Story vs study: the Orthodox difference (part 1)

In early 2015, twenty-one Coptic Christians were forced to their knees and beheaded on a Libyan beach by members of ISIS. The event was captured on video by the killers and released on the internet. Rightly, there was a worldwide groan from Christians of many differing traditions about the evil of ISIS's barbaric act. Not only that, but there was also an equally ecumenical reverence for the martyrdom of those men, many of whom could be heard crying out, "Lord Jesus Christ!" at the final moment before their heads were severed from their bodies.

Not everyone was impressed.

The writers at a polemical, Baptist blog called Pulpit & Pen, observing the display of Christian unity, quickly took it upon themselves to declare the martyrs no such thing. They educated their readers that Coptic Christians are "an ancient sect" which failed to adopt the principles of the Reformation, to the detriment of their souls. To put it more bluntly: when twenty-one men who called on the name of Christ were beheaded by terrorists, an inconsequential but vocal American Baptist blog claimed to possess raw intelligence indicating that those men are now in Hell.

A sister blog of P&P, unironically called Polemics Report, is declaring similar inanity in 2017 in response to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's invitation of an Orthodox Christian to represent Christianity in a soon-to-occur public debate with atheist Michael Shermer. That Christian is John Mark Reynolds, founder and former director of Biola University's Torrey Honors Institute, former Provost of Houston Baptist University, President of the groundbreaking Saint Constantine School in Houston, TX, and a Senior Fellow in the Humanities at The King's College, New York. Notwithstanding his Orthodox affiliation, you just about can't have stronger Evangelical bona fides than Reynolds.

Nevertheless, the hard workers at Polemics Report have attempted to head off the debate by raising the alarm over SWBTS having given the Christian mantle to a peddler of False Gospels™. It was a pure accident that I stumbled on the article, but it was so amusing that I decided to make Reynolds himself aware of it via Twitter. He saw the humor of it, too, and even posted it on Facebook for a laugh. Somehow or another, the writer of the Polemics Report piece became aware of Reynolds' post, and in the comments, smugly accused Reynolds of not being a Christian, while refusing to discuss the merits of his charge. Among other points, Reynolds attempted to explain that the writer's characterization of Orthodox belief was in fact a caricature, but the writer steadfastly refused to engage Reynolds on this point, only directing onlookers to various other non-Orthodox caricatures of Orthodox belief elsewhere on the internet.

As one of those onlookers, it was tempting for me to think of that writer as conversing in bad faith. But even if he was, I had some pity for him, and not of the condescending sort. My early days investigating Orthodoxy are still vivid in my memory, and forefront among those memories is the frustration I felt grappling with the various theological formulations I was reading that differed from my own. I also remember the challenges I had in precisely describing some aspects of Orthodox belief to curious friends who would ask questions.

The Orthodox are unique among Christian traditions, not just in their liturgical and architectural aesthetic, but in how they approach the life of faith in their churches. In my next post, I'm going to elaborate on that uniqueness, including how I think the Orthodox approach to faith life directly impacts how its faithful tend to express their faith. I'll also discuss why I believe that uniqueness is a foundational reason people like the writers at Polemics Report--and Evangelicals of better will broadly speaking--often have so much difficulty engaging Orthodox Christians on the substance of the faith.