CONSISTENCY OVER TIME AS
A CRITERION OF TRUTH

©  2004 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 200400709]

     At the outset, it is proper to state some assumptions not accepted by all.  For instance, Liberal and Evangelical Protestants generally reject two aspects of early Christian thinking (e.g. the thinking of St. John and of St. Paul, who used energy terminology 26 times) and subsequent Orthodox thinking, viz. the energetic view of creation (as evolutive) and time (as a criterion of truth).  The Orthodox also can accept the transference of guilt or merit from one individual to another; they cannot accept that a good God transfers Adam's guilt to innocent newborns, or that Christ's merits can be transferred by imputative fiat to a worshiper, let alone by a papal indulgence).  To follow what is presented below will require the suspension of the view that time (tradition) has no relevance to an ephapax ("once for all") revelation.  What follows represents actual correspondence with the writer:  My correspondent is in black; my comments are in blue.

      Concerning your comments about my denying circular reasoning in saying that the Bible testifies about itself as to its authority and truth, I will briefly explain what I mean.  I believe that the Bible testifies to itself because of its consistency.

     Fine.  Let that be the topic.

    In my thinking, the strength of this view is that the Bible was written by many writers at many different times in history.  It is true that I have to depend on historical evidence concerning the different times and writers.

    So far so good.

With the consistency I observe as well as do many others, I am convinced that there is one author with many writers inspired by that same author.  And then I read of Jesus quoting the OT concerning many things.  Also, there is the Holy Paraclete giving me assurance of my position, that I might never reach by intellectualizing the matter.  

     But doesn’t the inspired character of a text depend on the inspiration of (i) who wrote a given book of the Bible and (ii) who decided that this or that should be included in (not excluded from) the Bible?  The first was, say, an Apostle; (ii) has been the Orthodox Church:  If she had decided to put St. Ignatios (disciple of St. John the Theologian and Evangelist, successor to St. Peter as Bishop of Antioch) in, some of his writings would be there now; and if she had decided to exclude James (as Luther did), his Letter would not be there now.  What the Liberals do is decided on an individual's own telling,  the way Luther concluded that such-and-such was a worthless "epistle of straw" and should not be regarded as canonical.  Some critics have actually printed "Bibles" that [in principle if not in content] can be compared with Luther’s putting James and five other books in a sort of appendix at the end of his translation of the NT into German.
     The point I’m getting at:  Unless YOU or any Evangelical or Liberal claims to be inspired enough to judge what is inspired or self-consistent (or not)—which would be a major claim for anyone except a pure rationalist who rejects inspiration and depends on reason—how do you avoid the charge of replacing the unbroken existence of at least one ecclesiastical body with EGO’s private judgment or inspiration? Someone has to be inspired to know what is inspired. Do you claim to be inspired enough to decide (with intellect or passion—hardly volition) what is inspired? Don’t bother to answer, if this is too sensitive for you to deal with.

     The questions I’m asking you I asked myself decades ago. Unlike all of the Liberals who decided what was inspired or tenable (their position was no different from yours, as here laid out, except that they found inconsistencies rather than consistencies; they reserved the right, as you apparently have, to reject what they found to be inconsistent), I decided that not EGO-me could judge what was inspired, but only the collective and DURABLE inspiration of the Church Fathers. I can still disagree with some individual if I find something inconsistent— individuals are prone to err—but the collective consensus has had to inspired, or else NOTHING is ascertainably so—certainly not judgments by you or me . . .  That’s the way I saw it.  I see no basic difference (on the anti-traditionalist left wing) between a Liberal and an Evangelical except that the one finds inconsistencies and th'other finds consistencies.
      I had never found WORSHIP in a Protestant Church until I saw it in the Church of England, many of whose members in those days (unlike today) rejected the claim of being Protestant. However, entering a proper Orthodox Church (with no windows and light coming in only from the lantern windows in the tower or dome—and candles or chandeliers) and seeing the people bowing down (as commanded in the Bible) is totally different from entering a Western Church. (I have seen prostrations in Anglican monasteries.) The glorious fan-vaulted ceilings of a Gothic cathedral are inspiring, but the darkness of a traditionalist Orthodox temple (few in America, esp. of the Greek persuasion, partly because the Orthodox bought denominational churchhouses when the previous owners had moved from the cities to the suburbs.  Once I took a guest to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in [name of city]; we got there late, at the moment when the 100-voiced choir (sopranos almost beyond the threshhold of sound and basses so low you couldn’t believe it) was singing 12 Alleelooeeah’s between the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel . . . both I and the non-Orthodox visitor felt that it was like stepping out of earth and into Heaven. 
     The words were in Church Slavonic.  Too bad our prayers are so poorly englished . . . but I am co-operating with others on that, as, e.g. http://www.orlapubs.com/AR/R297.html.  The worship in Heaven in the book of Apocalypse is modeled on early Orthodoxy—the bishop sitting on a throne surrounded by presvyters in the apse, the Lamb (what we still call the largest of the breads consecrated for Communion; we forbid icons of Christ as a Lamb, though Christ as a Shepherd is okay) on the heavenly Altar, etc., etc. . . . with Angels as acolytes!
     To cut it short, EGO’s judgments, whether of Liberals and Evangelicals—different not in kind, except for the rational element, but fundamentally different in their conclusions—that were so obviously not inspired turned me off in those days—and this was before the mainline Protestants gave up everything but fellowship and charity and perhaps a slogan/mantra or two.  I saw Papalism and Protestantism as having changed so often it was hard to keep up with them.  I saw the changes in Orthodoxy over time as being not individual (made by papal or EGO) but as always a consensus that had been built consistently on all of the consensus that had gone before and had been "good" or "sturdy" enough to endure the test of time—though time is, as already observed, a criterion that Liberals and Evangelicals reject. I wanted something objective and concluded that the same collective consensus that decided what books were in the Bible had a like inspiration to rise above individualistic subjectivity to objectivity and say what the words they had canonized meant.

