Characteristics and Sources of Orthodox Theology
by Protopresbyter Maxym Lysack
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This evening as we begin our talks together I wanted to talk to you about the Orthodox faith, and I wanted just to present an introduction to it. Right at the very start I wanted to say that Orthodox theology does not begin with proofs for the existence of God.
I wanted to say that because you can pick up many Christian manuals of theology, theological texts and in some of them, not in all of them, but in some of them you’re going to find a series of proofs for the existence of God. Sometimes in other texts what you’re going to find first off would be proofs for the credibility of Holy Scripture. It could be one or the other.
An Orthodox text and theology would not start that way. We would not start with proofs for the existence of God. There’s a very simple reason for that, and I’ll take an example from everyday life. That is that a son or daughter is not a sign of discourse with proof for existence or trying to prove the existence of his or her parents.
By that I mean that we are going into a world which was created by God. God is eternal. He precedes us. If we really believe there is a God, really, really and it isn’t just an intellectual discussion then we believe He is eternal. Trying to offer proof for His existence to other people at the beginning for theological discussion beginning it sounds actually very odd. It is a very odd place to start. God precedes us.
We’re to put it in a very simple language. He is our father and we are His children. We wouldn’t exist without Him. We don’t speculate on the existence of our parents. Without them we wouldn’t exist to speculate. This is how the Orthodox mind sees reality and sees and understands theology.
What could we say theology is then? Well, in terms of its roots we can see it is the word theologos, about God, Theos, but not simply the intellectual word. It isn’t simply intellectual discourage about God. Really, Orthodox theology starts with the statement of what is.
It almost sounds scientific, and in a way it is because theology is also a science and historically it was united to all of the other sciences. It was even called, for a period of time, the queen of the sciences, the lead area of science. It shouldn’t surprise us that Orthodox theological discussion would start in this way. It is a statement of what already is, because we have fallen heirs. We have become heirs. We have fallen heir to God’s creation.
Theology is a statement of what is. It is the word about God, but it is also a loving response and thanksgiving to God. The assumption here is that we received our own lives, our world and other people as a gift. They are God’s gifts to us. We also represent a gift of love to the world. We have the world as a gift. The world, in a sense, is a very, very great workshop or studio as an artist would conceive of it. God wants us to do something with it, and of course he is calling us to offer it back to him.
This is the priestly vocation that every human person has. Here we see the beauty has an awful lot to do with theology. We take of what God gives us. Of course we’re already surrounded by tremendous beauty in other people and in the created order, but we take it and we reshape it and hopefully, according to our Christian vocation, offer it back to God and create beauty. God loves beauty and our love for beauty, which is innate, comes from him.
These are just some introductory remarks to talk about how an Orthodox Christian would position himself or herself with regard to talking about the word about God, talking about theology.
If we were to take some adjectives and use them to describe Orthodox theology we could simply start with the word doxological. Doxological, this word means giving glory. In fact, theology is a hymn of glorification to God. That’s real theology. Of course, I realize, as you’re listening to this you’re probably thinking about things that pose as theology, and though it seem as having anything to do with being hymns of glorification to God, but pure theology would be exactly this.
Here’s an example. The creed that we have, the Creed of Nicea and Constantinople is first and foremost a hymn. It was sung in church historically. That was the rubric. Of course these days often to make it easier for everybody to participate we say it, but originally it was sung. It was chanted. It was always understood as a hymn.
It was not understood simply as a catalogue or a list of theological propositions starting first with God the Father, then God the Son and then God the Holy Spirit, although you can clearly see that kind of interpretive structure in the creed, but instead it is a hymn of glorification to God.
When we trade the creed, it is healing for us as well, but it is healing for us because we worship God, and this is one of the reasons why we pray the Creed as part of our prayers when we do morning and evening prayers. It’s a hymn of glorification to God. It’s not simply to remind ourselves of what we in the church happen to believe, but it is a hymn. We are glorifying him through theology. It’s the word about him.
We could also apply the word charismatic, which I know is a loaded word in North America now, but there’s no better way to use. I suppose one could say pneumatological and sound a little bit more theological about it, a bit more academic, but charismatic in the sense that the theology itself can only be done in and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, theology that is inspired by the Holy Spirit is always a hymn and is always glorification since the Holy Spirit is always relating to the father and the son in the Trinity and precisely that kind of relationship, a relationship of love and communion.
