Orthodox Biblical Interpretation and Protestant Biblical Scholarship

The question of what Orthodox Christians should make of Protestant biblical scholarship is a complicated question. First off, what do I mean by "Protestant biblical scholarship"? I don't mean to limit this to the work of scholars who are actually Protestants -- I include any scholar who takes the approach to Scripture that Protestant scholars developed, whether they be Roman Catholics, Jews, or Atheists. Should we embrace it fully, reject it completely, or should we make use it to some extent -- but critically, and cautiously?

The Problems with Embracing it Fully

A key question to consider at the beginning here is whether Protestants discovered an approach to Scripture, beginning in the 17th century, which is essential to properly understanding the Scriptures? If this were true, that would mean that for most of Church history, people were not really able to to properly understand the Scriptures. And that is an assumption which no right-believing Orthodox Christian could possibly accept.

When speaking about Protestants in general, it is necessary to make generalizations that are not going to be true to the same extent in every case, but generally modern Protestant biblical scholarship attempts to do the same thing with interpreting Scripture that Protestants attempt to do with Church history. They assume the Church became corrupt over the course of its history, and so it is necessary to leapfrog over the centuries and reestablish (more or less) the early Church. When it it comes to interpreting the Bible, they argue that have have to make that same leap, and get back to the understanding that prevailed when the Scriptures were written, in order to properly understand them. But the problem is, absent a time machine, we can only go back to the first century, in a sense, via the living Tradition that connects us with that time and with the apostles and saints of that time.

How do we know what St. John meant in his Gospel? We of course start with the text, but we then look to those whom he taught, and then to the Church as whole which received his teachings, and preserved them. We do not believe that the connection we have with St. John and the preservation of his teachings is either tenuous, or only partially reliable -- we believe the Church to be an infallible guide to what St. John meant.

Protestant scholars approach the Gospel of John like a crime scene investigation, or an archaeological dig, where they have to piece together fragmentary evidence, and then try to put together some sort of a plausible hypothesis about what to make of it. This, however, would only be true, if the Scriptures were not really the inspired word of God, and if the Church was not really the pillar and ground of the Truth. The Church understands the Scriptures because it knows the authors, and it is guided by the ultimate author of the Scriptures -- the Holy Spirit.

We also have to understand that Protestant methods are not neutral "technologies." They are methods that come with theological assumptions... assumptions which we generally do not share. If they were neutral technologies we should expect to see consistent results from their use, but in fact what we see is that they are used to produce speculative and subjective scholarship that is all over the map -- the likes of which would make the most speculative Freudian psychoanalysts blush, and shame the worst Gnostics the Church has ever encountered in its history.

But some might suggest that surely no Orthodox Christian would just accept this kind of scholarship, whole-hog, but such people would be wrong. Fr. Paul Tarazi is a case in point. If you look, for example, at the first volume of his three part introduction to the Old Testament, you will find that his entire text is based upon the assumption that the JEDP theory is a fact. Part one of the text is entitled "The Yahwist Epic" (the "J" source, which ends with an excursus entitled "The Case of the Elohist" (the "E" source); part 2 is entitled "The Deuteronomistic Tradition (the "D" source); part 3 is entitled "The Priestly Writings (the "P" source); and part 4 is entitled "The Post-Exilic Historical Traditions (which discusses the final redaction of the four sources into the Pentateuch as we know it). Fr. Paul does not present the JEDP theory as a theory, or discuss its merits. You would never know that any serious scholars questioned it. He simply assumes it to be true, and analyzes the separate histories and theological perspectives of the four sources. A good protestant introduction to the Old Testament generally does a better job of laying out the various theories, and they do discuss their merits and demerits. In fact, Brevard Childs (a Yale Old Testament Scholar, who was a Protestant) comes closer to an Orthodox presentation of the question, because in the end, he argues that we should interpret the Pentateuch as a whole, in its canonical form, not as separated sources (see his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979).

