Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1131: How is the Eastern Orthodox Church Different from Evangelical Protestantism? Dr. Eve Tibbs

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

Dr. Eve (Paraskevè) Tibbs is an Affiliate Professor of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, where she teaches Historical Theology, Systematic Theology, and Eastern Orthodox Theology. Her research and teaching interests include: the Holy Trinity and Personhood, Ecclesiology, Early Church History and Doctrinal Development. Dr. Tibbs served as Chair of the Eastern Orthodox Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion for six years, and has served as a member of the Executive Steering Committee of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute at Loyola Marymount University since 2015. Dr. Tibbs' most recent book is: A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology: Introducing Beliefs and Practices.  In this conversation, Dr. Tibbs gives an overview of the beliefs and practices of the Eastern church, and identifies ways in which the Eastern church differs from Evangelical Protestantism.   Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Rah. My guest today is Dr. Eve Tibbs, who is an affiliate professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, where she teaches historical theology, systematic theology, and Eastern Orthodox theology. Eve is the author of this book, A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology, Introducing Beliefs and Practices. And that is what we talk about. This is basically a one-on-one course in Eastern Orthodox beliefs and practice.

So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Eve Tibbs. Eve, thanks so much for being on Theology in Raw. I'm really excited about this conversation. That's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me. So just tell us a bit about yourself. Were you raised in the Greek Orthodox Church, or what's the background there? Well, yes and no. I am Greek by descent. 23andMe says I'm 97% Greek, which is kind of a big number. I was baptized as an infant into the Greek Orthodox Church. My parents were Greek Orthodox nominally, didn't really attend church. But my grandmother used to take me when i was very very

little before she entered eternal life and it stuck with me even i mean before the age of seven so when i was a teenager and could drive i brought myself back to the greek orthodox church and i've been there ever since raised my husband and i i have raised our children in the faith and all our grandchildren now. And, um, yeah. Okay. So I have an off the wall, goofy question that since, since you're Greek, uh, how accurate is the movie? My big fat Greek wedding. Like when you watch that, do you like, are you like, Oh my word, I feel like I'm watching my family or are you like this is nothing nothing like what is no it's pretty much i mean it's comedic of course there's exaggerations but that's pretty that was pretty much my life although that was you know taking place in chicago and wasn't we were a little bit more western out here but yep

yeah everybody i know who is greek watched that movie and said um that's my life they nailed it yeah a good friend of mine is greek and i just realized this and born and raised in chicago and oh yeah he said the exact same thing he's like this is like to the t yeah i i have um i mean so i'm i'm part armenian um which is not Greek, but I mean, when I watch that, a lot of cultural similarities in my upbringing. So my mom's half, I'm only a quarter. I don't look Armenian, but her whole side of the family is very Armenian. you know, yeah, just the food culture and just the male-female relationships. The neck that turns the head. Yeah. The Greek, yeah, the Greek and Armenians have a lot in common. And even on the side of persecution with the Armenian and Greek genocide. So

we share a lot of wonderful familial things and we also share a history of persecution. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Okay, so I wanted to have you on because I know almost nothing about the Orthodox Church as a whole. I've had several people who either are Eastern or some who converted to being Eastern who have told me that I sound kind of Eastern in the way I think about theology. In one area, and maybe we can even begin here, the embrace of the mystery of God, not feeling the need to systematize everything. Is that a characteristic of Eastern theology? Is that just kind of in the air of how Eastern people think? Or is that like a more of a cardinal kind of doctrine? Or tell us about mystery, theology, God, how those... Mystery is a tricky word, right? Because we tend to think of something like Agatha Christie, and there's these things that we don't understand that are floating around us. But if you've got to think

about the New Testament use of the term, whenever Jesus uses the term, he's basically like the he says to you has been given the mystery, which seems paradoxical because they're not quite understanding it. But basically he's saying it's all out there. God has revealed God's self and you're picking up little bits and pieces of it so that really is what mystery is it isn't anti intellectual it's like hyper rational okay so some people tend to think that because there's mystery we can we can set aside the systematic ideas and that and that's entirely true. But that doesn't mean that there's no discernment or intellectual understanding of the dogma. It just means that God is revealing God's self through interaction

and worship. So all theology starts with a personal connection to God through worship. I mean, really, if you think back, the ecumenical councils, all of the people who attended were bishops. They were responsible for worship. They weren't there because they were academicians. So, I mean, because, I mean, and that's your life now. You have one foot in the academy, one foot in the church, but is that pretty common in the Eastern church where you don't have one in full? Yeah. Exactly. Yes. So most of the people who are doing theology in the Orthodox church are clergy. Not entirely, but certainly those who are living the life, the Eucharistic life of the Orthodox church. That would be essential.

Even that, I totally resonate with that. I mean, I was, let's see, saved at 19. We'll talk about what that even means. But started following Jesus passionately and fully, I guess, in 19. And I fell in love with the academic side of studying the Bible. But I also, unlike others who have that kind of passion, I actually love, like people. Like I care deeply for the church. And I always said, I either want to be a pastoral theologian or a theological pastor.