But theology can very definitely be considered to be a charismatic activity. That’s important for us to understand the fact that every Orthodox liturgical office begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit or Heavenly King indicates that liturgy is a charismatic activity by definition.
As you can see here in the Orthodox mind there is no internal contradiction between structure and charismatic life because some people hear the word charismatic and they instantly conceive of something which is completely inaccurate, which has absolutely no structure, which could have nothing to do with liturgy at all which could be highly institutional, structural and so forth.
This is not the way the early church understood things, and we see right back to First Corinthians that St. Paul does not crush the charismata, the charismatic gifts, but he gifts them a liturgical shape. The word in Greek is typikon and he gives the Corinthian church an order of worship. In a sense, laying out for them the principles of early Christian liturgy when telling them how to manage the gifts of the Holy Spirit in public, therefore liturgical worship.
The charismatic institution, although in popular literature people like to play them off against each other and to talk about the charismatic part of the church in the institutional part of the church, are in fact two sides of one reality. This is why we conceive the church as being intrinsically charismatic, and we can certainly see theology as being intrinsically charismatic as well.
The Holy Spirit is at work and it is through the Holy Spirit we know from the New Testament that we can confess Jesus as Lord and confessing Jesus as Lord represents the essence of true Christian theology and yet, we are told that this is only done in the power of the Holy Spirit, which shows us that repeating the words is not worship or prayer at all unless it is done in the Holy Spirit, which is to say through the Holy Spirit praying Himself in us.
I’d like to comment briefly on sources of Orthodox teaching. We would start, of course, first with Holy Scripture. Just a few words about that, because of course it seems rather obvious and someone might say, well on to the next point now, but I want to say a couple of things about it first.
First of all, with regard to the authors of Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments, the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles and evangelists of the New Testament, they are all considered by the church as theologians. All of them are considered theologians. Of course, saying John considered the lead theologian among them in the New Testament is given a title, St. John the Apostle and Theologian.
But they are theologians because they are people who don’t simply know about God, but know God. No preposition in between the verb and the object. They know God. These are people that the fathers of the church refer to as God seers, people who have seen God. To see, of course, in scripture means a lot. It doesn’t just mean that you register a visual limit. You take out a camera and take a picture. God, I don’t think, is exactly photographed in that way.
But to see is to be in communion with. They are God seers and this makes them competent to preach the Gospel. They weren’t simply men who, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, had everything else except their right hands, all their other faculties suspended, and had just enough power available to pen the words of Holy Scripture, just enough intellectual ability so that they could write. This is absolutely not the case.
In fact, we receive in Holy Scripture, the word of God, of course, through these holy men, the authors of Holy Scripture, but we also receive that this is profoundly beautiful, the Word of God as received and experienced by them. In other words, when you read the Gospel of St. John you are of course receiving God’s word and of course it is inspired. These are things, in the Orthodox church by the way, we don’t even lose any time on. I realize that they may be debated elsewhere, but for us it is simply so clear it doesn’t require, although we could offer an apologetic it doesn’t really require one if you understand the tradition properly.
In addition to the fact that everything there is inspired, the people who are writing were not passive observers. In the book of Revelation we see very clearly St. John is a participant. He is not watching the book of Revelation on a large screen TV and sharing it with us, his experience of the video. He is involved. The people are speaking to him. He is answering. He’s grieving. He’s a 100% a part of what is going on.
We are receiving the word of God, but we are also receiving with it St. John’s own experience of it, which means that for him to be the theologian that he has to have himself seeing God, knowing God, experienced God and this gives us what we call in the tradition, empirical theology. Theology which is not simply reduced to the subjective level, that’s not what we mean by empirical or experiential, but theology that is spoken by people who, themselves, have been changed by everything they’re saying, which makes them competent to talk about it.
It gives us a little more understanding into how all of the apostles were so persuasive. Where they all dynamite speakers? Were they all impressive personally? Did they all blow the crowds away with their education, were they erudite cosmopolitan? Well erudite and cosmopolitan would not be the two words that one would normally apply to Galilee and fishermen, at least not the first two. Maybe to St. Paul, absolutely, but to St. Peter, cosmopolitan, erudite? I don’t think so.
What is it about all of them without exception, because they all have a massive impact on the world, that made them so convincing? Empirical theology. People understood that everything they were saying had essentially changed them. If these men said we have seen Christ resurrected you didn’t doubt it when you looked in their faces. You knew they were experiencing the resurrection and it made them irresistible in their preaching, whether they were fluent or not fluent, impressive or not impressive on the secular level.
