Having a bit of time on my hands, and being rather incensed at the smarmy tone and tenor of a recent piece written in Pulpit & Pen, a Calvinist publication, I wrote a response to one Mr. J.D. Hall, which I shall be forwarding to him. Having been in Calvinism for twelve years myself before actually climbing out of the theological ghetto in which I lived, I understand what he is saying – and he is wrong. Seriously, terribly, and in total misinformation wrong.  I know this because I, along with many other former Calvinists who have converted to the ancient faith,  was just like him. I did not know the history of the Christian faith, the writings of the Early Fathers, or what they taught. I honestly thought that what I believed as a Calvinist was the ancient faith – and I was shocked to find out otherwise through my study.

My response is in bold.

As the owner and president of Pulpit & Pen, I feel that I need to issue a public apology to the Eastern Orthodox community in regards to my managing editor’s recent words. In a series of posts, Pulpit & Pen editor, Jeff Maples, took it upon himself to essentially anathematize the Bible Answer Man, Hank Hanegraaff, and in the process said some hurtful things about an old and revered religious tradition. I would be remiss not to clarify Jeff’s remarks and in the process, make some apologies. I pray that it is received well by all of our friends in the Eastern Orthodox community.

Boy, with friends like you, who needs enemies?

Firstly, we would like to apologize on behalf of Protestants everywhere for overlooking the grave and damning heresies of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, compared to our stalwart protest of Rome.

The damning of any soul is first of all not your right. You are not God, and I would tread lightly in respect to usurping His authority to pronounce damnation upon anyone. More especially, though, I would be extremely careful not to insult that which God gave to the Apostles and which was faithful transmitted from generation to generation – that is, the ancient Christian faith which was shared in East and West under the title “katholicos.” The Bible teaches us in Hebrews 8:5 and 9:23-24 that God is less than pleased when men inject their thoughts and traditions into the worship which He has given to those leading His congregation. Moses was strictly warned not to tamper with that which God gave the Israelites as worship, and this goes right into the structure of the New Covenant Church as well. Since Calvinism has no existence prior to the heretic John Calvin and Geneva in the 16th century, you are treading on very thin ice to call the ancient faith “heresies.” Having read some of their pronouncements regarding new and man-made religious thoughts, I have no problem stating that the Early Fathers of the Church, if presented with Calvinism, would reject and condemn it out of hand as they did with any number of heresies that popped up in the first several centuries of the Christian faith.

This has been an oversight of Protestants, due mostly to the revival of actual Biblical orthodoxy (you might call it Protestantism) developing primarily in the West, and under the wicked authority of Rome, and not under the Eastern schismatics known by the misleading name of “Orthodox.”

That which did not exist for 16 centuries, which was never taught by the Apostles or the Early Fathers of the Church, can hardly be claimed as “orthodox.” We have another word for such novelties that never existed in the Church until made up by men – heresies. Of course, you can deflect this charge by simply showing me evidence that the Early Fathers taught what John Calvin invented. And by showing me, I don’t mean that you take one sentence from the Bible out of context – a favorite trick of heretics and cultists – and use that to prove your point. SDA’s, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons are experts at this art. I mean that you show that the understanding of the very first leaders of the Christian faith, as evidence in their sermons, epistles, and general writings, shows that they believed in some form of Calvinist theology. Lacking that, you have no proof at all that such a belief is anything near Christian “orthodoxy.”

While we have rightly called the Bishop of Rome the “antichrist” in our Confessions of Faith, we have overlooked the many antichrists that have gone out into the world and settled in their positions as leaders in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. It was not right of us to prejudicially focus on the Western anti-christ church just because they happened to be the ones murdering us for several centuries.

Murdering us? You mean like your hero, John Knox, who is reputed to have been responsible for the deaths of over 4,000 Catholic priests in Scotland? As Protestants, your history is hardly pure, being filled with murder, theft, and rape. Read the histories of what the English Anglicans under Cromwell did to innocent women and children for the horrid crime of being Catholic. Don’t throw stones if you live in a glass house.

In the future, we will strive to explain that anyone who seeks the title of ‘priest,’ (a blasphemous title if ever there were one), lead people into idolatry, claim the sole mediary position between God and man, practice necromantic prayers to the dead, engage in corpse worship, and promote meritorious salvation is an antichrist, every bit as much as the Roman Catholic abomination. We are sorry for leaving out specific condemnations of your religion in our Confessions, as it wasn’t very inclusive of us.