And people are like, well, you can pick one or the other, but you kind of can't do both, you know? And I was like, I don't like that dichotomy. So, um, yeah. Yeah. You really have to, the, the ancient Christian world, the Evagrius of Ponticus said, uh, that you are truly a theologian if you truly pray and you truly pray. If you truly pray, you are truly a theologian. So those things, the contemplation of God and prayer and worship, they were never separated in the early church.

That really didn't happen until scholasticism in the Roman Catholic West, after the split from the Orthodox churches. So that really is a Western church phenomenon, the split. Yeah, the trajectory really starts in scholasticism in the 11th and 12th century. It had many good things, but theology became... Thomas Aquinas called it the queen of the sciences. And that takes it in a little bit different way. Can you give us a really basic history lesson for somebody that doesn't even... I'm thinking of even my kids or younger people in the faith where they're like, wait, what is, there's a Western church and an Eastern church. And can you take us back to how we got a Western church, Eastern church, what that even means? And then

also the different brands. I mean, I know like, you know, you have a Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Coptic. Is that even part of the Eastern Church? Can you give us just a real basic overview, historically speaking? Okay, there we go. Well, in the ancient Christian world, let's start with the apostles and Christ and move forward. Those who spoke Greek were called, in the Christian East, in Jerusalem and Constantinople and Antioch, they were the Greek-speaking Christians, and the Latin-speaking Christians were primarily in the West, in Rome. So really that's where you get Eastern and Western.

Even today, the Orthodox world was the Greek-speaking Christians, and the West was from Latin. So for the first 1,000 years or so, there was one church. We called it the Undivided Church, and it was East and West. And there was a lot of diversity. What was happening in Rome would have been different from what was happening in Antioch, and that was absolutely fine. Until the end of the first millennium, Christian millennium, there became a debate about the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And

in the Christian West, one of the popes, Nicholas I, said, you know what, I don't need to talk to the rest of the bishops and council, because I am in the seat of Peter, and I can make this decision by myself. And that's very simplified. Little by little, the diversity became disunity. And in 1054, there was an official split. Basically, the East and West excommunicated one another. And the Eastern churches, the five Cs that were Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antria antioch constantinople and rome they divided east and west so in 1054 that's the first time you could say there was a separate roman catholic church okay and all of the rest of those seas of the pentarchy there's they were they remained

orthodox and they are still orthodox and intact today okay then over on the western side of church history in the Latin Roman West, you know this, Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk and the Reformation takes place in the early 16th century. But all of that, you know, John Calvin further North in Geneva and, or because of Wingley and all of those Reformation traditions, they all originate in the Christian West. They're reforming the church as presented in the Roman Catholic Church after the Great Schism of the 11th century. Then you've got the Christian East, what's happening over there.

Very different history, very different theology. So what really Martin Luther was rebelling against was some of the things that Rome had added after the Great Schism of 1054. In fact, he was really upset, you know, as you know, with Rome. And one point on the Eucharist, he says, the Greeks are the best Christians in the world. Because he was really, yeah, he was, because the Greeks Because the specific thing was that the Greeks were offering the Holy Eucharist in both forms, the body and blood of Christ, to lay people. And at that time, the New Roman Catholic Medieval Church was only offering both forms to clergy. Oh, wow. Really? I did not know that. Wow. Okay. Did the Eastern Church have any kind of its own reformation?

This is, I think not, right? No, and there was no 1517 moment? No. Okay. No. You know, there's kind of, I'm kind of a little bit of a nerd, and I like to tell these, you know, light bulb jokes. And I used to be a software developer, and it's like, how many software developers does it take to change a light bulb? Do you know? No. None.

None. None because that's hardware. So how many orthodox does it take to change a light bulb? How many? Change. Oh. It's like a dad joke. That's funny.

That is a dad joke. That's funny. It is a dad joke. So since the Great Schism in 1054, there have been no dogmatic changes in the Orthodox Church. And that's pretty important. That doesn't mean that other things don't change. I mean, the Holy Spirit is present and the faith is dynamic, even though it maybe appears, you know, old, old fashioned to a lot of people today. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so where did, uh, where did we get Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox? What's the, what's the, is it, is it a relationship similar to what we would call like denominations or is it more like the Anglican church in England and the Anglican church in America are going to have somewhat different flavors or yeah. So the, the orthodox we'll talk about the one orthodox church wherever it is in the world okay and the faith is exactly the same so it's not denominations they're not parts of one another they are the one apostolic church that has a historically continuous

um both in faith and in worship and in dogma etc et cetera, et cetera. And it's a very simple answer to the question. I worship in a Greek Orthodox parish, and when we have our festival, we have baklava. And in the Russian Orthodox churches, they have pirogies. So really, I call it different flavors of orthodoxy. There is only one Orthodox church. There are different jurisdictions around the world, but those are mainly administrative. And the Orthodox church. There are different jurisdictions around the world, but those are mainly administrative. And the Orthodox church does not think of itself in administrative terms. Basically, it's the body of Christ wherever it is found. It's kind of a cosmic... So the leadership is going... You might have a head of the Russian Orthodox church and a head

of the Greek Orthodox, but they don't see each other as competing with that or they're just... No. So one of the essentials of orthodoxy, and that's in my book, is conciliar. The Orthodox Church is conciliar. The Roman Catholic Church has its head, which is the Pope, and the Pope can make decisions. He has universal authority. He can even declare dogma on his own. He's got that kind of immediate plenary authority. But in the Orthodox Church, no one person has any authority. The only authority is Jesus Christ. So all of the bishops are equal, and this is why there's been no dogmatic declarations since the Church has been able to gather in council. That's what the term conciliar means.

