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Are Evangelicalism and

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The Forgotten Reformer: Cyril Lucaris

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5 55
C H R I S T & C U LT U R E
A Call for Orthodox
Churches to Preach
the Gospel
BY ADRIEL SANCHEZ
9 Finding Our Place in an
T H E O LO GY
Will the Real Jesus
Please Stand Up?
B Y M AT T H E W R I C H A R D
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LETTER from the EDITOR

should not be skimmed over. Mike Brown’s report

on the recent migration of Reformed churchgo-
ers to the Eastern Orthodox (EO) fellowship tells
us that the beauty and mystery of the liturgy is
one of most reasons frequently given for joining
the EO communion, which Alison Sailer con-
firms in her discussion of her own journey from
Geneva to Constantinople. John Stovall illus-
trates the historical context of Eastern Orthodox
and Protestant distinctives with his fascinat-
ing portrait of Cyril Lucaris, the patriarch of
Constantinople who was assassinated for his
commitment to Reformed teaching. While there

B
eauty has a hard time in confessional is much we share with our Orthodox brethren,
Protestant circles, and it’s easy to there are also significant differences that warrant
understand why. In our sex-saturated serious consideration, particularly for high-
society, this powerful and elevating profile Protestant teachers, as Perry Robinson
value has been exploited and degraded to the points out in his essay on the conversion of Hank
level of commercial property. Once ranked as Hanegraaff (the Bible Answer Man).
the necessary companion to truth and goodness, There is certainly a place for beauty and maj-
it’s devolved into little more than the ultimate esty in worship. If the divine service is indeed an
selling point for everything from smartphones in-breaking of the glorious kingdom age on our
and cars to Hollywood starlets and earthly reality, then the church’s
politicians. As heirs to a histori- physical building and liturgy
cally iconoclastic church, we’re not ought to reflect this. Ultimately,
sure what to do with it. Scripture at “THERE IS we do not come to a facility that
once gives us Solomon and his bride’s CERTAINLY holds however-many hundreds
ecstatic rejoicings at one another’s of people and hosts so-many
beauty, and Peter’s admonition that
A PLACE FOR conferences a year at such-and-
women ought not to let their adorning BEAUTY AND such an address. We come to the
be with “the braiding of hair and the MAJESTY IN city of the living God, the heav-
putting on of gold jewelry.” If we’re enly Jerusalem, to innumerable
honest, the simplicity (we won’t call
WORSHIP.” angels in festal gathering, to the
it ugliness) of the church buildings assembly of the firstborn who are
we worship in today has more to do enrolled in heaven, to God, the
with primarily pragmatic considerations than judge of all, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new
scriptural principle. covenant (Heb. 12:22–24). As this year begins,
Not so with the Eastern Orthodox Church. we rejoice that the city of the living God contin-
They may have a few problems, but a nuanced ues to grow, unshackled by small budgets and
and well-articulated view of beauty (particularly, hostile city councils, and unencumbered by the
the beauty of worship) isn’t one of them. While grandeur of the greatest cathedral. 
Protestants could certainly stand to take a leaf
or two out of the EO’s aesthetic book, Editor-
in-Chief Michael Horton reminds us that the
theological principles that inform that aesthetic BRO OKE VENTURA assoc iate editor

4
 01
A Call for Orthodox Churches
to Preach the Gospel
L E F T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y A R T H U R M O U N T; R I G H T: I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O
by Adriel Sanchez
have had several close friends con-
vert to Orthodoxy over the years,
I and they’re always excited to talk
about their transition. “Come and
see,” said one friend, smiling.
“The iconography, the vestments, the beauty!”
It’s not just the visual engagement. There is also
an ancient stimulation of the other senses—the
smells, the chanting, all of it so different from
what evangelicals are used to. But I’ve never had
a friend who converted to Orthodoxy say, “Come
and hear the preaching!” Why is that?
Some time ago, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
spoke at an Orthodox homeschooling conference
and posted his talk “Do Orthodox Christians
Know the Gospel Message?” on the Ancient
1
Faith blog. The speech was both encouraging
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
C H R I S T & C U LT U R E
(because Fr. Damick was able to critique his tra-
dition in an important area) and disheartening.
Disheartening because Fr. Damick recognizes a
deficiency in Orthodoxy today among the laity:
the average Orthodox Christian does not know
what the gospel is. “It would probably be no big
stretch to say that, if one were to ask the aver-
age Orthodox Christian the question, ‘What is
the gospel?’ he would not have an answer.” More
recently, retired priest Fr. Aidan Kimel lamented,
Since my retirement I have heard numerous
Orthodox homilies. With few exceptions,
they have been horrid—poorly constructed,
poorly delivered, and lacking in substance.
But bad technique may be forgiven if the
preacher is at least attempting to proclaim
5
C H R I S T & C U LT U R E
the good news. Alas that has not usually
been the case. What I have heard is exhor-
tation . . . to imitate Christ, obey the ten
commandments, be nice to my neighbors,
pray more often, confess my sins . . . even
a lengthy harangue scolding the congre-
gation for its failure to support the parish
festival. Exhortation and more exhorta-
tion—dreary, impotent words that do not
convert, do not heal, do not transform, do
not deify. A few years ago I listened to an
interview with Fr Theodore Stylianopoulos
in which he described the kinds of sermons
he heard growing up. He called them “try
harder” sermons. Yes, I thought, that’s
what I’m hearing now. No wonder church
is so depressing. If “try harder” is the only
word the pastor has to share, then it would
be far better to skip the sermon and allow
the Divine Liturgy itself to enact the good
news of Pascha.
“Behold, the days are coming,” the prophet
declares in the Name of the Lord, “when I
will send a famine on the land; not a famine
of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hear-
ing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). We
are experiencing this famine today. Many
priests and congregations pride them-
selves on their dogmatic orthodoxy and
“When the word was rehabilitated in the church, the
result was spiritual renewal, a reformation our churches
desperately need in modern times.”
6
steadfast adherence to tradition, yet the
good news of Pascha remains unpreached.
To these congregations—but especially to
the priests who have been entrusted with
the stewardship of the gospel—the terrify-
ing condemnation of Jesus is spoken: “Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for you are like whitewashed tombs, which
outwardly appear beautiful, but within
they are full of dead men’s bones and all
uncleanness” (Matt 23:27). Exhortations
and admonitions will never create the righ-
teousness that justifies. Those who are dead
in sin cannot raise themselves from their
graves; they cannot pull themselves up by
their Pelagian bootstraps. Only the uncon-
ditional promise, spoken in the power of
Spirit and absolute Love, can bestow the
new life that is repentance and faith. But
if that word is never declared, where will
2
faith be found?
This problem was noted by another Orthodox
Christian, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, just a few
decades ago:
One can observe an undoubted decline or
even crisis in preaching in contemporary
church life. The essence of this crisis lies
not in the inability to speak, in a loss of
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 “style” or in any intellectual deficiency on
the part of the preacher, but in something
far deeper: in an oblivion to what preaching
in the church assembly is supposed to be.
The homily can be, and often is even today,
intelligent, interesting, instructive and
comforting, but these are not the criteria by
which we can distinguish a “good” homily
from a “bad” one—these are not its real
essence. Its essence lies in its living link
to the gospel that was read in the church
assembly. For the genuine sermon is nei-
ther simply an explanation of what was read
by knowledgeable and competent persons,
not a transmission to the listeners of the
theological knowledge of the preacher, nor
a mediation “a propos” of the gospel text. In
general, it is not a sermon about the gospel
(“on a gospel theme”) but the preaching of
3
the gospel itself.
Fr. Schmemann’s call is for the church to preach
the good news of Jesus Christ, not just to talk
about it (or depict it in iconography, I might
add). Until the Orthodox Church rediscov-
ers this emphasis upon the importance of the
preached word as well as the sacrament, I sus-
pect that its laity will continue to suffer from
gospel illiteracy. The beauty of Orthodox liturgy,
with its sensory emphasis, cannot compensate
for the sacramental word, which alone creates
faith in the hearts of dead sinners. God has
promised to save humanity through the fool-
ishness of preaching (1 Cor. 1:21), not through
the veneration of icons or burning of incense.
If a church focuses on the latter, or even on the
sacrament apart from the word, it is destined
to produce disciples who cannot articulate the
simplicity of the gospel.
The Protestant Reformers would have sym-
pathized with critiques like this, because they
too believed the church needed to “rediscover”
gospel preaching. This is one of the reasons I am
grateful for the Reformed tradition, in which
the emphasis has always been “Come and hear
the gospel!” In fact, one of the chief complaints
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
the Protestant Reformers had against the
Roman Catholic Church (a complaint that may
also be raised in the context of this discussion)
was that while Rome did not abolish the word,
it had subordinated it to the sacraments and
shrouded it in extrabiblical traditions. This
abasing of the word led to the moral and theo-
logical failures of the medieval church. The
genius of the sixteenth-century Protestants was
in restoring the primacy of the preached word.
When the word was rehabilitated in the church,
the result was spiritual renewal, a reformation
our churches desperately need in modern times.
What then is the solution to the present crisis
that exists not only in Orthodox churches, but
in many evangelical churches as well? It begins
with a proper understanding of the word’s pri-
macy. This lofty position isn’t bestowed on the
word by any individual or church, but is inher-
ent to its nature. Since the word comes to us
from God (2 Tim. 3:16), it needs no external
authority to authenticate it. With a recovery
of the word’s primacy comes an understanding
of the word’s power. When God compared his
word to that of the false prophets in Jeremiah’s
day, he said, “Is not my word like fire, and like a
hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jer.
23:29). The word alone has the power to warm
calloused hearts and break rock-hard wills. It
doesn’t just deconstruct—Isaiah likened God’s
word to a life-giving rainfall, sent out to accom-
plish God’s purposes in the world (Isa. 55:10–11).
The heavenly shower of apostolic preaching is
the foundation upon which the church is con-
structed (Eph. 2:20), and wherever that word is
not upheld, God’s temple is in disrepair.
It also isn’t enough to say we need to have
a high view of God’s word. There are many
churches that believe in the divine inspira-
tion and power of Scripture, but they still fall
short when it comes to communicating the
substance of Scripture. This type of preaching
(as Schmemann put it) misses the essence of
the gospel and (according to Kimel) doesn’t
deify. The verbum agraphon (unwritten word)
spoken by the prophets and apostles and the
7
C H R I S T & C U LT U R E
“Once congregations
experience the life-giving
power of the preached
gospel, they won’t
settle for replacements
(regardless of their
aesthetic beauty).”
verbum engraphon (written word) inscriptur-
ated for subsequent generations were always
meant to lead us to the Word as Person, Jesus.
This happens only when our preaching tran-
sitions from moral exhortations (law) to the
powerful proclamation of God’s victory over
our moral failures (gospel). This is the rain that
arid souls long for—the solution to our parched
spirituality.
When pastors rightly understand the pri-
macy and the power of God’s word, they won’t
grow tired of preaching it; and once congrega-
tions experience the life-giving power of the
preached gospel, they won’t settle for replace-
ments (regardless of their aesthetic beauty). I
remember being pleasantly surprised when a
member of a Reformed congregation lamented
to me about the church he visited while on vaca-
tion, “The pastor only preached the law, not the
gospel!” We should preach the gospel so clearly
that the laity in our churches lament when it is
8
missing. I’m reminded of Calvin’s commentary
on Galatians 3:1.
Let those who would discharge aright the
ministry of the gospel learn, not merely to
speak and declaim, but to penetrate into
the consciences of men, to make them see
Christ crucified, and feel the shedding of his
blood. When the church has painters such as
these, she no longer needs the dead images of
wood and stone, she no longer requires pic-
tures; both of which, unquestionably, were
first admitted to Christian temples when
the pastors . . . uttered a few words from the
pulpit in such a cold and careless manner,
that the power and efficacy of the ministry
4
were utterly extinguished.
We can learn a great deal from our Orthodox
brothers. The staple liturgy of John Chrysostom,
with its holistic engagement of mind and
body, reminds us that we’re not simply souls
trapped in bodies. Worship should engage
the whole person. Orthodox churches, how-
ever, should recover the expository rigor of
John Chrysostom, whose homilies weren’t
ten-minute musings but in-depth biblical exhor-
tations; they should reclaim the “preaching
of the gospel itself,” as Fr. Schmemann called
it, and prioritize the weekly refrain Christos
Anesti! (“Christ is risen!”) over the “try harder”
sermons that leave people in despair. Only when
the liturgy of John Chrysostom is accompanied
by his expositional preaching can we expect
today’s famine to end. 
ADRIEL SANCHEZ is a graduate of Westminster Seminary in
California and a church planter at North Park Presbyterian
Church (www.northparkpres.com) in San Diego.
1 From http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/roadsfromemmaus/2015/05/08/
do-orthodox-christians-know-the-gospel-message.
2 From https://publicorthodoxy.org/2016/12/17/the-politics-of-pascha.
3 Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom
(New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 77.
4 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians
and Ephesians, vol. XXI (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009), 80–81.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
02
Will the Real Jesus
Please Stand Up?
by Matthew Richard
hould we take a hammer and
chisel to the Jesus of the Bible
S and shape him into our own per-
sonal Jesus? Of course not! This
does not, however, stop North
Americans from getting out their toolbox.
Obviously I’m not speaking literally, but the
tendency of people to “rebrand” the Jesus of
history into their own personal avatar is quite
real. Truly did Calvin say that our hearts are idol
factories, carving out that which is uncomfort-
able and enhancing that which speaks to our
desires. Remaking Jesus into an image of our
choosing results in a happy medium between
the discomfort of bowing one’s knee before the
real Jesus and the guilt-inducing conviction of
an outright rejection.
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
THEOLOGY
The fact that we like to make Jesus over in
our own image isn’t exactly big news. When
we consider the general mind-set of our
North American society, it makes sense. We
are a culture that personalizes just about
everything—playlists, food, smartphones,
relationships, even gender. Why shouldn’t
we customize Jesus? And this is precisely
what we do. We redefine Jesus according to
our own image, desires, and aspirations. He
becomes the Giver of Bling, the Feminized, the
Mystical Friend, the National Patriot, the Moral
Example, the New Moses, and the Mascot. We
twist him into a funhouse-mirror image of our-
selves, since life is easier when we can convince
ourselves that what Jesus really wants is what
we really want.
9
THEOLOGY
“We can taste, see, and
believe the real Jesus
right here and right now.”
The problem with our false christs is that
they can’t fix our problem. They may make us
feel better, but they can’t address the founda-
tional flaw in our existence. They have no power
to appease the wrath of God. Our problem isn’t
ultimately that we die, suffer physically, men-
tally, and emotionally, or that there is rampant
injustice and corruption. Our problem is that we
have offended a holy God and that we cannot, by
our own powers, be reconciled to him. Our false
christs cannot resurrect us from the dead—they
crumble at the slightest discomfort; they smash
to the ground as we stumble into the traps of our
own sin and despair; they stare back with vacant
eyes as we plead for salvation.
They cannot forgive sin or resurrect dead
people, because they are not real. Like trees cut
down and carved into idols one day and used as
firewood the next, these false christs are essen-
tially puppets of their creators (Isa. 44:9–20).
Like their mutable and easily swayed originals,
they vacillate from one thing to another—a
savior one moment and kindling the next.
They are frail and will never have more power
than those who fashioned them, which means
they cannot overcome sin, death, the devil, or
the world. They may possess the qualities of
the Jesus of Scripture, but they are not God of
God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begot-
ten, not made, being of one substance with the
Father, the Savior of both body and soul.
There’s an old saying, “If you want to show up
a crooked stick, put a straight one next to it.”
We need the real Jesus to stand up so we can
clearly see who he is and hear what he has done,
because it is only the power of that gospel that
will set us free from the sin that ensnares us into
10
believing that the Jesus of our imagination can
fulfill our deepest human desires. While false
christs stand or fall by our own power, Jesus
Christ continually sits at the right hand of the
Father. He stood in our place as he became flesh
and blood and walked through the wilderness of
depravity on our behalf. He conquered the temp-
tations to which we so easily succumb, drinking
the vile cup of our suffering and sin, stumbling
up the hill to Golgotha. He was displayed on a
bloody cross, his body pierced, and blood and
water poured out for each and every one of us
who desperately hold onto hollow, fake christs.
Unlike the idols of our creation, which harden
our hearts against the inborn knowledge of sin,
Jesus declared from his cross that our sins
have been paid for. Unlike our false christs,
who ultimately require that we live and die for
them, the true Christ lived the righteous life we
ought to have lived and died the death we should
have died. Unlike the “rebranded” Jesus, who
is hampered by the finite and flawed power of
their creators, the historical Jesus rose victori-
ous from the grave, taking his seat at the right
hand of the Father in glory, allowing all who
believe in him to share in his triumph. Through
his word and sacraments, we not only hear who
he is and what he did, but we receive him and
his benefits of forgiveness, life, and salvation.
When our culture, society, and circumstance
shift like reeds blowing in the winds of change,
this Word does not change but remains forever
(Isa. 40:7–8). We can taste, see, and believe the
real Jesus right here and right now.
This is the real Jesus—the Jesus you and I do
not deserve but certainly need. This is the God
who is for you, who has saved you, and who will
not fail you. Unlike idols that cannot see or speak,
he has drawn near to you in his word to reveal
himself to you, so that you might receive him by
faith and be his own. This is the real Jesus: Christ
crucified and resurrected, the only one who for-
gives sin and grants everlasting life. 
REV. DR. MATTHEW RICHARD is pastor of Zion Lutheran
Church in Gwinner, North Dakota.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 V O L .2 7 | N O.1

FEATURES

We have beheld enough

of his love, peace, and glory,
to worship him, sense his love,
and know that one day
we will enjoy full, soulful,
peaceful resonance with him.”
­

— MICHAEL BROWN, “DRIFTING EAST”

12 24 38 46

ARE DRIFTING EAST: THE FORGOTTEN BEWARE THE

EVANGELICALISM A PASTORAL REFORMER: CONVERT
AND EASTERN APPROACH TO CYRIL LUCARIS
ORTHODOXY CHRISTIANS
COMPATIBLE? CONSIDERING
CONVERSION

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
11
by
ARE MICHAEL S. HORTON

E VA N G E L I C A L I S M A N D

EASTERN ORTHODOXY

illustration by  C O M PAT I B L E ? JOE CAVAZOS

A cursory comparison of the indi-
ces of any primary or secondary
work on Eastern Orthodoxy and
evangelicalism exposes an inter-
esting contrast—in the Eastern
Orthodox index, one will find
such entries as chrismation,
deification, energies of God, reca-
pitulation, theosis, and the like,
but notable absences will include
original sin, grace, justification,
sanctification, substitutionary
atonement, and related terms
that are familiar to confessional
Protestants.

