Agree with Thine Adversary Quickly

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

A Metaphor for Evangelicalism

JESUS said unto his disciples, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. - St. Matthew 5:20-26 

Packer's Passing

Two days ago, we received the news that James Innell Packer (22 July 1926 - 17 July 2020), Evangelical theologian and Anglican priest, passed away in the Lord at the age of 93. 

Packer was my first exposure to Anglicanism, outside of C.S. Lewis. Strangely enough, the book “A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life” was given to me as an antidote to Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” by a Reformation-minded Chinese pastor, who was afraid of my “philosophical leaning” and wanted to insure that I stayed in a more Calvinistic stream of thought. 

Continuing to read Packer’s “Knowing God” and “Life in the Spirit”, I was very impressed with his love for God and his ability to explain a simple Gospel, but less satisfied with his Evangelical Calvinist paradigm’s inability to grapple with questions of history, human suffering and free will, questions that Lewis so wonderfully resolved with his expansive Anglocatholic Patristic approach. The more I studied Puritanism, holding high the same holiness and love that Packer exuded, the more sure I was that its theology was deeply flawed and harmful. Packer converted me away from the Reformation and was a bridge back to the Orthodoxy and Catholicity of the Ancient Fathers. 

I deeply respect Packer as a sincere and pious believer, and see in him a picture of the integrity that all Churchmen should aspire to, even though I now regret that many points of his theological approach have enabled Evangelicalism to undercut historical orthodoxy. May Christ have mercy on J.I. Packer’s soul, may he rest in the light of Christ’s face, and rise in glory on the Last Day. We may all say, "Memory Eternal!"

Packer, preaching

What is Evangelicalism?

The Encyclopedia Britanica says, "Anglican Evangelical, one who emphasizes biblical faith, personal conversion, piety, and, in general, the Protestant rather than the Catholic heritage of the Anglican Communion. Such persons have also been referred to as low churchmen because they give a “low” place to the importance of the episcopal form of church government, the sacraments, and liturgical worship. The term Low Church was used by about the end of the 17th century, although this emphasis within Anglicanism was evident since the time of King Edward VI (1537–53). The movement that became known as the Evangelical movement began within the Church of England in 1738, through the convergence of various theological streams contributing to its foundation, including Pietism, Puritanism, Presbyterianism and the Moravian Church (in particular its bishop Nicolaus Zinzendorf and his community at Herrnhut) and in the Welsh and American Revivals and the personal conversion of John and Charles Wesley in 1738." Wikipedia goes on, "Preeminently, John Wesley and other early Methodists were at the root of sparking this new movement during the First Great Awakening.” According to religion scholar Randall Balmer in the “Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism” - Evangelicalism resulted "from the confluence of Pietism, Presbyterianism, and the vestiges of Puritanism. Evangelicalism picked up the peculiar characteristics from each strain – warmhearted spirituality from the Pietists (for instance), doctrinal precisionism from the Presbyterians, and individualistic introspection from the Puritans”. Puritanism combined Calvinism with a doctrine that personal conversion was a prerequisite for church membership and with an emphasis on the study of Scripture by lay people. It took root in the colonies of New England, where the Congregational church became an established religion, in the ministry of Jonathan Edwards, a Congregationalist minister, who also greatly contributed to the process of converting many to the Evangelical cause by his publication of "A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton” in 1737, where his emphasis on justification by faith alone and instant assurance of salvation became the rallying cry for a sincere Christian conversion. This approach still defines the distinctive of the Modern Evangelicalism of Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, Peter Marshall, Billy Graham, Bob Jones, Oral Roberts, Bill Bright, Luis Palau, Stephen Tong, Rick Warren, Jerry Falwell, and Ray Comfort. It would come as a shock to many Evangelicals that they are a part of what was initially conceived as an Anglican Movement. 

