews 12:29.
  2. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are both Fully God.
  3. The Burning Bush, despite the presence of the Lord, remained unconsumed.
  4. Mary, despite bearing Jesus in her womb, remained unconsumed.
  5. The Church, despite the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, also remains unconsumed.

 I must admit that I never noticed this relationship before, but coming across it and pondering it has really touched my heart.  Mary carried the All-Consuming fire in her womb, yet God condescended Himself enough so as not to consume her.  Mary is, in many ways, the Unburnt Bush (this is a title given to her in Orthodox Tradition).  Today, the Church has the All-Consuming fire living within it.  God condescends Himself enough to take up residence in our hearts, yet we, like Mary, remain unconsumed.  How glorious this is!

You showed Moses, O Christ God,
An image of your most pure Mother
In the bush that burned yet was not consumed,
For she herself was not consumed,
When she received in her womb the fire of divinity!
She remained incorrupt after her pure childbearing!
By her prayers, O greatly merciful One,
Deliver us from the flame of passions,
And preserve your people from all harm!
(Orthodox Kontakion Hymn)

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Eastern Orthodox, Theology

What Is the Eastern Orthodox View of the Atonement?

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Post Author: Darrell

Many of those in the Protestant and Catholic traditions are familiar with the Penal Substitutionary Theory of the Atonement (hereafter referred to as Substitutionary Atonement).  However, I have found many to be unfamiliar with the predominant atonement view held by those in the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is commonly called The Recapitulation Theory.

The Recapitulation Theory dates to very early in the Church.  Many believe it had its beginnings with Saint Irenaeus in the second century.  We find it throughout the writings of the early Church Fathers.   Saint Athanasius, the giant of the Nicaean Council, wrote a wonderful book in AD 318 which explains the overall view very well.  It is titled On The Incarnation and was originally written as a letter to one of his disciples.

Substitutionary Atonement focuses on Christ’s suffering and death as the price for man’s sin.  In many ways, the model for Substitutionary Atonement is a courtroom.  Due to his sin, man needed to be made right with a perfect and just God.  Therefore, Christ came to suffer and pay the price in our place, i.e., He substituted Himself for us.  Now, in the courtroom of God, those who accept Christ as their Lord and Savior are judged innocent.  They have a forensic righteousness imputed upon them.

The Recapitulation Theory agrees that God needed to deal with man’s sin.  Man was separated from God as a result of the fall and, left to his own devices, was incapable of returning to God.  However, Recapitulation sees the model through which God dealt with man’s sin as a hospital rather than a courtroom.  Instead of viewing the atonement as Christ paying the price for sin in order to satisfy a wrathful God, Recapitulation teaches that Christ became human to heal mankind by perfectly uniting the human nature to the Divine Nature in His person.  Through the Incarnation, Christ took on human nature, becoming the Second Adam, and entered into every stage of humanity, from infancy to adulthood, uniting it to God.  He then suffered death to enter Hades and destroy it.  After three days, He resurrected and completed His task by destroying death.

By entering each of these stages and remaining perfectly obedient to the Father, Christ recapitulated every aspect of human nature.  He said “Yes” where Adam said “No” and healed what Adam’s actions had damaged.  This enables all of those who are willing to say yes to God to be perfectly united with the Holy Trinity through Christ’s person.  In addition, by destroying death, Christ reversed the consequence of the fall.  Now, all can be resurrected.  Those who choose to live their life in Christ can be perfectly united to the Holy Trinity, receiving the full love of God as Heavenly bliss.  However, those who reject Christ and choose to live their lives chasing after their passions will receive the love of God as hell.

Because of its focus on unification between God and man in the person of Christ, Recapitulation places great importance on the teaching that Christ is both fully man and fully God.  If Christ did not have both natures, He would have been incapable of uniting humanity to divinity, which was the entire purpose of the Incarnation.  As Saint Gregory of Nazianzus said in the fourth century, “That which is not assumed is not healed, but that which is united to God is saved.”  The doctrine of the dual nature of Christ came to the forefront with the third Ecumenical Council in AD 431.  During this council, the Church answered the Nestorian heresy and affirmed Christ’s humanity and divinity and upheld the title of Theotokos (Mother of God) for Mary.  By giving Mary this title, the Church believed we would preserve the teaching of the dual nature of Christ.  If Mary is the Mother of God, then, by necessity, Christ truly is God.  In addition, since Mary is both human and Christ’s mother, Christ is also fully human.

Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Great Apostasy

Did The Church Fall Away?

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Post Author: Darrell

One of the foundational teachings of Mormonism is that shortly after the death of the Apostles, the bulk of mankind rejected the teachings of Christ and the Apostles, and the world fell away from the plain and precious truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  As a result, the Church and the authority to act in God’s name were taken from the earth, and the world entered into a period known as the Great Apostasy.  It was not until God’s appearance to Joseph Smith in 1820, and his subsequent call to be a Prophet, that the Fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and God’s Church were once again restored to the earth.  Today, this fullness is known and taught only in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

During my last few years as a Mormon, I struggled with this teaching as I came to realize that it does not line up with what Christ promised us.  In Matthew 16:18, Christ says, “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”   Mormonism teaches that with the restoration of the Gospel, Temples have been reestablished upon the earth.  Within these Temples, Mormons perform various Ordinances that are believed to be binding not only on earth, but also in heaven.  Two of these Ordinances are known as Baptism for the Dead and Endowment for the Dead.  They are performed vicariously for and in behalf of individuals who did not receive them in this life. 

