Truth Unites - Protestant-Orthodox Relationship: The Moment That Defined It

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

In this video I draw three lessons for ecumenical theology from an important but often overlooked dialogue in the 1570s and 1580s between Lutheran theologians and Jeremiah II, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. In particular, I suggest that the dialogue clarifies two different approaches to catholicity. Read the letter exchange here: https://www.amazon.com/Augsburg-Constantinople-Correspondence-Theologians-Confession/dp/0916586820/ My video on the Essence-Energies Distinction: https://youtu.be/gvfPICJGcHo Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

In other videos, I've talked about how the Protestant reformers, Luther and Calvin, for example, defended the status of the Eastern Orthodox Church as a legitimate church over and against the claims of the Roman Catholic Church of exclusivity. And I'll put up this Calvin quote. I've put it up a couple of times, so I won't read it. But just to comment on the editor here, John McNeil, editing this passage references Luther's view of the same thing. And he talks about at the 1519 debate Luther had with Johann Eck, Catholic opponent. had articulated the same idea. All the Eastern Orthodox are damned and Luther responded, typically colorful Luther, nothing more detestable than this blasphemy, could be spoken. Whatever Luther's faults were, the gift of understatement.

It was not one of them. All right. Question, where did the Protestant Eastern Orthodox relationship go from there? In this video, I want to recount a fascinating and I think underappreciated dialogue later in the 16th century, in the 1570s, 1580s, 1580s, 1580s, 1580s between a group of Lutheran theologians from Tübingen in southern Germany and Jeremiah the second, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. This is an office that's often seen in a kind of leadership role or representative leadership role among Eastern Orthodox Christians. Essentially, the Lutherans sent Jeremiah a copy of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran Confession of Faith, and engaged him in a theological correspondence. They each sent three letters to each other,

And you can read the letters in this fascinating book, which I'll put in the video description if you want to take a look at it. This interchange is one of the most important ecumenical moments in all of church history, I think. And yet a lot of people don't really know much about it. So hence this video. I think the Protestant Eastern Orthodox relationship is especially interesting and illuminating and brings up questions because we don't have the direct relationship and shared histories, shared assumptions, etc. that you often have in the more direct, conflictual type relationships like Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Catholic, Roman Catholic Eastern Orthodox, or even Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox.

All of those relationships are different because you have more common contact and common knowledge throughout history. The Protestant Eastern Orthodox relationship is almost like two people from a different culture talking to each other. It's fascinating. So it raises lots of great questions. I mean, for me, as an evangelical Protestant, I'm definitely challenged in many ways, and I learned so much from engaging Eastern Christianity in general. One of my favorite videos I ever did, maybe my favorite one, in terms of just how much I learned from doing it,

was my video on the essence energies distinction in Eastern Orthodox, especially the Palomite tradition. I'll put that in the video description as well. But in this video, I want to express what is a fundamental concern of mine, maybe one of my deepest ones, maybe the deepest one, or one of them, with the Eastern Orthodox Church, and that is its restrictive vision of Catholicity. And so to get into this, I'll just make three observations from these letters back and forth.

Number one, the Lutherans regarded Jeremiah II as a Christian and the Eastern Orthodox Church as a church. Sounds kind of basic to us. That cannot be assumed. That was not the thinking of the time. And I've done a video on No Salvation Outside the Church. You can see that for more about that. We'll get into it a little bit here. But basically, the Lutherans treated Jeremiah out with diplomacy and tax.

with courtesy and respect. They addressed him with all kinds of funny titles, old-fashioned language, like God-beloved, sir, the most honorable Lord, the all-holy ecumenical patriarch. But more importantly, they understood him as a Christian, and they expressed their desire for unity in the Christian faith. Again, that is actually rare for the time. Here's how they put it. This is how they started off their first letter. If the merciful Heavenly Father, through his beloved son, the sole savior of us all, would so direct us on both sides, so that even though we are greatly separated as far as the places where we live are concerned, we become close to one another in our agreement on the correct teaching, and the cities of Constantinople and Tumingen become bound to each other.

By the bond of the same Christian faith and love, there is no event that we should desire more. Note that they expressed openness to God working on both sides. It's interesting. Okay, second observation. They had a lot of agreement. They were able to carve out a lot of agreement. Even Jeremiah said at the end of his second letter, basically, we have agreed on almost all of the main subjects. And he just basically said, here's where we differ, and it pertains to the interpretation of Scripture. What did they agree upon?