Evangelical Anglicans, like Packer and Stott, can attach some kind of appreciation for a historical church with a liturgical use, if, first, they understand that their spirituality is grounded in the reality of their individual conversion, and modify their understanding of the Articles and Formularies to fit this paradigm. This is allowable, as long as they don’t believe in “One True Church” or think that the Sacraments save. Thus, you CAN be an Evangelical Anglican, but there is no reason that you have to be Anglican, other than preferred style or pension plan. Apostolic Christianity becomes a style, and not an icon of the truth. This Evangelical ideology can be applied similarly, to greater and lesser effect, to all various denominations. There are even Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox who undertake this project. It does the same thing in each case. It narrows the definition of Sacrament to experiencing God personally, narrows the definition of “Church” to yourself and Jesus, and narrows the possible historical meanings of the Bible to a simple book of divine instructions. This annihilation of Scripture, Sacrament, Tradition and Church thus prepares one for the collapse of meaning that comes when Critical Theory disproves all of these assumptions, and readies the soul to plunge into the eternal darkness of the Postmodern realization. Evangelicalism is the gateway drug to Post-Christianity and godless secularism, exactly what we see in cultures that have embraced Evangelical individualism over the Mind of the Church as expressed in the Councils of the Church, enlivened by the presence and direction of the Holy Spirit. 

My Experience 

My childhood experience was defined by Evangelicalism, and I deeply appreciate the love, hope, good character and love for the Lord that I met amongst sincere, bible-believing individuals. My father was a life-time Baptist minister and my grandfather was a Baptist deacon, combining to create almost a century of service in Baptist, Non-Denominational and Evangelical churches. Both my father and grandfather were great examples of God’s love and faithfulness through the trials of pastoral ministry, and I see them as models for what I aspire to in my life. The strong emphasis on personal conversion, on a singular faith that orients itself towards God as a human relationship, and the confidence in God’s ability to save mankind will always stick with me as an inheritance of my paternal piety. JI Packer said in his 1958 article, “Fundamentalism: The British Scene”: “The constitutive principle of evangelicalism is the conviction that obedience to Christ means submission to the written Word, as that whereby Christ rules his Church; whence arises the evangelical determination to believe all that Scripture asserts, as being truth revealed by God, and to bring the whole life of the Church into conformity with it.” I agreed with this statement until my studies in the Early Church proved this to be wrong. Evangelicals attempt to make the Church a product of Scripture, but what I found in biblical history was that the Bible was a product of the Church. Through these reading and cross-cultural experience, I gradually began to question Evangelical paradigms. In this, I discovered that the historic Church believed something entirely different about Scripture, and this plunged me into an existential crisis while on the mission field. 

Contrary to what Evangelicals believe, I discovered that the original view Biblical authority is different from “Sola Scriptura”, because they always used an interpretive grid based on the earliest Fathers as the hermeneutical context through which meaning in Scripture is found. This is also not quite “Prima Scriptura” because it starts in the Faith of the Church, as confessed in the Creeds, and then interprets Scripture through a Christological paradigm that is centered on the Four Gospels, then through the New Testament, the Old Testament (with the Apocrypha), the Apostolic Fathers, the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the Ecumenical Councils the various local traditions of the catholic churches. We should not use the Reforming principle of Scripture Alone, or the idea that Scripture somehow interprets itself, because we do not see this in the Early Church or as a possibility with the miniotic epistemology that arises from postmodern deconstruction and Critical Theory (which shows how readers bring meaning to the text through inherited lexical categories that rest within the culture and not within the texts themselves). This makes sense with the process of the Scripture’s reception, canonization and transmission/preservation to us, where the work of the Church is constantly visible. The view that removes Scripture from this process is incredibly attractive, but historically untenable, and now, with alternative texts available, also a disprovable view. We see that the Scriptures never came to us in a separate, “pure” and “preserved” context that removes the agency of the Church or the constant interplay of cultural meaning. Scripture came to us in a process of transmission that did not hold the texts static or without local variants and dialectical/expressional differences. All of the textual streams - Hebrew, Septuagint, Peshitta, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Ethiopian, Latin and Slavic show this principle at work. If the Church interacted with Scripture, stabilizing its contents through doctrinal commitments, as we can see happening within all the various families of texts, then the Scriptures are not “above” the Church, but is at the “heart” of the Church, in a rich, symbiotic relationship. This vision is the only way that we can resolve the absolute catastrophic mental dissonance created by subjecting a love of Scripture and the “Sola Scriptura” view (that desires to hold Scripture above the Church instinctively) to the study of historical biblical texts, variants, families of Scriptures preserved by different local churches, and the advent of the provable methods of Textual Criticism. And, with this view of the preservation of Scripture within a divinely appointed and Spirit-filled culture of the Church, it makes sense of our ecclesiological choices - because, is within this continuous culture of Covenant Communities (righteous, patriarchal families that keep the priesthood and the sacrifices to God) that the Scriptures must continue to be preserved and propagated. 