It is an oversimplification, but it may be said

generally that, while Western theological systems
often follow a Trinitarian pattern reflected in the
Apostles’ Creed, the focus is often more on the
work of the persons than on their perichoretic
unity and the nature of the hypostatic union of
the God-Man. This becomes most apparent in the
second article, where Western theology tends to
regard Christology as an essential means to the
end of soteriology. Thus there is an emphasis on
the cross and resurrection as the apex of human
redemption. In Eastern patristic and Byzantine
theology, however, the accent falls on the incarna-
tion itself. Jesus Christ the God-Man is not only
who he is in order to be a Savior; he is a Savior pre-
cisely in being who he is.

13
 Regarding the first five centuries as defini-
tive, Orthodox theology revolves around
Christological issues, and this is why one
may find teeming citations for hypostasis,
Arianism, and the filioque, but few for guilt,
Pelagius, forgiveness, reconciliation, and pro-
pitiation. In many cases, further conversation
between Eastern and Western partners reveals
considerable agreement in substance despite
different taxonomies. The heart of our differ-
ences emerges over the material principle:
justification by grace alone through faith alone
because of Christ alone.

SIN AND FREE WILL

A
nselm’s famous retort to his imaginary
friend Boso “You have not yet consid-
ered how great your sin is” applies to all
of our communions, especially in this day THE HEART OF OUR
of optimism about human capabilities. Despite
the agreements noted above, the Christian East, DIFFERENCES EMERGES OVER
in the Reformed view, possesses an inadequate THE MATERIAL PRINCIPLE:
view of sin. This becomes apparent in its treat-
ment of original sin, excluding inherited guilt JUSTIFICATION BY GRACE
from the picture and embracing a synergistic
view of regeneration as well as a medicinal view
ALONE THROUGH FAITH ALONE
of justifying grace. BECAUSE OF CHRIST ALONE.
To do justice to the Orthodox view, we must
again recall that the reigning paradigm is rela-
tional and transformative. Humanity is on a
pilgrimage from innocence to mortality to
immortality. Father Palachovsky explains:

We have been made in His image through

Creation, but we must become like Him
by ourselves, through our own free will. To
be the image of God belongs to us by our
primordial destination, but to become
like God depends upon our will….Human
nature has not remained intact, as some
theologians teach, but has become corrupt.
Nevertheless, this corruption does not go
1
so far as the Protestant theologians teach.

We must appreciate the categories of Orthodox

thought on this issue, since the context of
early patristic development was Gnosticism,

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

14
Manichaeism, and their kindred heresies in
which creation and redemption were set against
one another. Matter was inherently evil because
it was intrinsically temporal rather than eter-
nal, physical rather than spiritual, and so forth.
Sin was accounted for in a cosmic fatalism
grounded in ontological dualism. It would only
make sense that the church fathers would con-
front this pagan determinism and dualism with
an emphasis on human responsibility and free-
dom, as well as on the goodness of the Creator
2
God (and therefore of every natura he creates).
There are some passages in Augustine, particu-
larly in his description of the origin of sin, that
come perilously close to viewing nature qua
3
nature as sinful. This is thoroughly rejected
by the Reformers and their successors.
Still, even granting this important point,
Orthodoxy appears to deny clear biblical state-
ments on this important question. Corruption
and mortality are hardly the only categories in
biblical teaching. Nevertheless, as Constantine N.
Tsirpanlis writes in presenting the Orthodox view,
Now, Adam’s sin was a personal choice
and act, not a collective guilt nor a “sin of
nature.” Hence, inherited guilt is impossi-
ble….In other words, the posterity of Adam
inherited the consequences of his sin, i.e.,
physical death and mortality, sickness of
corruption, and obscurity or distortion of
4
God’s image, but not his personal guilt.
John Meyendorff concurs that there is, in fact,
“a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine
traditions in identifying the inheritance of the
Fall as an inheritance essentially of mortal-
ity rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being
5
merely the consequence of mortality.” “The
opposition between the two Adams is seen in
terms not of guilt and forgiveness but of death
6 REDEMPTION
and life,” he says, citing 1 Corinthians 15:47–48.
First Corinthians 15:47–48 is a marvelous and
much-overlooked side of the sin-and-grace mes-
7
sage. Orthodoxy offers profound insight on this
aspect, but in presenting half of the picture as if
it were the whole, it ignores the obvious juridi-
cal elements and consequently leaves us not
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
merely with an incomplete account but with an
erroneous one. Can sinfulness be regarded as a
consequence of mortality and vice versa when
Scripture so clearly states that “sin entered the
world through one man, and death through sin,
and in this way death came to all men, because
all sinned” (Rom. 5:12)? “The wages of sin is
death” (Rom. 6:23). Here in Romans 6, “wages”
is a similarly legal category, a debt that is owed.
The biblical testimony to the Savior’s payment
of a debt is so replete as not to require citations.
The New Testament language for sin (e.g., con-
demnation of the law) and redemption (e.g.,
justification, imputation, reconciliation, acquit-
tal) is unmistakably forensic as well as relational.
Even those who have not in their own persons
committed exactly the same sin as Adam’s are
nevertheless guilty of that sin (Rom. 5:14). “The
judgment followed one sin and brought condem-
nation” (v. 16), and “by the trespass of the one
man, death reigned through that one man” (v. 17).
“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass
was condemnation for all men” (v. 18). (I have
purposely reserved the corollary of the second
Adam for our discussion below.) Paul repeats
for effect, “through the disobedience of the one
man the many were made sinners” (v. 19). Death
comes through sin, inherited both in its power
and in its guilt. Therefore, the consequence is
inherited. That is Paul’s logic in this text.
The Orthodox view excludes original guilt,
while the Western view admits both original
guilt and original corruption/mortality. Despite
Augustinian (and Roman Catholic) distortions
of sin and nature, the confessional Protestant
articulation of original sin is thus able to do
greater justice to the fuller teaching of Scripture,
even if it needs to give more attention to the
emphasis on immortality in the second Adam.
N
eo-orthodox theologies prepared the
soil for a wide-scale reassessment
of the Western tradition in terms of
“relational” versus “legal” catego-
ries. Protestants have subjected what they
have referred to as “Augustinian legalism” to
15
relentless criticism. Perhaps partly because
of the society in which many evangelical theo-
logians now live, with its therapeutic culture
in which justice must give way to love in every
instance, the Pauline explanation for how God
is, in Christ, both “just and the one who justi-
fies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26)
has lost its attraction for a growing number
of those theologians. The difference between
the two categories is the difference between a
“courtroom” model and a “family room” model.
The former is indisputably Roman, while
the latter is thoroughly scriptural, it is sug-
gested. This is precisely the view expressed by
modern Orthodox theologians, such as Christos
Yannaras:
A great misconception and distortion of
the ecclesial truth about the abolition of
death by the cross of Christ had already
appeared in the West by the first centuries
and progressively dominated the spiritual
climate. Tertullian, Augustine, Anselm and
Thomas Aquinas are the great landmarks
in the formation and imposition of this dis-
tortion which was finally proclaimed as an
official teaching of the Western church at
the Council of Trent (1545–1563). It is a
matter of a legalistic interpretation of the
biblical images of “ransom” which Christ
paid with his death on the cross. . . . In the
teaching of Luther and of Calvin later, it is
not simply divine justice, but the wrath of
God which must be appeased by the sacri-
8
fice of Christ on the cross.
This account Yannaras can regard only as
“sadistic,” leading to “egocentric justification
9
as well.” Individualistic and legalistic, this the-
ology fails to recognize the ecclesial and cosmic
redemption that comes from God as a passion-
ate lover.
Orthodox theologians should attempt to
understand the surprise of those who have seen
in both Old and New Testaments a recurring
emphasis on the cross of Christ as “payment,”
“propitiation,” “sacrifice,” “satisfaction,” and
the like. Acknowledging the important theme of
16
Christus Victor, Reformation theology has nev-
ertheless recognized the victory of Christ over
Satan, mortality, evil, and the demonic as the
consequence of his satisfaction of the Father’s
plan to propitiate God’s wrath against sin. Even
in one of the clearest Christus Victor passages,
Paul apparently makes this very connection:
When you were dead in your sins [a moral
category, since his readers are still physi-
cally alive] and in the uncircumcision of
your sinful nature, God made you alive with
Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having
canceled the written code, with its regula-
tions, that was against us and that stood
opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to
the cross. And having disarmed the powers
and authorities, he made a public specta-
cle of them, triumphing over them by the
cross. (Col. 2:13–15)
That last statement depends on that which pre-
cedes it. The power of Satan over us was chiefly
God’s own law, a recurring Pauline theme; but
once this was satisfied by the substitution of
Christ for sinners, the powers and authori-
ties were disarmed. The “public spectacle” is a
courtroom scene in which God judges his Son
in our place.
Here, once again, this view accounts for
both the Christus Victor motif and the substi-
tutionary motif, while the Orthodox emphasis
apparently cannot accept the very premise (i.e.,
God’s wrath against sinners) that would pro-
vide a context for Christ’s victory. Irenaeus, for
one, incorporates both motifs in his thought.
Not only by his incarnation but “by means of
his passion” Jesus Christ has conquered death:
For doing away with that disobedience of
man which had taken place at the begin-
ning by the occasion of a tree, “He became
obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross”; rectifying [a legal term] that dis-
obedience which had occurred by reason
of a tree, through that obedience which was
[wrought out] upon the tree [of the cross]
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 19)
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
ACKNOWLEDGING THE IMPORTANT THEME

O F C H R I S T U S V I C T O R , R E F O R M A T I O N

T H E O L O G Y H A S N E V E R T H E L E S S

R E C O G N I Z E D T H E V I C T O R Y O F C H R I S T

OVER SATAN, MORTALIT Y, EVIL , AND THE

D E M O N I C A S T H E C O N S E Q U E N C E O F H I S

SATISFACTION OF THE FATHER’S PLAN TO

PROPITIATE GOD’S WRATH AGAINST SIN.

17
 ARE PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS IN
THE MIDDLE EAST OUR “BROTHERS
AND SISTERS IN CHRIST”?
E
very day brings
another gruesome
story of men,
women, and children in
the Middle East being
persecuted for their faith
in Christ. Churches are
destroyed, families are
pushed out of their homes
and villages, individuals
have their throats slit—
and the entire world
watches with horror. West-
ern Christians regularly
pray for our persecuted
brothers and sisters in
Christ, but some wonder
if it is proper to think of
them as fellow Christians.
After all, missionaries have
been at work in many of
those same regions for
years, trying to convert
people from Orthodox
and Roman Catholic
Churches to Protestant-
ism. Why were they trying
to convert them, if they
were already “in Christ”
with us?
In his Institutes of the
Christian Religion (IV.1.8),
John Calvin refers to
“a certain charitable
judgment whereby we
recognize as members
18
of the church those who,
by confession of faith, by
example of life, and by par-
taking of the sacraments,
profess the same God and
Christ with us.” Taking their
mark from Calvin, other
Reformed theologians
have often spoken of the
“judgment of charity” with
regard to how we evaluate
another person’s claim to
faith. The idea here is that
unless someone proves by
their profession or their
actions that they are not
Christians, we should take
them at their word and not
second-guess their profes-
sion of faith.
This attitude should help
us give the benefit of
the doubt to those men,
women, and children who
are being persecuted
simply for being Christians.
The important theological
distinctions we discuss in
the free West are not even
under consideration among
those whose very lives
are threatened by their
simple profession, “Jesus is
Lord.” We can and should
rejoice with them when
their towns and villages
are freed, when they can
worship in peace, and when
their lives are safe from
threats of harm.
That does not mean,
however, that we shouldn’t
still seek to bring them—as
we do our neighbors here
in the West—to a better,
fuller, and richer under-
standing of the Christian
faith. As circumstances
allow, our missionaries
should try to convince
them of the significant
errors of Orthodoxy and
Catholicism. Being freed
from a theology of works
righteousness will give
them significant peace and
assurance of their stand-
ing in Christ today. Along
the way, we may discover
that some Middle Eastern
Christians were Christians
in name only—having
a cultural connection
because of family and
place of birth, but no vital,
living faith. In that sense,
they are no different from
many Americans who are
Christians in name only,
identifying as a Christian
because of a family or
cultural connection.
BY ERIC
LANDRY
In April 2017, a video of
Coptic Christians chanting
the Nicene Creed went
viral on social media.
People claimed it was
a response of the small
Christian minority in Cairo,
responding to attacks on
Palm Sunday that killed
dozens of worshippers. If
we watch that video and
are moved to question the
veracity and vitality of the
faith of those who—at the
risk of their own lives—
appear in public to profess
their faith with the same
words we recite on Sunday
mornings, then we lack the
judgment of charity Calvin
enjoins on us. Instead,
we should be moved to
prayer and praise instead.
For there will “always
be a church on earth” to
worship God (WCF 25.5),
and the gates of hell shall
not prevail against it (Matt.
16:18). 
ERIC LANDRY is exe-
utive editor of Modern
Reformation and pastor
of Redeemer Presbyterian
Church in Austin, Texas.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16)
….In the second Adam, however, we are
reconciled, being made obedient even unto
death. For we were debtors to none other
but to him whose commandment we had
10
transgressed at the beginning.
Note that he says we were debtors to the
commandment we had transgressed at the
beginning—in Adam. Hence, human beings
“are not justified of themselves, but the advent
11
of the Lord.” There is, therefore, no basis for
“trusting to works of righteousness.”12
It is important to recognize that while certain
affectations from Roman jurisprudence—or,
more directly, medieval feudalism—appear in
Western discussions (especially in Anselm’s
account), the Reformers explicitly criticized
these tendencies while building on their labors.
It is difficult to dismiss the Old Testament’s
legal character. In fact, as recent scholarship
has underscored, much of the Old Testament
may be read as a covenantal charter in the pat-
tern of the ancient Near Eastern suzerainty
13
treaty. Without recognizing the legal char-
acter of the Mosaic economy, involving strict
observances for remaining in the land and
requiring the shedding of blood for remission
of sins, and the anticipation in the prophets
of a Servant who will bear the guilt of sinners,
the Old Testament loses its plot and the New
Testament loses its claim as the fulfillment of
all types and shadows.
JUSTIFICATION
T
he parallel between the first and second
Adams in Romans 5 draws together
tightly the corollary of “double impu-
tation”: Adam’s guilt and Christ’s
righteousness. Orthodoxy’s apparent denial of
original guilt and its reticence toward legal cat-
egories cannot help but lead to a denial of the
imputation of Christ’s righteousness, or “jus-
tification.” Orthodox theologians frequently
dismiss the entire discussion of justification as a
Western debate, although it was the debate at the
heart of Jesus’ controversy with the Pharisees,
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
of Paul’s controversy with the Galatians, and
the writer of the book of Hebrews’ controversy
with the Judaizers. “The righteousness that is by
works” is set in opposition to “the righteousness
that is by faith,” not because works and faith are
opposed in the least, but because the righteous-
ness that God’s justice requires is found only in
Christ. It must be imputed, or credited—terms
that are of Pauline, not Protestant, origin.
At this point, proof-texts could be sent back
and forth, but Orthodox theologians will not
be likely to find ours appealing, since they do
not accept the motif these texts assume. For
instance, the gospel we find in Scripture (Luke
18:14) says that the believing tax collector (pub-
lican) went home justified once and for all,
rather than the Pharisee who had been trying
to attain righteousness by his own efforts (per-
haps even with the help of grace, since he does
thank God that he is not like the tax collector).
After demonstrating that the Old Testament
saints were justified through faith alone, Paul
announces, “But to him who does not work
but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is accounted for righteousness, just
as David also describes the blessedness of the
man to whom God imputes righteousness apart
from works” (Rom. 4:5–6 NKJV). Paul says that
a person is justified not when he ceases being
ungodly but while he or she is ungodly, and that
God imputes righteousness apart from works—
not apart from works alone or through works
that are performed in cooperation with God’s
grace, but by faith apart from works. We find
the same construction earlier in Romans:
But now the righteousness of God apart
from the law is revealed, being witnessed
by the Law and the Prophets, even the
righteousness of God which is through
faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who
believe. For there is no difference: for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God, being justified freely by His grace
through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propi-
tiation by his blood, through faith. (Rom.
3:21–25 NKJV)
19
A denial of this point is no small thing for the
apostles, as Paul relates in his distress:
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to
God for Israel is that they may be saved. For
I bear them witness that they have a zeal
for God, but not according to knowledge.
For they being ignorant of God’s righteous-
ness, and seeking to establish their own
righteousness, have not submitted to the
righteousness of God. For Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone
who believes. (Rom. 10:1–4 NKJV)
Just before, Paul had argued that salvation does
not “depend on man’s desire or effort, but on
God’s mercy” (Rom. 9:16), and later (ch. 11)
he will warn Gentile Christians that they must
not rely on their pedigree, since if the physi-
cal descendants of Abraham may be broken off
to make room for believing Gentiles, God will
certainly not fail to reject Gentiles who place
the least confidence in their own cooperation
with God.
Whether Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or
Protestant, we must all take this to heart. It is
trusting in Christ’s merit alone, not in our coop-
eration with grace, that we are justified. It is by
embracing the apostolic message, not tracing
one’s ministerial ancestry to the apostles, that a
person or a church is approved by God.
Discerning in these New Testament lines of
thought a clear distinction between law and
gospel—that which commands without prom-
ise or assistance and that which gives without
command or judgment—Reformation theology
observes in Orthodox theology a serious con-
fusion on this point. Despite the fact that the
Orthodox use the Greek New Testament (as well
as the Septuagint), Father Palachovsky cites
Acts 2:38 in its erroneous Vulgate translation:
14
“Do penance.” The Greek metanoeo (repent) is
transformed into the Latin command “Do pen-
ance,” and this leads to the same confusion of
justification and penitential merit one finds in
Roman Catholic soteriology. He distinguishes
between peccata leviora and peccata graviora,
the latter of which John apparently has in mind
20
when he says, “Whosoever has been born of God
15
does not sin” (1 John 3:9 NKJV).
Even Father Callinikos’s catechism asks, “On
what basis will Christ judge the world?” The
answer:
On the basis of His Gospel. Whosoever has
believed in it and has acted in accordance
with its dictates, will sit up on the right
hand of the Judge….Faith in Christ with-
out good works is not enough to save us.
Good works by themselves are also not suf-
ficient. Our salvation will be the outcome
of a virtuous life permeated and sealed by
the inestimable blood of the Only-begotten
16
Son of God.
C i t i n g Au g u s t i n e a p p r o v i n g l y, Fa t h e r
Palachovsky says that daily sins “may be cleansed
through (1) the recitation of the Miserere,
17
(2) almsgiving, and (3) fasting.”
Daniel Clendenin, who describes himself as
an evangelical student of Eastern Orthodoxy,
offers a sympathetic reading of this position:
Orthodox theologians contend that in the
West the doctrines of sin and salvation have
been unduly dominated by legal, juridical,
and forensic categories. These categories,
they insist, are not only overly negative and
alien to the spirit of Eastern Christianity,
but, when allowed to dominate are actual
distortions of the biblical message. Ernst
Benz suggests that this legal framework
predominates in Western thinking (both
Catholic and Protestant). He notes how the
apostle Paul [that great Western thinker!]
frames his Epistle to the Romans in terms
of divine law and justice, categories that
are perhaps taken from Roman civil law,
and that his idea of justification by faith
answers the question of how guilty people
can stand before a just God. Benz suggests
that the Catholic church especially, with
its doctrines of penance and indulgences,
its concepts of the church, the role of the
priest, and canon law, developed in this
[Paul’s?] legalistic direction. This accent
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 on legal concepts, in contrast to the idea
of mystical union, perpetuated in the East,
is seen by Orthodoxy as the “real issue that
unites the West theologically and divides it
18
from the East."