They agreed upon the nature of Scripture as the inspired word of God, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of Christ, two natures for Christ. the nature of evil, the nature of Christ's saving office and his death and resurrection, his future second coming, many, many more things. They also had a lot of points of agreement, shared agreement of concern about the Western Roman Catholic Church. For example, they both affirmed communion in both kinds, the bread and the wine. They both opposed the overreaches of papal claims. They both rejected obligatory priestly celibacy, and they both rejected the system of salvation that had been bubbling up in the medieval West with indulgences and purgatory and the treasury of merit and any idea of an excess of merit being transferred to another person, something like that. They both agreed

about that. Nonetheless, they had disagreements and the disagreements were not trivial. They were important. They disagreed about the filioque clause. Does the spirit proceed from the father and the son? They disagreed about free will. That was an important one, actually. They disagreed about the nature of justification. Of course, that's not shocking. They disagreed about the number of sacraments and other questions about the sacraments. Baptism, the mode of baptism, pouring, for example.

They disagreed about praying to the saints, icons, relics, things like that. And there were other things as well. Maybe the biggest one would be the nature and infallibility of the church. At one point, Jeremiah basically says, to paraphrase, those in the church are holy of the truth. Those who are not holy of the truth are not of the church. And he does have this idea that the church cannot err. It's much more of an absolutist ecclesiology or doctrine of the church.

So those areas of disagreement are not unimportant. We'll talk about them here, but you also can see there's a common foundation. Basically, to summarize it, you could say there's the core that's agreed upon and then moving out into the periphery. You have more disagreements, or you might say the tree trunk is there for both, but the branches we differ on. Change the metaphor, if you want. We're not saying the disagreements are unimportant.

We're just saying there's this common stuff at the beginning. You have the same God, the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit. You have the same mediator for how to get to that God and be reconciled to him, the God man, Jesus Christ. You have the same basic outline of redemptive history, creation of the world X-Nehalo, the fall of humanity into sin, the influence. incarnation and then second coming of Christ. So for example, in other interfaith comparisons, you don't have the agreement that you will have in the Protestant Eastern Orthodox relationship. A Christian and a Hindu don't have the same linear vision of history as creation for redemption. A Christian

and a Buddhist don't have the same understanding of the human condition and the nature of evil, the nature of salvation. A Christian and a Mormon don't have the Trinity and the God. God man. Okay? But you have disagreements that are also important. They're not trivial. They concern how we worship God, how we function as the church, how we understand salvation. Some of the differences have requirements attached to them on pain of anathema. Okay. So we are not saying that disagreements are not necessarily worth dividing over. All we're saying is within both of these traditions, we seem to be in the ballpark of what we call Christianity. So that raises the climactic question

that I want to address with my third observation, which is the point of this video. The question is, what do you do when you have differences of that nature? You have someone and you're looking at them and you're saying, that person seems to be a Christian, but we are not in union with each other.

They're not a member of some alien religion, but there are these complicated walls of division that stand between us that often go back for centuries and have layers to them and complexity to them. How do we function now? What do we do in that scenario? Here's my third observation that addresses that question. The dialogue between Jeremiah and the Lutherans ultimately reveals two very different ways of how to relate to Christians and other traditions and ultimately of Catholicity,

that is the wholeness of the church. Let me describe Jeremiah's approach. Jeremiah's first letter starts off warm but condescending. I was really curious about this. I was wondering, how is he going to respond to this? You know, it's kind of a fascinating moment, a unique moment. And he basically says, he calls the Lutherans spiritual sons of my humble self. And then he addressed them with the cheerfulness of a father to his children. So I remember reading this thinking, okay, well, it could be worse. He's not outright shooting anathemas right out of the gate, but it is rather

patronizing. You know, this is actually the thing that I think is most important in all ecumenical endeavor, and that's genuine humility, not just giving a nod to humility, but genuine humility, genuinely embracing 1st Corinthians 13, I see through a glass darkly, I don't have all the answers, I need to listen. So that was a very condescending opening. In his second letter, he enjoins the Lutherans to put aside their irrational innovations and to enter the Eastern Orthodox Church. basically the answer for Jeremiah. He concludes the letter saying, nothing else is the cause of dissension than this, and only this, which when you correct it, we will be with the grace of God

in agreement. In his third letter, once it becomes evident that the Lutherans are not yielding on their points of difference, Jeremiah's tone takes a more rebuking posture. At one point, he sarcastically exclaims, you call yourselves theologians. And basically, to show how he ends it, he just brings things to an end. He says, we request that from henceforth, You do not cause us more grief, nor write to us on the same subject. Thus, as for you, please release us from these cares. Therefore, going about your own ways, write no longer concerning dogmas. But if you do, write only for friendship's sake, farewell.

