Remembering Elmer

I remember Elmer.  Elmer was an elephant, whose image adorned the backs of our notebooks when I was in public school, and whose face flew on a flag on our school flagpole.  Elmer was “the Safety Elephant” whose rules we were encouraged to always remember (like an elephant, since “elephants never forget”).  His rules consisted of such maxims as “LOOK BOTH WAYS before you cross the street” and “KEEP OUT from between parked cars”.  There were four other rules also, complete with pictures to illustrate them, but you get the idea.  If our school was accident-free, we were allowed to fly Elmer’s flag to celebrate this, but if a child was involved in a car accident we lost that right.  Even now I can hear our school Principal’s voice coming over my school’s public address system to sorrowfully announce, “We lost Elmer”.  The idea behind this educational initiative on the part of the grown-ups was that children, if left to themselves, would be heedless of the risks involved in traffic and would be hurt.  Thus the grown-ups, under the persona of Elmer the Safety Elephant, ceaselessly inculcated the six safety rules to keep the children safe from danger.

            Today’s young children are now in danger from a source other than traffic.  I refer to the pandemic of pornography sweeping our land.  In kinder gentler days, if a person wanted to view pornographic images he had to go to a place that sold them and ask for the magazine containing the images which was kept hidden behind the counter.  One ran the risk of receiving cold disapproving adult glances, and perhaps even being reported to one’s parents.  Now with the omnipresence of the internet, one can view such images in the privacy of one’s own home, or even with one’s friends at McDonald’s through an i-phone.  The average boy first discovers pornography in grade five, between the ages of nine to eleven, which of course means that some boys discover it earlier than nine years of age.  That means that these boys’ brains are spent marinating in a pornographic culture which distorts the relationship between men and women long before they have any meaningful relationships with women.  It does not take much imagination to see how such a generation of boys growing up damaged in this way will be hampered when it comes to their own adult sexuality and be further hampered in their task of conveying a healthy view of sexuality to their own children. 

            We need help from Elmer.  That is, as parents, grandparents, and adults with any responsibility for raising and influencing children, we need to warn them of the dangers of pornography in the same way as our parents warned us of the dangers of playing in traffic.  Elmer gave us six simple rules to keep us safe.  I suggest three simple rules, which should be pounded into the heads of our children with the same happy relentlessness in which traffic safety rules were pounded into ours.  They are:

1. Do not “sext”, or send sexually explicit messages to anyone.
2. Do not send sexually explicit or provocative photos to anyone online.
3. Do not view pornography.

In giving these rules and setting these parental boundaries, we should make it abundantly clear that we are not giving these rules because pornography is a sin (though in fact it is) but because it is dangerous.  The rules are given in the same spirit and with the same motivation as other rules such as “Cover your mouth when you sneeze”, “Wash your hands after handling food which might be contaminated”, and “Don’t run out into traffic”.  It has nothing to do with spirituality or religion, and everything to do with simple safety.  When a city faces a pandemic, we see health officials urging people to wash their hands, and people walking about the streets in medical masks.  It should be the same with this pandemic.  We take these precautions to keep our children safe from consequences that will follow them throughout their lives and have consequences for their children in turn.  It is imperative that we remember the plague that surrounds us, even if (like most plagues) it is often invisible, and take steps to stay safe.  Like an elephant, we must never forget.

The Elephant in the Ecumenical Room

           Especially in advance of the much-anticipated Great and Holy Council scheduled for later this year, there has been much talk about the importance of our ecumenical connections, including the possibility of recognizing the baptisms of all the other Christian churches and denominations.  Part of the discussion has revolved around the question of how to receive Christians from such churches who desire to convert to Orthodoxy—do we receive them by baptism, thereby effectively totally denying the basic ecclesial reality of their churches, or merely by chrismation, accepting their baptisms as valid and thereby giving more ecclesial validity to their churches?  Some of the scholarly discussion has invoked the wisdom of St. Basil, who dealt with questions like these in his “canonical letter” to Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, which was in turn utilized in the canons attached to the Quinisext Council in Trullo, in canon 95.