Secondly, the ecumenical councils, the ecumenical sit ins as we often call them, a 20th Century Orthodox theologian whom we love very much, Father George Florovsky, wonderful theologian, refers to them as charismatic events ecumenical councils. People who read the minutes of the councils are sometimes less convinced because the minutes show everything that was going on, and it wasn’t always pretty. There were disagreements, sharp disagreements, people who were declared heretics, so on and so forth.
Looking at the thing as a whole, it is a charismatic event. It’s an event of the Holy Spirit. What makes an ecumenical council ecumenical, in other words, received by the entire Christian world, that’s what it means by the way, it has nothing to do with dialogue between different confessions, obviously because you have ecumenical councils during the time of the undivided church so who were they supposed to be dialoging with? With the Aryans, the heretics? I don’t think so. Ecumenical refers to the whole ecumenic, which is the whole Christian universe, if you like, all of the Christian civilization.
The councils became ecumenical, in other words, received by all put simply, not because they had to have a requisite number of bishops in total or a requisite number from both the east and the west. The second ecumenical council had hardly anybody from the west. It was still received there as ecumenical. The authority of an ecumenical council comes from the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, it is perceived as this charismatic event which the church experiences as irresistible. It simply recognizes the stem of the Holy Spirit in the event, and you might ask the question well how would they be able to do that? Because these are people who already had scripture as a reference and couldn’t understand the work of the Holy Spirit in scripture. Therefore, they used something about a charismatic event. They could recognize the voice of the council and see whether it was the voice of the Holy Spirit or not.
There were some councils with hundreds of bishops that were rejected, the well-known "Robber Council" between the third and fourth ecumenical sit ins had a huge number of bishops. It was rejected by the church. The bishops went in to heresy, the majority of them.
You can see that if we put the authority in the structure we have a problem. Many, many times in church history the authority is the Holy Spirit in the ecumenical council. The ecumenical councils or sit ins restate in more precise language apply to specific situations what scripture has already said. The big commotion at the First Ecumenical Council, and watch this, caused a huge reaction was that they used one word, Ousia, which was not a scriptural word, but a word which already existed in Greek, and they used that word, homoousion.
This shows us that the fathers were wanting to be strictly scriptural in their approach to the councils, but first and foremost these are received as charismatic events.
Thirdly, liturgical life, all of it, not simply the divine liturgy and Eucharist but all of the liturgical life is a source of theology, but it is also a recapitulation of Holy Scripture and a recapitulation of the ecumenical sit ins so you can hear at an Orthodox vespers what are the proclamations of an ecumenical council sung as a hymn of vespers.
Some people who come from outside of the Orthodox tradition find it very curious. They’ll say, “What are you doing singing the proclamation of an ecumenical council?” Well, for us it’s a charismatic event, it’s doxological and vespers is a great place for it. It’s exactly where you’d want to pray. If you couldn't pray it wouldn't be an ecumenical council would it? That’s the Orthodox thinking.
The Liturgy shows, the liturgical life shows the intuition of the church. One of my professors of dogmatic theology at seminary told us, “Don’t worry, now I’m making you study. We’re doing all these courses in dogmatic theology, you’re going to forget some of it.” He says, “I know you’re going to forget some of it.” The exams are over and you forget. He says, “If you forget go back to the liturgy and see what is prayed there and you’ll know the theology.”
That’s exactly Orthodox liturgical life. There is no disparity, no difference between what is stated dogmatically and what is created liturgically. In fact, somebody could get our entire dogmatic theology without opening a book outside of Holy Scripture of course by simply attending the services. Especially vespers and matins, listening and writing things down. The whole theology of the church about everything. The whole theology is there, not simply about the church, but the whole theology that the church teaches.
Now, I’m careful just to say one thing here. I have no doubt you’ll pose a question about it later. When I say liturgical life I realize that certain people have written some very recent compositions, particularly recently composed akathist hymns and different services like this, most of which find themselves within the place of the great tradition, but there is always a possibility when something has been written privately and simply printed up and distributed that it might not follow in every detail or might not exhibit the liturgical mindset of the whole church, and I’m aware of that because different people have come to show me different things, nice compositions, but given that the authors sometimes do not have the same spiritual quality and maturity of the people who wrote the hymnography, classical hymography of the church, it’s not surprising that one might find a few disparages there.