If you think back to Acts chapter 15, you know there was a problem with Gentiles becoming Christians. Should they become Jewish first? You remember that debate. And how did they solve that debate? Even Peter was there. If Peter had been the boss of the apostles, he would have made the decision himself. But no, they sent word back to Jerusalem. And even James there, who was the bishop there, he didn't even make the decision himself.

He called a council, it says, of the elders and the whole church. And their response, it's in chapter 15, verse 28, I'm pretty sure. They begin it like this. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. And to us, yeah. And then I don't even care what comes next, but they met in council and waited until they could all agree. That's conciliarity. So that really is how, I mean, humans are flawed and sinful.

Humans are flawed and sinful, but the ideal, the way the Orthodox Church is kind of, I guess you'd say structured, even though it's not really structured, is that no one person is an authority and everybody together is the church. And so when we use the term the church, it really means everybody other than that, is there still like a hierarchical level of leadership? Yes. Yes, definitely hierarchy, but I guess, you know, we don't have time, but there is also a hierarchy, at least in the Orthodox view of the Holy Trinity, but there are no degrees of divinity. So the Father is the one from whom the Son is begotten, and the Father is the one from whom the Spirit proceeds. But that doesn't mean that the Father is a superior God than the Son or the Spirit. There is a hierarchy. Justin Martyr in the second century said there's a taxis, an order. There's the protos, who is the Father, and then the second, who is the Son, and the third, who is the Spirit. But when we say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we're not saying one is better. Right. One is not superior.

So that really is how the Orthodox Church has structured as a model, or I should say an icon of the Holy Trinity, that there is a hierarchy. Because you always have to have a protos, you always have to have a point of unity to prevent the diversity from becoming disunity. Interesting. Okay. And when you honor the hierarchy out of love for Jesus Christ, then it's not a power authority issue. You're staying together out of love for Jesus Christ. It's a hierarchy among equals. I mean, it's- It is. Yeah. The protos, the first, has always been talked about by the church fathers as the first among equals. That's a great way to put it. Yes.

There's been a debate within some evangelical circles about the so-called eternal subordination of the Son. Is that a thing in the Eastern Church, a matter of debate, or did they have a view on that? Because I think most people would deem that as heresy. Well, I guess you could say that there is, would there be an eternal subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit? Because I think it's misunderstanding, and I've actually just touched on that a little bit. If the Father is like the monarch but that's not actually a bad word in trinitarian language but if the father is the source of of the relationship with the son and the source of the relationship with the spirit that taxis that order that is not subordination okay that is that is um communion or perichoresis you can use all of those fancy terms you can think

of it in terms of a roman mindset where the pope is you know representing the father but that's not an orthodox worldview the orthodox worldview is always conciliar so under the under the western understanding of authority with papal authority then then you might have a view of the Trinity in that way. But if there's no different degrees of divinity, and the Son is an eternal Son, and the Father is an eternal Father, there really isn't any subordination in that sense. Yeah, I don't like the term subordination. When they say subordination, that sounds like an unhealthy kind of hierarchy. It almost has a secular feel of leadership, is the Bible. And in the Roman Catholic Church, the authority is the pope or the magisterium, the college of bishops that help determine scriptural interpretation. There's nothing like that in the Orthodox Church, because the only authority is Jesus Christ.

And individuals might have jurisdiction or responsibility, but ideally and theologically, there's no support for that. So, I wasn't planning on going here, but this has been something I've been thinking deeply about the last couple of years, leadership in the New Testament church. And it is interesting that the very words that the Apostle Paul uses to describe leaders, like he actually avoids the Greek word exousia, the typical word for authority, you know, because he uses, I mean, the main word is diakonia, service. Like if you're a leader, you're a servant. Yeah, actually, in Ephesians chapter 3, he calls himself the akonos, the servant. Yeah, the servant.

But he also talks about it as a minister, and the word there is liturgon. He's also the one who offers worship as well. Right, yeah. In Romans 15, too, I think that word occurs as well. Or the closest he gets is, if I'm going to butcher the pronunciation, proiesthemi or something, like a household manager. And those who lead in 1 Timothy, I want to say five, those who lead well, who manage well, the elders who are leading well. But it's not, again, it's not exousia. It's not like heavy-handed kind of idea of lead top-down leadership um so i guess

my question so the leaders is that what you're thinking of what's it the bishop no no no um proistami it's only used a couple times i think but it's translated like manager the one who manages the household yeah oh you do have episcopate. Yeah, the overseer as well. But so in the Orthodox Church, to be a leader is not seen as a highly like authority. You have certain responsibilities, but you're not seen as like an authority over non-leaders. Is that a good way? Exactly. No, I mean, it's Jesus washing the feet of his disciples saying this is what you need to be doing.

