David Wagschal, Five Hundred Years On: What Orthodox Christians Need

500 YEARS OF REFORMATION Five Hundred Years On: What Orthodox Christians Need to Know about the Reformation David Wagschal hen I was asked by the editors Then, in my late thirties, after some- Wof The Wheel to write something of a theological crisis, I returned thing about the 500th anniversary of to the Lutheran church. My journey the Lutheran Reformation, I thought into Orthodoxy had been fascinating, to myself: “What can I write about sometimes wonderful, sometimes the Lutheran Reformation that might painful; but I realized that it was time actually be useful to an audience of to return home. well-educated, open, and intelli- gent Orthodox Christians living in a This journey has left me in the rare Western context, who are genuinely position of knowing the Orthodox curious about culture and the world church exceptionally well from “the around them?” It occurred to me that inside”—still not very common in the my own lived experience places me in Western academy—while also pos- an unusually good position to answer sessing intimate familiarity with a this question. I’m something that Or- Protestant tradition. thodox don’t often encounter: I’m a reverse convert. What insights can I offer from this vantage point? Broadly, I’ve come to Born a Lutheran, from an old Lu- realize that the Orthodox relationship theran family that counts at least with Protestantism is more complex four generation of Lutheran pastors, and more intimate than most people I converted to the Orthodox Church realize. I’ll offer a few observations at age nineteen. I was drawn by its and a few challenges. sense of tradition, history, and litur- gical beauty. Immersed in the lively An Unknown World and progressive ethos of the OCA in the nineties, I was inspired to pursue My first observation, born from long a career in the Orthodox Church as experience in the Orthodox world, is a both an ecumenical officer and a pro- simple one: most Orthodox still don’t fessor of church history and canon know much about Protestantism. law. I served in the administration of the Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox are very accustomed obtained a doctorate in the history of to thinking of themselves as the un- Eastern canon law, and briefly taught known quantity, as the neglected at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. tradition that perpetually needs to 68 be highlighted, distinguished, and derstand and appreciate the East, the introduced to other traditions: they opposite movement is still mostly are the “forgotten other.” But within wanting. An attitude seems to persist Orthodox circles, I’ve been struck by in the East that either the Orthodox the degree to which the opposite is don’t need to know anything about true. While there is a certain familiar- Protestants, or that the little they ity with Roman Catholicism, Protes- know is all that matters (this is, inci- tantism remains very poorly under- dentally, an old Byzantine viewpoint stood in the East. Converts aside (and on anything non-Byzantine). Based on sometimes even then), it’s relatively my own experience, this is a serious rare, for example, to find an Orthodox misjudgment. Until I began to engage who’s actually read a classic of Prot- with Protestant theology in earnest, estant theology or literature—or who I really didn’t realize the extent to could even name one. Eastern sem- which Protestant theologies are truly inaries rarely treat Protestant theol- different from anything I had encoun- ogy. And within Orthodox discourse tered in the Orthodox tradition. For stereotypes abound: Protestants are someone used to the Fathers, or me- seen as biblical fundamentalists, or dieval theology, Luther is like a thun- as wild-eyed liberals, or as having derbolt. Love him or hate him, Luther no sense of tradition, or as a bunch of is something very new and “other”: he rationalists, or maybe as a bunch of has a startlingly different take on the “emotionalists”—and they are almost Gospel, the Church, the Bible. What is always seen as wildly fissile and with more, he suggests an entirely different little sense of Church. ethos or way of doing theology. In this, Protestant theology is much more un- Especially striking is the fact that Or- known in Orthodox circles than most thodox often have little or no sense of Orthodox realize. There is a lot here the different types of Protestantism. they truly don’t know. Lutheranism and Methodism or Cal- vinism and Pentecostalism are argu- The Protestant Within ably more different from each other than, say, Orthodoxy is from Roman My next observation stands in seem- Catholicism, or even Orthodoxy from ing contradiction to the first. It is that, Calvinism. Yet most Orthodox tend to while the Orthodox don’t consciously think of Protestantism as a uniform cultivate much interest in Protestant- phenomenon. Many Orthodox would ism, the influence of Protestantism on be surprised to learn that Anglican Orthodoxy—especially in the West— theological methodology is closer to is in fact incredibly pervasive, though their own than Roman Catholic; or strangely unacknowledged. that Lutheran sacramental theology probably reads closer to Byzantine This was first driven home to me when than medieval scholastic formula- I taught Orthodox students in semi- tions. But these subtleties—which are nary contexts. Listening to the semi- not really subtleties!