Fourthly, the fathers of the church, people say, “What? Every father, what every mother had to say about everything? Every single opinion?” No, what we call consensus patro. The agreement, the consensus of the fathers. What is based on scripture and of course reiterated at ecumenical councils and what we find in common between them, not every saint is a father by the way. Every father is a saint, but not every saint is a father of the church. Even among the fathers we understand that it is a consensus, the agreement between them on the core teaching of the church that we see as being so important and authoritative in the tradition.
We speak of them as being deified fathers, not in any new age sense, but in the sense of people again who, like the apostles and the prophets have seen God, true, real theologians not academics posing as theologians, but true, real theologians.
We understand the statement of St. Paul, “Though you may have many teachers, you do not have many fathers.” He says, “I have given birth to you through the preaching of the Gospel.” Of course he’s talking about the special relationship that he has with them, but he is also expressing a general principle, and that is that there are indeed many teachers but not many theologians, and not many father and the ones that we have had and do have give them a living voice, a living witness of the Holy Spirit in the church.
Finally, for tonight, not finally, but finally for tonight, the Eucharist to divine liturgy, the Eucharistic celebration is a wonderful source of theology, Orthodox theology. How so, someone would say? Well, of course because it recapitulates so much of Holy Scripture. The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom has between 200 and 300 references or illusions to the Old and New Testament and one liturgy. I still, and here I’m not talking about the readings, the lection, the epistle and the Gospel, simply talking about the liturgy itself which is so profoundly embedded in Holy Scripture. It is also 100% connected with the teaching of the councils, the essential Christological teaching of the councils, all of that is recapitulated in the liturgy as well.
Of course, in addition to that, we have the Eucharists as being really the sonnet and the highest expression of all of the liturgical life of the church. The liturgical aspect or liturgical source is here as well.
Certain fathers compiled the liturgy and the teaching of the fathers of the consensus patro can certainly be found there, so much so that went Saint Irenaeus of Lyon went to combat in the early church the Gnostics, the Gnostics posed a terrible problem under the Christianity because they represented a heresy, but they represented a heresy which was present in the church some of the time. Some Gnostics were outside of the church, but some were in the church, and were using Christian theological discourse, were referring to Scripture and confusing many people because they were doing this, using the same terminology but with a different meaning, put it in simple language. They had a teaching which was devastating for Christianity.
Saint Irenaeus understood that the teaching had to be rooted out of the church in the same way that a surgeon would remove a cancerous growth since the early fathers of the church referred to heresy as an illness and spoke of the therapy that was required for it’s cure, language which is still appropriate for today and takes us away from the sort of images that people get when they hear the word heretic or heresy, how the fathers of the church tried to resolve these situations.
To return to what he finally did, of course he addressed the specific issues that the Gnostics raised, the fact that they had a cosmology and understanding of the universe which was not only completely foreign to Christianity but completely antithetical to Christianity, that they spoke of matter as being evil or at least less than good, that they could not conceive, the Gnostics couldn’t, of a personal God who had personally created since Creation for them represented a kind of reduction or a lower level of original reality.
Saint Irenaeus knew that he couldn’t leave this, that he had to address it and that in the very early days of the church there had to be some discussion about well what the apostolic tradition was, and he has a work which is entitled on the apostolic, Teaching the Apostolic Tradition.
Eventually what it came down to is a fascinating summary of all of his apologetical work, and here it is. Our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist and the Eucharist confirms our opinion. Now when we hear that we smile because we say, “Well, what do you mean our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist?” Well, of course Saint Irenaeus was and is a bishop. It means he is a Eucharistic celibate, the primary Eucharistic celibate in his local church. He had been consecrated a bishop in the context of the Eucharist. There is no other context in which a bishop may be consecrated in the Orthodox church, only in the Eucharist.
He understood that the apostolic succession for him was a succession in the apostolic teaching, in the Holy Spirit and in the Eucharist and the Gnostics could make no such claim. When he said this he had all of this in mind that Eucharist apostolic teaching and the presence of the Holy Spirit are all one. Where the Holy Spirit is, there is the Catholic Church, beautifully and simply put.
We certainly then say, alongside Saint Irenaeus although he probably says it better than most of us, might individually that the Eucharist is a source of theology, but not simply on the intellectual level. It is a living source, a living source.
by Protopresbyter Maxym Lysack
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This evening as we begin our talks together I wanted to talk to you about the Orthodox faith, and I wanted just to present an introduction to it. Right at the very start I wanted to say that Orthodox theology does not begin with proofs for the existence of God.