After this discovery, when I converted to Orthodox Christianity, the response was strong and negative from my Evangelical friends. Charismatics are equally anti-intellectual, but they don’t care when you leave their definition of orthodoxy, because they believe God is bigger than definitions and that spiritual life is a process of discovery. The Mainline Episcopal, Presbyterians, Methodists and other more intellectual denominations don’t care that you left their fold, and are highly “interested” in whatever you’ve discovered. They have already rejected a classical view of Orthodoxy, so becoming Orthodox/Catholic/Anglocatholic is quaint and often shows your lack of personal development and a juvenile need for “boundaries.” The only two groups that actively fight against your return to ancient Christianity are the Baptist/Evangelicals and the Calvinist Baptist/Hyper-Reformed. These are two really different perspectives. One believes that theological paradigms are almost superfluous or sinful, essentially leading to division and detracting from simple, self-evident, biblical faith, which they believe is found in personal reading of Scripture. The other believes that Calvinist scholasticism IS revealed truth and is incontrovertible. This last groups, in their “cage stage”, is motivated similarly to Internet Orthodox “konverts” - they both believe that they already understand all truth, and mistake this gnostic paradigms for a sacramental relationship with Christ in His Church and the resultant personal holiness. Of the last two, I would like much more to reason with the Evangelical out of Scripture and show how my faith is attempting to be in continuity with it, through history, rather than fight with Calvinists, who have already rejected Scripture by declaring large swaths of it unimportant because it does not complement their scholastic approach. To convince an Evangelical of Apostolic Truth, you have to show them a sincere love for Christ and other Christians, and a good knowledge of Scripture. To break Calvinism down, you have to start with first principles, like I did in last week’s sermon, and show how their categories are built in miss-translated and misunderstood biblical terms. They will hardly ever grant you enough authority or a long enough audience to do this. This is why, even as one who has left behind Evangelical paradigms, I still appreciate it as a sincere position. 

Contra Sola

“Sola Scriptura” is the term Evangelicals like to associate with their rejection of all other contexts and intertexts. But, it is actually rooted in the theological experience of the Radical Reformation, and isn’t based on Luther. That is a post 20th century theological melt-down appropriation and an appeal to Protestant authority. It initially rejected the Reformers as well as the Catholic Fathers. The Fathers of the Reformation were, indeed, more “catholic” in their approach than contemporary Evangelicalism ever was. Then, if Reformers were more “orthodox” than Evangelicals, why do we not accept them as sufficient? Luther was mistaken in his view of Scripture, misapplied Erasmus’ critical method to reject all of the Fathers he didn’t like (and mistakenly deemed all the Ante-Nicene Fathers except Tertullian to be forgeries), and was wrong in his understanding of ecclesiology because he had rejected those same Fathers. Calvin’s paradigm completely latinized the meanings of Greek words in order to show continuity with St. Augustine, without realizing the intermediary problem of St. Jerome’s mistranslation of the Vulgate, and ended up in an unrecognizable place to Early Christianity. The other Reformers are less important, but they shared the same problem of trusting themselves too much, misunderstanding the purpose of Scripture, and breaking down the conciliar model of synodal knowledge within the Church for more personalistic paradigms. 

The Evangelical approach to the Bible is at odds with how the historical Church has approached those same texts, but they didn’t know this, because, like all those who reject Apostolic counsel and authority, they assumed that their personal views of Scripture were normative. This is the central problem of Evangelicalism and modernity in general - a too strong confidence in the abilities of self to discern truth and interact with God as an individual. This reflects their lack of appreciation for synodal process, which is another reason why they do not understand the necessity of Creeds. Their presuppositions set them up for the fall. We forget the hard-won philosophical truths of an earlier age, which insist that Scripture is meant to be an internal guide to beliefs and attitudes, a document that is as intricately psychological as it is mythological. Scripture is meant to create internal struggle. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Within these stories are so many layers of meaning and truth, that, literally, it takes generations to unpack. They reveal what is really inside of us, because we externalize our internal interpretive paradigms onto them. They are not merely constructed as simple, forthright, clear stories that hold material, scientific knowledge. They are deep stories that formed over many generations of holy prophets and priests, telling and re-telling, shaped and formed by the Holy Spirit to mean things that are still astonishing today. They are profound and powerful stories, narratives, that control the hearts and minds of mankind when they hear them with open hearts and minds, in a community, unfolding inner potential to be in communion with God, the Creator of the universe, and not dry, sterile, materially-oriented texts. 

