Featured Eastern Orthodox Lecturer at SBTS

http://news.sbts.edu/2017/02/02/dreher-deliver-southern-seminarys-gheens-lectures-feb-7-8/

What a treat for 'spiritual formation' enthusiasts there:

 

On his blog, the Eastern Orthodox lecturer at SBTS was questioned how the Baptist seminarians were receiving his teaching:

"Question: you had the Reformation...as one of the main drivers of our current condition. How was that received at a Protestant seminary, and did you get any pushback?"

Dreher replied:

"I suppose I’ll find out at the Q&A tomorrow. The point I tried delicately to make was simply that the Reformation’s fracturing of religious unity in Europe is a historical fact."

 

He wasn't advertised as such, but here is what he was teaching them:

"we're going to have to do a lot more work to keep our eyes focused on God, the God who is love and who desires the salvation of all sinners."

"chronic anxiety did not begin to recede in my own mind until my priest ordered me to take up a daily Rule of contemplative prayer. This an Orthodox Christian's, its called a Prayer Rope, [he shows the one he is wearing] it's an ancient Discipline where on each bead you just say 'Lord Jesus Christ Son of the Living God have mercy on me a sinner.' But the way you do it is you have to steel your own mind, and that's incredibly difficut to do at first. But the idea is you've got to make that place in your mind for the Holy Spirit to act in your own heart."

"he gave me about an hour's worth of prayer to do, contemplative prayer, every day. It was harder than climbing up a mountain. But it eventually, over time, I've stuck with that Discipline, and that practice opened up a beachhead of stillness within my own heart, in which the Holy Spirit could work, pour in there, and to calm the stormy waters within."

"Ritual fasting is still observed with strictness by many Orthodox Christians as well as some Catholic monks....The Eastern Orthodox priest Father Schmemann wrires, 'When a man leaves on a journey he must know where he is going.' Father Schmemann wrote that in the first line of a famous book he wrote about Lent, the penitential season before Easter. It speaks to why all serious believers must engage in periods of fasting, of asceticism."

"When we abstain from practices that disorder our loves, and in that time of fasting redouble our contemplation of God, and of the good things he's given us, the blessings of Creation, especially in our love for other people, we recenter our minds on the inner stability we need to create a coherent meaningful self."

 

Q&A

"Q: You mentioned that churches should be oases of stillness. What are some practical ways that you think that we can cultivate that in our churches?"

"Dreher: ...Look to other traditions and see how they do it....Catholics have what they call Eucharistic Adoration, they believe that Christ is really present in the bread, and sometimes in their parishes they'll have people come in just very quietly and sit there with the Eucharist exposed on the Altar and just pray quietly....in the Orthodox Church we do have things like the Prayer Discipline I was telling you about. Just very quietly praying 'Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner.' Things like that, and done in church with quietness, stillness, with candles there, give it a reverent atmosphere. These things can all work, or have small prayer groups where you do that, Contemplative Prayer. The Benedictines have a wonderful tradition called Lectio Divina...things like that. Look back in the history of, the long history of Christian Devotions, devotional practices, and find some things that work."

"Sometimes God wants to come to us, does come to us as a still small voice. If we're not prepared to dwell in stillness and quiet and listen for that still small voice we may never hear it."

"The Jesus Prayer, I think that's something any evangelical Christian could do...it goes back to the Desert Fathers of the Early Church. So look it up online, these Prayer Ropes are knotted by monks, they're called chotki, C-H-O-T-K-I, you can find them online, it's just a great discipline. [takes off and fiddles with the one he's wearing] I find when I'm driving down the road, I don't want to hear the radio, I'll just very quietly just say my Prayer Rope, 'Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me' sometimes a shortened form, and it's a way to get into a really meditative state of mind."

"The monks in Norcia...they know that I was Catholic, but now I'm Orthodox and when I got ready to leave there after my last trip over there, one of the monks pulls his Prayer Rope out of his cassock and says 'Keep praying that thing.' He had the same kind that I did, 'Keep praying that thing,' I said 'I will, Brother.' It's one Devotion that can bring all Christians together."

 

Unless they happened to catch the livestream, they probably have no idea what he was pushing in that last lecture (see above).
Recordings have yet to be posted on SBTS's website; there is a recording on SBTS's youtube, but it has a notice with a padlock saying "this video is unlisted". Weird.

 

The Eastern Orthodox lecturer, who was also featured on Albert Mohler's podcast, posted an email from one of his new devotees who was upset after not being able to convince his church to get with the program:

Church Rejects Benedict

 

Why do you say that?

Maurice Robinson of SEBTS spoke at a Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary convocation a while back:

 

Yes, he was asked in the Q&A, why the difference if we all have the same Bible? His answer, hermeneutics:

“If we all had the same hermeneutics, all of you would be Baptists today, or I would be Orthodox."

 

Rod Dreher on Twitter