I mean, that's got to be it. And I think that plays out. I know a lot of Orthodox clergy and bishops, and I don't like to use the term servant leader because that has a, you know, 20, 21st century connotation. But I guess they are those things. I know a lot of most, you know, I can't think of anybody who isn't a humble servant leader. What kind of spiritual, so I'm not going to be really careful with my words, spiritual oversight, spiritual, are there authority-like things that like... Yeah. Well, because, so for example, I have, our bishop is Metropolitan Gerasimos of San Francisco. He's lovely and he's humble and he's tireless. But his main role and the main role of all of the bishops throughout church history, especially early church history, if you think about St. Irenaeus and the problems he was having with Gnosticism in the second century and he's and and ignatius and they say look to the bishop okay the bishop can the bishop can can if you are connected to this

bishop who is connected to all the other bishops then you know you're connected to the true church of christ and so even continually to today the bishop is the one who preserves truth by holding everybody together. And so his role is mainly to stop disunity. And that means that anybody, for example, if he, to use the term authority, if he needs to make a transfer, administrative transfer, or step in if there's an issue, administrative transfer or step in if there's an issue okay um people follow him not because they have to he's not my boss i'm on the metropolis council i don't follow him because he's my boss i'm a volunteer but i follow him out of love for jesus christ and so people will follow their bishop and it's a hard thing to explain to somebody outside of that we don't have to follow It's a hard thing to explain to somebody outside of that.

We don't have to follow him, but we do to preserve unity because of love for Jesus Christ and his church. And I would imagine you follow him because he's imitating Christ well, like he's laying down an example. But even if he didn't, even if he didn't, and I'm not saying he doesn't, but even if he didn't, the Orthodox will typically follow their bishop out of love for Jesus Christ. Wow. Because humans are sinful and flawed, but Christ is perfect. I really like, again, I'm just kind of knee deep in New Testament leadership categories and how it was so different than how the Greco-Roman world viewed this very, very top-down hierarchical status-driven view of leaders. top-down, hierarchical, status-driven view of leaders. And it seems like that Paul and other New Testament writers were turning that just on its head by, again, constantly calling leaders servants as the main... Yeah, not servant leadership in the modern sense of the term,

but you are a leader because you're a servant. Servants are leaders. I would love to know, kind of big picture, what are some key differences between, so most of my audience is probably going to be, yeah, evangelical Christian. My audience is going to be more kind of moderate. They're not going to be, you know, for lack of better terms, far left or right or whatever. But they're, you know, probably standard evangelical, many non-denominational kind of people. What would be some be the main kind of distinctions between that brand of Christianity and the Eastern faith? It's probably an easy, but not quick. Okay. So, Augustine of Hippo is a saint in the Orthodox Church, but he is probably responsible

for the biggest trajectory, the biggest difference. So Augustine was a very creative thinker. And there's a term that I actually really like. It's theologomenon. Theologomenon. It's a pious idea that may or may not be true. It's kind of, I guess you might say a speculation. Before dogma had kind of been guess you might say a speculation okay you know here's before dogma had kind of been defined or the correct way of talking about for example jesus fully god and fully human all of the language that came about through the ecumenical councils um they speculated on well maybe it's this or maybe it's this so he did that with his view of inherited guilt. A lot of people think that he misread Romans and that he substituted a Greek word and said, because Adam sinned, we have all sinned, and

therefore we have all inherited the guilt of Adam. And Augustine even says, even if parents have been baptized, their child has inherited the guilt of Adam. And that's something that carried through the Protestant tradition, through the Roman Catholic tradition, because Luther was an Augustinian monk. And that has carried through, I think, most of evangelical Protestantism. And therefore, the solution to that problem, if you state the problem that way, which let me already say is not the way orthodox state the problem okay if you state the problem that way we've inherited guilt we owe god a debt and some says we owe god a debt then how do you pay back that debt well in the west the problem is solved at the cross where jesus has paid back the debt to god the father um and it's done so good friday is it the cross is it, the work is done,

and you hear that. So first of all, the Orthodox would say, wherever does God need payment in order to forgive? And my example is, you know, the prodigal son. The father is representing God, and he's running out to meet his prodigal son, even before the son has had an opportunity to ask for forgiveness to be brought back in. He's forgiving him immediately simply by making the effort to turn back, to repent. But more than that, the Orthodox believe that we have, Adam and Eve certainly caused a big problem for all of us. But the main problem in Genesis, from an Orthodox worldview perspective, is that Adam and Eve wanted the one thing that God said, the one thing that was not to be communion with God. They were given this entire garden. God said, be fruitful and multiply

and use all these things. And all of these things are meant to be communion with the God of life. And Adam and Eve said, you know what? Okay, that's all good. But we want that, that thing that you didn't give us. So in a way, it's paganism. And in whatever the fruit means and represents, it means turning away from the God of life toward the thing that's dead in itself. Whatever the fruit is, it's dead in itself. So it's kind of a bigger cosmic thing that, yes, Adam sinned and Adam was disobedient, but that's the least significant thing. What we've inherited is death. We die.

