Pilgrims from Paradise

Matthew Gallatin is the author of Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells (Conciliar Press, © 2002).  Audiences around the country have heard him share the story of his journey from evangelical Protestantism into Eastern Orthodoxy.  He has presented retreats and seminars on topics ranging from evangelism, to liturgical music and iconography, to life in the Spirit, to discerning the will of God in one’s life. 

Gallatin teaches philosophy at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. He resides in Post Falls, Idaho, with his wife Alice, daughter Kaci, and grandson Zachary.  Son Joshua, his wife Tiffani, and their son William, live in nearby Coeur d’Alene.  All the Gallatins are active members of St. John the Baptist Antiochian Orthodox Church in Post Falls. 

Gallatin was born in Petersburg, West Virginia, but spent most of his young life in Pennsylvania.  Until he was twelve, his family operated a dairy farm near Bedford, PA.  After a series of short moves, they ended up in Fairfield, PA, a small town just outside renowned Gettysburg. 

The best description of the home in which Gallatin grew up is “musical.”  His mother, a gifted pianist, played everything from Chopin to boogie-woogie.  Gallatin’s father played guitar and sang all the old-time country tunes.  But the family’s greatest love was gospel music.  As the Gallatin children grew older, they all learned to harmonize.  Eventually, the family began performing southern gospel music at churches, nursing homes, etc.

Along with a love for gospel music, Gallatin’s parents also inspired in him a commitment to the truth of Jesus Christ.  His parents were always reading, always listening, always studying, seeking to know what Christ actually taught, and what He really asks of His children.  It was this thirst for truth that led Gallatin’s parents to embrace Seventh-day Adventism when he was thirteen. 

Paradoxically, it was the longing for truth his parents had instilled in him that in time led Gallatin to question his Adventist faith.  At twenty-three, he began an intensive five-year study of Adventist beliefs.  One by one, the doctrines he had once believed true proved erroneous in the light of scriptural analysis.  He and Alice left the Adventist church.

Over the next few years, the Gallatins moved through various Protestant denominations.  Eventually, they became involved with a Calvary Chapel fellowship.  In 1983, Gallatin was ordained as a Calvary Chapel minister.

His time as a pastor proved to be a great turning point in Gallatin’s life.  His genuine desire to lead those in his care into truth brought him face to face with serious flaws in the foundations of Protestant faith—flaws that affect absolutely every Protestant denomination.  The chief problem Gallatin saw, when it comes to truth, is that Bible-believing Protestants have so many different versions of it.  Nor can these differences be ignored as superficial.  Why, Protestants hold contrary opinions about the very nature of God.  They hold absolutely contradictory notions about how people are saved.  Making the problem worse is the fact that Protestants arrive at these various interpretations of truth by applying the same doctrine: sola scriptura, the belief that “the Scriptures alone” determine truth. 

Eventually, Gallatin saw that as a Protestant, he could never be assured that his particular beliefs about God were true.  Sola scriptura obviously provides the basis for many contrary interpretations of Christian faith.  What it doesn’t offer is a way of determining which of those interpretations is correct.  Gallatin finally realized that for a Protestant, the truth about God can never be anything more than just a disputable personal opinion. God is simply Whoever you believe Him to be.  Gallatin could not accept that God would leave His children so divided, confused, and unclear about Him. 

So, he embarked upon a spiritual journey that led him into the study of philosophy, which in turn led to an encounter with the writings of the early Church Fathers.  From his study of the history and teachings of the early Church, Gallatin came to understand that Christian truth is not discovered through personal interpretation of the Scriptures. Finding out the truth about God is simply a matter of learning what Christians have believed about God from the beginnings of the Christian faith.  As St. Vincent of Lérins put it, the true faith is “that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”  For a Christian, then, truth is historical, not theological.

Gallatin began to study the faith of the early Church in earnest.  He saw that while Roman Catholicism has retained much of that faith, it also had made changes and additions to it.  Protestantism, on the other hand, has thrown out the bulk of those early Christian beliefs and practices.  He discovered that Roman Catholics and Protestants alike were led into these errors by their adoption of a rationalistic approach to faith.  In the Western world, relating to Christ has become primarily a matter of thinking about Him.

But Gallatin found that the early Church related to Christ in a different way.  Its life centered upon the immediate experience of the Presence of Christ.  This experience of Christ is not achieved through studying and theologizing.  Rather, it is made possible by participating in the various sacraments of the Faith—most especially, in the Eucharist.  Eventually, Gallatin discovered that there is only one place where the early Church’s sacramental life has been preserved, without additions, changes, or subtractions. Only in the Eastern Orthodox churches has the unaltered fullness of the Ancient Christian faith remained intact.  In 1997, Gallatin, his wife, and daughter were received into the Orthodox faith. 

Gallatin has recounted the steps on his journey into Orthodoxy in Thirsting for God in a Land of Shallow Wells.  The book details the self-contradictions that Gallatin discovered within Protestantism.  It also presents the case for Eastern Orthodoxy, defending many of those early Church doctrines and practices that contemporary Protestants may question: liturgical worship, formal prayer, veneration of the Virgin Mary and the Saints, infant baptism, and the literal Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.