The Strange Allure of Eastern Orthodoxy

I have become aware of a growing fashion among evangelicals to consider joining one of the various Eastern Orthodox churches, chief of which are the Greek, Russian and Coptic branches. Orthodoxy (capital ‘O’) is not, in my opinion, orthodox (small ‘o’) in its doctrines and practice. If one takes the scriptures as sole repository of revealed, divine truth, then Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are really cut from the same cloth. Indeed, their official split back in 1054 was primarily concerned with the role of the Pope and the style of communion bread rather than a major doctrinal disagreement (the issue regarding the Holy Spirit seems relatively minor). The old errors of Rome with which we northern Europeans are more familiar are present also in Orthodoxy, but because it is officially different to Catholicism, evangelicals can seemingly join it with easier conscience.

I have no doubt that much of modern, evangelical Christianity, especially of the charismatic kind, is brash and shallow. Cheesy cliches, worship resembling pop concerts, superstar leaders with oodles of charisma and bank balances to match: all of this persuades some to seek something deeper, more meaningful, something with greater heritage. To this, Orthodoxy steps forward, offering disillusioned evangelicals the answers they thought they were looking for:

We are the one true Church!

Our worship is reverential and traditional!

We know the Bible best because it’s in our own language!

Yet beneath the veneer, the traditional piety, and the smiling, bearded priests, lies the old woman of Babylon, the ancient deceptress of man-made religion. Rome and Constantinople are sisters, for they come from the same ancient line. Reverend Father Thomas Fitzgerald, writing for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, explains and justifies Orthodoxy’s various positions, which I here quote:

The Holy Scriptures are highly regarded by the Orthodox Church.

I have heard Muslims and atheists speak of their high regard for our Bible, too. Yet he then goes on:

While the Bible is treasured as a valuable written record of God's revelation, it does not contain wholly that revelation. The Bible is viewed as only one expression of God's revelation in the ongoing life of His people. Scripture is part of the treasure of Faith which is known as Tradition. Tradition means that which is "handed on" from one generation to another. In addition to the witness of Faith in the Scripture, the Orthodox Christian Faith is celebrated in the Eucharist; taught by the Fathers; glorified by the Saints; expressed in prayers, hymns, and icons; defended by the seven Ecumenical Councils; embodied in the Nicene Creed; manifested in social concern; and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is lived in every local Orthodox parish. The life of the Holy Trinity is manifested in every aspect of the Church's life. Finally, the Church, as a whole, is the guardian of the authentic Christian Faith which bears witness to that Revelation.

In other words, the Bible alone is not enough. Ancient traditions, practices and anomalies can be justified and endorsed so long as they have been so for hundreds of years. It is the same error as Rome.

Secondly, it is deeply sacramentalist. God speaks not primarily through scripture, but through ceremonies, such as communion and baptism:

Not only do the Sacraments disclose and reveal God to us, but also they serve to make us receptive to God. All the Sacraments affect our personal relationship to God and to one another. The Holy Spirit works through the Sacraments...Through the three-fold immersion in the waters of Baptism in the Name of the Holy Trinity, one dies to the old ways of sin and is born to a new life in Christ.

Quite how this happens in the babies they baptise, one can but wonder. Notice that the waters themselves assume a significance here, rather than the symbolic value which the Bible teaches. Furthermore, Orthodoxy teaches a human priesthood and the need to confess to one of those priests:

Christ our Lord continues to heal those broken in spirit and restore the Father's love those who are lost. According to Orthodox teaching, the penitent confess to God and is forgiven by God. The priest is the sacramental witness who represents both Christ and His people.

Priests are mediators between man and God. Yet these were done away with by the Cross, for only Christ Jesus is the Great High Priest we need. Confessing to a man in order to receive God’s forgiveness is a parody of the real gospel. Furthermore, Orthodoxy teaches purgatory, that most obnoxious and unbiblical of doctrines:

Purgatory is a place where souls go if they die without being fully sanctified or deified in this life. According to the Eastern Orthodox Church, souls are not fully purified in this life, and undergo temporary punishment in order to make up for their sins. While the Orthodox church believes that the souls do not go to purgatory after death, Catholics do. Both churches recognize that purgatory is a place where the souls of the departed are punished until they can reach heaven.

-Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church

If not after death, then when? Ok, so let’s turn to a primary source:

And the souls of those involved in mortal sins, who have not departed in despair but while still living in the body, though without bringing forth any fruits of repentance, have repented—by pouring forth tears, by kneeling while watching in prayers, by afflicting themselves, by relieving the poor, and finally by showing forth by their works their love towards God and their neighbour, and which the Catholic Church has from the beginning rightly called satisfaction. [Their souls] depart into Hades, and there endure the punishment due to the sins they have committed. But they are aware of their future release from there, and are delivered by the Supreme Goodness, through the prayers of the priests, and the good works which the relatives of each do for their departed. -Synod of Jerusalem (1672)

Any ‘evangelical’ who can suddenly subscribe to this needs a long, hard think. Christ bore the punishment of our sins upon the Cross, and proclaimed “It is finished!”. Orthodoxy’s priests may dress a little differently from their Roman cousins, and their churches might be filled with two-dimensional icons rather than statues, but the end result is the same: an unbiblical, man-made, counterfeit gospel proclaimed my a corrupted, debased organisation.

Those in shallow, worldly Protestant churches who tire of compromise and encroaching modernity should not look to Istanbul, Athens, Moscow or Cairo for the solution, but Biblical and solid Reformation Christianity. And no, our faith did not begin at the Reformation, but it was there rediscovered, for it was a going back to the orginal texts, while rejecting the manufactured lies traditions of men.

But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain. Galatians 4:9-11

Image by Michelle Raponi from Pixabay

Post script: I have just attended a men's breakfast at which one of the speakers was a man who was raised Orthodox. In his own words, he was "saved from all those idols".