            This material distinguished between three different situations—1. Christians whose faith (represented sometimes by the baptismal formula they used) was sufficiently different from that of the Church to require them to be received by re-baptism—which of course, was not really a re-baptism, but simply a baptism, since the baptism they received from their heretical church was regarded as no true baptism; 2. Christians whose faith retained enough similarities to that of the Church so as to allow them to be received by chrismation alone, without re-baptism; and 3. Christians whose faith was sufficiently similar to that of the Church so as to allow them to be received into the Church upon them simply renouncing and anathematizing their former heresies.  Examples of the first group of converts requiring rebaptism were the Paulianists, as well as the Eunomeans, who baptized with a single immersion.  Examples of the second group, those received by chrismation alone, were Apolliniarians, who declared that Christ had no human soul, but that the Logos took the place of the soul in Him.  Examples of the third group, converts received through simple renunciation of error, were groups like the Nestorians. 

Here the details concerning the heresies are less important than the underlying principle involved, which is that various groups were received according to the principle of how far their faith differed from Orthodoxy.  Groups judged close to Orthodoxy were only required to renounce their previous errors.  Groups judged further out and differing more dramatically from the faith of the Church were required to be chrismated.  Groups whose faith was judged as radically incompatible to Orthodoxy were received by baptism, with the implicit judgment that their former faith was not truly Christian, whatever it claimed to be and whatever its outward similarities.

            Many scholars still invoke these principles today, and on the basis of them suggest that the Church recognize the baptism of all the other Christian churches.  Those churches, they suggest, are sufficiently close to Orthodoxy so as to allow the Orthodox to accept their baptism because they accept the same Trinitarian faith as Orthodoxy does.  But are they really?

            Here we must speak of the elephant in the ecumenical room.  It is probable that most of the representatives of those Protestant churches do indeed accept a Trinitarian faith, and have enough proximity to Orthodoxy to allow them to hang out in ecumenical circles and talk to us very articulately.  But we Orthodox have had a similar experience before which should caution us to take what is said in such ecumenical discussions with a grain of ecumenical salt.  Our previous discussions with Anglicans, for instance, gave us the impression that 1. Anglicanism was confessionally homogenous, with all Anglicans committed to the same faith; and 2. this faith accepted (for example) seven sacraments and seven ecumenical councils.  That was because the ecumenical delegates talking to us at ecumenical gatherings accepted these things, and we assumed (gratuitously, as it turned out) that they represented all Anglicans.  It was not so.  Many Anglicans accepted not seven sacraments, but two, and not the seven ecumenical councils, but four (or possibly five or six), but certainly not the last one, which blessed icons.  It turned out that there were High Anglicans, Low Anglicans, and Broad Anglicans, and heaven knows what in between.  Having no such experience of confessional diversity (or “comprehension” as the Anglicans called it) we assumed that such diversity did not exist within the churches with whom we were speaking.  We were naïve, as it turned out, and were soon disabused of our naivety. 

            It is high time to learn from our past mistakes.  The delegates speaking for the various Protestant churches, let us charitably assume, are convinced and devout Trinitarians, persons whose faith approximates ours enough to allow them to take part in ecumenical discussions.  But the devout Anglican Trinitarian does not represent all Anglicans.  Anglicanism (to take but one example) allows its members and even its bishops a great latitude in their faith, so that some have been famously anti-trinitarian with no ecclesiastical consequences whatsoever (men such as Bishop Pike and Bishop Spong).  Evidently such diversity (or comprehension) is entirely legitimate within the Anglican Communion.

