Interesting Coincidences

The Reformation was two centuries of bloody hell, with Protestants murdering Catholics, Catholics murdering Protestants, and often Protestants murdering other flavors of Protestant. Is that sort of thing really good on the whole?

And, from the perspective of the Orthodox as well as the Catholics, the Protestant experiment produced some positive things, but on balance the result was more than 30,000 varieties of Protestantism at last count, as well as numerous odd sects like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witness who arguably aren’t even Christian, all claiming that their teachings are correct and strictly follow the Bible.

Meanwhile, history and regular contact with those ancient Christian sects not in communion with Rome has been increasingly showing that a number of things Luther claimed were obviously true were never considered obviously true by anyone before he came along; the Oriental Orthodox were basically out of contact with Rome for over 1,500 years until the 20th Century, and what they believe is 99.9% the same as Rome (at least as compared to the fundamentalists).

Nowadays the mainline Protestants–all the old line ones like the Lutherans and the Presbyterians–take a very dim view of the Fundamentalists and their highly liberal approach that anyone can read the book (which translation? that’s another question, as is the question of who does the reading when teaching) and decide for themselves what they think. The obvious result is utter chaos, with people going with whichever beliefs suit them best and damn the rest, and everyone following whatever speakers or writers they find most persuasive. And if there’s a problem with their local church, they just run off, creating a schism and forming a new church more to their liking.

And, I mean, if the Bible all by itself is capable of guiding all seeking hearts to the right answer, why wouldn’t people just read the Bible? Why, when I go into a Zondervan store, do I find dozens of different book titles written by people trying to explain why their approach to Scripture is correct? Why does every fundamentalist bible study class seem to consist of people teaching and debating each other how to read and interpret scripture?

We, on the other hand (the Catholics, the Assyrian Church, the Oriental Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox, the Union of Utrech Protestants, the Old Catholics unaffiliated with Rome, the "high church" Episcopalians, and others) look at this all as unfortunate. Not that fundamentalists deserve our scorn, or are evil people; we simply have to look at them and sigh and pray they’ll come around and realize that their entire approach to Scripture is questionable; it’s nothing wrong with the Scriptures, it’s just their approach that’s so off-base and leads them so awry (like swerving your car to avoid a bump and accidentally winding up in a ditch on the other side of the road because you overcompensated).

In essence, with them (the fundamentalists I mean, not the mainline Protestants), every man is his own Bishop, or picks his own Bishop to follow. What those who claim they just follow "what the Bible plainly says" don’t notice is that what they’re really saying is that they consider themselves (or their teachers and translators) to be infallible; otherwise, how do they know they’re reading it correctly? Because Jesus came along and gave his great commission to the apostles, saying, "go forth and write my book and pass it around, and all true believers will interpret it just fine?" And did he hand them a printing press while he was at it?

Essentially, in my view, fundamentalism is a revival of the religion of the 1st century Sadducees, who threw Oral Torah completely out the window. (And yes, you can make the case that the Catholic and the Orthodox are like the Pharisees in their scriptural approach.)

I notice my fundamentalist friends get pretty flustered when I bring all this up; my experience is that people in that part of the fold are very used to dealing with ex-Catholics and just assume that the Catholic Church must be wrong and go with that. I don’t know how often I’ve seen such errors, but they commonly fall into two categories: 1) Misunderstanding a catholic teaching, and so criticizing it without knowledge, or, worse, 2) attributing teachings/doctrines to the Church that the Church does not actually believe and never has (which can be proven from the historical record).

In almost all cases, they just sort of assume that Catholics (or Orthodox, or the others) have no answer for their charges, without bothering to check with a reliable Catholic source first. But the internet is increasingly making that an unsustainable position; anyone who wants to know what the Church actually teaches and has always taught can find out pretty quickly, and false charges can quickly be addressed with documentation. In essence, these folks seem to feel they have every right to rip into what the Catholic Church teaches (or that they just think it teaches), and actually get a little agitated when a knowledgeable Catholic calmly points out what the church really believes and always has believed. And they don’t like their own version of Christianity put under the same microscope they put Catholics under.

