Salvation, Justification, Works 03

“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision.” — G.K. Chesterton

I replied to a comment made on something I wrote on another blog and I thought the answer was worth posting here as well, with a couple of additional comments.

I can remember being a guest preacher at a church where they allowed people to “share” impressions, prophecy, etc. Right before my sermon, a woman came up and crying shared about how difficult it had been to work at a camp for “problem” youth, and the emotional pain she had suffered while doing so.

It was yet summer and another camp was about to start in a week. At the end of her sharing, she talked about going back and invited people to volunteer to come and help her. As I heard her, I thought I felt that still small voice telling me to modify my sermon (yes I was a priest and yes priests do get those feelings too, GRIN).

So, I started out by pointing to her testimony and saying it was the oddest call to service I had ever heard. I characterized it as, “I hurt; I hurt; please come hurt with me.” I then went on to talk about service and about growing through your service and pointed out that her call to the congregation was one of the most Biblical calls to serve the world I had heard in a long time.

She came up afterward and thanked me. I heard later that at least some people volunteered to go “hurt” with her at the camp. That is Christian growth in service.

As with any short comment, one thinks later about things one could have said or Scriptures one could have added. I found myself thinking later about Colossians 1: 21-25, which says:

“And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight—if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister. I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . .”

In those verses of St. Paul, one finds the balance which is so often excluded in certain theological formulations that try to prove that St. Paul was saying that nothing whatsoever counts but grace through faith. Yet, in those verses, one sees a balance very similar to that of St. James. I am convinced that some of the misinterpretations are because of a misinterpretation of St. Paul because Anselm’s and Thomas Aquinas’ view of the atonement tends to be the Western view. Remember that St. James never said that faith was not necessary, but rather that where there are no works, there is no faith. In fact, the connection between works and faith is so intimate that St. James could bluntly say that people were justified by their works.

And so, in those verses above, in a similar way to St. James, St. Paul is speaking about reconciliation through the death of our Lord Jesus, and his presentation of us as “holy, blameless, and above reproach in His sight,” and yet without a discernible pause, he immediately says, “if indeed you continue in the faith.” That is a paraphrase for works, or, at the least, for discernible perseverance in the Christian life. That this is so–works–is shown again by his slipping, again effortlessly and without discernible pause, into his personal experience and his sufferings. But, he goes even farther. One reading of the next phrase could almost be that the atonement had something missing, “. . . fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.”

In fact, there is nothing missing from the atonement. The phrase makes perfect sense if the atonement is not merely a juridical pronouncement, but mystical union. In union with Christ, I take on his righteousness as he has taken on my sin. But, it is not simple juridical pronouncement. It means I take on his sufferings as well. I have taken on Christ and the task of becoming in his likeness. And, because I am in mystical union with God, I can truly say that I make up what is lacking. Not that I am somehow winning my salvation by my efforts, but rather that I am one with Christ. In St. Paul’s case, he could say that he was one with Christ and therefore he suffers, like Christ, “for the sake of His body, which is the Church.” In fact, in union with Christ, he suffers as Christ would have suffered. And, thus, mystically, what St. Paul suffers travels in the other direction and becomes what Christ suffers, and in a certain sense, what was lacking. In this passage, St. Paul points out that he has truly become what Roman Catholics say about their priest, he is Alter Christus. And, every single one of us Christians is called to be an Alter Christus and to grow in the likeness of our Lord and our God. And, so, we Orthodox use the term to be deified, to become like God, not as the serpent told us in the Garden, but as our God has called us to become in Christ.

It is in this mystical union, yes this mysticism, that the connundrum about faith and works finds its solution.