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Our mutual challenge
Despite its title and subtitle, Daniel B. Clendenin's piece on "Why I'm Not Orthodox" [Jan. 6] was fair-minded and dialogical. Much of its content showed that "the ancient and alien world of the Eastern church" is no more so than the world of Scripture itself at whose center is the One, living and holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, working out the mystery of our salvation.

As the dialogue between evangelicals and Orthodox continues to grow, the chief issues raised by Clendenin concerning the church, sacraments (not an Orthodox word), Scripture, tradition, authority, and hermeneutics deserve thorough discussion by speaking the truth in love and in mutual respect. My hunch is that, theologically, such dialogue will be mutually beneficial-enriching for the evangelicals and cleansing for the Orthodox, discerning what is truly orthodox and abiding. What binds us is the commitment to the authority of Scripture, which is both indisputable and massive in the Orthodox tradition. Scripture and tradition cannot be placed at the same level as alternatives, because Scripture is the record of revelation while tradition is the ecclesial hermeneutical context, a category which is equally important for evangelicals who, in the words of Clendenin, have their own "key distinctives of the Protestant evangelical tradition."

Our mutual challenge is, then, to engage the above issues not only in terms of the "distinctives" which differentiate us, but above all in terms of the full and total witness of the canonical Scriptures themselves, which can hardly be divorced from the historical growth of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church that canonized the Bible. Such study, accomplished with prayer and the work of the Spirit, may startle many of us both to see and to celebrate that some of our respective "key distinctives" may not be as far apart as we now perceive, while others may need mutual correction precisely on deeply biblical grounds.

Theodore Stylianopoulos
Professor of New Testament, Holy Cross
Greek Orthodox School of Theology
Brookline, Mass.

Dan Clendenin does a wonderfully thorough job of explaining several aspects of Orthodox Christian theology and history—which is why I find it hard to believe that he is not yet Orthodox! While Clendenin is factual in his description of Orthodoxy, because he insists on critiquing Orthodoxy through a Protestant world-view, his analysis falls understandably short. You can't judge a faith that has existed since the first century through sixteenth-century eyes.

Reformation theology, not the Bible, is Clendenin's yardstick. Several times he bases his position on what Luther, Calvin, and "the Reformers" said, which doesn't work, because this movement left Rome, not the Eastern church. But even then, is there some reason we should take the word of sixteenth-century Western Europeans over that of the early Eastern fathers—or the apostles themselves?

Clendenin never really answers the question of why he's not Orthodox. It all comes down to personal choice: being "committed to key distinctives of the Protestant evangelical tradition." It comes off like saying, I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate!

Fr. Peter E. Gillquist
Antiochian Orthodox Christian
Archdiocese of North America
Santa Barbara, Calif.

Clendenin states that one of the main reasons he did not become Orthodox is his belief in the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, not in the Orthodox church's belief that holy tradition, which goes back along with apostolic succession through the ecumenical councils and the early church fathers to the apostles and Jesus Christ himself, is the interpreter of Scripture and on an equal level with it. As a Greek Orthodox Christian, I see that sola scriptura is certainly not a reality in Protestantism, where each believer is free to interpret Scripture according to his individual bias and denominational tradition. This placing of the individual above Scripture has resulted in the thousands of denominations that make up Protestantism. If, as Protestants believe, every believer is inspired by the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture, then all such interpretations must be equally valid, even though some may be diametrically opposed to each other.

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March 3 1997, Vol. 41, No. 3