As I have said many times, I found studying the Orthodox (both kinds) very helpful in deprogramming me from what I grew up being taught was just stuff made up by the Vatican in Rome; now, we know, many of those things are indisputably historical and practiced by the very men who gave us the scriptures–unless you believe the entire church was already corrupted immediately after the last of the original 12 apostles died, and God didn’t see fit to correct it for 1,500 years until he gave us Luther, Calvin, and the other competing leaders of Protestantism. (Either that or you believe in something called the “Invisible Church,” meaning Christian fundamentalists throughout history who left no historical records to show their existence, or that the evull Vatican erased all proof of).

My own view? Protestants should look carefully at what they claim Rome just invented, and consider if it isn’t really them who’s strayed. The Protestant experiment’s gone on for five centuries now, and it may be time to look back and re-evaluate some things. (And to their credit, many of them are doing just that).

[shrug] That’s just what I think. I could be wrong.

Arnold: As I think I’ve explained in other conversations, I grew up steeped in two kinds of Protestantism: mainline Presbyterianism (with regular Sunday School and Confirmation classes) and Fundamentalist. It can hardly be surprising, then, that when I came of age and I realized that Protestants disagree with each other constantly on how to read and interpret scripture, I came to the conclusion that the whole Christian experiment was worthless, and the Bible itself was just a twisted, complicated book that regularly contradicted itself.

But, I also grew up basically being told that the Catholic church was evil: it "hid the bible from the people" (a vicious lie), it practiced things directly contrary to the Bible (no, it doesn’t), it worshiped idols and Mary and the other Saints (yet another string of vicious lies) and etc.

When I felt moved to return to Christianity, I felt I needed to look pretty deeply into the Church and what it taught, including what it had taught from the very earliest days. I found that most useful, because I had inherited many of the kneejerk "that’s Catholic so it must be wrong" programming I got so much of in my youth.

The Orthodox and other non-Roman Catholic churches that have been in continuous operation since the 1st Century were usually the reassurance I needed; compared to the fundamentalist "I’ll read it and decide for myself" approach (which only results in endless arguments, because the Bible can’t stand up by itself against such an assault), all of the oldest lines of Christianity and even some mainline Protestants maintain the unity of the Christian message and hope and teaching, and that sound teachings (i.e. doctrines) are the only way you can understand the Bible properly.

As I’ve said before, proudly claiming you use only the Bible is the spiritual equivalent of saying you proudly use your right arm after cutting off your left arm. It’s also just plain bizarre, like saying “we need no laws, we have the Constitution and we just use that!”

In any case, Arnold: it was by engaging my own mind and by ruthless research on the very earliest days of Christianity that I came to the actual Church. And, I hate to break it to ya, but there are tons of people turning up these days at Catholic and Orthodox Churches seeking answers (including in my own RCIA classes, with ex-lutherans, ex-baptists, ex-fundamentalists, and ex-atheists all in the mix); Orthodoxy in fact greatly threatens the Fundamentalists in America, who have for generations now rested (consciously or unconsciously) on the noxious doctrine that Rome is always wrong, and they could say almost anything bad about the Church and get applause for it–and now they’re increasingly encountering Christians who have not been in Communion with Rome for 1,000, even 1,500 years, who can prove they’ve been in constant operation since the 1st Century, and who agree with Rome one hell of a lot more than they agree with the Fundamentalists.

Orthodoxy, to my delight, is one of the fastest growing branches of Christianity in America, and I think there’s a reason for that. It is, after all, indisputably part of the ancient Christian faith, and not some brand new "reconstruction" or brand new "restoration" that’s basically just the fantasy of modern-day fundamentalists (and some Evangelicals).

Or so I see it. I could be wrong.