But that would be entirely different than a Levite in a border town having to deal with a parishioner who wanted to move north even if it meant worshiping at the golden calves, and even more different than one moving up there in order to worship the Golden Calves.

I realize you have your own intellectual and spiritual biography in all this, which I know very little about and which I will not judge. You know what you know and what you have gone through and I don’t need to judge the servant of another. But if I’m dealing with people I do know who do think the Northern Kingdom is attractive, I’ve got to be honest about what I think it means to use unauthorized means into God’s presence (without denying the real sins in the Southern Kingdom, BTW).

But it seems to me that, in addition to defending your own chosen tradition and branch of the church, you are saying that one must either reject the Northern Kingdom as not God’s people at all, or consider the sins of the Northern Kingdom to not really be sins.

Of course, you would reverse the analogy. I’m the guy who was been brought up outside the realm of the true sanctuary, etc. But that is my point: There has got to be some way to acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit in other communions (and thus the presence of gifted teachers such as Alexander Schmemann) without making light of perceived sins/errors. Otherwise, we are put in the polarizing position of either joining with or regarding others as false churches altogether.

I thought I was trying to find a middle ground. We are talking about sources of public schism, after all. How can those not be serious? But do they mean I can’t read and even recommend Louis Bouyer of Alexander Schmemann? I don’t think so.

Also, my pastor friend is no small fry. Household name in some Reformed circles.

Sorry, Andrew. Mark, Peter, & James know better than to do this doublespeak of making Orthodoxy and Catholicism into “rank unbelief” and “hellfire” talk, & then freely take from the very sacramental model that makes veneration and “necromancy” possible.

At least one of my pastor friends was willing to refer to Chesterton and Lewis and Schmemann as “Egyptians” for his plundering. To be consistent, Schmemann, et al, can be little more than a pagan idolator who uses the Creed.

They acknowledge the difference between sins of ignorance/wandering and apostasy, while still recognizing that the activity is sinful.

I love Mark Horne, Peter Leithart, and James Jordon, quite honestly. Those three men have my utmost respect. But! If these things (#1 and 2) are vile idolatry and necromancy (respectively), I’d like to know why these men aren’t actively condemning Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Schmemann not only engaged in these activities, he actively promoted them. Or is using Schmemann, who was clearly in “rank unbelief” and “without hope of eternal life,” akin to using Crossan and Borg when they are correct? If so, I would humbly submit that Jordan and Leithart should stop actively promoting Schmemann’s books on worship, and only use him on topics where idolatry is not clearly associated. Which leaves…umm…maybe his journal?