I wanted to say that because you can pick up many Christian manuals of theology, theological texts and in some of them, not in all of them, but in some of them you’re going to find a series of proofs for the existence of God. Sometimes in other texts what you’re going to find first off would be proofs for the credibility of Holy Scripture. It could be one or the other.
An Orthodox text and theology would not start that way. We would not start with proofs for the existence of God. There’s a very simple reason for that, and I’ll take an example from everyday life. That is that a son or daughter is not a sign of discourse with proof for existence or trying to prove the existence of his or her parents.
By that I mean that we are going into a world which was created by God. God is eternal. He precedes us. If we really believe there is a God, really, really and it isn’t just an intellectual discussion then we believe He is eternal. Trying to offer proof for His existence to other people at the beginning for theological discussion beginning it sounds actually very odd. It is a very odd place to start. God precedes us.
We’re to put it in a very simple language. He is our father and we are His children. We wouldn’t exist without Him. We don’t speculate on the existence of our parents. Without them we wouldn’t exist to speculate. This is how the Orthodox mind sees reality and sees and understands theology.
What could we say theology is then? Well, in terms of its roots we can see it is the word theologos, about God, Theos, but not simply the intellectual word. It isn’t simply intellectual discourage about God. Really, Orthodox theology starts with the statement of what is.
It almost sounds scientific, and in a way it is because theology is also a science and historically it was united to all of the other sciences. It was even called, for a period of time, the queen of the sciences, the lead area of science. It shouldn’t surprise us that Orthodox theological discussion would start in this way. It is a statement of what already is, because we have fallen heirs. We have become heirs. We have fallen heir to God’s creation.
Theology is a statement of what is. It is the word about God, but it is also a loving response and thanksgiving to God. The assumption here is that we received our own lives, our world and other people as a gift. They are God’s gifts to us. We also represent a gift of love to the world. We have the world as a gift. The world, in a sense, is a very, very great workshop or studio as an artist would conceive of it. God wants us to do something with it, and of course he is calling us to offer it back to him.
This is the priestly vocation that every human person has. Here we see the beauty has an awful lot to do with theology. We take of what God gives us. Of course we’re already surrounded by tremendous beauty in other people and in the created order, but we take it and we reshape it and hopefully, according to our Christian vocation, offer it back to God and create beauty. God loves beauty and our love for beauty, which is innate, comes from him.
These are just some introductory remarks to talk about how an Orthodox Christian would position himself or herself with regard to talking about the word about God, talking about theology.
If we were to take some adjectives and use them to describe Orthodox theology we could simply start with the word doxological. Doxological, this word means giving glory. In fact, theology is a hymn of glorification to God. That’s real theology. Of course, I realize, as you’re listening to this you’re probably thinking about things that pose as theology, and though it seem as having anything to do with being hymns of glorification to God, but pure theology would be exactly this.
Here’s an example. The creed that we have, the Creed of Nicea and Constantinople is first and foremost a hymn. It was sung in church historically. That was the rubric. Of course these days often to make it easier for everybody to participate we say it, but originally it was sung. It was chanted. It was always understood as a hymn.
It was not understood simply as a catalogue or a list of theological propositions starting first with God the Father, then God the Son and then God the Holy Spirit, although you can clearly see that kind of interpretive structure in the creed, but instead it is a hymn of glorification to God.
When we trade the creed, it is healing for us as well, but it is healing for us because we worship God, and this is one of the reasons why we pray the Creed as part of our prayers when we do morning and evening prayers. It’s a hymn of glorification to God. It’s not simply to remind ourselves of what we in the church happen to believe, but it is a hymn. We are glorifying him through theology. It’s the word about him.
We could also apply the word charismatic, which I know is a loaded word in North America now, but there’s no better way to use. I suppose one could say pneumatological and sound a little bit more theological about it, a bit more academic, but charismatic in the sense that the theology itself can only be done in and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, theology that is inspired by the Holy Spirit is always a hymn and is always glorification since the Holy Spirit is always relating to the father and the son in the Trinity and precisely that kind of relationship, a relationship of love and communion.
But theology can very definitely be considered to be a charismatic activity. That’s important for us to understand the fact that every Orthodox liturgical office begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit or Heavenly King indicates that liturgy is a charismatic activity by definition.