—usually get lost. narians’ basic instincts and desires for building a vibrant Orthodox church Orthodox should do better than this. in the twentieth century, the church Whereas Western Christians have historian in me began to realize that made considerable strides in the last virtually all of their ideas—truth be fifty years or so in attempting to un- told—had their pedigree in the Prot- The Wheel 12 | Winter 2018 69 estant Reformation: vernacular in the Tractarianism, a kind of Eastern New- liturgy, biblical literacy, flattening of manism. John Zizioulas? Here the in- the hierarchy, emphasis on preaching, fluence is more secular, but his criti- congregational singing, re-empha- cal milieu is nevertheless defined by sis on the value of marriage, a strong early twentieth century existentialist sense of “spiritual equality” among theology, much of it Protestant. What people, more representative forms of about the Russian religious philoso- governance, and so forth. Theirs was a phers and the Slavophiles? Well: read virtual checklist for the Reformation! Hegel and the Hegelians. Among the Conversely, much of what they didn’t more recent theologians Protestant in- like was often arguably more properly fluence may be even greater. The the- Orthodox: the strong ascetic/monastic ology of John Behr, for example, reso- tradition (and particularly the idea nates strongly with that of Karl Barth of any kind of spiritual “elite”), the and the Protestant post-liberals. purity tradition, the “incremental” (“ladder”) virtue tradition, the heav- Don’t get me wrong: I don’t make ily stratified social and metaphysical these observations to denigrate or de- universe, a high value on hierarchical tract from the achievements of these authority, and so on. Orthodox theologians in any way. Quite the opposite: Orthodox theo- I also realized, however, that this phe- logians should be in active conversa- nomenon extended far beyond a few tion with the broader Christian world, westernized seminarians. The more and they’ve clearly appropriated my knowledge of Protestant theol- these Western theologies in many in- ogy grew, the more I recognized that teresting and creative ways—and of many modern Orthodox theologians course have something new to offer. are deeply steeped in Protestantism. But what is strange—and a bit trou- Kallistos Ware is an excellent example. bling—is that this deep and vital in- Once you read a little nineteenth cen- ternal engagement with Protestant tury Anglican history, it becomes im- (and Roman Catholic) theology co-ex- possible to read him as anything other ists with an almost complete external than a late manifestation of Anglican disinterest in this theology and even Pope Francis greets Archbishop Antje Jackelen, primate of the Lutheran Church of Sweden, during a 2017 cele- bration of the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reforma- tion. 70 disavowal of its influence. I chal- merous protections against the abuse lenge my Orthodox academic friends of hierarchical authority in their own to self-reflect critically a little on this Church—protections that have their dynamic: why this peculiar silence? origins in Protestant church orders What is going on here, and what pur- and the theology of the “priesthood of pose does it serve? all believers” (not to mention the En- lightenment). Or they might excoriate Dismissing Protestantism the “individualism” of the Protestant doctrinal world while still expecting One result of this strangely indirect to be able to ask questions of their and ambivalent relationship with priests, to be doctrinally educated, to Protestant theology is that the Ortho- receive a creative sermon each week, dox can easily fall into the trap of dis- and to understand their own tradition missiveness or even contemptuous- fully. ness of Protestantism and its ideas. You frequently encounter the attitude You can see how this situation can that, if Protestants simply understood quickly degrade into a routine con- even a little about Orthodoxy, they temptuousness: in effect, you can would immediately convert: that the easily decide that all the weaknesses Protestant theological objections to of Protestantism are Protestantism’s Orthodoxy are really without any “proper” characteristics, while all its grounds, and can be easily and swiftly strengths are your own tradition! dispensed with. The correctness of Or- thodoxy is “obvious,” so Protestants Weirdly, this dismissiveness seems need to be endured in their naïveté (or especially common among converts stubbornness) until they see the light.

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