So God establishes the priesthood and you call it “blasphemous?” Wow! Worse than that, the Bible you claim to believe is the final word to us says,  “we have been made priests and kings unto Christ” (Revelation 5: 10). But perhaps I err. Surely you can show me just one verse which clearly and definitively states, in these exact words, “the priesthood is over.” It shouldn’t be that hard, seeing as you know the Bible so well. Have at it, m’boy!

You also apparently don’t understand biblical terms when you use them, so let me give you a lesson in proper hermeneutics. Idolatry is taking any creature or man-made thing and making it to be a god. Worshiping it in a fashion reserved for God alone. Here’s a hint for you: no one in Orthodoxy does this. We don’t have any idols in Orthodoxy, we don’t bow down to anything (icons in particular) and call them “God” or worship them as God. Your ignorance, for one who thinks himself intelligent, is appalling. One thinks you got your theological education from a Chick tract.

Then there is your sad soteriology, which in essence says that those who have gone before us and lived holy lives are dead. You claim we practice “necromantic prayers,” but the salvation which Christ accomplished on the Cross has overthrown death and those who have gone before us are alive in a way that neither you nor I could comprehend, even if we could see it with our own eyes. What kind of salvation is this, that leaves the dead to be dead, rather than alive in Christ?

Adding to this, you apparently have missed those passages in the Bible in which Christ Himself said that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Christ Himself met two of those who were alive – Moses and Elijah – on Mount Tabor and spoke with them, even though their bodies were in tombs in Israel. Was Christ also guilty of “necromantic prayers?” Perhaps you would be wise to stop and reflect on what you are about to say before you spout of the usual thoughtless boilerplate that is part and parcel of so many wretched anti-Catholic bigots like Lorraine Boettner and Alexander Hislop.

Where do you get the idea of “meritorious salvation?” Is it from the fact that we believe what Christ taught in the Scriptures (John 5: 28-29, Ephesians 2: 5-10, Matthew 25: 33-46, and Revelation 20: 12-13) that we shall be judged by our works, and those who have done good works shall inherit eternal life? Don’t believe me – look for yourself:

Rom 2:7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

Doesn’t say a thing about “faith alone,” does it? But what the Bible says about faith alone is so clear that Luther ran around his room looking for a scissors with which to excise the book of James:  Jas 2:17 “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” Luther hated that this was in the Bible, for it justified the understanding that eternal life is an covenant inheritance which is given to those who keep covenant with Christ by doing those works which He commanded us to do.

The Cross is the beginning of the Christian life. The heresy of Protestantism says that once you “accept Jaaaaayzuz as your personal Lord and Savior” you are “as assured of heaven as if you are already there.”  (A favorite saying of many who once preached the Fundamentalist Gospel in tent revivals.)  That is not historic Christianity and you will find no such teaching in any of the Early Fathers of the Church. What you will find is that our salvation, which begins by the utterly free reception of salvation in baptism, is a journey into holiness. We are created to be partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) and thus grow in Christlikeness. In the Orthodox faith, we call this process “theosis.”

Secondly, we are sorry that many Protestants have stopped protesting, sending the impression that our confessional doctrinal beliefs don’t anathematize you as not only being sub-Christian, but being anti-Christian. We are sorry that men like Albert Mohler, Paige Patterson, Russell Moore and Carl Trueman, all who should certainly know better, seem to have affirmed you in your superstitious and pagan religion.

Please explain to me how Orthodoxy, which follows that which has been taught for 2,000 years, is anti-Christian. Are you really like the goofball preacher I read online who swears that the Early Church was a Calvinist organization with Presbyterian worship and governance? Good grief, from what planet did this guy arrive? 

Holy Orthodox has remained unchanged for 2,000 years. You can find in the writings of the Early Fathers of the Church, long before the Canon of Scripture was completed, the practices of the Orthodox faith. What you cannot find is Calvinism in any form, a denial of many of the things which are found in the Sacred Scriptures. For instance, Jesus said, “this IS my Body, this IS my Blood.” Now how do we know that He meant that literally? Because we can read what the first Christians taught about it, and they taught that He meant it just as He said it. The idea of Holy Communion as a bare memorial meal was never known in Christendom until it began with the Reformers. They claimed to be following the Scriptures, but then even they separated in their understanding of “the true faith.” Some of them practiced paedo-baptism and some did not, and both camps called each other heretics while claiming to be true to the teaching of the Bible.