            It is not just anti-trinitarianism that is allowed within the boundaries of their “orthodoxy”.  Their refusal to condemn abortion is allowed, as is the view which says that women can be bishops, and homosexuals and lesbians can be married (and ordained).  The rejection of Scripture, Tradition, and the canonical tradition implicit in accepting such teachings is also allowed and is mainstream in these traditions.  This reigning theological liberalism is the elephant in the room.  Bishop Spong, for example, may declare himself a Trinitarian according to his redefined definitions and recite the Creed every Sunday, but what of it?  Liberalism allows him to redefine the ancient creedal words in whatever way he likes, so that although he may say the traditional Creed, he may actually not believe a word of it.  We know that this is allowed, because Spong has written best-sellers to boast about it, and remained a best-selling bishop.  Anglican Comprehension apparently is wide and comprehensive enough to include such diversity.  Given this, it really scarcely matters what the devout Trinitarian attending the ecumenical gatherings believes.  His or hers is a private opinion, and cannot be regarded as really representing the church which he or she purports to represent.

            Let us for a moment prescind from this discussion and play a game of historical imagination.  Let’s pretend that St. Basil could be presented with the case of a church that allowed its bishops to publically and emphatically reject the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, the existence of hell, and the uniqueness of the Christian faith.  Let us assume that he knew further that this church allowed abortion, blessed homosexual marital unions, and even ordained such homosexuals to the highest offices in the church.  In which of the three categories we have mentioned above do you guess he might place this church?  Is there any doubt that he would regard such a confession as essentially Gnostic, and receive its converts by baptism?  For all of the churches he surveyed in his days agreed with his Orthodox church regarding all these moral issues.   Churches which dissented so radically about such basics as our modern liberal Protestant churches do would not have been accepted by Basil and the Councils after him as sufficiently close to Orthodoxy as to allow their baptisms to stand.  The issue of what determines ecclesial legitimacy cannot be confined to Christological matters and Trinitarian theology.  It embraces orthodoxy of moral praxis as well as orthodoxy of belief, and churches which diverge so dramatically in matters of basic moral issues cannot be considered true churches.  Calling darkness light (see Isaiah 5:20) is enough to forfeit credible claim to be the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

            This being so, it has important implications for our ecumenical discussions.  All our past ecumenism has been based upon the happy principle of confessionalism—i.e. that a certain church or denomination was more or less consistent in its confession of faith.   Thus all Protestants could be counted upon to accept the divinity of Christ, all Calvinists could be counted upon to accept the Westminster Confession, and all Lutherans could be counted upon to accept the Augsburg Confession.  That is why the rite of receiving such converts found in Hapgood’s Service Book asks the Reformed converts (for example) if they renounce the “false doctrine of predestination of men”, because they assumed that all Reformed converts accepted the same Reformed confession of faith.  We assumed that each denomination was characterized by fidelity to its historic confessions and could be counted on to keep to that historic path.  For the last generation at least it has clearly not been so, and Christians from those confessions have been free to accept or reject the historic confessions of their past, or in fact anything else they liked.  That is why they now reject Protestantism’s historic theology of the sanctity of unborn life, of Holy Orders, of sexuality, and of gender.  It should be noted that I am here referring only to the “historic” Protestant churches of the Reformation now characterized by theological liberalism, not the more conservative Evangelical Protestant churches which have retained a more traditional moral praxis.  It should also be noted that these reflections are intended to have implications only for those converting to Orthodoxy in the future; those already received by chrismation alone should of course be fully accepted with no suggestion that their previous baptism requires remedy.

As long as Protestant churches allow such diversity (or heresy, to give its ancient name) our ecumenical discussions will partake of a certain unreality.  We will pass motions accepting the baptisms of all Lutherans, assuming that all Lutherans are like the Lutherans we have been talking to, when in fact many of them are nothing like them at all.  The fact that theological liberalism reigns in the historic Protestant churches has not been mentioned in any of the ecumenical documents I have seen.  If that elephant in the room has indeed been noticed by Orthodox participants, no one has been speaking about it.  It is time that we did.

