So I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't feeling all that Protestant especially after giving the Iconography workshop this past Saturday. The reasons wasn't so much the iconography per se. But around a revelation I had about the 7th Ecumenical council and the Orthodox feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy as the celebration of the 7th Ecumenical Council. Now since I started writing icons I accepted and found compelling St John of Damascus'' arguments and agreed with the conclusion of the Ecumenical council, but it wasn't until presenting all this to others that the doctrinal and theological importance of the icon really sunk in.
I put forward in brief St. John of Damascus' apology for icons and the connection to the incarnation. The icon as the proclamation of the incarnation. But as I presented the history and the iconoclast controversy I realized that the 7th ecumenical council really did in affirming the possibility of the icon affirmed all previous ecumenical councils and how to some degree the Iconoclasts in the search for an imageless Christianity failed to actually affirm the previous councils. I finally understand how the affirmation of icons and the 7th ecuemnical council really sums up all that had gone before.
So, now what. This Lutheran Pietist can now say without hesitation that he affirms all 7 ecumenical councils. Add to this that much of Hesychiast theology seems to me to be what Lutheran Pietist were trying to articulate and affirm about the faith, it looks like I may be fairly orthodox.
I don't know. No, I am not so much protesting any more.
More than one person would put it this way: 'It's Rome or the abyss'. Looking realistically at the liberalised state of mainstream RC churches I'd put it thus instead: you have a choice between Catholicism or the shrinking mainline merger into mush.
ReplyDeleteFor all the good work that you probably do I see Reconciler as a symptom of the latter: the liberal denominations merging instead of competing for the same shrinking white upper-middle-class demographic. This won't work as that class sees no use for religion and regards churches trying to pander to them as proof that they're right and don't need it.
The latter lets you have icons, etc. as a part of a smorgasbord of relativism. The former actually conducted the seventh ecumenical council and said what icons really mean.
As I like to put it, icons are unique to Orthodoxy but in Western Catholic terms they are halfway between pictures and statues (illustrations) on one hand and the presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament on the other.
Believe me, I understand the 'my native tradition isn't crap' feeling that keeps you in Lutheran Pietism. A thinking person in a Catholic church wouldn't deny anything good and true you got from it. (I use Miles Coverdale's psalter to pray even though he ended up in heresy!) Of course I can't tell you how to work that out - taking the best of your tradition with you - where you are, 'on the ground level'. Pray and discern.
Young Fogey,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you are right. At the moment at least things seem a little less stark then you put it. Certainly there is a relativism and certainly there might be "the merger into mush."
Whatever Reconciler may be, our intention at least is not simple merger and certainly not into something indistinct.
If what you say is true then it will eventualy be clear that I will be unable to truely afirm what is of the church. At the moment while I see the things that cause you to see things so starkly they are not all that I see.
What I am fairly certain is that I am where I am supposed to be for now. I see God at work. Now, what I won't say is that I know exactly what God is doing. And so yes I pray and seek to discern.
Yeah, and Young Fogey, I at least am NOT INTERESTED in Rome!!! "Orthodoxy" here with a capital O is referring to Eastern Orthodoxy, not the Roman Church, which holds no draw for me whatsoever. A bizarre "choice" you present: maybe it's yours, but it isn't mine. The clarion call is from farther east (and farther back) than Rome.
ReplyDeleteAlso vastly interesting that you reference the "white upper class" demographic. If you were to see a spreadsheet of Reconciler's budget, I as treasurer assure you that none of our members fall into "upperclass" status. (Fairly white so far, however, is true.) Tacky of you to assume we are just falling into line with some pitiful revival-based-but-modernist liberal mainstream "pandering" endeavor. Bah.
For those interested in iconography, I would recommend the following site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hexaemeron.org/
I said white upper-middle-class, though the top classes have no use for religion either, and money ≠ social class.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when I first read this -
ReplyDelete"Orthodoxy" here with a capital O is referring to Eastern Orthodoxy, not the Roman Church, which holds no draw for me whatsoever.
- I thought you meant that Eastern Orthodoxy holds no draw for you but now I see you're repeating your anti-Roman statement from the last sentence.
(I wouldn't send anybody to commit spiritual suicide in the liberalised mainstream RC churches either - functionally they're a kind of liberal Protestantism.)
The clarion call is from farther east (and farther back) than Rome.
But the Christian East I know is entirely Catholic about the issues on which mainline Protestant denominations dissent (except many of them make excuses for artificial contraception just like the latter) - far more so than mainstream RCs! - and the Orthodox believe they alone are the true church, mirroring Rome, so they would say it's them or the abyss! Are you saying you agree with them on that?