Clendenin correctly notes that this is irrecon-

cilable with the position of the Reformers:

In his Institutes Calvin described justi-

fication by faith as “the hinge on which
all true religion turns,” and in his precise
definition of the doctrine he compares it
to an acquittal in the courts of divine jus-
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE, tice: “just as a man, deemed innocent by an
impartial judge, is said to be justified, so a
BOTH ORTHODOX AND sinner is said to be justified by God when he
ROMAN CATHOLIC asserts his righteousness.” In the history of
Orthodox theology, on the other hand, it is
THEOLOGIES TEND TO startling to observe the near total absence
of any mention of the idea of justification
COLLAPSE ONTOLOGICAL AND by faith.
19

ETHICAL CATEGORIES—
Clendenin goes on to suggest that we need to
THE EAST IN A PREFERENCE balance Orthodoxy’s emphasis on mystical
20
union and Protestantism’s forensic emphasis.
FOR GOOD CREATION It is true that a genuinely Pauline theology will
OVERWHELMING SIN, WHILE emphasize both mystical union and the “sum-
ming up” of all things in Christ on the one hand,
THE WEST TILTED and individual justification and reconciliation
on the other. However, how one relates the two
TOWARD CONFUSING SIN is all-important. Any view of union and recapit-
WITH CREATION. ulation that denies that the sole basis for divine
acceptance of sinners is the righteousness of
Christ and that the sole means of receiving
that righteousness is imputation through faith
alone apart from works is a denial of the gospel.
Calvin especially had a developed doctrine of
mystical union with Christ, and it was in fact
central to his thought, linking justification and
sanctification in an inseparable bond, as both
depended on Christ and all his benefits.
I wonder what our Orthodox interlocutors
would make of the following conclusion: From
my perspective, both Orthodox and Roman
Catholic theologies tend to collapse ontological
and ethical categories—the East in a preference
for good creation overwhelming sin, while the

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
21
West tilted toward confusing sin with creation.
It seems to me that the Pauline line of thought
in particular presses us to distinguish ontologi-
cal and ethical categories without either setting
them in opposition or allowing one side to swal-
low the other whole. To be sure, God made the
world and pronounced it good. Nothing evil
can be attributed to nature as nature. And yet,
Western theology is correct to recognize that
sin has become an inherited part of human
existence. By clearly distinguishing the onto-
logical goodness of nature from the ethical
depravity that makes the attainment of sal-
vation impossible even for the most morally
committed, one is able to uphold the integrity
of creation and its consummation on one hand
while doing justice to the imputation of guilt
that leads to death on the other. In this way,
both a subtle form of Manichaeism on one hand
and a subtle form of Semi-Pelagianism on the
other can be avoided.
In The Philokalia, Clendenin recognizes “a
very clear synergism or cooperation between
21
the grace of God and human effort.” But
Clendenin simply takes this as a restatement
of James: “Thus, faith without works and works
22
without faith are equally rejected.” A further
concession is made, one that could easily be
made by an Arminian Protestant who shares
the Orthodox understanding of synergism (i.e.,
regeneration as the fruit of free will’s coopera-
tion with grace): “The Orthodox emphasis on
the importance of the human response toward
the grace of God, which as the same time clearly
rejects salvation by works, is a healthy synergis-
tic antidote to any antinomian tendencies that
might result from (distorted) juridical under-
23
standings of salvation.”
I include this because it seems to me that
Clendenin’s approach is typical of many
evangelical responses to both Orthodoxy and
Roman Catholicism. “Balance” would suggest
neither Pelagian denial of grace nor what he
calls an “antinomian” rejection of synergism.
However, this seems to me to be wrong on two
counts. First, it is simplistic. Reformation
theology emphasizes “the importance of the
human response toward the grace of God” just as
22
vigorously as any, while denying what Clendenin
regards as “a healthy synergistic antidote to
any antinomian tendencies.” Synergism, in
our reading of Scripture, is never healthy, and
as an antidote to antinomian tendencies it can
only prove to be a cure worse than the disease.
In fairness, Clendenin does encourage the
Orthodox not to dismiss such biblical motifs
as justification by faith as Augustinian corrup-
24
tions. However, to miss these biblical motifs is
not merely to leave out a few pieces of the puzzle
but is to make the puzzle into something else
entirely. Orthodoxy has many healthy empha-
ses, but its denial of the full seriousness of sin
and its consequently high appreciation for the
possibilities of free will keep it from recognizing
the heart of the gospel.
SANCTIFICATION
I
f antinomianism is what one calls being
freely justified (declared righteous, not
made righteous) once and for all the
moment one looks away from oneself to
Christ and his merit as sufficient for all sins for
all time, then I confess to being an antinomian.
But, of course, classic Reformation teaching
has always affirmed sanctification—the pro-
cess of being conformed to Christ’s likeness.
Reformation theology has drunk deeply from
the same wisdom as the Christian East on this
reality of the new creation and the renewal
that even now is taking believers “from glory
to glory.” But it has opposed every tendency to
confuse justification and sanctification, ren-
dering the former the goal of the latter rather
than its basis.
John Meyendorff provides a helpful explana-
tion of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis that, I
would argue, can be understood in a manner
consistent with evangelical theology:
The man Jesus is God hypostatically, and,
therefore, in Him there is a “communica-
tion” (perichoresis—circumincessio) of
the “energies” divine and human. This
“communication” also reaches those who
are “in Christ.” But they, of course, are
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 human hypostases, and are united to God
not hypostatically but only “by grace” or
25
“by energy.”
In fact, Meyendorff clearly distinguishes the
Orthodox view from Pelagianism, but then
he reiterates the synergistic perspective that
remains at the heart of the debate between
Reformation theology and its rivals:
It is not through his own activity or
“energy” that man can be deified—this
would be Pelagianism—but by divine
“energy,” to which his human activity is
“obedient”; between the two there is a
“synergy,” of which the relation of the two
26
energies in Christ is the ontological basis.
In spite of his repudiation of Pelagianism,
Meyendorff confirms our suspicion that
Orthodoxy reflects a Semi-Pelagian con-
sensus. Although it will sound like a gross
oversimplification, many of us will regard
this as a difference—although an important
one—of degree. To what extent can humans
be said to contribute to their own salvation?
Pelagians answer, “Entirely”; Semi-Pelagians
say, “In part.“ Neither of these answers, from
a classic evangelical perspective, does justice
to the biblical account of sin; nor does either
give the comfort that is held out to us in “the
good news.”
CONCLUSION
T
he treasure that the church carries
in earthen vessels is the gospel—the
announcement that God has done for
us in Christ that which we could never
do for ourselves, even with his help. This is
all we have at the end of the day, and without
it our ancient pedigree and customs, liturgies
and rites, ecclesiastical offices and powers,
are worthless. Is it possible that Orthodoxy
has, like the recipients of the epistle to the
Hebrews, turned—even so soon—from the suf-
ficiency of Christ and his eternal priesthood to
return to the shadows of the law and its temporal
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
priesthood that could never and can never take
away sin? 
MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor
of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster
Seminary California in Escondido.
The above excerpt is adapted from “Are Eastern Orthodoxy
and Evangelicalism Compatible? No” by Michael Horton,
taken from Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evan-
gelicalism Copyright © 2004 by James J. Stamoolis. Used
by kind permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.
1 V. Palachovsky and C. Vogel, Sin in the Orthodox Church and in the
Protestant Churches (n.p.: Desclee, 1960), 31, 35.
2 Cf. Saint Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh et al. (New
York: Image Books, 1958), bk. 12, chs. 3–5.
3 Saint Augustine, bk. 13, chs. 13–16. See also Saint Augustine,
Confessions, bk. 1, chap. 7; bk. 21, chap. 27.
4 Constantine N. Tsirpanlis, Introduction to Eastern Patristic Thought
and Orthodox Theology (n.p.: Michael Glazier Books, 1990), 52.
5 Tsirpanlis, 145.
6 Tsirpanlis, 146.
7 See Richard Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption (Phillipsburg, NJ:
P&R, 1978).
8 Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox
Theology, trans. Keith Schram (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991),
111–13.
9 Yannaras, 113.
10 Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” 544.
11 Irenaeus, 499.
12 Irenaeus, 500.
13 Cf. Meredith G. Kline, The Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant
Structure of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963).
14 See Palachovsky and Vogel, 14.
15 Palachovsky and Vogel, 16.
16 Constantine N. Callinikos, The Greek Orthodox Catechism: A Manual
of Instruction on Faith, Morals and Worship (n.p.: Greek Archdiocese
of No. and So. America, 1960), 31.
17 Palachovsky and Vogel, 47.
18 Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western
Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 122.
19 Clendenin, 123.
20 Clendenin 124.
21 Clendenin, 135. The Philokalia is a collection of texts written
between the fourth and fifteenth centuries by spiritual masters of
the Orthodox Christian tradition. First published in Greek in 1782
and translated into Slavonic and later into Russian, The Philokalia
has exercised a greater influence than any book other than the Bible
in the recent history of the Orthodox Church.
22 Clendenin, 136.
23 Clendenin, 158.
24 Clendenin, 158.
25 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and
Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), 164.
26 Meyendorff, 164.
23
by MICHAEL BROWN

illustration by  ISABEL SELIGER

24
 hy are people leaving Reformed

W churches for Eastern Orthodox

churches? While there have always
been some who have left Protestant
churches to be received (chrismated) into
Eastern Orthodoxy (EO), significant cultural
differences have generally prevented it from
being a significant draw to Protestant “search-
ers.” With the advent of a distinctly American
flavor of EO found in the Antiochian Orthodox
Christian Archdiocese of North America and
the Orthodox Church in America, and the influ-
ence of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological
Seminary in New York, many are being drawn
to EO who evidently had a limited familiarity
and access before.
In the 1960s and ’70s, a large number of evan-
gelicals left Campus Crusade for Christ and

DRIFTING
founded a movement called the New Covenant
Apostolic Order. Those who belonged to this
movement had spent significant time reading

EAST the early church fathers in an effort to discover

the New Testament church. They came to the
conclusion that EO was that church, and in
coming years, large numbers of pastors and
laypeople were received into that fellowship.
Peter Gillquist spearheaded a publishing effort
A Pastoral Approach
to teach Protestants about EO, resulting in a
to Christians steady stream of converts who now saw EO as
Considering Conversion a way to participate in an ancient faith without
1
the trappings of the Roman Catholic Church.
Generally, there are three categories of reasons
why people join Eastern Orthodox churches:
mystery, history, and beauty.

ATTRACTED TO MYSTERY
O worship is described as participa-

E
tion in and expression of fund-
amental unknowable realities: the
Trinity, the incarnation, Creation,
2
the sacraments, and the church. For many con-
verts to EO, a main draw is the idea that EO
worship (and even theological formulations)
supremely reflects these mysteries, especially
in contrast to Western Protestantism.
Many who have left for EO would say that
the West is more focused on talking about God