Do you not understand that for the first four centuries, there wasn’t even a canon of Scripture?  How did the earliest Christians know what to believe and practice? They learned what the Apostles had taught because it was transmitted through the generations of believers. There was no Bible in which to have “faith alone.” It is the writings of the Early Fathers, and not the Scriptures, which tell us what Christ taught to the Apostles and what they in turn entrusted to the next generation.

While I am at it, define “superstitious” for me.  If you are going to throw down a charge, at least have the decency to explain what you mean. What in Orthodoxy do you think is “superstitious?” Superstition is the action of doing certain actions to obtain a result, often with the idea of moving the hand of unfeeling Fate or the impersonal gods. Show me where we do this. If you are going to make claims of “pagan” and “superstitious,” the burden of proof is on you. Name-calling is hardly proof.

While the Intelligentsia class of evangelicalism are happy to learn about how Rod Dreher’s monasticism fetish might be a valuable tool for fleeing the culture wars, the rest of us failed to speak up loudly enough to challenge them on this, partially because the idol-factory of our hearts are quick to make our own popes out of mere men, and we don’t like to challenge our popes. The fact is, Greek Orthodox men like Rod Dreher have no part in the Kingdom of God on Earth, because they have no part of the Kingdom of God in Heaven, unless they were to recant their idolatry and believe the one, true, catholic doctrine of Sola Fide.

Once again, there is no evidence of Sola Fide in the Bible (as shown by the verses I displayed to you) nor in the writings of the Early Fathers. You are dreaming, sir! You have invented something that simply never existed in the first centuries of Christianity. You really should do some historical study. It would do you a world of good, as it did me, although I was shocked – shocked I tell you – to find out through the writings of the first Christians that they were distinctly Orthodox in their theology.

There’s no such thing as being “kind of Christian,” and the Trinitarian ontology of the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn’t undo the fact that trusting in your merit for salvation is just as damning as being a Modalist like TD Jakes or believing in 9 divine persons like Benny Hinn.

Once again, we do not trust in any merit we have before the all-holy God. We understand that salvation is a pure act of God’s grace to mankind, who, if not given the grace to respond, would never turn to Him in repentance. For heaven’s sake, if you are going to criticize something or someone, at least get to know properly your enemy. You make claims that simply are not true and then expect people to believe them because you state those claims. I think this is called a Strawman Argument. It should be beneath you.

So, therefore, we apologize for our evangelical leaders who have stopped protesting, even though they call themselves Protestants. Much of your outrage (the thousands of angry, F-bomb dropping emails we have received) is due to the fact you’ve never heard a Protestant say you’re not a Christian. It’s not because Protestant doctrine doesn’t say you’re lost (it certainly does), but because we’ve become a bunch of limp-wristed milksops. Forgive our cowardice.

And forgive us for those in Catholicism and Orthodoxy who are dropping “F-bombs” on you. The last time I looked, that was not a proper Christian response, even in a very heated argument. And, of course, they are an atrocious witness to Christ and His power to change us into those who love our enemies and pray for those, who like you, despitefully treat us. They bring horrible insult upon the name of Christ by such actions.

Thirdly, we apologize for making it seem, should you have perceived it that way, that you’re unchristian because your priests wear dresses and you burn incense. While true religion has little patience for pretentious pageantry, the issue for us concerning your doctrinal apostasy is your denial of Sola Fide, Sola Scriptura, and Penal Substitution. The fact that you adorn your buildings in gaudy and sacrilegious, bedazzled idols is second to the more blatant soteriological heresies that damn your soul (although idolatry is damning enough). The fact that you believe that superstitious voodoo oil poured over someone’s head fills them with the holy spirit and brings them back from apostasy is secondary to your hope in your own righteousness for salvation. We (still-protesting Protestants) shouldn’t have focused upon your bizarre, extra-biblical rituals that resemble more seance than Biblical service of worship; we should have focused far more upon your doctrinal beliefs that oppose Jesus and the very Gospel itself.

Your ignorance is almost as appalling as your arrogance. Let’s focus on some of the “unbiblical” practices of the Orthodox faith which you mentioned above:

Anointing with oil: 20 verses in the Bible, including Hebrews 1:9 in the NT, speak of being anointed with oil. Might I turn the question around and ask why you don’t do this? It’s in the Bible, after all. It is a sign of God’s blessing upon the one being anointed.