I mean, they didn't die immediately, but now we die. And there's evil in the world and there's sin in the world. So the problem statement is that we got we've inherited a big mess of things our human condition is decaying and we die okay so jesus has come he he took on the human condition he became one of us and just in doing so he's reunited humanity and divinity in himself and yes he went to the cross but he also conquered death and that's our enemy so if if the problem statement is that we've inherited something like an illness we die and we've got enemies the the view of jesus is that he comes to solve the problem by conquering our enemies by eliminating evil evil, by renewing creation. And so his resurrection is, crucifixion is important. You have to have that. He's died for our sake,

but he's resurrected and he's the conqueror. So when Orthodox Christians see Jesus on the cross on Good Friday, they don't see the victim. They see the one who loved us so much, he voluntarily ascended the cross in order to conquer death so that we can be united to him in eternal life. So I'm hearing, yeah, because if you have a different... Different problem statement leads to a different answer. That really is, that leads to, yeah, several significant differences. a different answer. That really is, that leads to several significant differences. This episode is sponsored by Haya Health, a children's nutritional supplement that's actually really good for them. So I first heard about Haya through an advertisement

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And get your kids the full-bodied nourishment that they need to grow into healthy adults. Adamson introduced sin and death into the world. We inherit death. Because they separated from the God of life. Right. And Jesus has returned us to communion with the God of life. That's it. Okay.

What's the difference between life and death? I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no. It's fine. No, no. I just... So, whereas, yeah, most Protestants would say we inherit Adam's guilt on some level.

There's debates about how that's transmitted, you know, and I agree. I mean, Romans 5.12, I do think Augustine very much mistranslated that instead of because all sinned, he translated it in whom, which is not what the Greek, is it F-ho or something? F-ho, exactly. Yeah. Very good. F-ho or something? F-ho, exactly. Yeah.

Very good. I remember writing a paper on this on my Bible college days, like 25 years ago, and looking at that. But you know, so that leads to so many other things, though. The Immaculate Conception of Mary in the Roman Catholic Church,

that's dogma. Okay. Pope Pius IX declared it, ex cathedra from his throne, that Mary is the Immaculate Conception and a lot of people don't realize what that means. That means that of all the parents who had relations and bore children, Mary's parents were the only ones that didn't pass along original guilt. Her

conception was the Immaculate Conception, the only child ever born with an Immaculate Conception. So what does that do to Mary? It makes her a different kind of ontological human being than the rest of us. So that's not an Orthodox understanding. For us, Mary's, if you came to my church, you would see a huge icon of Mary with Jesus Christ. Okay. And maybe somebody who didn't know better would say, ah, see, these Orthodox do worship Mary. No, she's an ordinary girl. But her yes was not preordained. She completely gave herself over

to God's will. Her yes was voluntary. And she bore, I mean, she becomes the temple because she herself bore God. So the Eastern Church has a different view of Mary than the Catholic Church. Absolutely. Yes. Now, the Eastern Church will refer to Mary as Theotokos, which is what Cyril of Alexandria said. You probably remember this in his debate with Nestorius. Nestorius says, I'll call her Christotokos,

because she gave birth to this human who was the Christ. And in this person who is the human Christ, there's alongside him, I'm simplifying ridiculously, but there is this divine logos and there is this human Christ. And Nestorius said, you can't call her Theotokos because these two parts of him are separate. And the church says no. And Sir Alexandria represented the Orthodox position and said, no, Jesus is inseparably God and inseparably human. And so we will call her theotokos because she gave birth to God. So when the Orthodox use the term theotokos, they're really making a Christological statement. She gave birth to God following the Council of Ephesus and Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Chalcedon, etc.

So it's almost like, it sounds, this might be an inaccurate way of putting it, but just for simplicity's sake, like the Eastern view of Mary is kind of in between Protestant and Catholic in a sense. Like it's a higher view of Mary than Protestants might have, or more nuanced, more theologically sophisticated view, but doesn't fall into... Well, I don't... Like Catholic friends, the kind of Mariolatry, they say it's not... Yeah, they say it's a little more nuanced than that too. So high view of Mary, but no worship of... Maybe not. I mean, the Orthodox would say that the Immaculate Conception is improper dogma.

It's actually dogma. You have to believe it in the Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholics also have a dogma of the bodily assumption of Mary before her death. And the Orthodox believe that Mary fell asleep in the Lord. She actually really died because she's a regular human being. So maybe it's a little... I don't know if it's in between. I think that the evangelical, what do I want to say? Ignorance, ignoring Mary, in a sense, comes from the medieval Catholic view of Mary. In other words, it's still the Reformation polemic.