25
rather than actually experiencing, loving, and
serving him. They perceive a conflict between an
attempt to define, explain, and codify God and
to revel mystically in the unknown. Many EO
convert stories highlight being carried away in
some aspect of beauty, mystery, or experience,
rather than having a question answered; they
may speak less of finding some elusive answer
in EO theology, and more of being soothed out
of existential angst by the EO experience. They
speak of being alive to possibility, of being lost
in spectacle and grandeur as they see, hear, and
touch, in contrast to the stagnancy they felt in
a bland or shallow Western religious program.
They speak of finding the West’s dogmatic asser-
tions unsatisfying and lacking, the product of
callously spouted answers and touted systems
that swallow up purity, piety, and humility.
MYSTERY: KNOWING
THROUGH NOT KNOWING
or EO, mystical experience is an
F
ascent toward God—an experience
that surpasses all human under-
standing, and an existential attitude
that involves the whole being. One implication
of this is that knowing begins in prayer, in lit-
urgy, in sacraments, as opposed to starting with,
as is said to characterize the Reformed and
Western church, a preoccupation with mere
rationalistic constructs.
Thus in EO, the beginning place of knowing
is, ironically, in unknowing. Central to EO is
the idea of apophaticism, a way of knowing in
which one knows God primarily through mysti-
cal contemplation, rather than through positive
propositions or intellectual activities. It is an
emptying of the mind of logic and engaging in
prayer in one’s ignorance. The goal is not knowl-
edge but union with the Triune God, what EO calls
deification. This negative way of apophaticism
is the only way to open the door to a legitimate
positive way of cataphaticism (a way of saying
something positive about God). Denials, or nega-
tions, are the beginning point of EO theology,
and everything else is God (as displayed by the
negations of the central Athanasian Creed and
26
by descriptors of God, such as ineffable, incom-
prehensible, invisible, and inconceivable).
Protestants are said to give lip service to God’s
incomprehensibility, but then they compromise
it via their theological systems, confessions, and
philosophies when they explain that which was
just confessed as incomprehensible. Vladimir
Lossky says:
We must live the dogma expressing a
revealed truth, which appears to us as an
unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion
that instead of assimilating the mystery to
our mode of understanding, we should, on
the contrary, look for a profound change,
and inner transformation of spirit,
enabling us to experience it mystically. Far
from being mutually opposed, theology
and mysticism support and complete each
other…there is, therefore, no Christian
mysticism without theology; but, above all,
there is no theology without mysticism….
Mysticism is…the perfecting and crown of
3
all theology: as theology par excellence.
SOME REFORMED THOUGHTS ON MYSTERY
s human beings created in the image
A of God, we are more than thinking
4
beings. It would not surprise us
that many of our friends attracted
to EO will need more deliberate, patient, per-
sonal, holistic (body and soul) care. This is the
care, after all, that the Father gives us. We can
model and teach holistic piety in the way we
5
interact in church and in the world.
To provide this care would first be to ensure
that our own local churches’ love and commu-
nion extend beyond the walls of the church on
the Lord’s Day. Thoughtful, intentional, and
sacrificial seeking to love and serve one another
daily is our calling. The phrase “They will know
we are Christians by our love” is not just a plati-
tude but a calling, a privilege, a responsibility, a
participation in the life of God and his people.
If we wish to minister most effectively to those
believing that EO is a more desirable place to
experience the mysteries of the Christian life,
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
then let us spend time with one another, weep-
ing with those who weep, rejoicing with those
who rejoice, chasing after the wandering, bind-
ing up the wounded, bearing with one another,
and by the Spirit serving and loving one another
6
as God the Father loves and serves us in Christ.
It behooves us to examine ourselves in light of
God’s word to see if we sound like the noisy gongs
7
and clanging cymbals that lack love.
But alongside living in caring community and
ministering to the whole person the entire week,
it will likely be helpful to review and affirm some
of our thoughts on the broad concept of “mys-
tery,” including the following:
• We, in fact, take pains to express the pre-
ponderance of mystery, as evidenced by
the over twenty times we refer to it in
the Belgic Confession, especially with
regard to the Trinity, the incarnation,
the church, the Lord’s Supper, God’s will,
8
election, and regeneration.
• The Holy Spirit shapes faith by institu-
tion and ritual, as well as by intellectual
explanation and assent. The church is
important for faith, life, practice, and
piety; indeed, outside of her there is no
salvation. The sacraments (at least the
two instituted by Christ) are far more
than bare signs but effectual means of
grace. Extraordinary things are happen-
ing through ordinary means.
• The ecumenical creeds and confessions of
the church are not merely lists of things
to which we subscribe, but lively words
forming our liturgical lives in union with
our Triune God and his people. We stand
before God in awe, and he dwells within
us. We are not just talking about God,
but we are talking to him and with him
and because of him—given that in him
we live and move and have our being, and
the Spirit of Christ dwells within us.
• Though there is much to be recognized
as mystery, there is much that the Lord
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
has revealed. Certainly there are things
beyond our comprehension as finite
creatures, but that does not undermine
the fact that there are things we know
and can know as God has revealed him-
self in nature, in his word, and in his Son.
Scripture itself makes this distinction
between the revealed and hidden things
(Deut. 29:29). The incarnation, the real-
ity of which is inaccessible to us in great
and many ways, is that the Eternal Word
became flesh and dwelt among us. We only
know in part, yes, but we do know! And
while knowledge for knowledge’s sake may
be problematic, and speculation is idola-
trous, the Lord never prizes ignorance.
To say that we cannot know something
fully is not to say that we do not know it
9
meaningfully or sufficiently. What God
has said to us, we must learn.
HISTORY
nother major contributing factor in
A Protestant conversion to EO is the
allure of antiquity. EO claims to be
the original Christian church
founded by Jesus, with liturgy, doctrine, and
government that has remained unchanged since
the days of the apostles.
In the first place, EO contends that its worship
has not changed since the days of the apostles.
They claim that the Divine Liturgy “was in prac-
tice right after the descent of the Holy Spirit
th
on the Disciples of Christ on the 50 day after
10
His Resurrection.” While they admit that the
Divine Liturgy saw subsequent development
and did not take its final form until the fourth
century, they maintain that the basic structure
of their worship has not changed since the early
church. As one Orthodox monk put it, “You
have to understand, the words we are saying in
today’s liturgy are the same words that Christ
was saying, the same words that saints from the
first century, the second century, the third cen-
11
tury, the fourth century [were saying].” Unlike
American evangelicalism that undergoes con-
stant updates and changes in its musical and
27
liturgical styles, the Divine Liturgy appears
to remain untouched by the passing fads and
whims of popular culture.
Second, while EO describes itself more as a
way of life than a system of belief, it neverthe-
less claims to represent the unbroken succession
of apostolic Christianity in its doctrine, which is
summarized in the seven Ecumenical Councils
(Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus
in 431, Chalcedon in 451, Constantinople in 553,
Constantinople II in 681, and Nicaea II in 787)
12
and their respective creeds and canons. For the
Orthodox Church, these ecumenical councils
constitute its confession. In addition to the seven
ecumenical councils, EO recognizes as authori-
tative the writings of the early church fathers.
This is “for guidance in questions of faith, for the
correct understanding of Sacred Scripture, and
in order to distinguish the authentic Tradition of
13
the Church from false teachings.”
Finally, EO offers connectivity to the ancient
church in its government through its claim of
an unbroken succession from the apostles to
the current bishops of the Orthodox Church.
EO has three tiers of church hierarchy in its
government: bishops, presbyters, and deacons.
These offices, EO claims, have direct lineage to
the apostles—that is, the men who serve in these
offices today were ordained by men who were
ordained by men (and so on), all the way back to
the apostles. Without this apostolic succession,
says Orthodoxy, a church is not a true church:
“The succession from the Apostles and the
uninterruptedness of the episcopacy comprise
one of the essential sides of the Church. And,
on the contrary: the absence of the succession
of the episcopacy in one or another Christian
denomination deprives it of an attribute of the
true Church, even if in it there is present an
14
undistorted dogmatic teaching.”
A CRITIQUE OF ORTHODOXY’S
HISTORICAL CLAIMS
s it true that EO represents the
I unbroken chain of apostolic
Christianity in its worship, doc-
trine, and government? How should
28
we as Reformed Christians respond to these
claims? The notion that the Divine Liturgy has
been in place since the days of the apostles is
misleading and grossly oversimplified. The
nearest example in the New Testament of an
apostolic liturgy is found in Acts 2.42: “And
they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teach-
ing and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread
and the prayers.” But this, of course, is not a
liturgy; rather, it describes the four main ele-
ments present in the weekly worship of the
apostolic church: word, fellowship, sacra-
ments, and the prayers (which include the
singing of Psalms and hymns). Likewise, the
most reliable documents from the post-apos-
tolic early church, such as the Didache (c.
second century) and Justin Martyr’s First
Apology (c. 155–157), provide us with evidence
that worship in the ancient church consisted
of Scripture reading, preaching, singing, the
Lord’s Prayer, and weekly Communion. These,
however, show no signs of looking identical to
the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church. In
fact, the oldest surviving liturgy in use by EO
today is the “Liturgy of St. James,” which dates
no earlier than the fourth century. EO’s claim
that its liturgy has remained unchanged since
the days of the apostles is unsubstantiated and
overstated.
Turning to EO’s claim to represent the unbro-
ken chain of apostolic doctrine, we make two
brief observations. First, EO’s claim works
only if one accepts the Orthodox notion of the
church’s infallibility and, specifically, that the
canons and decrees of the ecumenical councils
15
are infallible. If the canons and decrees of the
ecumenical councils are infallible, as EO claims,
then they possess the same weight and authority
as Scripture. On the other hand, if the church
and its various councils are fallible, then it is
possible that the church has erred in its rulings
from time to time since the days of the apostles.
We believe, as the Westminster Confession of
Faith states, that “all synods or councils, since
the Apostles’ times, whether general or particu-
lar, may err; and many have erred. Therefore
they are not to be made the rule of faith or prac-
16
tice; but to be used as a help in both.”
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 Second, we point out that essential Christian
doctrine is not limited to the seven ecumenical
councils of the ancient church. While we agree
that there exists a “catholic consciousness” in
the ancient creeds, confirming “a number of the
fundamental truths” of Christianity, we also rec-
ognize that the history of the Christian church
continued after the eighth century, giving rise
to crucial questions and debates that required
more clarity than the canons and decrees of the
ecumenical councils provide.
Finally, we respond briefly to EO’s claim to
apostolic succession in its government—that
is, that their current bishops have a direct lin-
eage to the apostles. While such a claim is in
itself dubious, even if it could be proven, it is
no ground for the believer’s confidence that EO
The true apostolic has preserved the truth over the past two mil-
succession is not
17
lennia. As Michael Horton states,

one of men but of Orthodoxy’s appeal to a direct line to the

apostolic ministry— apostles is surely no greater ground for
confidence than that which the Galatian
ministry of the churches could have claimed. Yet they
word of God, were wrong. It is on the basis of the apos-
tle’s own rebukes that we know they were
which alone is the wrong, and that their lofty place in the
final authority for the history of the church could not save them
from the apostle’s anathema.
18

Christian’s faith
and life. In other words, if the apostolic church itself
was fraught with problems and sometimes
deviated from the truth, how does EO’s claim
to apostolic succession of its bishops give us
confidence that the truth has been preserved
pristinely over the centuries? The true apos-
tolic succession is not one of men but of
apostolic ministry—ministry of the word of
God, which alone is the final authority for the
Christian’s faith and life.

The treasure that the church carries

in earthen vessels is the gospel—the
announcement that God has done for us
in Christ that which we could never do for
ourselves, even with his help. This is all we
have at the end of the day, and without it
our ancient pedigree and customs, liturgies

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
29
 Beauty is therefore
pursued not simply
for subjective
experiences of
delight, but because
to gaze upon beauty
is to gaze upon God’s
own beauty revealed
in creation. I L L U S T R AT I O N / P H O T O B Y N A M E H E R E

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

30
 and rites, ecclesiastical offices and powers,
are worthless.19
It is not upon an apostolic succession of men
that Christ has built his church, but upon the
gospel that the apostles proclaimed.
BEAUTY
eauty is another category that has
B been a factor in people’s embrace of
EO. Some conver ts to EO have
become frustrated with the lack of
beauty in many Protestant worship services. For
example, note the following:
I never understood why Old Testament
worship utilized all the senses, and then
suddenly we get a new and better covenant
(Heb. 8:6) and switch to plain white walls
free of any symbolism. Orthodox people
taste, touch, see, hear, and smell virtually
everything! Orthodoxy is exceedingly beau-
tiful. Worship is beautiful in Orthodoxy, as
it should be. And every detail of worship is
carefully designed for the honor and glory
of God—from the way we sing to the images
that adorn our walls to the vestments of the
20
clergy.
Since a hallmark of Reformed churches since
the Reformation has been simplicity of wor-
ship, and since Reformed church décor is often
designed to minimize distraction from the
preached word, converts like the one just cited
describe their transition as one from worship
that is ugly and bland to worship that is beauti-
ful and vibrant.
HOW EO APPEARS TO PROVIDE BEAUTY
ne reason EO has such a sensory
O approach to worship is because it
emphasizes both ontology and escha-
tology when describing beauty. First
of all, ontology (i.e., being, existence) comes into
play in the belief that the cosmos is designed to
reflect God’s own beauty. EO theologian Andrew
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
Louth explains: “We see a created order of beings
both visible and invisible, a creation which,
because created out of nothing, manifests noth-
ing but God himself, for the whole created order
is to be seen as a theophany, a manifestation of
21
God, indeed a manifestation of God’s beauty.”
Beauty is therefore pursued not simply for sub-
jective experiences of delight, but because to gaze
upon beauty is to gaze upon God’s own beauty
revealed in creation. Indeed, the very layout of
EO worship spaces is intended to be a model or
reflection of the entire cosmos.
22
Second, eschatology comes into play as the
beauty of worship especially reflects God’s rev-
elation of beauty as it exists in the eschaton.
The idea of the age to come breaking in on the
present age is not a category wholly foreign
to Reformed theology. After all, we regularly
speak of the already/not-yet and recognize the
in-breaking of the kingdom of God in Jesus’
23
miracles. Orthodoxy, however, tends toward
an over-realized eschatology, attempting to pull
more and more of the age to come into the pres-
ent in worship. Furthermore, this eschatological
distinction is even conceived in terms of an
ontological or metaphysical movement toward
24
“being.” For example, Leonid Ouspensky,
a famous Russian Orthodox iconographer,
speaks of those in glory (the saints) as more fully
human than sinners because they have “put on
the incorruptible beauty of the kingdom of God.”
He continues:
For this reason beauty, as it is understood
by the Orthodox Church, is not the charac-
teristic beauty of a creature. It is a part of
the life to come, when God will be all in all.…
For the church…the value and beauty of the
visible world lie not in the temporary splen-
dor of its present state, but in its potential
transformation, realized by humans. In
other words, true beauty is the radiance of
the Holy Spirit, the holiness of and partici-
pation in the life of the world to come.
25
Again, there is validity in speaking of the glory
of the age to come breaking in on the present,
but glorification is not the same as Plato’s pure
31
being. The beauty of the age to come is consum-
mate beauty, to be sure, but EO’s handling of this
beauty using the language of being and ontology
ups the ante, as it were, concerning what hap-
pens in worship. If in worship the worshipper
experiences nothing less than the age to come
manifesting a beauty that is more real than the
present, then it is no wonder that worship is so
geared toward sensory experience.
BEAUTY IN SCRIPTURE
AND THE REFORMATION
cripture speaks regularly of beauty,
S although it does not do so in a philo-
sophical and analytic direction.
“Instead the biblical writers are
content with beauty as a general artistic qual-
ity denoting the positive response of a person
26
to nature, a person or an artifact.” It is true
that God’s creation is beautiful; the fruit of the
tree was “a delight to the eyes” (Gen 3:6) and
the various results of God’s creative acts were
declared “good” or “very good.” And the beauty
of this world does seem to direct our attention
to a “beauty that is more permanent and tran-
27
scendent than anything this life can give.” Yet
beauty in Scripture is not only an aesthetic
quality but also a spiritual response to the
beauty of God.
It is also true that Scripture does describe God
himself as beautiful. David desires to enter God’s
presence to “behold the beauty of the Lord”
(Ps. 27:4). The psalmist notes that God made
the heavens and that “splendor and majesty
are before him; strength and beauty are in his
sanctuary” (Ps. 96:6). But it is noteworthy that,
in the Old Testament, beauty is frequently used
as a synonym for glory, majesty, splendor, and
28
pleasantness. Yahweh in his glory and Jesus
in his transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–8; Mark
9:2–8; Luke 9:28–36; cf. 2 Pet. 1:16–17) and
his appearance among the seven lamp stands
(Rev. 1:12–16) equally depict the beauty of God’s
29
holy array. Thus, while beauty is predicated
on God and while there is an appropriateness
to speaking of his beauty in aesthetic terms,
the ontological and eschatological language
32
used in EO descriptions of beauty seems to go
beyond Scripture’s intent, reflecting ideas more
Platonic than biblical. Nevertheless, the Bible
assumes that beauty is praiseworthy and good,
that beauty found in this world is a reflection of
God’s perfect beauty, and the artisanship found
throughout Scripture’s pages is even attributed
to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (e.g., Exod.
31:1–11). The pursuit of and delight in beauty by
humans should be seen as a natural outworking
of this very truth.
Is the character of EO worship truly beautiful
vis-à-vis Protestant worship? No. The only way
converts can downplay the beauty of Protestant
worship is by judging Protestant worship by one’s
tastes for Byzantine artistic culture. Though
some claim that the simplicity of Protestant wor-
ship is “boring” (i.e., lacking beauty/aesthetics
and so on), Darryl Hart and John Muether offer
an important response: “The real question…is…
how did Reformed and Presbyterian churches
come to a point where members sometimes per-
ceive preaching, the sacraments, prayer, song,
30
Bible reading, and benedictions as boring?”
Indeed, how did they? We suggest that the prob-
lem is not with Protestant worship but with the
overly narrow tastes that have been cultivated
by converts to EO. A scenario, offered by John
Witvliet, is illustrative:
On a Sunday in Advent, the Kyrie and
Gloria are sung by a choir of developmen-
tally and physically disabled children. The
Old Testament lectionary reading is from
Isaiah 35. Their singing, by any standard
measure, lacks aesthetic integrity—it is
unrhythmic and out of tune. Yet here a
powerful symbiosis of social factors (per-
sonal knowledge of individual choristers)
and theological factors (the vivid and hope-
filled eschatological theme of Isaiah 35)
transform the aesthetic dimension of the
choir’s contribution into a rich, kingdom-
31
oriented liturgical experience.
There are indeed times when Protestant wor-
ship is done sloppily and lazily. But it is crucial
to remember that the broken and contrite heart
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