LDS doctrine teaches that when a person who is either an unfaithful Mormon or a non-Mormon dies, they go to a place known as Spirit Prison.  According to LDS.org, Spirit Prison is another name for Hell or Hades.[1]  It is contrasted with Paradise, the place where righteous Mormons go upon their death.  Those who reside in Spirit Prison have the opportunity to hear the teachings of the LDS Gospel.  If they accept them and their Temple Work (Ordinances of Baptism and Endowment) has been performed vicariously on their behalf, they can leave Hell and enter Paradise.[2]

This is where I found the LDS teaching to be problematic, for what does this mean for those individuals who lived and died during the Great Apostasy?  If Christ’s Church was really taken from the earth, and it was not restored until after Joseph Smith, what, according to Mormonism, has happened to all those individuals who lived and died during the period of the Great Apostasy?  Well, the reality of the fact is that they are in Hell.  Even if they accepted Christ, believed in Him, and strove to live by His teachings, they are still in Hell.  It is not until their Temple Work has been done that they can be released from Hell.   Even worse is the fact that the Temple Work for the majority of the Earth’s past population has not been done and will not be done for many years to come because we do not have their names.  Our records don’t go back that far. 

In my opinion, this teaching does not line up at all with Christ’s promise.  He told us that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church He established.  However, if LDS teaching is true, the Gates of Hell are prevailing against Christ’s Church and have been doing so since shortly after Christ’s ascension.  His Church was taken from the earth and those who lived lives seeking Him and living by His commandments are suffering in Hell as a result.  Not only is this teaching demeaning to the power of God, it also makes a complete mockery of Christ’s redeeming work.  He came to earth to unite humanity with divinity, bridging the gap between fallen mankind and the Creator of all.  However, according to Mormonism, many of those who have sought to follow Him are suffering in Hell for no other reason than they were born at the wrong time.

To be fair to Mormons, I must submit that Christ’s promise does not present a problem to their teachings alone.  Those who hold to strong fundamentalist Protestantism also encounter problems when comparing their beliefs to Christ’s promise.  I have spoken to many Protestants who believe that one cannot be a “faithful Catholic” or a “faithful Eastern Orthodox Christian” and still be saved.  They believe that the teachings of both of these great Churches are a corruption of what Christ taught and that if one holds to their teachings they are “non-Christian.”  However, the truth is that many of the core teachings of these Churches date back to the earliest times in Christianity, so if they are corruptions, they are corruptions that instilled themselves in the Church from virtually the very beginning of Christendom.  For example, the teaching that the Eucharist contains the Real Presence of Christ was a fundamental teaching of the Church from around the year 100, and the veneration of Mary can be dated to at least the middle 100’s.  By default then, stating that those who hold these beliefs are non-Christian is to state that the Church, from the earliest of times, apostatized in some of its key doctrines very early and remained that way until after the reformation.  Therefore, at its heart, this is to believe that the Gates of Hell prevailed against the Church for nearly 1500 years, dooming those who held to its key teachings to Hell.  Do we really believe that?

Think about it. 

 [1]http://classic.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?index=8&locale=0&sourceId=a5352f2324d98010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD.  Accessed 7/18/011.

Eastern Orthodox, Mind-Body Theory

Are the Human Mind and Body Separate from Each Other?

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Izbište-Eastern Orthodox Church
Image via Wikipedia

Post Author: Darrell

Recently, I have been studying the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, and quite honestly, I have found it to be a very intriguing faith.  They have a rich history and their faith is filled with traditions that hark back to the early Church.  Their approach to the Christian life and worship is unique, refreshing, and in many respects quite inspiring.

The Orthodox view of the human person is especially interesting.  Many Western Christians hold to a dualistic view of the mind and the body, believing them to be separate types of reality with the mind being equivalent to the spirit and the body being purely material.  While there are many profound advantages to this view, it is not without some serious challenges.  For example, dualism fails to account for the dramatic change in personality and character that can occur from physical damage to the brain and/or chemical imbalances within the body.  If the mind and spirit are separate entities, why do such changes in personality take place when a purely physical entity such as the brain is damaged?  It appears that any rational explanation for this would have to account for a profound connection between mind and body, yet this connection is precisely what the dualistic view seeks to avoid.

The Eastern Tradition of Christianity takes a different approach to mind/body duality, essentially saying that it doesn’t exist.  Instead, Orthodox view human personhood as a unity between the mind and the body.  In The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware says:

The west has often associated the image of God with the human soul or intellect.  While many Orthodox have done the same, others would say that since the human person is a single unified whole, the image of God embraces the entire person, body and soul as well. . . . Our body is not an enemy, but a partner and collaborator with our soul. [emphasis mine]

This is not to say that Orthodox believe that God has a body… they don’t.  They hold to a very traditional view of the Godhead, believing the Father to be spirit.  However, to the Orthodox, Christ’s incarnation united the physical and the spiritual.  Fourtenth century Saint of The Eastern Orthodox Church, Gregory Palamas, has been quoted as saying, “By taking a human body at the Incarnation, [Christ] has made the flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification.”

This unified view of the body and soul has a few similarities (although there are still many stark differences) to the mind/body theory known as Emergentism.  Emergentism says the human mind is not wholly separate from, nor entirely connected to, the body.  Instead, the mind, while produced by the brain, is entirely distinct from the brain.  As an analogy, we can look at magnetic fields and gravitational fields.  Both fields are produced by a generating physical object; however, they are also distinct from the generating physical object.  In the same way, Emergentism says that the mind emerges from the body (brain), but is still distinct from the body.

While this view has its challenges as well, it does appear to answer some of the questions left unanswered by the dualist.  Perhaps we Westerners have something to think about?