A reaction against all things Catholic. A reaction against that particular kind of view. And you know what? I teach at Fuller Theological Seminary and I've taught systematic theology for a lot of years. Only recently, in 2017, did they ask me to teach courses on Eastern Orthodox theology and those it's been, those classes have been oversubscribed with a wait list. So it's the content, it's not me. But in any event, before I was teaching classes on orthodoxy, I would basically teach the Western systematic, you know, dogmatic tradition. And during the break, people would come up to me and say, okay, what is the orthodox view on this thing that you just talked about? And when asked, I would tell them, and they would say, okay, what is the Orthodox view on this thing that you just talked about? And when

asked, I would tell them and they would say, you know what? I think I'm Orthodox because I've always thought that. I never, you know, in the Western seminary, you got to pick, is it Barth? Is it Brunner? Is it Pelagius? Is it Augustine? You know? And then when you hear that there's a whole other worldview that never entered the Western academy, They go, oh, I think that's me. So, okay. So going back to add it. So, so no inherited guilt. Is there a view of like a, are we born with like a sin nature or what's the, how would

you, how, what's the kind of anthropology in, in Orthodoxy? Yeah, we're definitely fallen. We're fallen. We're sinful. We need a savior. We're a big mess. But, but God doesn't require us to pay Him back. God wants everybody to be saved. So there's no Calvinistic, there's no

tulip, there's no election. And even eternity is looked at in a different way. We don't have time for that, but maybe I'll come back and talk about that another time. Okay. Okay. So that leads to maybe a different view of salvation. So there's no like penal substitution. That would be probably a big difference. There's definitely no penal substitution. And salvation in the Orthodox Church is called theosis, which is really union or reunion with God. And it began when Jesus is incarnation. So when you say the work of Christ, where did his work begin? Most Protestants would say when he went to the cross. The when you say the work of Christ, where did his work begin? Most Protestants would say when he went to the cross. The Orthodox would say when he became incarnate. Because he begins

the process of uniting us, reuniting us, communion with God. So salvation as theosis is union with God. It was Peter, in Peter's epistle, he says that we are partakers of the divine nature. So what Jesus is by nature, he will give us by grace. And this is part of Paul's language where he says we become sons of God. Because we are sons when we are in Christ. When we are connected to his son, we become like sons. When we are connected to his son, we become like sons. And, you know, sometimes women will read that and say, no, no, this is, you know, we don't want to be sons of God.

No, I say, yes, I do. If I'm going to be in my relationship with a father like Jesus, absolutely. Make me a son. Okay. Make me a son of God, because that's our goal, is that we should be so in Christ that we are adopted into the relationship with his Father through him. It's interesting that, and so I did my PhD work in Paul,, Paul has lots of, you know, metaphors of salvation. By far, the most pervasive description of our salvific state is that we are in Christ, I think over a hundred times in Paul, not justification, not redemption. I mean, all these are there and important, but in Christ,

over and over and over and over. It sounds like the Orthodox Church is sort of capitalizing on that as kind of the main lens to view our salvation. And so he also, St. Paul also says he's working out his salvation in fear and trembling, and that he's reaching forward, he's stretching forward to the end. So salvation for the Orthodox is not a one time, it's not a momentary experience, it's one's entire life. And yes, that may even continue into eternity because God is infinite and we are not. We are finite. Even though He will grant us eternal life, we are still finite beings. So there is more of God to become in communion with. It'll never end. That doesn't sound too different from, I would say, maybe more of a Protestant

scholarly understanding of salvation, where even in Paul you have, or in the New Testament as a whole, you have past tense, we have been saved. You have current, present tense, we are being saved, and future tense, we will be saved. So this already, not yet. I think Protestants would distinguish, again, on a more academic level, I think in the church, these terms get thrown around as synonyms, but like, you know, justification might be a description of that initial point of salvation, you know, redemption or, you know, resurrection, looking at the final state. But all of these are under the broad umbrella of salvation, which is an already not yet past, present, future phenomenon. So while Protestants should distinguish between

justification and maybe sanctification, we shouldn't put a harsh distinction between sanctification and salvation. Like sanctification is another way of looking at this process of salvation. So some people might hear me talk like that and say, wait, that's not evangelical. No, that actually is very, very standard. Again, on a scholarly level, that's how we talk because that's how Paul talks. I mean, there's no getting around the fact that he talks about salvation from all these different angles. So everything I said, that would be similar, I think, to the Eastern understanding. In some ways, yeah. Kind of manipulating the

semantics, but yes, very similar. I think the big difference is that salvation is a lifelong process that may even continue into eternity because of God's infinity. Yeah, I saw you in our email exchange. Can you expand that a little bit? That's infinity. Yeah, I saw you in our email exchange. Can you expand that a little bit? That's interesting. So in the afterlife, in eternity, there's still a process of salvation happening. It's not like it's...

Yeah, well, okay. It's not universalism, but I suppose some people might think that it's there, but it's not. There, in the Orthodox teaching, there isn't like a separation between heaven and hell. Okay. Because God is present everywhere. How can you have a place where God is not? God is the creator of all things.