Because historical Evangelicalism was based on a patently false view of Scripture, one that fell apart under scrutiny, but, because it was culturally powerful and held centers of scholarship in the US, it remade itself as a denomination with scholarship essentially stealing the paradigm of authority of Scripture, Creeds, Councils and Historic Fathers, without tying it back to church continuity or historical process. Grudem, Stott, Packer, Gonzales, and many other theologians, all labored to make this possible, and it became a huge project within Low Church Anglicanism, which struggles to redefine Anglicanism from its catholic base to a Reformed mentality. In this, they enabled those who wanted to continue in Evangelical amnesia to have respectability, while never correcting their essential heresies or dealing with the problem of schism and the charismatic deficiencies of a non-Apostolic ecclesiology. To insulate themselves from these problems, Evangelicalism has not turned to a robust philosophical and theological conversation, but has relied upon shunning and sheltering to try to preserve itself. In the broad Evangelical context, confessionalism is seen as unnecessary and divisive, just as creedal faith is seen as outdated and potentially idolatrous. This is because they believe Scripture to be a document written by God as a simple, personally applicable instruction book, which manifests God in a real way, and which undercuts all institutions and theological systems. While we see why this is not a tenable approach, this is the central “mystery” of Evangelicalism. Baptism and Eucharist are unnecessary, but one cannot be saved without the Bible, and the Bible is only understood and applied personally, so the sacrament of Evangelicalism is “Quiet Time”, where the basic unit of the Church is “Me, My Bible, and God!” 

The Ancient view of Scripture is not a liberal view of Scripture. This is what the ancient Church believed. As St. Hilary of Poiters said, “Scriptura est non in legendo, sed in intelligendo.” (“Scripture is not in the reading, but in the understanding.”) I know it seems counter intuitive, but I have come to see that authority rests in the interpretation, the ability to ascribe meaning to words and phrases within different environments and cultures through analogy (which always must be a directed process, because of how easily this “meaning by association” process can go off the rails). We are not the original audiences for any of the Scriptures, our underlying lifestyles and modes of thought are different, and many of the original assumptions of the hearers of Scripture have been obscured by multiple moderating languages (English speakers hear through German responses to Latin texts, which were mistranslated by St. Jerome to fit Roman legal categories, instead of Greek philosophical ones), all of which bring in contexts that were foreign to the Scriptures themselves. Therefore, in order to have continuity of meaning, one must have continuity of culture, which then necessitates both a submission to institutional structure and an adherence to historical forms, without considering the “fashion of the day” (contemporary, receiving culture). In order to have an understanding of what Scripture means, its accompanying culture must be kept alive and its context must be brought down. The Apostolic Church attempts to be a hermeneutic for Scripture, hence all the fuss about how the authority of Scripture is wrapped up with the history and structure of the Church. 