As you can see here in the Orthodox mind there is no internal contradiction between structure and charismatic life because some people hear the word charismatic and they instantly conceive of something which is completely inaccurate, which has absolutely no structure, which could have nothing to do with liturgy at all which could be highly institutional, structural and so forth.
This is not the way the early church understood things, and we see right back to First Corinthians that St. Paul does not crush the charismata, the charismatic gifts, but he gifts them a liturgical shape. The word in Greek is typikon and he gives the Corinthian church an order of worship. In a sense, laying out for them the principles of early Christian liturgy when telling them how to manage the gifts of the Holy Spirit in public, therefore liturgical worship.
The charismatic institution, although in popular literature people like to play them off against each other and to talk about the charismatic part of the church in the institutional part of the church, are in fact two sides of one reality. This is why we conceive the church as being intrinsically charismatic, and we can certainly see theology as being intrinsically charismatic as well.
The Holy Spirit is at work and it is through the Holy Spirit we know from the New Testament that we can confess Jesus as Lord and confessing Jesus as Lord represents the essence of true Christian theology and yet, we are told that this is only done in the power of the Holy Spirit, which shows us that repeating the words is not worship or prayer at all unless it is done in the Holy Spirit, which is to say through the Holy Spirit praying Himself in us.
I’d like to comment briefly on sources of Orthodox teaching. We would start, of course, first with Holy Scripture. Just a few words about that, because of course it seems rather obvious and someone might say, well on to the next point now, but I want to say a couple of things about it first.
First of all, with regard to the authors of Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments, the prophets of the Old Testament, the apostles and evangelists of the New Testament, they are all considered by the church as theologians. All of them are considered theologians. Of course, saying John considered the lead theologian among them in the New Testament is given a title, St. John the Apostle and Theologian.
But they are theologians because they are people who don’t simply know about God, but know God. No preposition in between the verb and the object. They know God. These are people that the fathers of the church refer to as God seers, people who have seen God. To see, of course, in scripture means a lot. It doesn’t just mean that you register a visual limit. You take out a camera and take a picture. God, I don’t think, is exactly photographed in that way.
But to see is to be in communion with. They are God seers and this makes them competent to preach the Gospel. They weren’t simply men who, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, had everything else except their right hands, all their other faculties suspended, and had just enough power available to pen the words of Holy Scripture, just enough intellectual ability so that they could write. This is absolutely not the case.
In fact, we receive in Holy Scripture, the word of God, of course, through these holy men, the authors of Holy Scripture, but we also receive that this is profoundly beautiful, the Word of God as received and experienced by them. In other words, when you read the Gospel of St. John you are of course receiving God’s word and of course it is inspired. These are things, in the Orthodox church by the way, we don’t even lose any time on. I realize that they may be debated elsewhere, but for us it is simply so clear it doesn’t require, although we could offer an apologetic it doesn’t really require one if you understand the tradition properly.
In addition to the fact that everything there is inspired, the people who are writing were not passive observers. In the book of Revelation we see very clearly St. John is a participant. He is not watching the book of Revelation on a large screen TV and sharing it with us, his experience of the video. He is involved. The people are speaking to him. He is answering. He’s grieving. He’s a 100% a part of what is going on.
We are receiving the word of God, but we are also receiving with it St. John’s own experience of it, which means that for him to be the theologian that he has to have himself seeing God, knowing God, experienced God and this gives us what we call in the tradition, empirical theology. Theology which is not simply reduced to the subjective level, that’s not what we mean by empirical or experiential, but theology that is spoken by people who, themselves, have been changed by everything they’re saying, which makes them competent to talk about it.
It gives us a little more understanding into how all of the apostles were so persuasive. Where they all dynamite speakers? Were they all impressive personally? Did they all blow the crowds away with their education, were they erudite cosmopolitan? Well erudite and cosmopolitan would not be the two words that one would normally apply to Galilee and fishermen, at least not the first two. Maybe to St. Paul, absolutely, but to St. Peter, cosmopolitan, erudite? I don’t think so.
What is it about all of them without exception, because they all have a massive impact on the world, that made them so convincing? Empirical theology. People understood that everything they were saying had essentially changed them. If these men said we have seen Christ resurrected you didn’t doubt it when you looked in their faces. You knew they were experiencing the resurrection and it made them irresistible in their preaching, whether they were fluent or not fluent, impressive or not impressive on the secular level.
