NAMB's Nasty Stab: "Turning Barriers of Belief into Bridges of Personal Faith"

"Ivan was frustrated. The more he tried to know God, the farther away God seemed. He wanted to read and learn more about him, but where should he turn? Should he look in his daily prayer book, talk to his priest, buy a Bible and read it? Which one would be the best source for showing him the way? He decided the best option would be to talk to the priest, Father Dmitri. At least you could trust the Church. It had been in his country for over a thousand years. The priest frustrated him even more. Dmitri told him not to worry about knowing God—he was a mystery and could not be known. But the missionaries who led a Bible Study where Ivan went to college seemed to personally know him. They think they do, Dmitri said, but what they really know is merely a system they have created to explain him who is without explanation." (p. 15)

Link: http://www.namb.net/atf/cf/%7BCDA250E8-8866-4236-9A0C-C646DE153446%7D/BB_E_Orthodox_Manual.pdf

NAMB (North American Missionary Board), a group sponsered by the Southern Baptist Convention, has made a bit of a major ecumenical error with a 70-something page guide to the conversion of Eastern Orthodox Christians. Granted, they have done this for numerous religious sects, the Hindu guidebook being most prominant in my mind due to one protest somewhere in the midwest. Although I personally have no issue with the concept of conversion -- being a convert myself -- the Baptist method seems to be more like "tactical brainwashing." The guide cites such modern theological "stars" as Lossky and Florovsky with little to no understanding of the concepts behind them. This is, of course, innumerated through their gross understanding of essence and energies on page 23. I'll briefly illustrate their figured:

God

ESSENCE
⎛   ⎞
  ⎟ ⎟
  ⎟ ⎟
  ⎟ ⎟
⎢  ⎟ ⎟
  ⎟ ⎟
  ⎟ ⎟
∨ ∨ ∨ ∨
ENERGIES

*Note the radioactive properties of these rays. God is gamma.

I'll give the some credit: that caption was not present. And, yes, it is correct to say that God's energies "radiate" in some manner of speaking. The problem here is more or less that the diagram over-simplifies the whole ordeal into some poorly-planned plot. They quote St. Basil the Great, which is all and well, but skew his words into this crummy diagram. Yes, St. Basil says God's energies decend upon us, and this quotation is quite obviously orthodox. But I do not believe St. Basil would describe God's "energies" as little arrows spewing forth from His essence, as this -- at least to me -- makes it seem as if His energies are "less" glorious and almost less holy. From an over-simplified understanding of the theology comes the obvious conclusion: God is too "unknowable" for "true" Biblical thought. This, they claim, causes people to fear personally experiencing God. To turn these barriers into bridges, a Baptist missionary is to emphasize the "branch" described in John 15:5 (e.g. the believer is the branch, and the vine is Jesus).

Isn't this a bit similar to the essence/energy idea? Evidently not, as it is also necessary for a missionary to preach on the known characteristics of God. Cataphatic theology is not alien to the East, as they seem to think. To wit, "Rather than list and explain the attributes of God (as Western theologians often do), an Eastern theologian looks for aspects of the world which show imperfection or incompleteness" (p. 22). God is, as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite states, that incomprehensible mystical darkness upon Mt. Sinai, but there are nevertheless some positive characteristics that we can attribute to Him. Eastern theologians are not blind to this idea; rather, it is understood that too much cataphatic thought degrades God's infinite glory. There ought to be, again, as many Eastern theologians say, a healthy "balence" between the two. Even so, apophatic theology -- as again demonstrated by Pseudo-Dionysius -- is not simply "negations;" rather, God is noted as "hyper-essential" and "super-natural."

Given their understanding, the SBC would probably call Pseudo-Dionysius an "atheist" for his bit on the nature of God's existence. Oh well.

The sad thing is despite the obvious racial profiling (all the pictures are of a cliche Russian Orthodox believer), the semi-decent scholarship -- inasmuch as they quote prominant and important Orthodox scholars -- makes it seem as if the missionaries truly understand what they are discussing, at least on some level. It is not perfect, granted, but it is more appealing than a Chick tract -- and more convincing. I know they are doing work in Russia, which is obviously opportunistic, as many of the faithful there have just emerged from the underground to the public sphere.

*sigh*