Incense: found not only in use in the OT, but in Revelation it speaks of the use of incense in heaven. What? Are you going to turn down heaven because you find incense a “pagan ritual?”

Idols: There are no idols in the Orthodox Church. You defining icons as such does not make that so. The proper definition of an idol, as I said before, is a created thing, such as the ugly elephant “god” of the Hindus, being worshiped  as the true God. We do not do this. How many times must you be told this?

To what “extra-biblical rituals” do you refer?

Baptism for the remission of sins? Acts 2:38
The Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Christ? John 6
Prayers for the dead? Macabees 12: 43-46 (The original Bible, not the Protestant truncated version)

Icons: The Bible says that Christ is the icon of the unseen God. Therefore, said the 7th Ecumenical Council, since God saw fit to make an icon of Himself and place Him among us so that we might understand Him better, it is fitting for us to also make icons. Case closed.

Seance?  We don’t call up the dead and ask them to do our bidding. We pray to those who are alive in Christ, the saints in heaven, and ask their prayers before the throne of God. They are very much alive (Revelation 4:4; 6:9; 7: 9-17) as are Moses, Elijah, the prophets, and all those who have been redeemed by Christ. You do not realize this, but you insult the work of Christ on the Cross by such an accusation. His death emptied out Hades, gave life to the world, and to those who are with Him now.

Fourthly, we apologize for letting you get away with asserting your religious superiority by the age of your church.

The age of our Church is the whole point. We are not new, and therefore, you cannot say that we did what Calvinism did, which was to invent novel theological, soteriological, and anthropological ideas which are not found in the historic writings of the Christian faith. What we do today can be found in the teachings of the historic faith of the first century. What you cannot find is any evidence of any of the preachers of the Church teaching Calvinism or anything like it in the first century. Again, I challenge you to prove me wrong.

As for the issue of “dresses” on priests (I hope you don’t think you are being either cute or particularly original with this little insult) you apparently are unaware of how God’s Covenant works and with one particular covenant event called, “Covenant Clothing.” I discovered this on a Protestant website, of all places. Whenever a Greater King, a Suzerainty King of the Middle East (do you even know what that means?) would bestow his authority on a lesser king after “cutting covenant” with him, he would dress him in clothing which reflected that authority.

This is the beauty of what took place when the Prodigal Son returned home. Far from being made a slave, the son was given the robe of familial authority, indicating that he was again in covenant relationship with his father and bore familial authority. We also see this in Joseph and the many-colored robe his father gave him, which is why his brothers despised him. He had no right to  covenant authority, yet his father prophetically bestowed it upon him by clothing him in that garment. And God brought it to pass when Joseph was the authority over his brothers as Second-in-Command in Egypt.

This was also what the splendid dress of the priests is all about, starting with the priests of the Old Covenant and moving to the priests of the New Covenant. The robes with their ephods and other symbols showed that God’s authority was placed upon them. This is true of the New Covenant, and you make fun (again, a very serious issue before God) of those to whom He has given His covenant authority. You do like living dangerously, don’t you?

While it is true that you happen to live in a part of the world that was first affected by the Gospel, your geographical proximity to the early church does not mean that you hold to the doctrines or practices of that New Testament Church.

This is just…………….bizarre. I mean, you are just clueless, aren’t you? I can’t even begin to understand what history of Christianity you have studied. It certainly wasn’t the sermons or writings of any of the first preachers of the Church, called The Early Fathers. You cannot find in them a single reference to any Calvinist particular of that belief system. Even Augustine, whose odd anthropological musings are the basis of your beliefs, rejected Calvinist ideas. He didn’t realize, of course, that some 14 centuries latter, John Calvin would take his writings and develop a whole system of warped theology around them.

The fact is, the heresies of Gnosticism, Antinomianism, and the Judaizers all predate the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, the sect of the Nicolatians (founded by an Acts 6 deacon) predates your church considerably. Logic, of course, would not deduce that these groups, because they are older, are right. We apologize for not being more forward in pointing out that Jesus specifically wrote to the Ephesians Church (where there is now the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate) that he would remove the lamp stand (IE the Holy Spirit) from their church for forsaking their first love, the Gospel of Jesus.

