Faith, Beer, and Other Things That Interest Geoff

Going back the Oriental Orthodox, in Evangelical/Orthodox debates this tradition is generally ignored because Evangelicals are ordinarily opposed to Monophysitism, and so the Oriental Orthodox are summarily excluded.

But this is misleading, and gives the Eastern Orthodox an unfair advantage. And that’s because Evangelicals don’t necessarily oppose Monophysitism for same reasons as the Eastern Orthodox. We oppose it because it’s unscriptural.

But the Eastern Orthodox oppose it because it’s contra-conciliar. And that, in turn, is bound up with a high-church polity and apostolic succession.

Yet if you grant high-church assumptions, then the Oriental Orthodox have just as good or poor a claim to apostolic succession as the Eastern Orthodox. So we shouldn’t be giving the Eastern Orthodox a free pass on this issue. They need to fight and win on more than one front. They need to beat the Oriental Orthodox at their own game before they’re in any position to mount an attack on Evangelicalism, or some particular tradition thereof.

They also need to explain who speaks for Eastern Orthodox, and why.

Labels: apologetics, eastern orthodoxy