Monday, September 04, 2006
From Stephen
Faith vs Works?
Having just read Eve's fascinating post, a few very jumbled thoughts of my own came to my mind.
For a quick (though not sure exhaustive) list of references to "Kingdom of God" in both the Old and New Testaments, you can go here: http://www.christinyou.net/pages/kingdom.html
I have just finished a very short but very informative book entitled, "My Conversations with Martin Luther," by Timothy F. Lull. The only reason I mention this, besides suggesting it to you all (we're up to like 7 readers now, right?), is that it highlights something very important. The resilience of the works vs faith debate.
From Eve's last post:
What really delights me about this vision is that we human beings are asked to do good, not so much for our own individual salvation, but more for the incremental salvation of the whole world. In a sense, we are all Jesus, we are all part of a larger picture, and every good thought, good word, and good deed (the trinity of Zoroastrian ethics) is hastening the moment when the final Restoration will take place.
As someone who was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, the sense that one must earn their salvation through good works is very palpable. (As an interesting aside, Lutherans and Roman Catholics have come to an agreement on justification by faith through grace, so this is not a doctrinal disagreement anymore.) So when first reading Luther, where the point is hammered home that salvation is a gift, not something you earn or can produce through you own efforts (i.e., works), my first question was, well, what's the point of doing good works then!
Now, my point (finally) is that I think the standard liberal approach to church is that the church functions as an additional social service agency, albeit with God's blessing. I think a better and more scripturally grounded view of church is that church is what God does to us for the benefit of the world. I think that Luther would say, "Look, God through Christ IS the salvation of the world." Period. Our job is to recognize this and work from this grounding. I don't think Eve would disagree with this (not so sure about Zoroastrianism), but I think it is an important matter of emphasis. It is not always about what we do, but what God does through us. We need to remember this so that we don't get to the point of thinking the Kingdom of God (or that salvation) is wholly dependent on what we do (i.e., "works"); for that, we should thank God!
Comments:
Hi again all... I thought you might like to hear the Eastern take on faith vs. works via Vladimir Lossky, an Orthodox theologian:
"The notion of merit is foreign to the Eastern tradition. The word is seldom encountered in the spiritual writings of the Eastern Church, and has not the same meaning as in the West. The explanation is to be sought in the general attitude of Eastern theology towards grace and free will. In the East, this question has never had the urgency which it assumed in the West from the time of St. Augustine onwards. The Eastern tradition never separates these two elements: grace and human freedom are manifested simultaneously and cannot be conceived apart from each other. St. Gregory of Nyssa describes very clearly the reciprocal bond that makes of grace and free will two poles of one and the same reality: 'As the grace of God cannot descend upon souls which flee from their salvation, so the power of human virtue is not of itself sufficient to raise to perfection souls which have no share in grace ... the righteousness of works and the grace of the Spirit, coming together to the same place, fill the soul in which they are united with the life of the blessed.'
Thus grace is not a reward for the merit of the human will, as Pelagianism would have it; but no more is it the cause of the 'meritorious acts' of our free will. For it is not a question of merits but of a co-operation, of a synergy of the two wills, divine and human, a harmony in which grace bears ever more and more fruit, and is appropriated -- acquired -- by the human person. Grace is a presence of God within us which demands constant effort on our part; these efforts, however, in no way determine grace, nor does grace act upon our liberty as if it were external or foreign to it. This doctrine, faithful to the apophatic spirit of the Eastern tradition, expresses the mystery of the coincidence of grace and human freedom in good works, without recourse to positive and rational terms.
The fundamental error of Pelagius was that of transposing the mystery of grace on to a rational plane, by which process grace and liberty, realities of the spiritual order, are transformed into two mutually exclusive concepts which then have to be reconciled, as if they were two objects exterior to one another. St. Augustine, in his attack on Pelagianism, followed the example of his adversary in taking his stand on the same rational ground, where there was no possibility of the question ever being resolved. It is not, in the circumstances, surprising that a representative of the Eastern tradition -- St. John Cassian -- who took part in this debate and was opposed both to the Pelagians and to St. Augustine, was not able to make himself correctly understood. His position of seeming to stand 'above' the conflict, was interpreted, on the rational plane, as a semi-pelagianism, and was condemned in the West. The Eastern Church, on the other hand, has always considered him as a witness to tradition.* As a master of Christian asceticism, St. John Cassian of Marseilles was the father of Western monasticism before St. Benedict, who in great part bases himself upon his writings; and St. Bernard and the whole Cistercian school are extensively indebted to him. But the disharmony between the spirituality of Eastern inspiration springing from St. John Cassian, and the Augustinian doctrine about the relationship between grace and free will which developed and spread throghout the West, became more and more accentuated as living contact with the Eastern tradition was lost."
*(footnote) He was, moreover, for long venerated as a saint in the West also: St. Gregory the Great refers to him as such, and even in the fourteenth century, Pope Urban V calls him 'St. John Cassian' in one of his bulls.
Vladimir Lossky, _The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church_(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002)p 198
The notions of rationality in the West I think frequently create an oppositional way of thinking that in the East is a little different: see the takes on "Logos" that surround Benedict's recent speech, so widely misunderstood in popular understanding of the West. It all comes down to concepts of Logos: is it merely rationality or is there more to it?
: September 22, 2006 Post a Comment