     One’s responsibility for one’s belief and actions can depend either on one’s looking to see if anything existing is convincing enough to be worthy of embracing; or it can be envisioned as investigating on one’s own very limited resources what one can convince oneself of.  I think private judgments have plagued Christianity in every age:  Some layman, monk, priest (Luther), or bishop (Augustine) who convinced a sufficiently numerous or otherwise powerful group of others that he knew what was right convinced other and started a schism.  And all schisms from Orthodoxy have had sufficient deficiencies to keep it changing and, as long as it has endured, to keep it doctoring up what had gone before.  Contrast St. Athanasios who convinced the consensus of the Church that a certain teaching was wrong and helped the Church to stick to the consensus that had remained consistent with what had gone before—the argument always used.  One always found something in non-Orthodox beliefs something inconsistent with the deposit or diathēkē of belief písteōs.  The conflict with heresiarchs (individuals who judged that the Bible means something inconsistent with what the tradition has believed) has led to every sort of schism in the two thousand years during which only one body has stayed on course.  (I know you will have to disagree with this history, but I mention it just for my own sake and, let’s say, for the sake of objective consistency and the conserving of ancient truth.) I don’t see any way to maintain CONSISTENCY and the stability that demarcates truth other than to build each new insight that is consistent with what has gone before on that foundation.  
      I doubt that you are different from me in having espoused various interpretations over the years—that bespeaks no consistency in our views. The test of consistency is time.  We have come to see something more convincing and consistent, or at least what, from the point of view of some paradigm new to us, we deemed better.  How many Western interpretations/religions have been consistent for a fraction of the time Orthodoxy has been consistent?  This conservative or (tradition-preserving) character of Orthodoxy stands opposed to all of the radical innovations, which—however sincere one may be in thinking otherwise—don’t understand the Hellenistic ethos or, otherwise, can’t use (because of one's paradigm) it to understand an ancient set of books.  
     It is clear to me that the authors of the NT, especially St. Paul, St. John, St. James, and St. Peter, took Hebrew mystericism (or incarnationalism, the idea that creation and time play essential religious rôles—the basic idea of an Incarnational religion as opposite to Gnosticism) and formed it. viz. with meaning, by eliminating juridicalism.  The only question is whether that Apostolic paradigm (and existed or rather, could have existed, so far as we know during the Apostolic Age in the places where the Apostles preached.  The materialism of Incarnation and Mysteries (sacrament[al]s) was repugnant to the reigning Platonist of Christianity's early centuries.  I personally don't see how today’s virtual realities (imputational "realities") could have existed till after the Dark Ages and then only in the West).  Juridicalism has always typified non-Christian Semitic religions.  But it was energy, so often alluded to by St. Paul, that formed pristine Christianity. 

      Seeing nothing but inconsistency here, I long ago rejected it.  Haivng said that, I have to concede that there IS a WILL-BASED way to disregard reality and invoke a putative imputational reality in which guilt can be IMPUTED from one person to others, and MERITS can be imputed from one person to others. As a matter of reason and also within a will-based morality, EGO has the responsibility for what it does; this is based on one’s own bad and good intentions; doing what we haven’t intended has got no moral value, good or bad. We need to know what we are doing and what it’s likely consequences if our act is to have moral value, good or bad. So even in a volitional framework, I cannot accept imputed reality (whether it involves God imputing Adam's guilt and Christ's merits and virtual righteousness to a sinner; or whether a pope transfers merits with an indulgence).  Virtual reality does not seem to be anything worthy of a the GOD of truth.  It will no doubt seem otherwise to you, but in such teachings I see consistency with a paradigm, but not a desirable consistency with anything viaable in the Hellenism of the Apostolic Age.  I don't think a credible God would lie by calling a sinner righteous just because He can do so!