Lawyers or Doctors?

I recently began attending a newly-formed discussion group (politics, society and culture kind of stuff). As often happens when people find out that I’m a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, I get asked a lot of questions about both it’s teachings and it’s structure.

One of the most effective changes I can make in people’s thinking about Church teachings is to help them see the difference between the “legal” model and the “medical” model. The legal model is the one we are most familiar with in the West, in both Protestant and Catholic churches – sin is a violation of God’s Law and requires punishment. We are unable on our own to pay the “fine” ourselves; therefore, to satisfy God’s divine justice, it was necessary for God to allow His only son to be tortured to death on the cross. By gratefully accepting this act of divine love (?), the penalty for our sins is canceled.

In contrast, the medical model better illustrates the Orthodox Church perspective. In this view, sin is better understood as a disease rather than a crime. The clergy are not policemen, lawyers and judges, but rather medics, doctors and pharmacists. The Church is more of a hospital, not a courthouse. Striving to love our neighbor, to pray and fast, and all our spiritual efforts are not done in order to get points taken off our driver’s license, so to speak, but are a therapeutic prescription for restoring our health and fighting the disease that infects us.

The other shift in thinking comes with trying to understand how Orthodox clergy differ from the Catholic. The starting point often is clarifying that the Orthodox Church has no “Pope”, no matter how many times ill-informed news media refer to the Patriarch of Constantinople that way. The Patriarch of Constantinople is a bishop who, in matters of faith and doctrine, has equal standing with every other bishop of the Church.

The Church’s understanding of who God is, who Jesus was (and is), and all the foundational Christian doctrines were settled by debate and subsequent agreement in council (specifically the eight “Ecumenical Councils” of the pre-schism undivided Church).

Accountability for maintaining fidelity to that understanding of the nature of God, sin, and salvation rests with the Church as a whole- laity included, but primarily acting through the bishops. Here again the medical model proved helpful. One fellow asked me what would happen if a priest, or bishop, claimed to have received a new revelation (ala Joseph Smith and Mormonism, for example) and began teaching that as “true” Orthodoxy.

Well, what would happen if a medical doctor- a cardiologist, endocrinologist or neurologist, say- began to treat every condition of every patient with a macrobiotic diet and aromatherapy? His license to practice medicine would first be suspended, then revoked by a duly-constituted board of review, acting in accordance with rules of procedure established by the American Medical Association. If he wanted to hang up a sign and practice his new approach to healing on his own, he’s free to do so, as long as he doesn’t claim to be operating as an AMA-recognized MD; if his new approach to health care were proven to actually cause harm, injury or the death of any patients of his, he could either be sued in civil court or tried in criminal court and imprisoned.

The same holds true for the Church. There is a story about an Orthodox Church in Siberia, sometime in the mid 1990’s I believe, where the priest performed some ancient ritual of “kinship” between two men that amounted to a not very thinly disguised gay marriage. Shortly thereafter, the priest was defrocked, the church was burned to the ground, and the ashes were plowed under. In this way the Church acted against “spiritual malpractice” in the same way that doctors are held liable for medical malpractice.

For anyone inclined to see this as an example of “homophobia”, I recommend they read “Christian Faith and Same-sex Attraction” by Fr. Thomas Hopko. It is the most sensitive and compassionate treatment of the issue I’ve ever read. If you check out the customer reviews section of the web page you’ll see that it was even favorably endorsed by a lesbian professor of “Queer Theology” (Lord have mercy) in Britain.

Finally, as the Orthodox begin (finally) Great Lent, Fr. Stephen has another excellent post regarding Forgiveness Sunday called “To Care for the Heart“, which also illustrates some of this distinction between the Western and Eastern understanding of forgiveness.