God is the one who exists outside of time. It's the God of life. God is the creator of all things. God is the one who exists outside of time. It's the God of life. And if you think of, what is it, Matthew 25, 31, the judgment seat of Christ, where he's separating the sheep from the goats, they're both in his presence. Some are on his right, some are on his left. But the ones on his left, i'm using this kind of figuratively the word picture they will not be really happy with the uncreated glory of of god um because they have preferred darkness as saint paul would say um they're they they don't want to be exposed to the light they want to they prefer darkness so the light of christ or whatever you're going to the uncreated glory of god whatever that is is going to be painful and torture

to those who don't want to be in christ in god's presence it's it's kind of like um you don't want to be with god sorry you're going to be with god but you're not going to like it and so god will give us whatever we want do you want to go closer to Jesus Christ and be in the light of Jesus Christ and the love and all of that? However you've groomed your life, then when you are in Christ's presence, you will love that presence

and you will want more of it because he is infinite and we are not. There will always be more love. It will never be boring. More love to attain to. But if you've groomed your life on earth as preferring hell, you are not going to go into hell. You are going to be in hell when you are in Christ's presence because his love and his glory will be like fire to you. It's a little bit different way because it puts the

burden of salvation on each of us. It isn't earning your salvation by work. Salvation is a gift if you want to talk about it in Western terms. But if you think of salvation in terms of communion with God and growing in communion with God, then the burden is on us. Do you want to be with God? Do you want to grow in communion with God? You're going to love that. You're going to love eternity because there's plenty of that for you. Are you the worst sinner? I don't even want to think about it. I don't even watch the news anymore. You're going to pretty much hate being in God's presence and it's going to be pretty painful. Is there opportunity to repent and turn to God endlessly in the afterlife, like in more of a traditional Christian universalist perspective, or is it not? It's never taught.

But I think there's kind of this hope. In fact, actually, Metropolitan Callisto is aware of blessed Memory in his collected, volume one of his collected works, the last chapter says, dare we hope for the salvation of all? And ultimately, I'm summarizing here, he says, we should hope, but we should never teach that because that's not what the Bible says. So it's kind of a... Interesting. We don't know what's going on in eternity, but I think it's a theologum. We don't know what's going on in eternity, but I think it's a theologum. It's a pious idea that the saints, according to Callistos Ware, the saints would not be happy if they knew that people were being tortured for eternity.

And so there is this hope that the love of God will overcome even the worst sinner. But that's not taught. So I'm not saying that the Orthodox Church is universalistic. But there's always just this kind of like... So it doesn't really fit any of the traditional Western church categories. We have three. We have universalism, annihilation, and eternal conscious torment. It's neither. It's neither. It's neither. And I really do think that the idea

that the Orthodox view solves a lot of the reasons that some of those, like annihilation, conditional annihilationism. I think that God will honor what it is you've chosen with your life. I'd be curious, and we don't need to get into this, but unless you want to say a quick word about it. Some of the traditional kind of like hell passages, the lake of fire, language around destruction, or even some of the torment passages, would those be seen as metaphor? Do you know how those would be interpreted if there is even one standard way of looking at those passages? I guess metaphor, but is it metaphor? It really is.

Yeah. It's really a description of pain and suffering, which evil ones will experience in the presence of the uncreated glory of the loving God. in the presence of the uncreated glory of the loving God. It makes me actually think of the way you were talking about the afterlife. You have that kind of strange or at least strange to Protestant ears passage at the end of Revelation when you have the new Jerusalem. But then it says, and outside are the kind of, you know, the evildoers and stuff. So you're like, wait a minute. So they're kind of right outside.

And then it says the door is always open too. It's like, well, open for who? And that's where, I mean, Christian universalists would capitalize on that saying, see, there's this fine line between, you know, the sheep and the goats and the goats are out there, but there's always a possibility of them coming in here. So the Orthodox church,

one thing that you've that you've reminded me of tends to not speculate on either end of the Bible. There's no, you know, are Orthodox young earth creationists or Darwinian, you know, none of those. The only thing the Orthodox would say and the Orthodox fathers throughout the ages is that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And we don't know how God did those things, but God did those things. Just like we don't know how Jesus became incarnate, but we know that he is truly God and truly human.

And we also know that he will return again in glory. How, when, the Orthodox will never speculate. In fact, when I was taking classes for my master's at Fuller, and actually my parish priest required that I read additional books for every class I took at Fuller. Orthodox books. And I actually was accountable to him for papers and exams. He wanted to make sure that I understood the Orthodox view, so I did double the work for my masters. But I remember I came to him one on, I said, I think we're all millennial, you know, pre-millennial, post-millennial, dispensational. And I said, I think we're all millennial. And he said, stop. I don't even want to hear those terms. And I said, well, you sent me to seminary. I've got a

test. I think the Orthodox are all millennial. And he goes, no, those are Western terms. And I said, well, you sent me to seminary. I've got a test. I think the Orthodox are amillennial. And he goes, no, those are Western terms. They don't describe us. Christ will come again, period. Okay, well, I have to still pass the test, but all right. See, I think it's the way you're talking, I think that's because I very much resonate with that. I just, part of it's my, I'm a biblical scholar by trade I love to look at pericopes and words and themes and what's Paul doing in the text what's Jesus doing rather than trying to

systematize the whole thing and I think sometimes the western church overly systematizes things and yeah what you said about young and old earth I completely resonate with that. I mean, if you're going to get down into like an apologetic, how do you correlate science and the Bible and stuff? I'm not saying there's not a place for those conversations, but I just think