Is it possible that the Pentateuch was comprised of more than one source? It is possible. Is there any way that we could confidently know which source was which in the Pentateuch, given the information available to us today? No. But even if we knew for sure that the Pentateuch was composed of four sources, and even if we could confidently identify which source any particular portions of the Pentateuch came from, if we believe in God, and believe that the Scriptures are inspired by Him, and have confidence that the form that we have received is the form that God intended for us to receive, then the form we have receive is what we should concern ourselves with.

But as a matter of fact, as is often the case, Protestant scholars selectively choose the "facts" and "evidence" that suit their agenda and then proceed, with their conclusions essentially predetermined by their basic assumptions, to apply their methods to the Scriptures. And so if you assume, for example, that any mentions of liturgical worship would be later than the time of Moses (because you're a Protestant, and see that as a later corruption), and obviously, the work of later priests, your starting assumption is how you identify the "P" source, and then you know the "P" source, because it matches your assumptions. The reasoning is circular, but because it is presented with confidence, by people who sound like they know what they are talking about, people too often assume there is something objective and compelling about it, when in fact, it is completely subjective.

The Problems with Rejecting it Completely

Having said that Protestants did not discover anything new that is essential to properly understanding the Scriptures, the fact remains, we live in a world in which the fruits of Protestant biblical scholarship are everywhere. If we could establish an isolated community on an island somewhere, completely disconnected from the rest of the world, such a community could afford to ignore this scholarship... but that is not the world we live in.

One fairly obvious reason we should want to understand this field is that if we want to reach Protestants, we have to be able to communicate with them in ways that will be meaningful to them. We have to understand where they are coming from, and be able to answer their questions. We should not only be able to identify where they deviate from the Orthodox Faith, but also to acknowledge where they do not.

What is not usually obvious, however, is that even Orthodox people who live in the west have been heavily influenced by this kind of scholarship, and they more often than not do not realize it, or recognize where so many of their assumptions about Scripture come from. Even though we live in a culture that is becoming increasingly anti-Christian, it is nonetheless a culture that is immersed in Protestantism. Our people watch documentaries, read articles, or have teachers or professors who make appeals to biblical scholarship, and often what is presented in the name of biblical scholarship is in fact a fairly radical set of conclusions that are not even in the mainstream, but because someone with a Ph.D. is quoted, the assumption is that this is what people who are educated on the subject ought to think. And so if you have a parish priest who has not critically studied Protestant biblical scholarship, he may not recognize how his flock has been influenced by it, much less recognize its influence upon himself, nor will he be equipped to give convincing answers when people ask him if it is really true that the Gospel of Judas is a reliable text, or why we should accept the testimony of the canonical Gospels, or even how we know that Christ was even an historical person.

And as a matter of fact, the enemies of the Church are not unaware of this scholarship. For example, we have a letter Maxim Gorky wrote to Joseph Stalin, in which he discussed his strategies for eliminating religious faith in Russia, and among many other things, he said:

"We cannot do without an edition of the "Bible" with critical commentaries from the Tubingen school and books on criticism of biblical texts, which could bring a very useful "confusion into the minds" of believers" (Letter of Gorky to Stalin).

The liberal German biblical scholarship Gorky refers to may very well have played a role in his own atheism. If it did not cause him to become an atheist, it certainly did nothing but confirm him in that atheism.

Making Medicines from Poisonous Snakes

The Church Fathers obviously didn't have to contend with liberal German biblical scholars, but they did have to contend with an issue that has some analogies to this question -- and that is the question of what use, if any, Christians should make of pagan Greek learning. In the wider culture, pagan Greek philosophy, rhetoric, and literature was the intellectual gold standard, and to educated people of the time, you either were conversant in these things, or you were not to be taken seriously.