And that's the end of it. You almost get the sense of like, you're bothering me. You're giving us grief and cares by even talking to us. So, I mean, I really do think that's a fair summary of it. You can buy the book and read them for yourself. But that's how it comes across. I could put it colloquially by summarizing Jeremiah's three letters like this. Letter number one, I'm happy to help.

Letter number two, you guys have issues. Letter number three, stop talking to me. For me, this is a good model of how not to do ecumenism. Demand immediate acquiescence and then cut off dialogue if it doesn't happen. The Lutherans, I think, give us a better model. On the one hand, they don't shy away from arguing about their differences. So they go into this charge of innovation, and they say, no, we cannot bear to be called heretics. Indeed, we embrace all the articles of the Catholic faith, rejecting absolutely none of them,

and we respectfully make use of the sacraments which were instituted by Christ over and over. They're showing on point by point. Our doctrine is not new. It is founded upon the Word of God. But they also showed courtesy. After Jeremiah cut off the dialogue, they acknowledged his request, but then they expressed a hope that it would be re-referred. reconsidered in due time. And they express their prayers and friendship. Let me read from how they finish. Therefore, standing together with your holiness, patriarch, and most reverence, sir, we offer

to the God of all our true friendship, which we have shown to you and which we will continuously afterwards keep. We wish your holiness with all our heart, all that is best, and a prayerful wish for salvation, and above all this, that the Holy Spirit will lead all the activities of your holiness, the honor of God and the salvation of his church. Amen. for the time, for the historical context, that is a remarkably respectful sign-off. Ultimately, what emerges from this interchange, I would say, are two vastly different visions of Catholicity. For Jeremiah, unity with the Lutherans basically comes about if they become Eastern Orthodox. It's basically institutional incorporation into the Orthodox Church. That's unity.

It's just that simple. For the Lutherans, by contrast, the criterion for Christian unity is adherence to the gospel of Christ as held forth in the scriptures. Here's the last quote, most important one, most revealing one of their position. They say, we desire from the bottom of our hearts to preserve a God-pleasing peace with all who love the gospel of Christ, who hold the right interpretation of Christ, the unique teacher who speaks to us through the words of the old as well as the New Testaments, We do not innovate in any matters of faith. Think about those words. We desire from the bottom of our hearts

to preserve a God-pleasing peace with all who love the gospel of Christ. This is a very different theology of and disposition toward Catholicity. In my opinion, it reflects a much more compelling approach, partly because it lacks the institutional exclusivism that's characteristic of every major non-protestant church out there.

major, I said, which is very difficult to maintain even in the 16th century, but certainly in the 21st, but also partly because it lacks the, frankly, the arrogance of just assuming the superiority and necessity of your own views right out of the gate. The Lutherans were respectful, they aimed for reconciliation, but they were unwilling to compromise to reach reconciliation. So they just concluded by offering friendship and prayers and openness to further dialogue being reopened. at some time in the future. They never adopted the mentality. You need to become a Lutheran in order to become a part of the one true church. This is the approach that I think is a better model for us today. I often use the word irenecism, which means aiming for peace, and this is often misunderstood

as though it were a sign of weakness or compromise, or maybe just something that is good, but optional, and it can be jettisoned when times get tough or something like that. Not at all. Irenicism is not compromise. It is not weakness. It'll take all the strength you have. Sometimes you have to cling to the Holy Spirit's help to not fall away from it into the vitriol. That is so common.

And it's not just for sometimes, but not others. It's needed precisely for the tough times. And I believe it reflects God's heart for the church today. Lots of Protestants don't have that spirit of Catholicity that is reflected by these Lutheran theologians. And so a lot of times we veer off into either a kind of feisty sectarianism or a kind of squishy acumenism. And this ability to wrangle for the truth, but with love and respect and a desire for peace is often missing from all our traditions. And so I will offer a concluding appeal to my Protestant viewers that is this.

We are not engaging in compromise with any historic Protestant standards, except maybe some of the fringe groups. but none of the mainstream groups when we express openness to there being true Christians and true churches outside of Protestantism. The Lutherans were not compromising a single official Lutheran

article of doctrine when they treated Jeremiah as a Christian person within the Christian church to whom Christian obligations and Christian love are due. This is one of the great things about Protestantism. We have not claimed to the one true church. And frankly, a lot of Protestants today, I think we need to do better at

reflecting that posture of ironicism, openness, but conviction at the same time in the midst of our dialogues. But in our tradition, that's our heritage that we can reclaim. So I'll put up this quote from the Lutherans one last time as a model for us that I try to aspire after on my YouTube channel imperfectly, though sincerely. And I think as a model for us all, we design. from the bottom of our hearts to preserve a God-pleasing peace with all who love the Gospel of Christ.