wturri78
Puritan Board Freshman
Dear PB'ers,
I've been carrying on a very interesting conversation with someone of the Eastern Orthodox bent about how one can determine, essentially, "who is right," especially in the context of those who've chosen either Rome or Constantinople over against the claims of the other--what I still see as a stalemate between competing traditions and claims to genuine succession and preservation of original truth. I would like to post one snippet here where she replied to some of what I had asked. She raises a point that the idea of substitution in the atonement is present in Orthodoxy and the early fathers, but the idea of satisfaction (presumably in a penal way) cannot be traced earlier than Anselm in the west.
I know I can't post links to other forums here (sorry for doing that the other day, I plead excessive ignorance ), but I hope this is OK. I'm obviously not asking anyone to beat up on another person who can't reply, but I don't really see this as different from quoting an article elsewhere on the web...
Thoughts? I seem to recall reading somewhere that Luther's view of the atonement was a "Christus Victor" model by and large...not entirely sure what that means. I also read that Anselm's model borrowed somewhat from the feudal lord-and-serf sort of economy of the day.
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Point is - all three are right. Consistency with Scriptures, historical continuity, and doctrinal continuity would all be hallmarks of the Church founded by Jesus Christ. So then the question moves on to what we mean by those three terms - which will lead one to different conclusions depending on their underlying assumptions.
Although most responsible hermeneutics does approach the Scripture in context, that context never seems to extend past the immediate time of the writing and never looks at how the Church as a whole understood the words written. As has been pointed out, there were many competing books considered to be Scripture (or at least inspired). There were also many letters and works written that 'disappeared' from circulation. For one text to be selected over another it had to have a certain value to the whole Church and thus how the whole Church understood it (and not just the writer or the original readers) needs to be considered.
Furthermore, an archaeological approach to the Bible ignores outright the fact that there are communities that to this day have a living tradition that has not varied much from that of the 4th century Church. I'm not just talking about Eastern Orthodox - but OO, Assyerians, and even the Old Believers as well. It would be like studying works written by the early Anabaptists in isolation without examining how the Amish and Mennonites of today understand them.
I agree it doesn't address the question of who is right, but my contention is that the change in soteriology was much more significant than simple development. While a substitutionary aspect of the Atonement is not foreign to Orthodoxy, a satisfactionary aspect is. Doctrinally this model can not be traced back prior to Anselm's publication of Cur Deus Homo in 1097 AD, yet it is the predominant underlying understanding of the Atonement for both Protestants and Catholics. Substitution can be found to some degree in the writings of the Church Fathers, but Satisfaction can not. Furthermore, the early Church Fathers almost overwhelming held to what you might call the Christus Victor model. This is an important point because the two models have fundamentally opposing understandings of who God is in His nature and of what the Atonement accomplished.
I've been carrying on a very interesting conversation with someone of the Eastern Orthodox bent about how one can determine, essentially, "who is right," especially in the context of those who've chosen either Rome or Constantinople over against the claims of the other--what I still see as a stalemate between competing traditions and claims to genuine succession and preservation of original truth. I would like to post one snippet here where she replied to some of what I had asked. She raises a point that the idea of substitution in the atonement is present in Orthodoxy and the early fathers, but the idea of satisfaction (presumably in a penal way) cannot be traced earlier than Anselm in the west.
I know I can't post links to other forums here (sorry for doing that the other day, I plead excessive ignorance ), but I hope this is OK. I'm obviously not asking anyone to beat up on another person who can't reply, but I don't really see this as different from quoting an article elsewhere on the web...
Thoughts? I seem to recall reading somewhere that Luther's view of the atonement was a "Christus Victor" model by and large...not entirely sure what that means. I also read that Anselm's model borrowed somewhat from the feudal lord-and-serf sort of economy of the day.