On the one hand, you had those like Tertullian, who dismissed Greek philosophy by asking: "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?" (Prescription against Heretics, Chapter 7). And on the other hand, you had those, those who adopted Greek philosophy in such a way that they ended up with a pagan faith with only a thin Christian veneer. Tertullian's extremism lead him out of the Church; and most of those who fully embraced pagan philosophy belonged to heretical groups that never were in the Church to begin with.

The Church Fathers, however, took a balanced approach. For example, St. Gregory the Theologian wrote:

"...as we have compounded healthful drugs from certain of the reptiles; so from secular literature we have received principles of enquiry and speculation, while we have rejected their idolatry, terror, and pit of destruction.  Nay, even these have aided us in our religion, by our perception of the contrast between what is worse and what is better, and by gaining strength for our doctrine from the weakness of theirs" (Oration 43, Panegyric on Saint Basil," A Selected Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, series 2, vol. vii, eds. Henry Wace and Philip Schaff (New York: Christian, 18871900), p. 398f).

Likewise, St. Basil the Great said:

"Now, then, altogether after the manner of bees must we use these writings, for the bees do not visit all the flowers without discrimination, nor indeed do they seek to carry away entire those upon which they light, but rather, having taken so much as is adapted to their needs, they let the rest go. So we, if wise, shall take from heathen books whatever befits us and is allied to the truth, and shall pass over the rest. And just as in culling roses we avoid the thorns, from such writings as these we will gather everything useful, and guard against the noxious. So, from the very beginning, we must examine each of their teachings, to harmonize it with our ultimate purpose, according to the Doric proverb, 'testing each stone by the measuring-line''" (Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature, IV).

Simply put, we eat the meat, but spit out the bones. Use what is useful to us and to our purposes, and reject what is not. The appropriation of terminology and useful elements of Greek philosophy is already evident in the writings of the Apostles in the New Testament, and so what the Fathers did was entirely in keeping with the Faith that they had received from the Apostles. But the criterion of where to draw the lines here has always remained the Faith once delivered unto the Saints (Jude 3).

We should approach Protestant biblical scholarship in precisely the same way.

Taking a Critical Approach to Biblical Criticism

The key to approaching this scholarship in order to make good use of it, without falling prey to its pretensions, is to apply the same  "hermeneutic of suspicion" to Protestant biblical scholarship, which its practitioners so love to apply to Scripture. As, Thomas Oden observed

"Scripture criticism is more firmly captive today to its modern (naturalistic, narcissistic, individualistic) Zeitgeist than Augustinianism ever was to Platonism or Thomism to Aristotelianism. Trapped in modern prejudices against pre-modern forms of consciousness, reductionistic exegesis has proved to be just as prone to speculation as were the extremist forms of Gnosticism and as uncritical of its own presuppositions as supralapsarian Protestant scholasticism" (Agenda for Theology: After Modernity What? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990) p. 111).

 “We violate a primary ethical demand upon historical study if we impose upon a set of documents presuppositions congenial to us and then borrow from the canonical prestige of the documents by claiming that it corresponds with our favored predisposition. That lacks honesty. The modern attempt to study Christ has done this repeatedly. The text has often become a mirror of ideological interest: Kant’s Christ becomes a strained exposition of the categorical imperative; Hegel’s Christ looks like a shadow-image of the Hegelian dialectic. Schleiermacher’s Christ is a reflection of the awkward mating of pietism and romanticism; Strauss’s Christ is neatly weeded of all supernatural referents. Harnack’s portrait of Christ looks exactly like that of a late nineteenth-century German liberal idealist; and Tillich’s Christ is a dehistorical existential idea of being that participates in estrangement without being estranged…. The historical biblical critic was “not nearly so interested in being changed by his reading of the Bible, as in changing the way that the Bible was read in order to confirm it to the modern spirit”” (The Word of Life: Systematic Theology Volume Two, (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), p. 224f).