Secondly, the ecumenical councils, the ecumenical sit ins as we often call them, a 20th Century Orthodox theologian whom we love very much, Father George Florovsky, wonderful theologian, refers to them as charismatic events ecumenical councils. People who read the minutes of the councils are sometimes less convinced because the minutes show everything that was going on, and it wasn’t always pretty. There were disagreements, sharp disagreements, people who were declared heretics, so on and so forth.
Looking at the thing as a whole, it is a charismatic event. It’s an event of the Holy Spirit. What makes an ecumenical council ecumenical, in other words, received by the entire Christian world, that’s what it means by the way, it has nothing to do with dialogue between different confessions, obviously because you have ecumenical councils during the time of the undivided church so who were they supposed to be dialoging with? With the Aryans, the heretics? I don’t think so. Ecumenical refers to the whole ecumenic, which is the whole Christian universe, if you like, all of the Christian civilization.
The councils became ecumenical, in other words, received by all put simply, not because they had to have a requisite number of bishops in total or a requisite number from both the east and the west. The second ecumenical council had hardly anybody from the west. It was still received there as ecumenical. The authority of an ecumenical council comes from the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, it is perceived as this charismatic event which the church experiences as irresistible. It simply recognizes the stem of the Holy Spirit in the event, and you might ask the question well how would they be able to do that? Because these are people who already had scripture as a reference and couldn’t understand the work of the Holy Spirit in scripture. Therefore, they used something about a charismatic event. They could recognize the voice of the council and see whether it was the voice of the Holy Spirit or not.
There were some councils with hundreds of bishops that were rejected, the well-known "Robber Council" between the third and fourth ecumenical sit ins had a huge number of bishops. It was rejected by the church. The bishops went in to heresy, the majority of them.
You can see that if we put the authority in the structure we have a problem. Many, many times in church history the authority is the Holy Spirit in the ecumenical council. The ecumenical councils or sit ins restate in more precise language apply to specific situations what scripture has already said. The big commotion at the First Ecumenical Council, and watch this, caused a huge reaction was that they used one word, Ousia, which was not a scriptural word, but a word which already existed in Greek, and they used that word, homoousion.
This shows us that the fathers were wanting to be strictly scriptural in their approach to the councils, but first and foremost these are received as charismatic events.
Thirdly, liturgical life, all of it, not simply the divine liturgy and Eucharist but all of the liturgical life is a source of theology, but it is also a recapitulation of Holy Scripture and a recapitulation of the ecumenical sit ins so you can hear at an Orthodox vespers what are the proclamations of an ecumenical council sung as a hymn of vespers.
Some people who come from outside of the Orthodox tradition find it very curious. They’ll say, “What are you doing singing the proclamation of an ecumenical council?” Well, for us it’s a charismatic event, it’s doxological and vespers is a great place for it. It’s exactly where you’d want to pray. If you couldn't pray it wouldn't be an ecumenical council would it? That’s the Orthodox thinking.
The Liturgy shows, the liturgical life shows the intuition of the church. One of my professors of dogmatic theology at seminary told us, “Don’t worry, now I’m making you study. We’re doing all these courses in dogmatic theology, you’re going to forget some of it.” He says, “I know you’re going to forget some of it.” The exams are over and you forget. He says, “If you forget go back to the liturgy and see what is prayed there and you’ll know the theology.”
That’s exactly Orthodox liturgical life. There is no disparity, no difference between what is stated dogmatically and what is created liturgically. In fact, somebody could get our entire dogmatic theology without opening a book outside of Holy Scripture of course by simply attending the services. Especially vespers and matins, listening and writing things down. The whole theology of the church about everything. The whole theology is there, not simply about the church, but the whole theology that the church teaches.
Now, I’m careful just to say one thing here. I have no doubt you’ll pose a question about it later. When I say liturgical life I realize that certain people have written some very recent compositions, particularly recently composed akathist hymns and different services like this, most of which find themselves within the place of the great tradition, but there is always a possibility when something has been written privately and simply printed up and distributed that it might not follow in every detail or might not exhibit the liturgical mindset of the whole church, and I’m aware of that because different people have come to show me different things, nice compositions, but given that the authors sometimes do not have the same spiritual quality and maturity of the people who wrote the hymnography, classical hymography of the church, it’s not surprising that one might find a few disparages there.