Biblicism is impossible without the interpretive mechanism of the Church’s synodality and the definitions of the Creeds and Councils, which maintains the "Tradition of the Apostles." (I Corinthians 4:17, 11:12, Philippians 4:9, 4:19, I Thessalonians 2:4, II Thessalonians 2:15, 3:6, II Timothy 2:2) "Comparing Scripture with Scripture" relies on the same principle as comparing Scripture with the Creeds and the Ancient Fathers, as it provides a conciliar baseline upon which all comparative hermeneutics can be done with integrity, not accepting an individual position or interpretation as truth. As it says in 2 Peter 1:20, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation." We only ultimately know the meaning of Scripture by the Power of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26, 1 Corinthians 2:10, Ephesians 3:5), and the Holy Spirit was given to the Church in Communion (as it came upon the Apostles at Pentecost in Acts 2), as a group and not individually, imparted by baptism and the laying-on of hands. It is maintained within the process of faithfully passing down apostolicity generation to generation. The Holy Spirit and the correct interpretation of the Scriptures does not come from outside of this process of communal reading and digesting the Holy Scriptures, which can only properly occur within the context of Christian Worship. Therefore, our worship cannot be separated from our doctrine and how we glorify God directly reflects in how we believe. Truth is not manifest primarily through individual understanding, but the understanding of the Church as a Whole, the Apostolic Deposit of the "faith which once was delivered unto the saints." (Jude 3) It is this reflection of the whole which is called "kata holos" in Greek - "Catholic." As such the Apostolic Faith is "the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." (I Timothy 3:15)

Common Ground and Contrasts 

1. God 

Both Christian Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism believes that God is the Creator and Sustainer of the world. They would agree that the One God is expressed in Three Persons - The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. They would both orient life purpose toward fulfilling God’s will, following God’s commandments and having a relationship with God as mankind’s ultimate destiny. They would differ on how they understood this to take place, and would also see God interacting with the world in different ways. Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christian mysticism sees God “present everywhere and filling all things” through the Uncreated Energies of the Holy Trinity, which allows Christians to share in the eternal life of the Trinity’s shared life. Evangelical Protestantism would see truth mediated by the Bible, would have a greater sense of God’s impassibility and the inability of Christians to share in God’s life, and might have a stronger sense of fatalism due to the influences of the Reformers. 

2. Scripture 

Both the Orthodox and the Evangelical hold to a high view of Scripture, believing it to be “God Breathed” and that it is based upon a prophetic work that was initiated by and preserved through the work of the Holy Spirit. The interpretive method is different between the two paradigms, one being intertextual and dependent upon the synodality of the Apostolic Church in the Episcopacy, and the Evangelical view being far more egalitarian in approach, focusing on a simplistic view of textual meaning that is obvious to all sincere Christian believers. Therefore, there is no need to submit to a tradition of interpretation within Evangelicalism, which leads to multiple views that are all assumed to be more or less right, leading to a tolerance of pluralism and a lack of doctrinal authority. 

3. The Church 

Historic Christianity has a strong sense of the Church as the “Body of Christ” and sees it as a real, visible and necessary spiritual reality, a covenant community in which salvation is found through the Holy Spirit, where sacraments strengthen one’s walk of faith, and where Christ is palpably present. Evangelicalism, however, believes that official church membership is only a formality, usually associated with an obligation to tithe, and that it in no way affects one’s spiritual life and relationship with God. Evangelicalism has often developed “parachurch” ministries, which are companies run for non-profit or for-profit endeavors, which are believed to be, in many ways, just as valid as churches in the work of the ministry. Anglo-Orthodoxy would insist, however, that no ministry can take place outside of the Apostolic Church, that it is accomplished through the lives of Baptized Christians, and that it takes part in the sacramental realities of the Church. Historically, Christian Orthodoxy has put a much higher value on the lives of saints and martyrs for evangelism, and holds “products” (copyrighted intellectual property) and creative gimmicks to be unfruitful areas of preoccupation for Church's ministry. 

4. Eschatology 

Both the Historic Orthodox and Evangelical churches believe in the coming judgment of the world by Jesus Christ, His literal return to rule and reign upon the earth, and the necessity of submitting to Him to insure the blessedness of souls who are judged in the Eschaton. They would differ greatly upon how the ending takes place, the purpose behind Christ's judgement of the world, and the manner in which last things would be accomplished. In Orthodoxy, it is understood that Christ will return and rule and reign forever. In Evangelicalism there are many, complicated, disagreeing theories about how such things would take place - from amillennialism to dispensationalism and many gradients in between, mostly focused on what individual teachers have been able to discern from the Book of Revelation or the Book of Daniel. The lack of a coherent vision for the End of Days and the Return of Christ reflects the general lack of a cohesive and historically consistent hermeneutical method. 