"Historical biblical criticism has been allied with polemical concerns since its eighteenth century inception as an ideological agent of "Enlightenment." It has expressed a determined interest from the beginning in discrediting not merely the authority of Scripture, but authority in general -- all authority as such. Just read the biographies of Reimarus, Rousseau, Lessing, Strauss, Feuerbach, and of course Nietzsche (cf. Jacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other). It has operated especially as a partisan "ideology for the demystification of religious tradition"... It is astutely described as the strike force of modernity, "the Wehrmacht of the liberal Church"... The hermeneutic of suspicion has been safely applied to the history of Jesus but not to the history of the historians. It is now time for the tables to turn. The hermeneutic of suspicion must be fairly and prudently applied to the critical movement itself... One obvious neglected arena is the social location of the quasi-Marxist critics of the social location of classic Christianity, who hold comfortable chairs in rutted, tenured tracks. These writers have focused upon the analysis of the social location of the writers and interpreters of Scripture. Yet that principle awaits now to be turned upon the social prejudices of the "knowledge elite" -- a guild of scholars asserting their interest in the privileged setting of the modern university" (Ibid., p. 225f).

Whenever you read a claim by a modern biblical scholar that seems questionable -- question it. Ask how he knows what he claims to know? What actual hard evidence does he have? Usually, you will find the actual evidence is very slender, and the rest is filled in with speculation and wishful thinking. And it is often the case that you will find that bad scholarship of that sort is refuted by better, more conservative Protestant scholars. Even with those scholars, you have to be discerning, but it should be understood that not all of these scholars are equally wrong-headed, or equally hostile to the Traditional understanding of the Scriptures which we hold to.

I would also add that it is not just for apologetic purposes that we need to be familiar with this kind of scholarship -- there are some good and useful things that these scholars have produced over the centuries. For example, until there is a good Orthodox Bible dictionary that is available in English, there is no reason we should not make use of such handy resources that helps a reader figure out who is who, and what is what as they read through the Bible. Why should we not make use of a good Greek or Hebrew Lexicon, even if those who compiled it were not Orthodox? As a matter of fact, there is no translation of the Bible in English that is not either entirely the work of non-Orthodox scholars, or at least dependent upon their work to some extent. It would be foolish, and practically impossible to make no use of heterodox scholarship when studying the Scriptures.

As Clement of Alexandria put it, we can take the spoils of Egypt and turn them into the furniture of the Tabernacle. That requires that we do not simply import pagan furniture into the Church, but whatever is true and good can be put to good use in the Church, and this is true of Protestant scholarship as well. We simply have to be discerning, and to remain faithful to the Tradition of the Church in the process.

For more information:

"Sola Scriptura," particularly the section on Historical-Critical Exegesis

Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, Scott W. Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) 1st Edition, by Michael C. Legaspi 

For an Orthodox critique of Fr. Paul Tarazi's approach to Scripture, see "Fr. Paul Tarazi: From Study to Heresy! A Critique of his Book Introduction to the New Testament: Paul and Mark," by Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)

A Guide to Biblical Reference Texts

Beginning to Read and Understand the Bible

Skeptical Biblical Scholarship: Part 1

Skeptical Biblical Scholarship: Part 2

Unitarian Morality With a Little "Theosis" Sprinkled on Top

Back in the 70's,  there was a song that expressed the ethic of the sexual revolution: "Love the one you're with," by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills, & Nash), which was based on a saying coined by Billy Preston: "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with." The logic being that you can't expect a man to remain faithful to his wife (or "main squeeze," as the case may be), if she isn't around. It's "unrealistic" to expect such a man to be celibate, when circumstances separate him from her. Take this logic into the contemporary period of homosexual advocacy, and you also have to conclude that if someone wants to have homosexual sex, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from it, simply because the Scriptures and 2000 years of Christian Tradition say that they should. But who would expect that similar logic might be advanced by an "Orthodox Theologian"? Well if you can't imagine that being possible, you probably are not familiar with the folks at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University.