This is found in the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Apostle. That book describes the end of the age and the destruction of Jerusalem. It is written specifically to the people of that time for their edification. More than one Protestant has made an utter fool out of himself by not understanding this and claiming that some faux “rapture of the Church” was about to take place. Starting with the Millerites of the 19th century all the way to Harold Camping’s bizarre numerical ranting (but he was a good Calvinist, n’est ce pas?) the world has been treated to any number of men who have thought they unlocked the mysteries of the Last Days, only to see them go down in theological flames. And lest you think I am being a bit too Catholic here, Preterism is held and taught by some serious Calvinists whom you may have heard of, such as Edward Stevens, and held in esteem by others such as Gary DeMar.

The Scripture contains a very explicit warning, directly from the dictation of Jesus, that the church that would become Eastern Orthodox would have the Holy Spirit depart it should they continue on their path of abandoning true religion.

The Bible was not “dictated.” That is, it is not a word for word description of exactly what came out of the mouth of God. This is yet another in a long list of hermeneutical errors of Protestants, who by their arguing and bickering among themselves over proper understanding of the Bible, give clear evidence that the Holy Spirit is not among any of them. The Holy Spirit is not schizophrenic, yet to see hundreds of Protestants, all claiming that they are being led by the Holy Spirit and yet all disagreeing with one another, one would wonder. You are blind if you don’t see this and at least think about the ramifications of such arguments among various and sundry “Bible-believing” Protestants.

While the Eastern Orthodox church is older than, for example, churches in other parts of the world, that doesn’t make it better. It just means that the Eastern Orthodox Church has been apostate longer than most churches have existed. Big. Stinking. Deal. You don’t get brownie points for the number of centuries since the Holy Spirit left your building.

Apostasy means leaving the faith once delivered to the Apostles. Again, I challenge you to prove that Calvinism existed in the first century of the Church. If you can’t, then guess who the real apostates are?

Fifthly, we apologize for not pointing out, as you rage in anger that we anathematize you, that you anathematized us first. Like the Roman Catholic apostate church, Eastern Orthodoxy has also declared Protestants to be hopelessly damned for trusting in Christ’s accomplished work alone for our salvation.

Really? Maybe some of the Traddydox have done this. They are as big a pain as the RadTrad Roman Catholics. The majority of Orthodox (and Catholics)  realize that they have no such arrogant right to take God’s place in judging who is and who ain’t saved. And that is also not your right either!

While the Eastern Orthodox community has ranted and railed with lamenting and gnashing of teeth toward Pulpit & Pen in recent weeks, they seem blissfully unaware that, like many cults, official Eastern Orthodox teaching declares that only they are the one true church and more specifically, they teach that actual Christians like ourselves are damned for trusting only in Jesus. We apologize for not pointing out that your man-made tradition similarly anathematizes, only it does it wrongly. There is no moral high ground of tolerance and open-mindedness that you can confess toward outsiders without denying the official teachings of your church, a church you believe infallible based upon nothing but the amount of time it’s held to its heresies.

I pray that you, as the Eastern Orthodox Community, will receive our apologies charitably. There has been much confusion because of the inability or unwillingness to articulate what Protestants actually believe about those who deny Sola Fide and Penal Substitution. We aim to fix all that, and do better in the future.

There is no justification outside faith alone in his accomplished work. Christ’s accomplished work includes his substitionary and vicarious death in our place, being for us our propitiation.

You do realize, don’t you, that this is a penal understanding of the Crucifixion which you have inherited from the erroneous salvific views of the Roman Catholic Church? The Orthodox do not see salvation in these terms. We see that God is our Divine Physician, and the Eucharist is the “medicine of immortality” which cures the soul of its sin sickness. We see baptism as the entrance into that covenant relationship of God’s healing of our souls. 

No amount of smells and bells, chanting absurdities, or calling out the gods of Ba’al and Asherah with much incense-burning, bell-ringing pomp and circumstance will change that.

No amount of Bible-thumping, foaming at the mouth, screaming hellfire and damnation at people will change the fact that Protestantism is a man-made religion which has abandoned that which was entrusted to the Apostles and faithfully transmitted by them to the next generations. No amount of using large and impressive sounding words will cover the fact that you do not understand the beauty of the Divine Liturgy and what it represents. No amount of parading your intellect around can take the place of learning of God in the silence of the Jesus Prayer. Until you understand, as Scott Hahn came to understand, that the Divine Liturgy we celebrate is that which is found in Revelation, that what we do is heaven brought down to earth (Hebrews 9: 23-24) so that by symbols, prayer, and worship, heaven is experienced here, you will simply not understand.

Cordially,
JD Hall

And to you too. I look forward to any response you may wish to tender.