5. Experience 

Anglo-Orthodoxy would side with the ascetical saints of history and hold to a belief that fasting, prayer, giving alms, silence, and “first works” of Christian discipleship (spiritual fatherhood and motherhood) are central to the sanctification of the individual believer, and manifests God’s work in the transformation of the world for good, signs, wonders, insights, spiritual counseling, evangelism and martyrdom. This process is guided by visions of light and holiness that permeate the individual and allow them to continue following God in faith and hope, changing them into icons of Christ and living representations of the life of the Church.  After death, many of these saints are kept incorrupt by the power of the Holy Spirit, and God can chose to do miracles through the relics of His Saints. Saints and martyrs can be asked for prayer in heaven, just as the saints of the Church Militant, not yet glorified, are asked for intercessory prayer. Evangelicalism, however, often focuses on quantifiable aspects of outward experience, such as number of congregants, excitement over new forms of music or preaching, and monetary success as evidences of God’s blessing. Ultimate spiritual success is often tied to the number of followers one has, and the impact that one’s approach makes on other Evangelical leaders. This, then, tends to negate the traditional forms of Christian piety seen in Church history, undercuts the Sacraments, detracts value from monasticism, times of retreat in the desert, the intercession of the saints, and the virtues of self-negation, and focuses on forms of “self-realization” more recognizable within the secular culture and focused only upon the living. The “communion of saints” ceases to contain both living and dead. Holy people who die in the Evangelical tradition are reckoned to beyond interaction with earthly things, and incapable of praying for the Church on earth. While both traditions believes in the effectual nature of prayer, believes in miracles, and sees music, art, and church services as able to channel the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit, they would disagree on the equations of internality and externality through which these things are accomplished. Orthodoxy believes that matter can be consecrated to God’s use, becoming holy, and mediating and channeling God’s energies for the benefit of mankind through the work of a visible Church, mediating truth to the world through a righted relationship between the physical world and the Creator God, through Christ’s work of Incarnation, which is manifested in the ministry of the Sacraments. Evangelicalism, however, would reject the idea of intermediated grace and the ability of the physical world to hold distinct states of blessing and holiness, and would rather focus on any blessing received through outward forms to be the result of the believer’s own faith, bringing into the situation a relationship with God, and negating all possible mediation.

6. Ethics 

Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism would share many aspects of a Traditional Western Culture. Evangelicals and Anglo-Orthodox are both “conservative” in the sense that they believe that something other than their own culture is the standard, and that a certain point in past history reveals the whole message of God’s Gospel, which leads to salvation. This, then, makes the Evangelical and the Orthodox look to history for answers and obligates both communities to submit to ancient history as a standard in all matters spiritual and moral, but the Orthodox position would seek to interpret this history through a matrix of ecclesial life, canon law, and the synodal consensus of the Fathers a preserved ancient culture, rather than equating modern culture to the ancient context. Both conservatisms are manifest in a willingness to keep social and cultural norms that are considered repugnant by progressives and secularists, and a general distastes for the modern views of women’s rights, divorce, homosexual marriage, transgenderism, abortion and euthanasia. In this, Orthodox Christians and Evangelicals are allies, although their approaches are very different. 

Not the Same 

The Anglo-Orthodox Christian and the Protestant Evangelical of Low-Church Anglican, Wesleyan, Non-Denominational, Baptist, or Reformed traditions, hold much in common and can learn much from one another. Orthodox Christians can learn about the possibilities of evangelism and friend-making, mission work and personal responsibility from the Evangelicals. Orthodoxy has failed to start parishes as quickly and with as limited of personal resources, and tends to be “top heavy” on the ground, requiring huge amounts of money, time and energy to transfer clunky episcopal hierarchies to new places. Evangelicals can learn about biblical culture, the original meaning of Scriptural texts, the practical obedience of the individual to a spiritual hierarchy, an embodied ecclesiology, the theology of sacraments, and inter-generational discipleship from the ancient and unbroken history of Orthodoxy. Evangelicalism has profoundly failed to create a sustainable culture of discipleship and personal holiness in its churches, relying on marketing and hype for short term “revivals”, and has settled for a focus on encouraging music and self-help speakers instead of spiritual fatherhood and motherhood. Fundamentally, however, they are different epistemologies towards the same body of texts and historical practices, expressing two different understandings of ecclesiology and pneumatology, and hold radically differing views on the implications of the Doctrine of Incarnation, Christ’s institution of the Sacraments, and the role of the individual in the Church to interpret truth and to submit to the historical paradigms of Christian life. These two forms of Christianity are not interchangeable. Christian Orthodoxy is the fullness of the Christian Faith and has been passed down without interruption into the modern world, with its basic teachings and attitudes intact. Evangelicalism is a historical innovation, created from a convergence of translational misunderstandings (Jerome, Augustine, Calvin, and a host of Reformers who created systems based upon a monergistic theological understanding), wrong doctrinal presuppositions and political realities that interfered with England and America’s return to the embrace of the historic Church as envisioned by the Carolinian Fathers, the British Orthodox Non-Jurors, and the Oxford Fathers. 