In his essay, "Sex, Marriage, & Theosis," which is part of the latest issue of The Wheel (which deals with issues related to homosexuality in several of its articles), Aristotle Papanikolaou makes various observations regarding the Church's understanding of marriage and sex, and uses lots of contemporary buzzwords before he gets to his real point in his last two paragraphs:

"Forced celibacy can actually unleash the potentially objectifying force of sexual desire, albeit in a repressed form. In other words, forced celibacy is a recipe for an anti-theotic state of being, especially since it may incite fear, anger, and hatred. If that is the case, then long-term committed relationships, or marriages, are also spaces for working through the objectifying potential of sexual desire ascetically, such that it contributes toward and does not mitigate against sacramentality. A Christian tradition with theosis at its core, and, as a result, with attention to the dynamics of the various constitutive aspects of the human condition, recognizes that when it comes to sexual desire, simply to say “struggle” can be spiritually harmful and, thus, not ascetically discerning. Sexual desire just does not stop when we struggle; in fact, the struggle may even incite it more intensely.

It is unrealistic, as Saint Paul I think insightfully recognized, to expect someone simply to deny or turn off such desire; it is spiritually discerning to allow such a desire to be expressed rather than “to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9), in long-term committed relationships or marriages, whose aim is presencing God through the virtues, which, in the end, are manifest when the various constitutive parts of the human condition are configured so that one can be agapeic toward the other, and one can increase in eros for the divine" (The Wheel 13/14, Spring/Summer 2018, p. 97)

Note the use of the phrase "long-term committed relationships, or marriages..." The Fordham folks are not yet ready to argue that the Church should give a sacramental blessing to gay marriages, but they are arguing that we should accept "long term committed relationships" that are homosexual as being compatible with the Christian life.

And if we accept that "forced celibacy" is "unrealistic" and "unhealthy," what should the Church say to a husband who is separated from his wife for years at a time, by circumstances beyond his control? This is not some unusual circumstance in the history of the world. In World War II, for example, many husbands did not see their wives for years at a time. Many a married couple in the Soviet Union were separated by the war, and in some cases never knew the fate of their spouse. Even in our current circumstances, military deployments still separate spouses for very long periods of time. Even non-military employment can require lengthy separations. Should the Church tell the husband and wife in such cases, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with"? If not, we are telling them that they should be celibate, which Aristotle Papanikolaou takes to be "forced celibacy."

And if we can't expect celibacy from adults, when they are either not married, or separated from their spouses, on what basis would we expect it from 15 year olds? It's not even legal in most states for 15 year olds to get married, even with their parents' permission, and so either we are asking them to remain celibate -- which is "unrealistic," and "unhealthy," (we have been told), or we are left to let them have sex outside of marriage in some form or another.

Aristotle Papanikolaou is espousing a position on sex and celibacy that you will find expressed in precisely 0% of the Fathers and Saints of the Church, and nowhere in all of Scripture. Nowhere in the Christian Tradition do you find the idea that sex of any kind outside of marriage (between a man and a woman) is acceptable. The only remotely historical connection such views would have in Church history would be found among certain gnostic groups in the early Church period, which were absolutely condemned by the Church. And yet this is apparently where these folks want to take the Church. How is it possible that the bishops of the Greek Archdiocese tolerate this nonsense?

You can use Trinitarian language, and you can talk about theosis all you want, but when you end up with a morality that is identical to that of the Unitarian Universalist Church, you are not Orthodox, no matter what you might call yourself. And from a purely practical standpoint the Greek Archdiocese might want to study up on the rapid decline the Unitarian Universalists have experienced since they threw out any semblance of adherence to Christian morality. In fact, the same pattern has been repeated in most of the mainline Protestant denominations, and there is no reason to think the pattern won't be repeated in the Greek Archdiocese as well.