Defending the Synodikon

          Recently, on the first Sunday of Great Lent, we read the Synodikon in church.  Well, actually just a tiny snippet of it, the bit about the legitimacy of icons and that this faith had established the world, and offering a heartfelt “Memory Eternal” for those who had died defending it.  We did not read the entire Synodikon, because it is quite long and lists a lot of heresies unrelated to the icons we were holding in procession at the time, and it contained a lot very unfamiliar names of people who were being anathematized.  Reading the names would have felt to my flock rather like reading pages out of the phone book, and since both those being commended with “Memory Eternal!” as well as those being reproached with “Anathema!” were utter strangers to them, I just read the bit about the icons.  Those wanting to peruse the entire text may find it here.

          Though I did not read the entire Synodikon liturgically that day, I am still glad that it exists and that we acknowledge its worth by at least reading some of it.  The point of the Synodikon is to draw very thick lines in the doctrinal sand and say that if anybody in the Church crosses those lines and strays into heresy, they must either recant or get out, and it is precisely this approach to truth that is necessary and saving.  It is also tremendously unpopular.  I remember recently reading a modern scholar who was quoting a line from one of the Fathers who was denouncing heretics.  The scholar put the word heretics in quotation marks—i.e. “heretics”—to stress that the term was the Father’s, and not hers.  She didn’t quite add the term “(sic)” after it to indicate how foolish she thought the term was, but she might as well have.  It was abundantly clear that she thought the term and the concept it represented to be archaic, harmful, and more than a little narrow-minded.  It certainly flew in the face of current canons of political correctness.

            Those canons are based on a form of pluralism that says I’m theologically okay and you’re theologically okay, regardless of what you assert.  It says that there is not just a legitimate diversity of opinion (which of course there is), but also that the legitimate diversity is so broad that pretty much anything goes, at least in the towers of Academia in which our author was writing.  The idea of saying to anyone, either in those towers or out on the street, “Your opinion is heretical” strikes the average man as not only absurd, but in supremely bad taste.  They want to know if you’re in favour of reviving the Inquisition and burning witches.  You can’t use the h-word in civilized company any more than you could use other abusive labels.

            Undergirding this attitude is the notion that heresy is just a simple mistake, akin to someone adding up a long column of figures and getting the sum wrong, or missing a question from the game “Jeopardy”.  Those enforcing the new canons of political correctness view the work of theologians with their precise definitions (such as we find in abundance in the Synodikon) as the work of people with altogether too much time on their hands who have produced formulas that have nothing to do with actual life.   Dogma, and the Church’s insistence upon correct dogma, they say, are irrelevant to Christian living.  It is not so.

            Here I remember the observations of Dorothy Sayers, famous as the creator of the detective Lord Peter Wimsey.  In her address Creed or Chaos?, she presents the case of John and Jane Doe who are considering junking Christ’s ethical teaching as impossible and impractical.  “Because,” says John, “if he was God all the time, he must have known that his suffering and death and so on wouldn’t last, and he could have stopped them by a miracle if he had liked, so his pretending to be an ordinary man was nothing but playacting.”  Adds Jane Doe:  “It was easy enough for him to be good, but it’s not at all the same thing me for me.  How about all that temptation stuff?  Playacting again.  It doesn’t help me to live what you call a Christian life.”  Sayers points out that John and Jane have swallowed the heresy of Apollinarianism, which states that Christ had no soul like ours, but that the divine Logos took the place of a human soul in Him.  As it turns out, heresy has practical effects on living the Christian life.  That is why the theologians went to such lengths to refute it and declare it out of court for Christians.  It was not just a mania for unnecessary exactitude, but pastoral care for souls like John and Jane Doe.

            So it is that we Orthodox need to retain the category of “heresy”, whether or not we read large chunks of the Synodikon.  The spirit which produced it is rare these pluralistic days where every man does what is right in his own eyes.  All the more reason to cling to that spirit when we find it.