E X I T T O EAST E R N O RT H O D OX Y
I
grew up in a fun-
damentalist “Bible
church” that loved
God and had a clear
desire to serve him, but I
questioned why my church
was so isolated from other
Christians. By the time
I graduated from high
school, I found something
in the more historical faith
of Reformed Presbyterian-
ism, but I still wondered
what exactly transpired
between the first century
AD and 1517.
During my first year of
college, I attended a
Reformed Church on Sun-
day mornings and a Roman
Catholic Church on Sunday
evenings. My theology was
still Reformed, but I longed
for rich, liturgical worship
saturated in Scripture. A
year later, I encountered
Eastern Orthodoxy and
knew immediately that was
where I belonged. General
dissatisfaction with evan-
gelicalism led me to search
for the historic church of
liturgy and sacraments.
And while Reformed
Christianity sometimes has
these elements, I found the
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
fullness of them only within
the Orthodox Church.
Protestantism’s narrative
of church history left me
dissatisfied. In particular,
what happened between
the first-century church
and the dawn of the
Reformation? Evangelicals
essentially told me that
the Christian church fell
into heresy right away and
did not recover until years
later when Martin Luther
rescued the faith from the
hands of Roman Catholi-
cism. Although Reformed
thinking is more generous
to the early church, it still
takes significant pause at
what transpired between
Jerusalem and Geneva.
Orthodoxy claims that the
church has been here all
along, unchanged, and still
relevant. Orthodoxy is both
“right belief” and “right
worship” in the context
of apostolic succession.
In other words, someone
has to preserve the faith
(duly ordained bishops),
and the right faith must
be preserved (Orthodoxy).
Christ promised to build
his church (singular), “and
the gates of hell will not
prevail against it.”
Evangelical and Reformed
Christianity left me dis-
satisfied by their liturgy.
All churches inescapably
have a liturgy, but many
evangelicals say that
formal liturgical worship
is “canned,” “dry,” or
pharisaical. The Orthodox
Church worships together
in beauty and holiness, and
I was drawn to it. Because
liturgy is rooted in the
incarnation, we worship
God with our whole being:
body, mind, and soul.
Anyone who has attended
an Orthodox service
can speak of the holistic
worship: incense, icons,
vestments, chants, and
prostrations.
Finally, evangelicalism
left me dissatisfied by its
sacraments where there is
little to no recognition of
the elements as physical
vehicles of grace, and
Communion is celebrated
more as a memorial service
than as the life-giving
bread and wine. Orthodoxy
BY ALISON
SAILER
understands that all of life
is a sacrament in Christ
who fills life itself with
the Holy Spirit. Ortho-
doxy is centered on one
sacrament, “the Eucharist,”
which is the “sacrament
of sacraments” and the
heavenly banquet of the
kingdom of God. In Holy
Communion we partake
of the body and blood
of Christ, the Eternal
Passover Lamb who makes
us alive and holy with
himself. This is why we
worship, and this is why
I transitioned from evan-
gelicalism into the fullness
of the faith of Christian
Orthodoxy. 
ALISON SAILER is a board
certified music therapist
practicing in South Florida.
She attends Saint Herman
of Alaska Orthodox Church
in Lake Worth.
This article originally
appeared in the March/
April 2012 issue of Modern
Reformation.
33
renders something to God in worship more
beautiful than any external adornments that
meet any number of cultural aesthetic norms.
A KINDER, GENTLER GOSPEL?
rthodox converts regularly speak of
O a fuller, broader understanding of
the gospel in Orthodoxy than is typi-
cally believed and taught in
Protestant churches. Protestants are accused of
“gospel reductionism”:
In the Holy Scripture and in the Holy
Fathers salvation is a grand accomplish-
ment with innumerable facets, a great and
expansive deliverance of humanity from
all of its enemies: sin, condemnation, the
wrath of God, the devil and his demons, the
world, and ultimately death. In Protestant
teaching and practice, salvation is essen-
32
tially a deliverance from the wrath of God.
Some Orthodox converts say that as a result of
this broader understanding, they experience
an increased joy in their salvation, draw greater
encouragement from it, and find more gospel
power for holy living. This better experience is
a result, they may argue, of Orthodoxy subju-
gating the primary, dominant salvific image in
Protestantism (i.e., the Divine Judge acquitting
criminals in the courtroom) to the image of the
divine doctor healing the sick in the hospital. This
offers some degree of relief from the angst of what
they would probably characterize as an errant or
imbalanced understanding of God’s wrath.
We readily admit that the proclamation of
these broader elements of redemption may be
inappropriately neglected, not only in churches
that indeed have a narrow view of gospel bless-
ings, but even in churches that explicitly
confess a rich and broad understanding of the
gospel. Preaching and liturgy absent of com-
municating the Lord’s victory through Christ
over all of humanity’s enemies is surely defi-
cient, and we do well to be self-critical if we
have lapsed into such an imbalance. Rounded
preaching and worship includes the gospel
34
themes of restoration from ruin, repair of bro-
kenness, victory over Satan, glorification, and
the like. And certainly there can be too much
law and not enough gospel in our liturgy and
preaching, distorting our people’s understand-
ing of God’s character.
It seems, however, that the substantive dis-
agreement here is not over how broad a range
of gospel blessings are believed and taught, but
over the doctrine of justification itself, and most
of all whether that doctrine’s basic “courtroom
model” elements should have a primary role in
the communication of the broad gospel bless-
ings. We are compelled to answer this question
by asking: In what framework and model, and
in what balance or emphasis, do the Scriptures
communicate the fullness of gospel blessings?
Not without other frameworks, yes, but the
Scriptures in fact weigh heavily toward the
image of the Divine Judge acquitting criminals
in the courtroom. This is the image that perme-
ates Scripture: sin as the cause of the wrathful
curse, and of Christ who comes to die to atone
for the debt of that sin. The Lord levies the hor-
rific curse in the garden in direct response to
man’s idolatry and straightaway announces
the bruising of the Seed for the crushing of
the Serpent; his law at Sinai even anticipates
Israel’s unthinkable gross apostasy for which
he will drive them into onerous exile, and insti-
tutes the sacrificial system where only smelly,
bloody slaughter brings forgiveness; his proph-
ets explain at great length the gross sin of the
people as the cause of his severe judgments,
and that their only hope for reconciliation will
come through the unjust spurning, crushing of
an obedient Son; Jesus himself speaks force-
fully of the wrath to come, and in the gospels
increasingly reveals the driving purpose of his
death, to pay the ransom debt; and, of course,
Paul directly systematizes the longstanding jus-
tification theme.
So if what attracts someone to Orthodoxy is
that the chief biblical structure of the gospel’s
communication is relegated to the back burner,
such that the discomforts inevitably caused by
the chief structure get muted, the existential
relief may be delightful, but it is, to use the
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 metaphor from C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles
of Narnia, Turkish delight. 33 Christians can
and should learn to be comfortable with being
uncomfortable:

It is good that one should wait quietly for the

salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man
that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him
sit alone in silence when it is laid on him;
let him put his mouth in the dust….For the
Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he
cause grief, he will have compassion accord-
ing to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not afflict from his heart or
grieve the children of men. (Lam. 3:26–33)

As we ought regularly to struggle with and feel

some angst about our violations of God’s law (“a
Rounded preaching sense of this corruption should make believers
and worship often to sigh, desiring to be delivered from this
34
body of death” ), we flee to the atoning suffering
includes the gospel and death of Christ. This is a salve that is, let us
themes of restoration admit, unsettling but also beautiful.

from ruin, repair Practically, we are concerned that when

professing Christians flee to EO for a kinder,
of brokenness, gentler gospel, some take that path to evade
victory over Satan, accepting and confronting the horrific nature
and extent of their sin, and thereby cultivating a
glorification, and godly sorrow for it that leads to repentance. This
the like. path was opened to them, and such a journey
was encouraged in the Protestant churches they
have left. They may try to quiet the law working
on their conscience with EO religious exercises
and a gospel easier on the ears. Ironically, then,
this Orthodox critique of Protestantism’s sup-
posed gospel reductionism is akin to the modern
evangelical church’s pragmatism or its penchant
to adapt theology and practice primarily for its
value to fulfill people’s emotional, social, or
other perceived needs.
It is also worth offering some counsel to
those who (probably rooted intellectually in
the problem of evil and/or emotionally in per-
sonal experience of abuse at the hands of sinful
authority) are anxious about the biblical God
of wrath. Let us remember that the Lord, given
all we know about him, is worthy of our confi-
dence in his justice. He gave us his own Son, and

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
35
so though we may have some questions about
him and may at times be intimidated by him,
we have beheld enough of his love, peace, and
glory, to worship him, sense his love, and know
that one day we will enjoy full, soulful, peaceful
resonance with him.
HOW TO TALK TO THOSE
CONSIDERING EASTERN ORTHODOXY
irst, of paramount importance,
F while communicating with those in
our care who are anywhere along a
road considering EO, let us main-
tain intellectual honesty and humility. We
should feel free to admit the foreignness of
Orthodoxy to many of us rather than presum-
ing (under pressure) to speak hastily to it.
Those promoting Orthodoxy pounce on obvi-
ous mischaracterizations of their faith made
by their critics (e.g., when we conflate
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism), and we
easily lose credibility if we also become guilty
of mischaracterization. We expect that in the
long term, the care we take in patiently
responding to them may be every bit as impor-
tant as the substance of our answers to EO
claims. We should try to slow everyone down.
One man in our churches who left for EO was
introduced to it, “studied the matter on the
internet for three months,” and then left his
Reformed church of over ten years (without any
discussion or indication of such a move to any
pastor or elder). Not only should this man be
told that he moved hastily, but we ourselves
should model for him and others a slow, care-
ful, and thoughtful approach.
Second, let us be sensitive to the difficult life
situations of those who are considering EO. It
is quite possible that in someone’s home life
or in their church life they have become rest-
less for reasons technically unrelated to the
differences between EO and confessional
Protestantism. One man’s brash and offensive
character traced to his tremendously traumatic
life seems to have made him a religious vaga-
bond (EO may prove only to be a comfortable
stop along the road). In other cases, however,
36
peoples’ troubles rub up against the edges of
Reformed doctrine. There was a man in one
of our churches who was tormented by the
Reformed conception of God’s sovereignty
because of the suffering of a family member.
Somehow, he found relief on this point in EO.
In either situation, our normal work of loving
counseling and discipline, rebuking and com-
forting must be renewed so that, as much as
depends on us, the sheep do not compound
their sins with false religion or wander else-
where for false comforts.
Third, put together a short list of talking
points or questions about the core differences
between the Reformed faith and EO that can
structure otherwise open conversations with our
members about Orthodoxy. It is more important
to discuss sola scriptura versus conciliar infal-
libility, or iconoclasm versus the mandatory use
of icons, than it is to get lost in discussions about
every jot and tittle of EO tradition. And through
these discussions, we do well to be patient and
understanding (though also firm), as opposed
to being primarily adversarial.
Finally, while the person remains a member
of one of our local churches—if they are explor-
ing EO, reading, even attending an occasional
service—patience on our part is an excellent
virtue to exercise. As long as a person is not
given over to promoting beliefs and practices
inconsistent with their Reformed profession,
let us seek to extend as much latitude as pos-
sible. There is a difference between someone
who is genuinely curious and needs to think
through new challenges to their profession
without us standing over them and inquiring
at every turn, and someone who is spreading
newfound Orthodox convictions on their social
media page. In the latter case, admonition and
discipline must be considered. 
MICHAEL BROWN is pastor of Christ United Reformed
Church in Santee, California.
This is an abridged adaptation of Rev. Brown’s report to the
United Reformed Church of North America’s Study Com-
mittee on Eastern Orthodoxy and is reprinted here by kind
permission of the author. 
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
1 Peter Gillquist writes of his conversion in Becoming Orthodox: A
Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith, rev. ed. (Ben Lomond, CA:
Conciliar Press, 2010), and shares the conversion stories of eigh-
teen Protestant pastors in Coming Home: Why Protestant Clergy
are Becoming Orthodox, 2nd ed. (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press,
1995).
2 Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 1.
3 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 8–9.
4 For a useful discussion the breadth of the human person, a breadth
that goes beyond “cognitivist approaches” that reduce man to merely
a thinking being, see James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom:
Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2009). In places, Smith sounds as if he is minimizing the
importance of knowledge and cognition, but this is not his intent.
5 Those who believe the Reformation to be exclusively cerebral seem
to have paid insufficient attention to the Puritans whose writings
evidence a thorough and careful theology wedded to a deep and pas-
sionate piety and experience of faith. For a useful introduction to
Puritan writers, see Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet
the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints (Grand Rapids:
Reformation Heritage Books, 2006). Also, Joel R. Beeke and
Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids:
Reformation Heritage Books, 2012).
6 Daily household devotional reading and prayer, the regular exercise of
hospitality, and the development of local/regional household prayer
and fellowship gatherings would be ways to serve these purposes.
7 Wilhelmus à Brakel’s words on humility, meekness, and peaceable-
ness are commendable as we seek to avoid the pride and arrogance
that is often more true of us than we wish to admit. Wilhelmus à
Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans.
Bartel Elshout (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 1995),
4:67–101.
8 There is particular (and catholic) reflection on our experience of
that mystery, as represented by John Owen’s Of Communion with
God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Works 2:1–274), and applied
in Sinclair B. Ferguson’s The Trinitarian Devotion of John Owen
(Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2014).
9 See Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of
Knowledge for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press,
2003). As this unknowable/knowable discussion applies to the
essence/energies distinction, consider Michael Horton’s adapta-
tions in The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims
on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 129–31, 159–
60, 612–13, and critical interactions with them; for example,
Ryan M. McGraw, “Shifting Paradigms in Reformed Systematic
Theology: A Review Article of Michael Horton’s The Christian Faith:
A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way,” Puritan Reformed
Journal 5:2 (July 2013): 250–54.
10 This is according to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. See
George Mastrantonis, “Introduction to the Divine Liturgy,” Greek
Orthodox Archdiocese of America, accessed March 10, 2016, http://
www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7117.
11 Harry Radliffe and Michael Karzis, “Mt. Athos: A Visit to the Holy
Mountain,” 60 Minutes, May 22, 2011, accessed March 10, 2016, http://
www.cbsnews.com/news/mt-athos-a-visit-to-the-holy-mountain.
12 “Many misunderstandings and prejudices concerning the Orthodox
Church thus go back to a wrong approach as students try to form,
merely with the help of sources and scholarship, a picture of
Orthodoxy, which is not really doctrine but a way of life, with its
own system-related criteria and thought forms.” Anastasios Kallis,
“Orthodox Church,” in Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2003), 3:866–68.
13 Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (Platina, CA: St.
Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1983), 43. See also Timothy Ware,
The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1969), 22, who states
that the Orthodox Church possesses a “Patristic mind” that consid-
ers “the Fathers . . . as living witnesses and contemporaries.”
14 Pomazansky, Dogmatic Theology, 257–58. Pomazansky adds, “The
Apostles established in the Church the Grace-given succession of the
episcopate, and through it the succession of the whole Grace-given
ministry of the Church hierarchy, which is called to be stewards
of the Mysteries of God, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 4:1,” in
Pomazansky, Dogmatic Theology, 247.
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
15 For more on EO’s claim that the canons and decrees of the ecumenical
councils are infallible, see Pomazansky, Dogmatic Theology, 29­–49,
and The Patriarchal Encyclical of 1895.
16 Westminster Confession of Faith, 31.4.
17 The claim itself is dubious, given both the history of Orthodoxy and
its ecclesiastical structure. As Robert Letham observes, “The Eastern
church in the Byzantine Empire had no systematic ecclesiology. Unlike
the West, there was no coherent body of canon law, due to the fact
that the Byzantines never considered the church in a juridical man-
ner.” See Robert Letham, Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy:
A Reformed Perspective (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus, 2007),
121. Throughout much of the Byzantine Empire (c. 330–1453), the
Orthodox Church was not held together by a magisterium and final
authority, as was the Western Church with its College of Cardinals
and Papacy in Rome. Not only did its center shift to Moscow from
Constantinople, which fell to the Turks in 1453, but under the pres-
sure and persecution of Islam since the seventh century, the Orthodox
Church gradually dispersed into a monastic movement of ascetics,
mystics, hermits, and recluses. While this does not disprove EO’s claim
to apostolic succession, it does seem to make the claim more difficult
to prove than the similar claim of Rome, which has, for the most part,
remained seated in one place for two thousand years and developed a
highly structured ecclesiology.
18 Michael Horton, “Are Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism
Compatible? No: An Evangelical Perspective,” in Three Views on
Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism, ed. James Stamoolis (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 142.
19 Horton, “Are Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism Compatible?,”
142–43.
20 Jamey Bennett, “Liturgy, Sacraments, and All That Jazz: Ten
Reasons I Joined the Orthodox Church,” Journey to Orthodoxy (blog),
September 30, 2013, http://journeytoorthodoxy.com/2013/09/
liturgy-sacraments-all-that-jazz-ten-reasons-i-joined-the-ortho-
dox-church.
21 Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 66.
22 Louth, Eastern Orthodox Theology, 133–34.
23 See Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, ed. Raymond
O. Zorn, trans. H. de Jongste (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and
Reformed, 1962), 65–70; Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old
and New Testaments (1948; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth
Trust, 1975), 386.
24 These are metaphysical matters that can get complicated, but for
a description of the details, see Michael S. Horton, Covenant and
Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville, KY: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2002), 20–45. This is a chapter titled “Eschatology after
Nietzsche.”
25 Leonid Ouspensky, “The Meaning and Content of the Icon,” in
Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, ed. Daniel
Clendenin, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 42.
26 “Beauty,” in Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman
III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 1998), 82.
27 “Beauty,” 85.
28 See Edmund Clowney, “Living Art: Christian Experience and the
Arts,” in God and Culture: Essays in Honor of Carl F. H. Henry, ed.
D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1993), 240.
29 Clowney, “Living Art,” 246.
30 D. G. Hart and John R. Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning
to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002),
115.
31 John D. Witvliet, “Toward a Liturgical Aesthetic: An Interdisciplinary
Review of Aesthetic Theory,” Liturgy Digest 3, no. 1 (1996): 76.
32 Josiah Trenham, Rock and Sand: An Orthodox Appraisal of the
Protestant Reformers and Their Teachings (Columbia, MO: New
Rome Press, 2015), 288. As an aside, Father Trenham is a convert
from the Reformation to EO; he is a former PCA minister and alum-
nus of Westminster Seminary California.
33 C. S. Lewis used the confection Turkish delight as a metaphor for
sin and temptation in The Chronicles of Narnia. See C. S. Lewis, The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
34 Belgic Confession of Faith, art. 15 (regarding original sin).
37
R E F O R M E R

CYRIL LUCARIS

T
F O R G O T T E N

The medieval historian Steven Runciman once

quipped, “Of all the roads that a historian may
tread none passes through more difficult coun-
try than that of a religious historian.” If he’s
correct, then the controversial terrain of Greek
reformer, writer, and eventual patriarch Cyril
Lucaris (1570–1638) is a most treacherous bog
for us to enter. Yet enter we must, for the life
and times of Lucaris deliver all the intrigue of
a le Carré novel and the passion of a Kennedy
speech—moreover, this saint’s life offers a salu-
T H E

tary reminder of the costs of the gospel and the

travails of Christ’s bride.
Lucaris was born to Greek parents on the
Mediterranean isle of Crete, which was under
the auspices of the mercantile republic of
Venice yet always aware that on the horizon
loomed a grave threat: the Ottoman Turks. With
the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and the
fall of Constantinople in 1453, the rise of the
Ottoman Empire heralded the emergence of an
Islamic power in a former hub of Christianity.
Combined with the sixteenth-century tumult
of Reformation and Counter-Reformation,
Lucaris’s lifetime was a hubbub of theological
and political strife—in which he stood squarely
in the middle.