Now some will probably suggest that I am reading too much into this essay, but I don't think so, for three reasons: 1) I asked the author directly to explain his use of "long-term committed relationships, or marriages...", and he declined; 2) this is the same person who stated that while dogma was not up for debate, morality was ( see The Living Church 2.0); and 3) I was told by a former student of his that the promotion of gay marriage was a frequent topic pushed by both Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos at Fordham. If they want to deny that I am reading their intentions accurately, they should say what they really do mean, and say so clearly.

Response to Giacomo Sanfilippo

Giacomo Sanfilippo

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Giacomo Sanfilippo, of Orthodoxy in Dialogue, began by focusing on an erroneous statement I made in the original version of the article "The Living Church 2.0":

"My response begins by exposing an outright lie by Father Whiteford when he writes, “The most recent issue of ‘The Wheel,’ a journal whose general editor is a lesbian….”*"

The asterisk is there to note that when it was pointed out that I was mistaken, I corrected the article, and added an apology to it. So on the point of whether or not my original statement was correct, I concede that it was not, and I sincerely apologize to Inga Leonova for the error -- I have done so privately, and publicly -- I have no desire to misrepresent anyone.

Making an erroneous statement, and telling a lie are not exactly identical things. For something to be a lie, it has to be not only false, but it has to be intentionally false. This is not the case. In his note at the end, he chides me for  "seem[ing] to have no hesitation to broadcast others’ sins such as he imagines them and potentially to ruin reputations in the process." To begin with, lying is also a sin, and were I indeed guilty of it, Giacomo would now be guilty of hypocrisy, because he would be broadcasting my sins. However, I think there are occasions in which calling people out in public is very appropriate, and if someone publicly posts a lie, I think calling them on it is  justified... just like I believe that a person should be called out in public if they publicly deny that the moral tradition of the Church is true and should be followed, and yet claims to be an Orthodox Christian.

First let me explain where my I got the mistaken idea in the first place. Inga Leonova has been pushing the LGBT agenda in the Orthodox Church for a very long time. Back in 2011, there was an irenic article by an Orthodox priest  on the subject of those struggling with homosexuality, which nevertheless did not give any ground on the principle that homosexual sex is a sin that needs to be repented of, and that an Orthodox Christian is obliged to not indulge in that sin. Inga had a pro-homosexual Orthodox Facebook group (which I believe she started) that discussed this article, and most of the posters thought it was positive, but she took issue with it, and wrote:

"I think the point of the article is crystal clear even though the author is very careful in actually NOT spelling it out. He addresses the perception that gay people are "persecuted" by the Church in being required to live celibate lives by saying that everyone is called to transform their lives by the ascetic ordeal of Christian life. This is yet again a very clever way of dismissing the question of gay companionship." 

Then a poster asked her to clarify what she really meant:

"?"gay companionship"? What is that, may I humbly ask? Like David and Jonathan? Not sexual? Why call it "gay"? I get so confused on what people are saying in these groups. Forgive me." 

Inga never responded, because to clarify would be to state something that apparently she was not yet prepared to say in public, in no uncertain terms (the latest issue of the Wheel crosses that line, however, if she has not crossed it previously).

I wrote about this in an article entitled  "The bottom line in the current debate," which pointed this out, and ended by referencing an article that suggested the problem of "gay companionship" could be dealt with by men and women who are struggling with homosexuality, but who desire to overcome it, marrying someone of the opposite sex, who is likewise struggling. My recollection is that Inga responded to that post by saying "Watch out folks! They are trying to marry us off".  Unfortunately, I did not save that post, and so cannot cite it verbatim. In any case, these comments combined with her relentless advocacy of the homosexual agenda led me to my conclusion, but I have been assured by several people that it is not true, and so I accept that must have misread her at some point.

Now Giacomo is free to believe that I intentionally made this statement, knowing it to be false, but I think a reasonable person would know that you don't have to be a genius to realize it is a bad strategy  to make a point that is easily refuted, and allows your opponents to focus on that one error, and ignore most of what you actually did say.