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I had just discovered this thread so the original theme was the most interesting to me. In general, I steer away from 'how do I know this Church or that Church is right' questions as the answers are always going to be based on one's presuppostions. A Protestant would tell you the true church is one that follows Scripture - but by that they mean one which follows the interpretation of Scripture they've personally become convinced is right. A Catholic would talk about the role of the Pope, because it makes things pretty cut and dried actually, and point to historical continuity. Orthodox (both flavors) would say to look for the Church that hasn't changed, added to, or developed it's doctrines. If you accept that reasoning then you need to decide about Chalcedon I suppose.Originally Posted by wturri78
Thanks for your reply and for bringing it back to the original post.
Point is - all three are right. Consistency with Scriptures, historical continuity, and doctrinal continuity would all be hallmarks of the Church founded by Jesus Christ. So then the question moves on to what we mean by those three terms - which will lead one to different conclusions depending on their underlying assumptions.
The problem with this approach, as I see it, is that it often becomes a what I call 'textual archaeology' - where you must try to carefully figure out what the Scriptures mean as if they were from a long-dead civilization. Doctrines can be formed of cobbled together verses taken from this book or that book with no regard to the internal precedence of authority between books. Major doctrines can be built from a passage or a verse in a single book - elevating it out of the context of both the rest of Scripture and the socio-historical millieu it was written in.Originally Posted by wturri78
It is logically true that if Catholicism fell off the boat doctrinally, then Protestants are just swimming in a different direction by reacting to doctrines that were wrong at their sources. Much of the Reformation was indeed reactionary and cooler heads did not necessarily always prevail. The goal of Protestantism is to recover the original faith that had been distorted or lost by the Roman church, by building up the doctrine from Scripture, not in simply rejecting what Rome taught.
Although most responsible hermeneutics does approach the Scripture in context, that context never seems to extend past the immediate time of the writing and never looks at how the Church as a whole understood the words written. As has been pointed out, there were many competing books considered to be Scripture (or at least inspired). There were also many letters and works written that 'disappeared' from circulation. For one text to be selected over another it had to have a certain value to the whole Church and thus how the whole Church understood it (and not just the writer or the original readers) needs to be considered.
Furthermore, an archaeological approach to the Bible ignores outright the fact that there are communities that to this day have a living tradition that has not varied much from that of the 4th century Church. I'm not just talking about Eastern Orthodox - but OO, Assyerians, and even the Old Believers as well. It would be like studying works written by the early Anabaptists in isolation without examining how the Amish and Mennonites of today understand them.
Originally Posted by wturri78
You are right in saying that if either Western view is correct, then something had to have developed beyond its nacent form. Both Rome and Reformed would say that truth did not change, but only our understanding of it. I think both would say that they do not reject those who came before, but "stand on their shoulders" as it were, to see farther.
I agree it doesn't address the question of who is right, but my contention is that the change in soteriology was much more significant than simple development. While a substitutionary aspect of the Atonement is not foreign to Orthodoxy, a satisfactionary aspect is. Doctrinally this model can not be traced back prior to Anselm's publication of Cur Deus Homo in 1097 AD, yet it is the predominant underlying understanding of the Atonement for both Protestants and Catholics. Substitution can be found to some degree in the writings of the Church Fathers, but Satisfaction can not. Furthermore, the early Church Fathers almost overwhelming held to what you might call the Christus Victor model. This is an important point because the two models have fundamentally opposing understandings of who God is in His nature and of what the Atonement accomplished.
True. However, in those cases you need to be careful to look at what was generally believed before and what came to be believed after and determine if the latter is really just a clarification of the former. My contention is that in the west there are many key doctrines that 'sprang up' in the 11th and 12th centuries which were built on an entirely different set of presupostions than existed prior to that time. Fundamentally different and contradictory understandings of the nature of God, the nature of Grace, the nature of Salvation, the nature of Sin, and so on.Originally Posted by wturri78
I think we'd agree that greater clarity came to definitions through controversy.