38
by JOHN STOVALL

illustration by  MLC
 From an early age, he was rescued from a
life of poverty via the benefits of patronage
and connection and given access to wealth and
education in the entrepôt of Venice. Here, he
learned Greek, Latin, Italian, and theology.
More significant than expert tutelage and
guides, however, were the prestige, presence,
and patronage of his uncle, Meletios Pegas
(1549–1601). Pegas, who would eventually rise
to the patriarchate of Alexandria, did not simply
provide support for Lucaris as a blood relative;
he molded the precocious young man into his
protégé. Pegas was a critical contact in the for-
mation of young Lucaris, responsible for his
rise through the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the
Orthodox Church. The training Lucaris received
at the university, combined with his family con-
nections, made him an ideal candidate to move Lucaris was able to bridge
within Greek, Catholic, and Protestant circles.
As a preacher, his sermons were filled with bibli- the gap between the Greek
cal quotations, classical allusions, and humanist
references. In short, Lucaris was able to bridge
and Latin streams of
the gap between the Greek and Latin streams of Christianity—quoting from
Christianity—quoting from the Cappadocian
fathers, while dripping sweet words from
the Cappadocian fathers,
Augustine, all wrapped in burnished rhetoric while dripping sweet words
and impervious logic.
Beginning in 1590 with his establishment to from Augustine, all wrapped
the Alexandrine see, Pegas asked for his nephew
to come from Italy to work in Egypt. By the age
in burnished rhetoric and
of twenty-three, Lucaris was ordained as a priest impervious logic.
and subsequently sent to Poland, where we find
our man joined in the heat of confessional battle
for the existence of the Orthodox community.
While he is most known in Western circles for
his later anti-Catholic animus, Lucaris first
encountered the assiduous energy of Jesuit
educators and papal power as a liaison between
the Greek faithful in the Ottoman Empire and
Orthodox bishops in Poland and Lithuania. In
Poland and the Ukraine, Lucaris was forced to
watch as a (slight) majority of bishops com-
mitted the Orthodox Church to a merger with
Rome—concluding the Union of Brest in 1596.
Lucaris then became one of the allies of those
Orthodox believers who refused to submit to the
authority of this council, teaching and educat-
ing across Eastern Europe while under threat of

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

40
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
41
expulsion. It was here that he first encountered
Lutheran divines, who began to plant the idea
in him of a union between the Lutheran and
Greek churches—a long-sought dream of the
Lutherans.
Yet, after his time in Poland, Lucaris had to
rush back to Alexandria. His uncle Pegas was
dying and wanted his nephew to replace him in
the high office of patriarch of Alexandria. Soon,
Lucaris was within the inner circles of Orthodox
ecclesiastics, where he would stay until elevated
to the first rank of patriarch of Constantinople
in 1620. While in Egypt, Lucaris cemented his
second key relationship (after his uncle) when
he met Cornelius Haga—the Dutch ambassa-
dor to the Ottomans—who would become a close
friend. Haga spawned in the belletristic Lucaris
a European-wide network of contacts that would
endure until Lucaris’s death in 1638. For the
intellectual Lucaris, Haga encouraged connec-
tions with Dutch theologians (Jan Uytenbogaert
and David le Leu de Wilhelm) and gave the patri-
arch his first taste of the writings of John Calvin.
Haga also supplied the financial means
to Lucaris’s desires for reform of the Greek
POLAND IN THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
(a land united by marriage since 1386
and enduring until 1795) was a polyglot
land and the largest nation in sixteenth-
century Europe.
Economically powerful yet politically divided among
landed magnates and home to Catholic, Orthodox, Prot-
estant, and Muslim subjects, the Commonwealth was the
playground for inspired Reformers (such as Jan á Lasco),
avaricious merchants, and jumped-up warlords alike. For a
superb treatment of life and religion in the pluralistic soci-
ety of the Commonwealth, see David Frick’s Kith, Kin, and
Neighbors: Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-
Century Wilno (Cornell University Press, 2013).
42
Church—and reform was needed, on a host of
levels, ranging from dilapidated churches to
illiterate priests. The only problem was that the
Greek Church was not its own master. Since the
fall of the Byzantine commonwealth in 1453, it
had been governed by Islamic jurisprudence of
the Ottoman Turks. While the branch of Islamic
law used by the Ottomans was the more tolerant
Hanafi School, the status of the Greek Christians
was precarious at best. We might hear this and
tremble for the welfare of Christians living under
Islam, but ironically, the minority position of the
Greek Orthodox made them an irresistible com-
modity for all foreign powers. For if the English
or the French could capture the allegiance of
Lucaris and this fifth column within the Ottoman
lands, then perhaps they could instigate an upris-
ing against Islamic overlords; failing that, at
least they could gain a religious triumph to show
the progress of Rome or Canterbury.
Recent work on the reliability of Lucaris’s
writings has enriched our grasp of his mind-
set. He was not solely focused on high matters
of Reformed theology. Rather, his life’s work
was more mundane and penultimate: crush-
ing the threat of a Catholic Poland through an
ambitious plan to forge an alliance between
Russia, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire for a
common offensive against Poland. For a small
taste of his vitriol against the Catholic Church,
we note how he labeled himself in one letter to
Dutch politicians, “the horror of your adver-
saries.” He detested “the dogmas of the Roman
church because they are false.” This grand plan,
if accomplished, would have completely changed
the religion and politics of Europe, which was
one of the major reasons Lucaris became a
political persona and a household name in all
European courts.
The hurricane of activity that Lucaris brought
to all he did—whether penning missives to
Moscow or outmaneuvering the Jesuits—
displayed a mind and a man committed to his
work and sure of its success. Beyond the political
machinations, Lucaris is most known to us as a
theological and educational reformer, aghast at
the dilapidated state of the Greek Church, who
attempted immediate renovation. Taking his
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

UNION OF BREST
Since the eleventh-century schism between
the Latin and Greek wings of Christianity,
attempts to reunite the two branches have
sparked—briefly flaming brilliantly but
invariably burning out after a time.
In the last decades of the sixteenth century, the religious
cauldron in the Ukraine gave rise to yet another call
for reunion. While individual Orthodox nobles (such as
Konstantin Ostrogsky) wanted to maintain traditional
links to Byzantine and Greek rites, most of the Ukrainian
and Ruthenian bishops nursed grievances over their
treatment by fellow Orthodox believers—notably at
the rapacious visits from Greek lands, which seemed
to always demand money and never offered to rebuild
churches or fight against the heresy of Protestantism.
The only solution appeared to be the nuclear one: create
a united church with Rome. On December 23, 1595, after
bitter debate, the Greek Catholic (or Uniate) Church was
born via papal decree. Significantly, the papal legates
included the filioque clause in the documents of union
but did not require its recitation in Uniate churches, and
bishops retained the right to appoint their own clergy.
While the majority of bishops in Ukraine wanted union,
the common folk generally split along geographical lines;
those in western Ukraine tended toward a pro-Rome
stance and those in the east against union.
cues from Genevan pastors (such as Antoine
Leger) and Dutch ambassadors (Cornelis
Haga), Lucaris set about translating the New
Testament from its first-century koinê Greek
into seventeenth-century Greek vernacular.
His plan to reform the Greek Church was
conjoined with politics. Not only did he move
to install the first Modern Greek printing press
in Istanbul (which was subsequently destroyed
after a French spy warned the Ottoman authori-
ties), but he also drew up the fateful document
that would endear him to history: a confession of
faith filled with robust statements on the nature
of justification by faith alone, a solid predesti-
narian streak, and a constant stress on the need
to return to the word of God as the only norming
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
norm for faith and practice. Indeed, such was
Lucaris’s commitment to Reformation teach-
ing that he was willing to “die as an Orthodox
Catholic, faithful to Evangelical doctrine and
to the Belgic Confession.”
Ever since its Latin publication in 1629,
Lucaris’s Confession has sparked debate over its
legitimacy, intent, and purpose. Did he actually
write it? Some doubts were spawned by its late
appearance in Greek (1633), for if he penned
it, wouldn’t he have written in Greek first?
Instead, the timing of the confession’s publica-
tion worked in the favor of Lucaris’s Dutch and
English allies, who were able to use this blast
from the East in their unceasing conflict with
the Habsburgs in Germany.
Therefore, while Lucaris’s authorship of his
confession is now a consensus view (since he never
denied it), it is likely that the original publication
was planned for foreign political benefit—not
for his own domestic plans or even for a Greek
Reformation. As sometimes occurs in this pres-
ent age, the intersection of politics and theology
does not always benefit the ordinary church-goer,
and we have little indication that Lucaris’s confes-
sion of faith was ever used beyond some schools
in Crete. The initial response from Rome was to
label it a forgery, with repudiation and counter
confession following in 1631. However, the most
deadly result of his continued polemics was not
ink but blood. In July 1638, backed by a secret
deal with the Ottoman Vizier and supplied by
gold from the Jesuit mission fund, the governor
of Constantinople arrested Lucaris, sent him on a
boat into exile, and watched as soldiers strangled
him and threw his body overboard. Thus ended a
most intriguing life.
The intrigue, however, continues, for Lucaris
still represents a tantalizing path not taken.
It should not surprise us that his reputation
in Rome was dismal, yet in the lands of the
Orthodox he received an array of judgments.
Within a decade of his death, Lucaris stood con-
demned by at least two pan-Orthodox synods; yet
in 2009, the Greek Orthodox patriarchate can-
onized him. What prompted such a divergence?
Likely, his pastoral zeal (expressed through the
commitment for the reform of morality and
43
 HE WAS PASSIONATE ABOUT
THE PROPAGATION OF
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN
THE FACE OF ISLAM, SUPPORTED
THE COMMON GOOD OF THE
GREEK PEOPLE IN EDUCATIONAL
REFORM, AND ATTEMPTED
TO TURN THE SHIP OF
ORTHODOXY TOWARD THE
SCRIPTURES AND THE CHRIST
THEY PROCLAIM.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

44
for the intellectual and spiritual growth of the
clergy), his defense of Orthodoxy, and his violent
death at the hands of the Turks combine to make
him appealing to the Orthodox Church.
If we Protestants are not in a rush to canon-
ize Lucaris, why learn of him at all? I suggest
that several pertinent details from his life offer
crucial guidance to twenty-first-century would-
be Reformers. Lucaris points us to the privilege
and difficulty of living in a contested religious
environment, not unlike our own. The network
of contacts he maintained across Europe, from
the Russian tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov
and George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, to
the Swedish prime minister, Axel Oxenstierna,
and the Remonstrant, Jan Uytenbogaert, indi-
cate the influence and cachet Lucaris presented
to all of Europe’s elite.
What endured when tsar and archbishop-
ric faded was not political succor but personal
friendships based on a shared commitment to
Christ and his church. The willingness of the
Dutch ambassador van Haga and the Swiss
pastor Leger to support and shield Lucaris, even
to buy him safe passage from Jesuit schemes,
should remind us of the love and friendship
shown by the Christians in Ephesus, who walked
to the shore with Paul and wept when he left.
Furthermore, the advance of a Reformed
confession and the inroads into the Orthodox
community were only possible through the mul-
ticultural associations of Dutch, English, and
German pastors, companies, and state dignitar-
ies. While we may value the heroic missionary
trope of Victorian-era writers, it is important
to avoid placing Lucaris in the genus of top
man—even his industry and gifts did not pro-
vide a sterling legacy; his devotees scattered
and his allies departed. Within twenty years,
the status quo of Turkokratia returned to the
Greek Orthodox community.
For Lucaris, the status of a Christian minority
in a Muslim-dominated society was a challeng-
ing prospect, and the offers of financial support
and personal acclaim from his Protestant co-
laborers served a vital role in sustaining Lucaris
through multiple periods of exile and impris-
onment in the 1620s and 1630s. The impact
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
THE HABSBURGS
One of Europe’s leading families and
longest-reigning dynasties, the Habsburgs
represented the apex of European prestige
and Catholic vitality.
Ruling initially a small duchy of the Holy Roman Empire,
they expanded rapidly through fortunate betrothals.
Thus the proverb Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube
(“Let others make war; you, lucky Austria, marry”). At the
height of their prestige, during the middle and late 1500s,
the Habsburgs controlled the entirety of Spain and her
colonies, the Holy Roman Empire (including much of
modern-day Germany), and the Netherlands. Such power
was not to last, as the abdication of Charles V in 1556
split his combined hegemony into Spanish and Austrian
parts. By the time of Lucaris, however, the Austrian
branch of the Habsburgs was still a potent reminder of
Catholic interest in European affairs.
on such “foreign missions” supplies a salutary
reminder to American Christians today who
may wonder at the value of supporting believ-
ers across the globe.
As we look back on his life, what stands out
most is his energy. The patriarch mastered
multiple languages, possessed a remarkable
library, and could choose his references. He
was as comfortable with political philosophy as
with theology—able to sprinkle quotations from
Augustine, Ficino, and Calvin in seventeenth-
century Greek. He was passionate about the
propagation of the Christian faith in the face of
Islam, supported the common good of the Greek
people in educational reform, and attempted to
turn the ship of Orthodoxy toward the Scriptures
and the Christ they proclaim. Yet for all this, he
failed. Likewise, we too must take our stand not
on what-ifs or might-haves, nor on the strength
of chariots or princes, but on the gospel itself as
the power of God unto salvation for the Greek. 
JOHN STOVALL is pastor of the Rock Presbyterian Church
in Stockbridge, Georgia, and is a doctoral candidate in his-
tory at the State University of New York, Albany.
45
by PERRY C. ROBINSON

illustration by MLC
 Beware
THE

Convert
You could say that I have been around the theological block
a few times. I’ve converted to and from a number of things.
Baptized Catholic and raised Episcopalian, I ran through non-
denominational groups in my teen years and then was off to
the Reformation. I went through some philosophy degree pro-
grams and left the Reformation to toy with Scotism, Thomism,
and parts of Ockhamism. I eventually landed in the Orthodox
Church, where I have been for the last seventeen years. I’ve done
a fair amount of on-the-street and classroom apologetics. While
I may not have seen everything, as I said, this is not my first time
around the block.