Furthermore, the point I was making is not really changed by this correction. My point is that the Wheel's general editor has a clear pro-homosexual bias, and she clearly does. That is easily documented. Also, I don't think anyone who is familiar with her position on homosexuality is likely to have a better or worse opinion of her based on her either being or not being a lesbian. In fact, were she a lesbian who accepted the teachings of the Church as they were, that would be far better. Personal sins are still sins, but sins that involve other people in your sin are worse -- but heresy by far, is much worse than either of those kinds of sins. Teaching that a sin is not really a sin is a heresy, and it is a heresy that closes off the possibility of repentance for those who believe it. You can't repent of a sin that you don't believe to be a sin. And Inga does not believe that homosexual sex is inherently sinful, and she is spreading that view now through the Wheel.

The Benedict Arnold Option

Giacomo then goes off on a weird tangent:

"Speaking of lies, Father Whiteford, are you aware that Rod Dreher’s unrepented lies about an African-American professor have endangered the man’s life to the point where he needs police protection? Have a look at the addendum at the top of this article. In fact, as the husband in an interracial marriage, you might want to read the whole article. I mention this because your blog post seems to suggest that you admire or at least make common cause with Mr. Dreher. We should choose our bedfellows a little more carefully."

I am not sure where this comes from. Prior to my most recent article, I find only two posts since 2004 that mention him. I certainly have no personal animosity towards Rod Dreher, and I am sure we agree on most matters of the Orthodox Faith. When it comes to his political commentary, I probably disagree with him as often as I agree with him. I do not regularly read his articles (which I am not criticizing, I just have only so much time). I have not read any of his books. Most of his opinions I only see in snippets on Twitter. What perhaps sparked this comment is that in my recent article, his name came up, only because I quoted a comment that mentioned him by Aristotle Papanikolaou. Apparently Rod Dreher made the comment that the moral teachings of the Church are not up for debate, and Aristotle Papanikolaou denied that this was so. On that point, I agree with Rod Dreher without any hesitation. It is a betrayal of the Orthodox Faith to suggest that our moral tradition is on a different footing than the dogmatic tradition of the Church.

If Giacomo wants to dispute that, he needs to make an argument, and provide something like evidence to back it up.

Context

Giacomo made the following assertion, which either means he only quickly scanned my article, or he is willing to misrepresent his opponents:

"In response to Metropolitan Kallistos’ Foreword in The Wheel you suggest that “his comments are due to the weakness of old age.” Shame on you, Father Whiteford."

I actually made no such assertion. He might as well have quoted me as saying I hoped the Metropolitan was kidnapped. In fact, I mentioned several possible mitigating circumstances that might excuse the text of the article in question, but then said that only God knows the truth of that, and only God can judge his heart -- but that we have an obligation to judge whether what he wrote was right or wrong.

Appealing to Homophobia

Giacomo closed with a suggestion of what he thinks is my real motivation:

"...you may be dealing with unresolved, perhaps unacknowledged inner conflicts of your own."

This is a common tactic of homosexual apologists. They suggest that anyone who stands for traditional morality in the face of the push for the acceptance of the homosexual agenda is probably a closeted homosexual himself. This, they hope will cause someone who does not want be thought of as a homosexual to shut up. It has been tried by others on me, and sorry, but it's a ploy that I am not going to be intimidated by.

You might just as well argue that those who oppose pedophilia are motivated by their own pedophile tendencies. If the day comes when pedophilia is being promoted by some in the Church, I will speak out against that too, and if someone makes a similar suggestion then, it won't work then either.

As an Orthodox Christian and as priest, I have an obligation to stand for the teachings of the Church. If I were making up a religion of my own, it would look very different, but if we want to be part of the Church that Christ founded, we don't get to make things up according to our own wishes. We have to take what the Church teaches as it is, and on this issue, the Scriptures, the Canons, the Fathers, and the Saints are all perfectly clear. If you want a Church that says homosexual sex is OK, you need to look elsewhere.