The late Richard Weaver hated the title of his book, Ideas Have Consequences. That is unfortunate because the title is outstanding, and carries a wealth of theology in three simple words. Ideas have very pointed consequences, and very particular destinations. One of the best illustrations of this is the profound differences that have developed between the western Church and the eastern Church. Those differences are not merely “doctrinal,” but reveal two completely different mindsets, two different paradigms. And all because ideas have consequences.
Some years ago some colleagues and I had occasion to criticize various aspects of the Eastern Orthodox Church in print. Aside from all the expected disagreements, and the back and forthing that goes on after such things, a remarkable thing became apparent to us in the exchanges that we had. The Eastern Orthodox do not really know how to argue. And this is said, not as an insult, but simply as an observation. Given the profound differences between East and West, I am not even sure they would take this as a slighting comment. I would not be surprised if they took the western zeal for argumentation as a central part of our problem.
By way of contrast, historic Protestants have deep and abiding differences with the Roman Catholic Church which cannot be papered over with ecumenical position papers. But the disagreements that remain between Rome and Geneva still show that the participants on both sides of the debate retain something in common. They are both heirs of the western mind; they both share a common approach to argument. He would be a foolhardy man who maintained that a Jesuit did not know how to argue a theological point. This is not the case at all with the Eastern Orthodox.
In order to argue anything, a man has to be able to say this, not that, here, not there, A, not not A. In short, he has to be able to make distinctions. So argumentation depends entirely on this, and distinctions in their turn depend on having an ultimate ground for making distinctions. In the historic Protestant view, the ultimate and greatest distinction that must be maintained at all times is the distinction between the Creator and the creature. This divide is an ontological chasm, which keeps clear the utter and complete differences between necessary and contingent, infinite and finite, Maker and made. This ultimate distinction provides us with the basis we need to justify the process of argument, and is an assumption which Protestants and Catholics share.
So the point being made here is not that the Eastern Orthodox do not know how to argue because they did not have debating classes in high school or college. Neither is any question being raised about intelligence or education — the issue rather is the uses to which intelligence and education are put. In the East, careful debate is not valued, and the reason for this is an idea which had a profound consequence.
The Eastern Church blurs the ultimate distinction between Creator and creature with their doctrine of theosis, or deification. That doctrine is critiqued elsewhere in this issue, and so it should be sufficient here simply to point out that when the Eastern Orthodox argue for an ontological union between man and God’s energies, they are confusing the one thing that must not be confused. We maintain, in contrast, that our union with Christ is a covenantal union, not a union of natures.
Blurring distinctions between Creator and creature leads necessarily to blurring distinctions within the Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to all coherent and sustained thought — and this doctrine of theosis has to threaten the doctrine of the Trinity in its implications. We in the Church cannot be deified without creating an imbalance in the relations or processions of the divine Persons, and without creating troubling questions about the Church as an aspiring fourth Person in the Quaternity. The implications of this line of thought place the Eastern Church at variance, not only with Scripture, but also with the early ecumenical creeds. But there I go, arguing . . .
My point here is not to show that they are wrong in their assumption, but rather that the assumption they make is inconsistent with sustained theological argumentation. This in its turn explains a host of consequences — the Eastern Orthodox Church is still here because of inertia and authority. It is not really a missionary faith; it does not readily go anywhere where argument might be required. Preaching, proselytizing, apologetics, evangelism — all these are impossible to conceive apart from argument. Those modern evangelicals who are drawn eastward are not drawn by argument; rather they are attracted by antiquity, beauty, and authority, and repelled by the apparent lack of such things in the monkey house that we call contemporary evangelicalism.
But if such a pilgrim asks the question, “How do we know this is true?”, the answer is entirely out of argument’s reach. In the Eastern view, doctrinal truth is established by the uniform consensus of the Church throughout all time. The only problem with this is that history is not yet done. We do not yet know what the Church throughout all ages has said. Suppose we have another twenty-thousand years ahead of us. We see yet another failure to make distinctions.
But in seeing this failure, and any others like it, we have to remember the source of it.