1. How to Read Rock and Sand

Before anyone can judge an argument, he needs to know two things about it: whom it is meant to persuade, and what it takes for granted. Neither of these is a fault. Every argument has to start somewhere, and every writer has some reader in mind. But a reader who overlooks them may find himself agreeing with a conclusion without ever having been shown the reasons for it.

Whom the Book Is For

Trenham is candid about his purpose. Orthodox Christians in America, he explains, are often invited by Protestants to Bible studies and urged “to be saved.” Since most of them know little about the history of Protestantism, they are unsure how to answer.⁵ The book was written to help them. It gives Orthodox readers an outline of Protestant history, an account of past contact between the Orthodox East and the Protestant West, and a summary of Orthodox judgments on Protestant teaching.⁶ It also serves those preparing to enter the Orthodox Church. Trenham reminds such converts that their change is not a move from one denomination to another but “a conversion from heresy to orthodoxy.”⁷ The Foreword sets the tone for all that follows. It names the Orthodox Church as the Rock and places every other body discussed in the book on “unstable and shifting Sand.”⁸

There is nothing wrong in this. A father who explains to his children why the family keeps its customs is doing his duty, and he is not obliged to argue every point as though a stranger were listening. But a stranger who overhears the conversation should remember that it was not meant for him. Points that seem settled at the family table may never have been argued at all. That is the position of a Baptist reader of Rock and Sand. He is listening in on a conversation within another household, and he must be careful not to take its assumptions for proofs.

What the Book Takes for Granted

The largest assumption is stated in a single sentence: “We know where the Church is and is not.”⁹ The Orthodox Church, in Trenham’s view, is the one Church that Christ founded, and the Protestant churches are “man-made religious bodies” outside it.¹⁰ This is a very large claim. In Rock and Sand it is stated, not proved.

The book also explains how the Church knows what is true. Apostolic Tradition, Trenham writes, is “the ultimate authority in the Church.”¹¹ Scripture must be read in agreement with the Holy Fathers,¹² and the agreement of the Fathers is “the traditional standard of infallible authority.”¹³

Now notice what happens when these claims are put side by side. Suppose someone asks how the true Tradition can be known. The answer is that the Church has kept it. Suppose he then asks which body is the true Church. The answer is that it is the one that has kept the true Tradition. Each answer leans on the other, like two playing cards propped together on a table. They will stand, but only because neither is ever asked to stand alone.

The difficulty is the same as checking a measuring tape against itself. If a tape has been stretched, every measurement taken with it will agree with the tape perfectly, and every one will be wrong. The only way to learn whether a tape is true is to hold it against something other than itself. In the same way, the only fair way to test the claims of a church is to hold them against a standard that the church did not make.

Here, happily, the two sides have common ground. Trenham himself calls Scripture “the foundational authority in the Church” and “the inspired and infallible truth.”¹⁴ Whatever else Orthodox and Baptist Christians disagree about, they agree that the Scriptures are the word of God. That makes Scripture the one standard against which the book’s claims can fairly be measured, and it is the standard this review uses.

It may be objected that Baptists also read the Bible through their own traditions. That is true. Every reader brings habits of mind to the page, and no one reads perfectly. But there is a difference between admitting that one may read Scripture wrongly and claiming that one’s reading cannot be wrong. The first keeps the reader under the authority of the text. The second places the interpreter beyond correction. A Baptist who misreads the Bible can be corrected by the Bible. The question to ask of Trenham’s position is whether anything could ever correct the Church.

A Fair Rule, Fairly Applied

In his Introduction, Trenham promises to rely on the Reformers’ own words and on the Protestant confessions “in order to avoid misrepresentation and caricature.”¹⁵ That is a good rule, and it would be unfair to hold him to any other. Appendix A records the places where the book falls short of it. Most are matters of plain fact that any reader can check. Three examples will show the pattern.

The book says that Baptists believe children must “become like adults in order for them to be baptized and saved.”¹⁶ Baptists teach nothing of the kind. They do not believe that baptism saves anyone, child or adult. They believe that baptism is the obedience of someone who has already believed.¹⁷ The book also says that the Reformers “denied the four characteristics or marks of the Church”: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.¹⁸ Yet the Reformers’ own confessions affirm the one holy Church that continues forever. What they disputed was where that Church is found, not whether it bears these marks.¹⁹ And the book says that there are “tens of thousands of Protestant denominations in America alone.”²⁰ Standard counts place the number of American denominations in the low hundreds. The larger figure counts independent congregations, which are not denominations at all.²¹

In other places the book uses labels where an argument is needed. It describes much Catholic and Protestant worship as “a man-centered entertainment service,” and it calls common Protestant teaching on the sacraments “gnostic at its core.”²² Gnosticism was an ancient heresy that taught that the material world is evil, which Protestants do not believe. A label of this kind is a shortcut. It saves the trouble of an argument by announcing the verdict in advance. It may comfort readers who already agree, but it gives no help to anyone who is still trying to decide.

Even the appeal to the early writers is more selective than it first appears. Trenham calls Augustine “innovative” and faults the Reformers for leaning on him so heavily.²³ Yet he appeals to Augustine against Calvin on the Church’s authority over Scripture,²⁴ and the Confession of Dositheos, which the book reprints, cites Augustine in support of infant baptism.²⁵ This need not be inconsistent, since a writer can be right on one point and wrong on another. But it shows that “the consensus of the Fathers” is not something a reader can simply look up. Someone has to decide which statements belong to the consensus and which are innovations, and that decision is made by the same Church whose claims are in question. The measuring tape has returned.

What Follows

None of this shows that Trenham is wrong about any doctrine. A man may misdescribe his opponents and still be right about the matter in dispute, just as a witness may get the color of a car wrong and still be right about the accident. The point is narrower. A careful reader of Rock and Sand will check its descriptions of others before trusting them, and will not mistake the confidence of its tone for the strength of its case.

Then he will turn to the questions themselves. Where does final authority lie? What is the Church? How is a sinner saved? Can a believer know that he is saved? What is baptism, and who should receive it? These questions are too important to be settled by the weight of a tradition, Baptist or Orthodox. They must be settled by the word of God. The sections that follow take them up in that order. But first, fairness requires a look at the places where Trenham’s criticisms deserve to be heard.