sometimes we get our, as my mom would say, our undies in a bunch too much over some of these things that just don't... I think science is going to, well, I think actually, which is it? Mitch, Mitch, you Kaku,

who says the string theory guy, I think that science is going to get to the place where they, where God is essential. I Einstein kind of touched on that, the black box that, you know, the end move mover has to start things off, but I'm pretty sure I have his name,

right? Mitch, you Kaku. He's like the string theory guy, you know, Big Bang Theory show, the string theory. Anyway, he says that there must be a God. And I think quantum mechanics is getting to the point where we can explain things like Jesus walking through locked doors. But science is just getting there. So theology can kind of help science at that point. They're not opposed. We just have a few more minutes and I have too many questions here. So, okay, I'm curious, and we had an email exchange about this as well. What's the Eastern view of women? You don't have women priests.

Women are good. I mean, would it be, I mean, the Protestant category, the evangelical categories are, you know, complementarian, egalitarian, male-only leaders, or, you know, female and male. Is it, you even have like, you know, a hot button term today is, you know, patriarchy. And you have literal patriarchs, right? I mean, does that convey what people... Yeah, but it's not a bad term. I love our patriarch, actually. The book that I wrote, A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology, Introducing Worship and Belief, the foreword was written by patriarch, His All-Holiness, ecumenical patriarch Bartholomew.

So I love our patriarch. I need a title like that. His all holiness. Yeah. Isn't that beautiful? And he's a wonderful leader and person. A very Christ-like. So, okay.

Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at the well. And what does she do after she encounters him? She goes back to Samaria and she preaches that she's met the Messiah. In the Orthodox tradition, well, in the early Christian tradition, I should say, she was baptized and her name is Fotini, the enlightened one. And she's called equal to the apostles in the orthodox church she has a feast day august 6 in which she's commemorated every year and she is she is given the same hymns as the apostles equal to the apostles in honor i'm trying to think of some of the other women phoebe is a deaconess and if you probably know Paul's term.

When he refers to her, he calls her the akonos. He uses the male term. She's not a deaconess. She actually is just a deacon. Who else am I going to talk about? The myrrh-bearing women at the empty tomb of Christ, they're also called equal to the apostles. And as I mentioned already, you come to my church and there's a big icon of the Virgin Mary. She's very honored in the Orthodox Church, but not in the same way as the Roman

Catholic Church. So when people walk into my congregation, my parish, whether they're male or female, the role model of what it means to be a Christian is that woman, Mary, because she says, every part of me belongs to God. She's given herself wholly to God. So yes, in the tradition of the Orthodox Church, there have been female deacons, tradition of the orthodox church there have been female deacons but no female priests and and um the the the deaconess or i should say the deacon female deacon has gone out of practice in the recent centuries but it never was eliminated in the last century a bishop in greece ordained two women as deacons so it's never really fallen out of the tradition it just isn't as necessary now because in the early church women were baptized naked and and they're anointed with oil and so they used the female deacons in

order to do that out of out of modesty so that it isn't done so much now women in the Orthodox Church can preach and teach adults, adult men, adult males. Whereas in other Protestant traditions, for example, where women are not ordained, they are also not allowed to teach. Right. So in the Orthodox Church, women can have the blessing to teach, to preach. They can pretty much do everything we have the orthodox church has parish councils which is very similar to a presbyterian board of elders and women can be the presidents of the parish council which would be essentially being an elder in that sense So I guess it's similar and different. Yeah.

There is probably no, well, how should I say it? Orthodox are more comfortable with the idea that the Holy Spirit has not revealed to the church in 2000 years that there should be a female priesthood. Okay. Than maybe people outside the Orthodox Church. Yeah. So what's the logic behind that? Is it just because you have all male priests in the Bible, so we're going to follow that? I think there might be something like that. I've never really come to a good conclusion because women certainly serve. They've been equal to the apostles. They preach, they teach, they're martyrs. they're female empresses who've called councils. They can pretty much do absolutely everything in the Orthodox Church that a male can do, except consecrate the Eucharist.

I think probably research has something to do with the sons of Aaron and the ones offering the sacrifice. I'm not really sure. I'm just now i'm speculating well and also because the view of leadership is quite different the view of priesthood and being or bishop um that you don't have this like exclude like it sounds like your description women have a lot of what we would call you know maybe again authority or maybe influence or you know yeah it's i'm on the metropolis council, um, a group of lay and clergy, uh, with our, with our, um, metropolitan, which is a bishop is just a fancy title for a bishop who has oversight of a larger area. Okay. Okay. Well, Eve, I've taken you almost an hour here.

So thank you so much for sharing. Um, so yeah, this is really, uh really interesting stuff for me. I hope people are equally interested and maybe made a few converts. I don't know. We'll see. I'll let you know if I get an email saying, all right, I'm in. But your book, again, is A Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology, Introducing Beliefs and Practices. It's been out for a couple of years and it's exactly what it is, a basic guide. So if you guys are interested in hearing more about Eastern theology, pick up this book. Eve, thanks so much for being a guest on Theology in Her Own. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

I really have enjoyed this chat, and really, thank you again for inviting me. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.