47
 I have a pretty good idea of what it means,
what it takes, and what happens when some-
one converts to another theological model and
community, particularly Orthodoxy. Friends are
gained and lost; families are happy or not happy.
There are complications with work or derailed
life plans, including marriages. Most important
of all, children can be affected, for good or ill. A
conversion usually brings some type of sword.
Every so often, a notable figure converts to
this or that position. Of late, the popular Hank
Hanegraaff has left his religious home, appar-
ently somewhere in popular evangelicalism,
for the Orthodox Church. This struck me as
odd. I worked for Hanegraaff’s organization,
Christian Research Institute (CRI), in the
early 1990s, so my perspective is informed by
firsthand experience. Second, I am Orthodox
and a former Calvinist. I have a good grasp of
Reformation theology and understand what
classical Protestants mean when they talk about
sola fide, sola scriptura, and so on. Given all of
the above, Hanegraaff’s shift to the Orthodox
Church, while not unprecedented, seemed
strange and likely fraught with difficulty. In
what follows, I will sketch some prudential
“do’s and don’ts” for converts, but particularly
high-profile converts, and I will try to bring to
light the demarcating lines between Orthodoxy
and the Reformation traditions that Hanegraaff
appears to have missed or is unclear about.
Prudence is a useful virtue to acquire, but
it is difficult to get people excited about it.
Prudence can prevent unnecessary suffering
for ourselves and others around us and can be
beneficial for our long term spiritual welfare.
When converting, one wishes to make a clean
start. In Orthodoxy this includes forgiveness,
both in granting and seeking it from others.
Any priest worth his salt will likely impress
upon someone seeking to enter the Orthodox
Church that they should spend some time
reflecting on whom they may have wronged
or from whom they may have suffered wrong,
prior to making a “life confession” that covers
their whole life outside the church. It is wise to
make an effort, suck up your pride, and make
a phone call. Go that extra mile of admitting
48
wrong-doing, even when it may not be entirely
or even mostly your fault. It might not have been
your fault at all. Parceling out blame is not the
point. At the very least for public figures, setting
one’s inner house in order would entail a public
statement of repentance for any past wrongs,
real or perceived, prior to reception. That way,
nothing from your past besmirches your new
convictions and doesn’t bring the body of your
new allegiance into disrepute. This is especially
true for public figures whose livelihood depends
on promoting themselves as teachers of the faith
and who consequently bear a stricter judgment,
as St. James indicates (James 3:1).
Probably, the most commonly required bit
of prudence for converts to Orthodoxy is to be
quiet—for a few years, to be precise. This is not
only to protect yourself, but also to protect the
church. There is a lot you don’t know, and the
paradigm shift takes a long time to complete, if
ever. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, then certainly
Constantinople wasn’t either. Don’t set yourself
up as an expert in Orthodoxy, attempting to speak
publically as a teacher of the faith. Whatever
Hanegraaff was prior to reception, he is still a
(newly minted) layman. Whatever his ordina-
tion was in the world of Protestantism (which was
dubious even by Reformation standards), or how
many books bear his name as a Protestant, none
of that is recognized by the Orthodox Church.
So being quiet is prudent, even for converts with
relevant education and degrees.
But this is a significant challenge for
Hanegraaff, since it is his job to talk about the-
ology and church history five days a week across
the airwaves of the nation. In this way, he is
unlike other high-profile converts—he has to
be ready from day one to discuss complicated
Orthodox teachings, such as the doctrine of the
divine energies, deification, and the role that
Dyothelitism plays in structuring Orthodox
soteriology. These may seem obscure teachings,
but to really explicate Orthodox teaching, even
at a basic level, one has to have a substantial
grasp of them. There is no time for on-the-
job training. While it is possible to explain
Orthodox teaching succinctly and precisely, this
takes academic work, which takes time.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 It is wise to anticipate a cost to be paid for
conversion. A conversion as substantial as
from Protestantism to Orthodoxy will have
repercussions, especially if you are a high-pro-
file figure like Hanegraaff. It seems to me that
Hanegraaff interpreted his being dropped by
Protestant radio networks as a kind of religious
persecution, which is strange since Protestant
radio stations largely exist to promote, well,
Protestantism. Being dropped from Protestant
venues was highly probable; even a small amount
of foresight should have prepared him for this.
If Hanegraaff crossed the Tiber tomorrow, the
Orthodox venues would behave in exactly the
same way and for the same reasons.
It is also unwise to downplay one’s conver-
sion—moving from Protestantism to Orthodoxy
is not akin to switching from Oreos to Hydrox-
brand cookies. Hanegraaff has given the
impression that his change was not theological
but rather a change of churches or denomi-
nation. On his April 10, 2017, Bible Answer
Man (BAM) show he remarked, “I am now a
member of an Orthodox Church, but nothing
has changed in my faith….I believe what I have
always believed, as codified in the Nicene Creed,
and as championed by mere Christianity.” And
on April 11, “Look, my views have been codi-
fied in twenty books, and my views have not
changed.” In these and other comments since
his conversion, he appears to be communicat-

IF HIS VIEWS ing the idea that his conversion is not a big deal
or a life-altering decision. He has just changed

HAVE NOT churches and not theology, or if he did, he just

changed out “secondary” or “nonessential” doc-
CHANGED, trines. He maintains “mere Christianity” along
the lines of C. S. Lewis.
THEN HE None of this is intellectually honest. All of the
books that bear his name were written when he
WAS NEVER was Protestant. It is not possible on Protestant
or Orthodox grounds that his views haven’t
PROTESTANT changed. Many of the areas that had to change
are at the core of the respective theological sys-
OR IS tems including the Trinity, Christology, and
most obviously soteriology. If his views have
NOT NOW not changed, then he was never Protestant or is

ORTHODOX.
not now Orthodox. What is more, the Orthodox
Church generally requires a public renunciation

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
49
of theological error and affiliations from either
Protestant or Catholic bodies prior to chris-
mation, which is most warranted in the case
of high-profile converts such as Hanegraaff.
Besides, if his views haven’t changed, then why
convert?
The Orthodox Church does not consider itself
to be a denomination. The Orthodox Church
takes itself to be the Church of Jesus Christ
and his apostles, full stop. As far as they are con-
cerned, Hanegraaff went from being outside the
Church, in at least material heresy and schism,
to being inside it.
What is more, “mere Christianity” (as C. S.
Lewis glossed it) is an abstraction with not a few
fairly arbitrary lines. There is no church you can
join that is the “mere Christianity” church. It is
a pragmatic construct. Does “mere Christianity”
include the filioque or sola fide? Does it include
that the Father alone is autotheos? Baptismal
regeneration? You get the point. It dies the
death of a thousand qualifications. Christian
theology isn’t compartmentalistic, but rather
anatomic—that is, every part is intrinsically
CHRISTIAN
and constitutively connected to every other part. THEOLOGY ISN’T
Such a compartmentalistic gloss by Hanegraaff
would imply that what is distinctive about COMPARTMEN-
Orthodox theology, to which he is obligated to
adhere down to the last iota, is of secondary TALISTIC,
importance, which is something the Orthodox
Church flatly denies. Conversion is a big deal BUT RATHER
that shouldn’t be entered into lightly or down-
played as insignificant. ANATOMIC—
Hanegraaff does provide two doctrinal
changes that he views as integral to his conver-
THAT IS,
sion: a change in adherence to the doctrine of
the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist,
EVERY PART IS
and the doctrine of theosis or deification. With
respect to the Eucharist, Hanegraaff makes
INTRINSICALLY
legitimate criticism of the popular nondenomi-
national practices and beliefs on which both
AND
classical Protestants and the Orthodox agree.
Popular evangelicals tend to treat the Eucharist
CONSTITUTIVELY
with a familiarity and casualness I am sure is
quite familiar to reformational Christians. Of
CONNECTED
course, those could be avoided by reception into TO EVERY
OTHER PART.
a Reformation tradition. Adherence to the real
presence could be had by becoming Lutheran.

VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018

50
The only way the real presence could be singled
out as a sufficient theological reason for conver-
sion to Orthodoxy is if it was coupled with a
commitment to apostolic succession and sacer-
dotalism. So far, Hanegraaff has yet to indicate
as much.
As to theosis, it is difficult to discern what
Hanegraaff thinks that doctrine is exactly, or
what it is about the Orthodox view that would
be sufficient for conversion. He describes it
in the most basic terms—namely, the bibli-
cal terms every Christian tradition already
adheres to. Every Christian tradition has to
have some doctrine of deification or glorifica-
tion, because that language is in the biblical
text. In some academic circles, theosis has
reached a somewhat faddish state, with vari-
ous Protestant and Catholic writers being
afflicted with “theosis envy.” (A priest I know
once remarked, “Orthodoxy is the new black.”)
Everyone has some doctrine of theosis; this is
hardly news. What we need from Hanegraaff
is some explanation of what it is about the
Orthodox view that was sufficient motivation
for him to convert.
With respect to the twin principles of the
Reformation, Hanegraaff seems either con-
fused or unwilling to disavow them directly.
This is problematic, since the CRI doctrinal
statement still lists them both as “essential”
Christian doctrines (Article 6), and all CRI
employees are required to adhere to it by per-
sonal signature. For sola fide, when repeatedly
queried about it, he consistently reads from a
prepared CRI factsheet, giving the standard
Reformation commentary on James 2—namely,
that works are the evidence of a saving faith,
rather than forming saving faith. Given that
the Orthodox Church condemned the former
position (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672, Decree
13), this option is not open to him. Instead of
saying, “This is what sola fide is, these are the
reasons I previously believed it, and I no longer
think those are good arguments for the follow-
ing reasons,” he seems to consistently avoid
denying sola fide. It isn’t appropriate to cloak
one’s conversion behind equivocal or ambigu-
ous statements.
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
Much the same problem apparently exists
for Hanegraaff with respect to sola scriptura.
On the April 10, 2017, Bible Answer Man show,
he said, “In terms of sola scriptura, I’ve always
been committed to the Bible as the infallible
guide for faith and practice. And I think that’s
what it means—it means that the Bible is infal-
lible and is inspired by the Holy Spirit.” Either
Hanegraaff is redefining sola scriptura, or after
thirty years as a Protestant he doesn’t know what
it means. The measure of that conceptual con-
tent is not what Hanegraaff thinks sola scriptura
means but what it has historically meant. There
is also that shibboleth of “only”/”alone” that is
conspicuously missing. A clear articulation—
and substantiated denial—from Hanegraaff is
what his theological position requires and what
his callers and audiences have a right to expect
from someone self-designated as the “Bible
Answer Man.” The pertinent question is not
whether those doctrines are true, but rather how
they are defined—whether or not Hanegraaff
believes they are true, and whether or not he
can profess them as a member of the Orthodox
Church. For the Orthodox, the answer to the
latter is clearly no.
There are many other areas besides soteriol-
ogy that require mastering in the respective
theological systems, such as Trinitarianism,
Christology, and anthropology—each of which
play a critical role in informing and structur-
ing each system’s soteriology. For example, the
Orthodox have a different soteriology because
they have a different Christology. This is why
mastering these other core areas is necessary,
and why it takes a good amount of academic
work and time to be able to speak accurately
about them. Suffice it to say that a person in
Hanegraaff’s position should have a deep grasp
of these areas before speaking publically. Many
converts to various positions have sacrificed as
much or more for their newfound faith. A clear
articulation would only increase the credibility
of his conversion. 
PERRY C. ROBINSON teaches high school history and
resides in Southern California with his wife and three chil-
dren. He blogs at Energetic Procession.
51
HELP EACH GENERATION
REDISCOVER AND APPLY
THE GOSPEL
N U M E R O U S S U RV E Y S , polls, and sociological studies have
conclusively shown that evangelical Christians—that is, those who
profess to take Scripture, Christ, and the gospel seriously—are
increasingly unaware of or unclear about some of the most basic issues
of Christian faith and practice. While many pastors and elders are
faithfully devoted to their ministry, it must be concluded with a grave
sense of duty as well as soberness and humility that this is the exception
rather than the rule.
In a time when the “nones” (or those claiming no religious adherence)
are, according to pollsters, growing and when our own churches are
stagnant or shrinking, it is more important than ever to identify and
celebrate the gospel: the glory of God manifested in the grace he shows
to those who deserve the very opposite. This is Christ-centered
Christianity at its best and we want to partner with you to help inform
the next generation of Reformers. Will you join us?
BECOME A PARTNER TODAY.
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 03 BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews
56 57 59
Damning Words: The Introverts in the Martin Luther and the
I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

Life and Religious Church: Finding Our Enduring Word of God:

Times of H. L. Mencken Place in an Extroverted The Wittenberg School
by D. G. Hart Culture and its Scripture-
by Adam S. McHugh Centered Proclamation
by Robert Kolb