Fourthly, the fathers of the church, people say, “What? Every father, what every mother had to say about everything? Every single opinion?” No, what we call consensus patro. The agreement, the consensus of the fathers. What is based on scripture and of course reiterated at ecumenical councils and what we find in common between them, not every saint is a father by the way. Every father is a saint, but not every saint is a father of the church. Even among the fathers we understand that it is a consensus, the agreement between them on the core teaching of the church that we see as being so important and authoritative in the tradition.
We speak of them as being deified fathers, not in any new age sense, but in the sense of people again who, like the apostles and the prophets have seen God, true, real theologians not academics posing as theologians, but true, real theologians.
We understand the statement of St. Paul, “Though you may have many teachers, you do not have many fathers.” He says, “I have given birth to you through the preaching of the Gospel.” Of course he’s talking about the special relationship that he has with them, but he is also expressing a general principle, and that is that there are indeed many teachers but not many theologians, and not many father and the ones that we have had and do have give them a living voice, a living witness of the Holy Spirit in the church.
Finally, for tonight, not finally, but finally for tonight, the Eucharist to divine liturgy, the Eucharistic celebration is a wonderful source of theology, Orthodox theology. How so, someone would say? Well, of course because it recapitulates so much of Holy Scripture. The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom has between 200 and 300 references or illusions to the Old and New Testament and one liturgy. I still, and here I’m not talking about the readings, the lection, the epistle and the Gospel, simply talking about the liturgy itself which is so profoundly embedded in Holy Scripture. It is also 100% connected with the teaching of the councils, the essential Christological teaching of the councils, all of that is recapitulated in the liturgy as well.
Of course, in addition to that, we have the Eucharists as being really the sonnet and the highest expression of all of the liturgical life of the church. The liturgical aspect or liturgical source is here as well.
Certain fathers compiled the liturgy and the teaching of the fathers of the consensus patro can certainly be found there, so much so that went Saint Irenaeus of Lyon went to combat in the early church the Gnostics, the Gnostics posed a terrible problem under the Christianity because they represented a heresy, but they represented a heresy which was present in the church some of the time. Some Gnostics were outside of the church, but some were in the church, and were using Christian theological discourse, were referring to Scripture and confusing many people because they were doing this, using the same terminology but with a different meaning, put it in simple language. They had a teaching which was devastating for Christianity.
Saint Irenaeus understood that the teaching had to be rooted out of the church in the same way that a surgeon would remove a cancerous growth since the early fathers of the church referred to heresy as an illness and spoke of the therapy that was required for it’s cure, language which is still appropriate for today and takes us away from the sort of images that people get when they hear the word heretic or heresy, how the fathers of the church tried to resolve these situations.
To return to what he finally did, of course he addressed the specific issues that the Gnostics raised, the fact that they had a cosmology and understanding of the universe which was not only completely foreign to Christianity but completely antithetical to Christianity, that they spoke of matter as being evil or at least less than good, that they could not conceive, the Gnostics couldn’t, of a personal God who had personally created since Creation for them represented a kind of reduction or a lower level of original reality.
Saint Irenaeus knew that he couldn’t leave this, that he had to address it and that in the very early days of the church there had to be some discussion about well what the apostolic tradition was, and he has a work which is entitled on the apostolic, Teaching the Apostolic Tradition.
Eventually what it came down to is a fascinating summary of all of his apologetical work, and here it is. Our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist and the Eucharist confirms our opinion. Now when we hear that we smile because we say, “Well, what do you mean our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist?” Well, of course Saint Irenaeus was and is a bishop. It means he is a Eucharistic celibate, the primary Eucharistic celibate in his local church. He had been consecrated a bishop in the context of the Eucharist. There is no other context in which a bishop may be consecrated in the Orthodox church, only in the Eucharist.
He understood that the apostolic succession for him was a succession in the apostolic teaching, in the Holy Spirit and in the Eucharist and the Gnostics could make no such claim. When he said this he had all of this in mind that Eucharist apostolic teaching and the presence of the Holy Spirit are all one. Where the Holy Spirit is, there is the Catholic Church, beautifully and simply put.
We certainly then say, alongside Saint Irenaeus although he probably says it better than most of us, might individually that the Eucharist is a source of theology, but not simply on the intellectual level. It is a living source, a living source.
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Transcribed from "Introduction to the Orthodox Faith - Lecture 1" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSe4UrhBkIA)
Transcribed from "Introduction to the Orthodox Faith - Lecture 1" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSe4UrhBkIA)
