theophiliacs

“Flux” is a continuing series on my year visiting churches of various Christian traditions.

I first experienced Eastern Orthodoxy as a 21-year-old traveling through Ukraine. Even then, the tradition enchanted me. At the time I was interning with a missions organization working in Eastern Europe. I knew that many of the churches we were helping to plant were located in heavily Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic areas. It was also become increasingly clear that these traditions were undoubtedly Christian, perhaps in some ways even more Christian than me. So why are we evangelizing Christians? I wondered.

It was the opening spark of a lesson that took me a few years to learn: old stuff matters.

By “old stuff,” I mean the bulk of the ancient practices and symbols many modern Evangelicals (both intentionally and unintentionally) learned to de-emphasize or ignore. In my studies, I realized there were a number of questions I’d never fully explored: where did the Bible come from? who first outlined concepts like the dual-natures of Christ and the Trinity? what is our modern conception of hell based on? Many of the answers to these questions were found in studying the first few centuries of Christianity, an area of scholarship sometimes called Patristics or a little more broadly, Christian Origins.

I learned that whether one recited the creeds in church or not, they were formative and part of our shared Christian heritage. Whether one appreciated liturgy or found it dull, it was influential in shaping modern forms of worship. I learned that Sacramental theology left a precedent for how we expected to experience God–even if one didn’t look for Him in Eucharist anymore. Most importantly I learned that issues like church governance, division, authority, human sexuality and the role of the Church in the world were problems as old as Pentecost.

Perhaps most poignantly, however, I was struck by how bewitching the tradional forms of worship could be. The ancient liturgies enchanted me, the Icons arrested me–I felt myself being pulled into something older and bigger and altogether more enveloping than my previous, more individualistic Church experiences had been. All my life, I had endeavored to maintain the right belief or “Apostolicity*” of my faith. But it wasn’t until my year of visiting Churches, that I was first introduced to its commanility or “Catholicity**.”

* (Apostolicity in this case, just means the faith of Apostles, or what was handed down to us.)
** (Catholic not in the Roman sense, but in it’s older meaning of ‘universal’ or ‘entirety).