REVIEWED BY REVIEWED BY REVIEWED BY

Simonetta Carr Anna Smith Silverio Gonzalez

MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
55
BOOK REVIEWS
Damning Words: The Life and Religious
Times of H. L. Mencken
by D. G. Hart
Eerdmans, 2016
279 pages (hardcover), $26.00
he enduring influence of
Christianity on many of its great-
T est critics is one of modern
history’s paradoxes. In Damning
Words: The Life and Religious
Times of H. L. Mencken, D. G. Hart highlights
this apparent incongruity in the life of the leg-
endary American agnostic—from his childhood
in the last decade of the nineteenth century to
his death in 1956. But Hart
does much more than that. He
brings us close to a man who
has been considered one of the
most fearless iconoclasts of
American society, and leads us
to reflect on uncomfortable
subjects with the same honesty
and candor that made
Mencken famous.
I approached this book with
the basic ignorance I suspect
affects many Americans. At a
popular level, Mencken seems
to be remembered simply for
his memorable quotes that
fit any of our most caustic
moods. In fact, his quotes are
often remembered more than the man. In my
case, this ignorance was aggravated by the fact
that I was born and raised in Italy, far from the
American sociopolitical scene and only vaguely
puzzled and amused by some of its excesses in
dramatic fervor over issues most Europeans
viewed with skepticism or indifference. History
does shape culture.
I read this book for a reason I suspect has
motivated many readers: I had come to appre-
ciate D. G. Hart’s writings and scholarship,
and I was curious to see how he approached a
56
biography of a man such as Mencken. I wasn’t
disappointed. I learned much about both
Mencken and his times, which are introduced
with ease by a biographer who has devoted much
attention to this period.
In his chronological approach to Mencken’s
life, Hart manages to be both objective and per-
sonal. I sympathized with some of Mencken’s
childhood impressions of Sunday-school
Christianity, and admired his dedication to his
work and his prowess with words that earned him
Joseph Krutch’s accolade of “best prose writer in
twentieth-century America” (2). At the end of his
life, Menken’s bleak view of human existence as a
pointless and “endless standing in line” reminded
me of the words of the Preacher of Ecclesiastes—
minus the uplifting hope of the
biblical conclusion.
Hart is up-front about his
emphasis on Mencken’s reli-
gious life, a task he considers
necessary as “few who have
studied Mencken attach much
significance to his writing about
faith.” Besides, he hopes that
Mencken’s “attitude as an unbe-
lieving minority in a majority
C h r i s t i a n s o c i e t y … m i g ht
show a way to demilitarize the
combat” in today’s society (9).
According to Hart, Mencken
can teach both Christians and
the “so-called new atheists”
some healthy humor and the
ability to take themselves less seriously. He can
also communicate a measure of respect for the
powerful effect religion has exercised on human
history and a realistic and “Augustinian” view of
human nature.
In fact, it was this view that brought Mencken
to find common ground with and sincere admi-
ration for the Presbyterian J. Gresham Machen,
whose “one and only purpose was,” in Mencken’s
words, “to hold it [the Church] resolutely to
what he conceived to be the true faith. When
that enterprise met with opposition he fought
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
vigorously, and though he lost in the end and
was forced out of Princeton it must be manifest
that he marched off to Philadelphia with all the
honors of war.”
While I disagreed with many of Mencken’s
views (especially about Nazi Germany, the Jews,
and blacks), I had to stop and listen to what
he had to say and appreciate his honesty and
perception in many instances that are usually
treated with superficial generalizations. Even
the lack of references, which can be a flaw for
footnote-lovers like me, was strangely unnotice-
able in this book—maybe because the narrative
flows easily and Hart managed to answer all my
questions within the main text. The omission is
remedied by a final section in essay form titled
“Notes on the Sources,” which include additional
insights and a final paragraph on Mencken’s rel-
evance on the American intellectual landscape.
In the end, Hart persuaded me that we need
more biographies of critics of Christianity,
written to discover and reflect rather than to
demonstrate, oppose, or defend. And more of
these should be written by biographers who, like
Hart, are familiar with the basic concerns and
tenets of the Christian faith and can transcend
the all-too-frequent shallow, assumed, and pre-
dictable accounts.  rity isn’t biblical. God is pleased to work through
SIMONETTA CARR has translated several books from English
into Italian and has written for newspapers and magazines
around the world.
Introverts in the Church: Finding Our
Place in an Extroverted Culture
by Adam S. McHugh
IVP Books, 2017
240 pages (paperback), $18.00
f you hate church fellowship hour,
evangelizing strangers, and youth
I group lock-ins, you might be a ter-
rible Christian. Or maybe you’re
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
just an introvert. Adam S. McHugh, a pastor and
introvert, has written Introverts in the Church:
Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture to
help churches figure out the difference.
Many books have been written about how
American culture prizes extroverts and needs to
learn to value introverts, defined as people who
(generally) are energized by solitude, process
internally, and prefer depth over breadth (35–
43). McHugh realizes that this process needs to
happen just as much, if not more, in the church,
where broader cultural preferences have been
adopted and transformed into measures of righ-
teousness. In many churches, ideal Christians
are friendly, outgoing, energetic, and engaging.
Introverted Christians are left with two dark
options: either accept their role as inferior
Christians, or utterly exhaust themselves in an
attempt to be something they aren’t. Depression
and dark nights of the soul can follow, as intro-
verts struggle to be faithful but cannot meet the
church’s expectations, which are easily mistaken
for God’s expectations.
As an introvert who has endured this strug-
gle himself, McHugh wants to encourage and
support others. He points out that making
extroversion the hallmark of Christian matu-
all the personality types he has created, so it’s
important for introverts to understand their
personality and work with it, not against it.
McHugh outlines common introverted tenden-
cies and shows how they benefit believers and
the church.
For example, introverts can be more attuned
to the workings of their hearts. Evangelicals
can be suspicious of the heart, which of course
is deceitfully wicked and no one can know it
(Jer. 17:9). But introverts are naturally internal
processors, so they spend a lot of time digging
around in there, examining their motivations
and desires. They find lots of gunk, but they also
find evidence that God is at work, and they learn
to tell the difference. This knowledge of their
inner workings is beneficial in their own lives
and in understanding the motivations of others,
57
BOOK REVIEWS
who might not have spent so much time doing
internal excavation.
Introverts also have the potential to be more
comfortable with contemplative and quiet forms
of spirituality. The Reformation put a great
emphasis on the word of God, which is certainly
appropriate. But Christians often confuse the
importance of God’s word with the importance
of their own. McHugh writes, “Our verbal effu-
siveness can devolve into breezy clichés, hollow
sound bites, and repetitive
song lyrics” (25). This breezi-
ness can be devastating when
it’s applied to difficult situa-
tions that demand sensitivity
and carefully chosen words.
Introverts are equipped to help
the evangelical church relearn
the importance of silence and
the fact that human words will
only take you so far.
I’m a shy introver t who
has been driven to Xanax by
Sunday morning coffee hour,
so it was remarkably refresh-
ing to read whole sections
encouraging me to see my
introversion as a gift instead of
a burden. I didn’t realize how many extroverted
expectations I was placing on myself, and real-
istically, I’m never going to be good at some of
those things (such as unstructured chit-chat).
I’m also able to better appreciate my strengths,
such as my love for studying the Bible, a passion
my introversion complements well.
McHugh wants to remove burdensome expec-
tations from introverts, but he isn’t distributing
get-out-of-evangelism-free cards. All Christians
are called to do things that make them uncom-
fortable. But we don’t need to make ourselves
more uncomfortable by assuming the task can be
done only in an extroverted way, such as believing
evangelism is best done by accosting strangers on
airplanes. (Why is it always airplanes?)
Instead, McHugh reframes evangelism in a
way that introverts can appreciate, focusing
58
more on listening in the context of relation-
ships than engaging in quick-witted debates
with strangers. He helps introverts tackle other
common areas of struggle by suggesting con-
crete goals for fellowship time, strategies for
engaging in conflict, and spiritual practices
that align with introverted sensibilities.
He recognizes that not every introvert will
identify with every issue he raises. Sometimes
it’s hard to disentangle the threads of introver-
sion, quietness, scholarliness,
shyness, and social anxiety.
One could be a bona fide intro-
vert and love church fellowship
hour or evangelizing strangers.
One could be an extrovert and
hate those activities. But by
interviewing many introverts,
McHugh identifies frequent
patterns that should connect
with most introverts on some
level.
Since McHugh is a pastor,
he spends a lot of time focus-
ing on introverts in leadership.
If Christians are expected to
be extroverts, then that goes
double for pastors and quintu-
ple for youth pastors. McHugh gives practical
tips for introverts in leadership to embrace their
good qualities, shift the expectations of their
congregations, and manage their limited social
energy well.
This is a book well wor th reading for
introverts or extroverts, especially pastors.
Introverted pastors will learn about themselves,
and extroverted pastors will learn how to better
minister to their introverted sheep. Churches
should be places where all personality types are
welcomed, appreciated, and challenged. This
book helps us get there. 
ANNA SMITH (MA, biblical studies, Westminster Seminary
California) teaches high school English, edits for The Gos-
pel Coalition, and blogs at www.thebeautifulplaceblog.com.
She lives in South Florida with her husband, Andy.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
Martin Luther and the Enduring Word
of God: The Wittenberg School and its
Scripture-Centered Proclamation
by Robert Kolb
Baker Academic, 2016
528 pages (hardcover), $49.99
n Martin Luther and the Enduring
Word of God, Robert Kolb places
I his readers in contact with a
world where the interpretation
and application of Scripture was
more than a matter of personal religious convic-
tion. The sixteenth-century Reformers sought
to recover God’s speech in Scripture—speech
that had been crowded out by opinions, tradi-
tions, and superstitions, speech that addressed
human beings in all areas of life: society, family,
church, and the depth of human hearts where
fear, pride, despair, or indifference fought to
maintain its grasp over the souls of men and
women who sought to earn God’s love and saving
grace through a system of cooperation and
merit. As Kolb describes, Martin Luther
believed that God spoke to all these matters
through Scripture:
The Bible served as the center of his entire
enterprise, combining elements in these
several components of life to forge plau-
sible answers to the questions of daily
life. Without the Bible, there could be no
preaching and therefore no evangelical
church life. Permeating the whole of life
for the Wittenberg theologians was the
presence of God, particularly of God in con-
versation with his people in, through, and
by means of Holy Scripture. (8)
Yet Luther was not alone in his wrestling with
God’s word; he was part of a community that
sought to recover Scripture’s message of grace,
which hinged on the two little words faith alone.
Kolb explains that this band of reformers was
essential to the Reformation:
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
Without the team around Luther, there would
have been no Wittenberg Reformation. The
cross-fertilization that arose from conver-
sations has long since disappeared into thin
air, but it can be sensed in the writings of
all of them as well as in their personal rec-
ollections. (7)
This conversation around Scripture—its
message, form, and doctrine; proper meth-
ods of its interpretation and application; its
proclamation; and even the practice of textual
criticism—is a conversation Kolb introduces
to pastors and students. It is his hope that his
lengthy overview on the Wittenberg school of
scriptural interpretation and proclamation will
inspire and “stimulate new research,” even as
“it attempts to provide biographical orientation
for such new studies of many of the subjects dis-
cussed” (14–15).
Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God
accomplishes this goal in a readable, engag-
ing study that did more than stimulate my
inner nerd. Kolb’s work inspired, challenged,
and informed my reading of the Bible, and for
this reason I recommend this book to anyone
interested in Martin Luther, the Reformation,
hermeneutics, or even the Bible.
In chapters 1 through 4, Kolb presents
Luther’s theology of Scripture in historical
context. He tells the story of Luther’s devel-
opment into a teacher of Scripture within the
late medieval world, a world that “had been
anything but a world without a Bible” (34).
The world Luther inherited was filled with
Scripture, but it “lacked an understanding of
God as the God of conversation and commu-
nity, engaged personally with his people, and
an understanding of the human creature cen-
tered on trust in God’s goodness and mercy,
as well as love and service to other human
beings” (18).
Kolb shows Luther immersed in the patterns
of monastic life, with its daily hours of prayer
and Scripture reading. He inherited a method
of scriptural interpretation with renewed
59
BOOK REVIEWS
interest in the text’s literal sense, which
had been chosen by his superior, Johannes
von Staupitz, for university training. Luther
became a “teacher of the Bible” and a late-
medieval theologian well equipped beyond
many of his peers (23–28, 31).
When Kolb writes about Luther’s theology
of Scripture, he explains Luther’s understand-
ing of God’s word as it relates
to God’s character, Christ as
the Word from the Father, the
gospel, and the controversies
of Luther’s own day: justifi-
cation, the nature of faith,
human nature, and church
authority. For Luther, God
effects what he declares in
Scripture and governs what it
affects: “God’s word governs
the course of human history.…
God’s Word creates faith, rees-
tablishing the relationship
of parent and child with his
chosen people” (48). “God’s
Word creates the Church and
governs it” (62).
As an interpreter of Scripture, Luther is
revealed as one who both maintained a super-
natural understanding of Scripture’s origin,
content, and effects together with a human
understanding of language, able to embrace
the humanist practices of textual criticism of
his day:
Despite the perception that the utterly
reliable, faithful God had been pres-
ent in the composition of Scripture
and remained present, confronting its
contemporary readers, Luther was not
oblivious to seeming discrepancies….
Luther’s linguistic sensitivities prevented
him from insisting on a strictly literalistic
interpretation of every passage. (85)
Kolb shows Luther’s understanding of God’s
presence in Scripture’s formation, content,
60
and effects, and how this influenced the inter-
pretive practices he inherited from medieval
Christianity, along with the rhetorical and her-
meneutical advancements made by humanist
scholars, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam.
Chapters 5 through 9 place Luther as a
professor, preacher, and translator in con-
text with the rest of the Wittenberg faculty.
Here, Kolb shows how much of
Luther’s insights and develop-
ment were the outworking of
a team of scholars committed
to the cause of reformation.
Philipp Melanchthon was
one such scholar and friend,
whose humanistic learning
greatly contributed to Luther’s
thought and the development
of t he Wittenb er g Scho ol
(241–42).
Chapters 10 through 14
e x p l a i n t h e l a tt e r d e v e l -
opments and concerns of
Lutheran thinkers to follow
the original faculty. Here,
Kolb provides a helpful
resource for new scholars seeking to research
Lutheran thoughts on Scripture and exegeti-
cal practices. In chapter 11, Kolb notes the
concerns over challenges from the Romans
Catholic Church, preaching, catechesis, and
the abundance of exegesis done to forward the
work of reformation begun by Luther with the
Wittenberg faculty.
In the wake of the five-hundred-year anni-
versary of the Reformation, Kolb reminds us of
the confidence the Wittenberg Reformers had
in God and his word. This book is well worth
the time it takes to read and digest its many
pages. 
SILVERIO GONZALEZ is an associate editor at the White
Horse Inn and a member of Escondido Orthodox Presby-
terian Church in Escondido, California. He holds a BA in
philosophy from the University of California Santa Barbara
and an MDiv from Westminster Seminary California.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE
AND WHY YOU BELIEVE IT
B R I N G I N G T H E R I C H R E S O U R C E S O F T H E R E F O R M AT I O N
T O T H E H A L LWAY O F M E R E C H R I S T I A N I T Y

C. S. Lewis famously remarked that “mere Christianity” is like a hallway where real conversations between
Christians of different convictions can begin and develop over time, as we emerge from our various
rooms to speak of Christ and his gospel to one another. For over twenty years, White Horse Inn has hosted
this conversation both on our radio show, White Horse Inn, and in our magazine, Modern Reformation.

VISIT WHITEHORSEINN.ORG TO LEARN MORE

04
Differences between the Reformed
and Eastern Orthodox Churches
by Tim Massaro
REFORMED
TRADITION IN THE CHURCH
Inheriting the theological arguments of the Conciliar Move-
ments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Refor-
mation brought something unique to the table. Reformation
churches developed a nuanced vision of tradition and authority.
Tradition and the church’s authority took a ministerial (i.e.,
dependent and secondary) role to Scripture. They made a
qualitative distinction between Scripture and tradition. Scrip-
ture cannot err, while tradition, councils, and bishops have done
so and continue to do so.
This does not mean the Reformation dismissed tradition.
In fact, many Reformed doctrines and practices evolved from
fruitful interaction with the past. Nevertheless, Scripture is
clear on matters of salvation. Reformational churches believe
that justification by faith alone is the most radiant aspect of
God’s self-revelation. God’s word alone is without error. Church
tradition, which is helpful and should not be discarded lightly, is
less clear and, more importantly, is fallible.
62
GEEK SQUAD
EASTERN ORTHODOXY
TRADITION IN THE CHURCH
Eastern churches place Scripture above tradition but not in a
qualitative way. Scripture “is one of the purest manifestations
of tradition. It is constitutively within sacred tradition, not
apart from it.”1 For Eastern churches, the worship of God and
the liturgy handed down in the traditions is clear.
Tradition takes on an authoritative role in relation to the
church and its practices. Tradition is handed down as a gift
that cannot be “owned.” It is not something a church pos-
sesses, either as a rigorous set of documents or as relative to
culture. The true church has had a vision of the path to God
from the beginning. Liturgical life determines what beliefs
have authority. Creeds and conciliar decrees take effect when
they shape the church’s liturgy, which brings people into vital
communion with God. The authority of a tradition is depen-
dent on the universality, antiquity, and conciliarity of the belief
or practice.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
 REFORMED
L I T U R GY A N D T H E P E W
Protestant reforms sought a healthy use of the church’s medieval
and ancient practices. The material principle of solus Christus
and the formal principle of sola scriptura shape Reformation wor-
ship in distinct ways. By centering everything on the life, death,
and resurrection of Christ, Christians are formed in his image.
The regulative principle of worship (RPW) guards the church
against idolatry, which is defined as whatever hides the pure
preaching of the gospel. Sadly, this principle can be applied too
rigorously at the expense of beauty.
Worship and vocation flow from gratitude for God’s free
grace. A Christian’s justification in Christ frees him to serve
God without fear and to live for his glory.
T H E O S I S A N D J U S T I F I CAT I O N
Adopting the Augustinian strain of medieval thought, the
ascent of man into God’s life is inverted into the descent of
Christ and his Spirit. While this language is not foreign to the
East, the discussion evolved with the law/gospel distinction,
which results in a refined doctrine of justification. To safeguard
God’s unconditional promise, justification can no longer include
the conversion of the soul or the infusion of some virtue.
Regeneration and virtue are the results of this free gift, not its
cause. Yet, the Reformation tradition never dismissed repen-
tance, conversion, virtue, or participation in the life of God. It
found a new, clearer mode of expressing this truth. Justification
by faith alone in Christ alone means that we are given the life
of God in Christ by the Spirit simply by promise. God’s descent
to us reorients life around the joy of promise, one that radically
alters a sinner’s heart. The Christian life now participates
in that very promise by which we have communion with the
Triune God. Reformation churches believe that without this
correct ordering, the gospel can never be cosmic, transforma-
tive, or good news.
MODERNREFORMATION.ORG
EASTERN ORTHODOXY
L I T U R GY A N D T H E P E W
Eastern churches view the liturgy as a predominately mystical
reality. The eschatological, cosmic reality of heaven becomes
transparent through the icons and liturgy. This heavenly
worship is the gospel. By the Spirit’s abiding presence with
the bishop, who holds to tradition and the Eucharist, heaven
comes down to us. Icons are not idols but transparent doors
into the heavenly temple. Through the divine liturgy, the soul
ascends back into the life of the Triune God. The spiritual work
of God in the Eucharist brings reconciliation to the world. While
expressing many helpful aspects of the Christian faith, the
East tends to emphasize beauty and images over the clarifying
necessity of the preached word.
T H E O S I S A N D J U S T I F I CAT I O N
Central to the Eastern theological vision is the doctrine of
deification, or theosis. God’s infinite essence is incapable of
penetration by the finite creature. The question then becomes
how finite, sinful creatures can enter that infinite life. The incar-
nation of the Son is God’s reply. The church participates in the
divine life of the Trinity by the grace found in Jesus. Through
the liturgy and tradition of the church, salvation is receiving by
grace what God has by nature. The incarnation of the Son has
purified the world by the working of the Holy Spirit.2 Life is an
ascent into God as he enters into the world by Christ’s incarna-
tion. Within the East, differences exist between the general
modes of this ascent. Some lean more toward a Semi-Pelagian
view of the human will, while others have adopted a more
Augustinian vision of grace and perfection in God. 
TIMOTHY W. MASSARO (MDiv, from Westminster Seminary
California) is social media manager at White Horse Inn and
associate editor for Core Christianity.
1 John Anthony McGuckin, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to
its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture (Chichester, UK: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2010), 101.
2 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
(Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 65–70.
63
05
The Communion of Saints
by Eric Landry
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen
hen we Christians profess our
belief in “the communion of
W saints,” we’re acknowledging that
our relationships in the kingdom
of God transcend other forms of
human connection. Although it’s hard to imag-
ine, in Christ we have stronger connections with
other Christians—even those we don’t know—
than we do with our natural family, fellow
citizens, or ethnic group. We sometimes over-
look, however, how the phrase reminds us that
our connection with one another stretches
across time as well. The author of the sermon-
letter to the Hebrews tells his congregation that
during worship we commune not only with
“God, the judge of all,” but also with “the assem-
bly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven”
and “the spirits of the righteous made perfect”
(Heb. 12:23). Our worship transcends the time
and space in which we worship. We have true
fellowship not only with God but also with those
men and women who died in faith before us, and
who are surrounded by innumerable angels in
festal gathering.
64
B AC K PAG E
There is great comfort in this truth for those
who are facing death, either their own or some-
one they love. All of us will, sooner or later, go
the way of all the earth, but our communion
with one another will never end. In 1 Corinthians
10:17, Paul tells us that our participation in the
Lord’s Supper ensures that we are participants
in Christ’s own body and blood: every time we
partake of the bread and wine, we participate
with the risen Lord and his body, here on earth
and in heaven. This was why Paul exhorted the
immature Christians of Corinth to flee from
sexual immorality and to pursue peace and
unity within the church. A real bond existed
between them and the risen Lord, and he didn’t
want them to pollute that bond by their sin and
strife. For those of us who are staring down that
last enemy, there should be great comfort in the
fact that our union with one another is secure
even after the ravages of death have done their
worst.
Pop culture encourages us to speak of loved
ones who have died as still being present with
us in some sense: their spirit is present or
they’re looking down from heaven. The Bible
gives us an even greater comfort and measure
of union with our friends and family who have
died: We still worship with one another! And
our worship, even though it is now separated by
the vale of tears, unites us to one another just
as it unites us to God. 
ERIC LANDRY is executive editor of Modern Reformation
magazine.
VOL.27 NO.1 JAN/FEB 2018
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