Summary

We can admire the commitment, integrity and love of the great Evangelicals. Evangelicalism is tied to Anglican Patrimony in many ways, since it started with the revivalism of the John and Charles Wesleys, George Whitfield, the Abolitionist Clapham Sect of William Wilburforce, and appreciate how they gained control in the British Commonwealth through the Evangelical episcopacies of Henry Ryder, Charles and John Sumner, using the institutions of Apostolicity while undermining their theological necessity. Evangelical theology has always understood itself to be about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and a true encounter with God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, and these are all good and necessary things - but personal maturity and formation can only occur within a strong, communal bond of an apostolic family. Evangelicalism’s failure rest squarely in its rejection of the Conciliar Church, and in its insistence that personal conversion trumps all else. Evangelicalism has often been too individualistic and independent. It is one of the reasons Americans, in our rebellious culture, like it so much. We have to remember that we aren’t hatched from eggs. We are reared by Mother Church and Father God, surrounded by the brothers and sisters of all the local, catholic churches throughout time. Our faith is formed by an inheritance that is too complex for us to even begin to understand. We receive our understanding through relationships, life experiences, words that we learn (and don’t make up ourselves), and many, many influences that are so subtle and numerous it is hard to categorize and understand them as individuals. We believe, with our brothers and sisters, the saints of old and to come, what has been received by all, in every place, and at every time. We are not sufficient on our own. We are not saved alone. 

A Call to Battle

Now, as Evangelicalism has lost the American culture wars, and Anglicanism fragments into a thousand different pieces, from the grumpy and bitter Continuers to the frothy homosexual and transgender-celebrating Episcopalians, and everything in between, we must reject the Evangelical paradigm’s rejection of Orthodoxy and continuity with the Ancient Church. We must cling fast to what is good, but we must hate even the garments defiled by the flesh, and create a truly patristic and serious revival of Ancient, Apostolic and Orthodox Christianity in the English-speaking world before it is too late to pass it on to the next generation. Many have abandoned the ancient ecclesiology of equal and married bishops to flee to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy, embracing false narratives of canonical and cultural exclusivity that the Early Church would not recognize. While we appreciate this, we know that the struggle before us will not leave these other patrimonies unmolested and that these solutions are, at best, temporary stop-gaps for English-speaking Apostolic Christians that must, at some point, stand up and take their place with those other Ancient Churches as a rightful expression of local catholicity. We have a birthright or immeasurable worth and beauty, and we have traded it for a bowl of worthless pottage. We must renew our covenant with God, as a people, as a patrimony, and families, and lastly as individuals. God is not known in a Quiet Time my ourselves, but in the Midst of the Congregation, in Communion, in the Declaration of God’s Word in faithful preaching. 

A Vision of an Enchanted Universe

We can either look into a cosmos filled with saints and angels, shining with the Glory of God, reflected off of the myriad of experiences, sufferings, and strivings of the Creation; or, we can cut ourselves off from all of this, insist that we are sufficient on our own, that we need no one else, and bravely stare into the void, the blackness, the abyss of a universe without God. This is the world where sexuality and personal choice are just a flash of consolation before eternal death, when it won’t matter anyway. This is the world without meaning that apologizes for pointing out that homosexual relationships lead to barrenness, cultural atrophy and death, because, well, death and non-existence are the ultimate point of a universe without God. Only with God in His Holy Catholic Apostolic and Orthodox Church is the universe “enchanted”, filled with meaning and with life, leading somewhere and for a cause greater than ourselves.