Why should a person whose only commitment to Christianity is that they attend church on most Sundays, give some, and behave correctly (by and large) not feel a little concerned?
Pastor Dietrich Bonhoffer said, “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ. . . costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.'”
I fear that too many who worry about works-righteousness creeping into the Church are setting their churches up for a significant problem with comfortable “Christians” who can always find a reason why they do not have to get involved or do anything, and yet can be comfortable in the mansion that awaits them.
Dietrich Bonhoffer was a pastor who, like Esther in the Old Testament, lived at a time when clear choices had to be made. He was a pastor in Germany before and during World War II. He never made it out of World War II. Because of the choices he made, he was hung in April 1945, shortly before the end of the war. He was the first voice to speak publicly against the mistreatment of the Jews, in April 1933. By 1940 he was forbidden to speak publicly. By 1943 he was arrested, and by 1945 was killed in a final spasm of revenge by a Nazi regime that was about to fall.
But, he had much time to meditate on the cost of discipleship, and it is those writings for which he is most known and quoted. He is one of the very few Protestants who have had an epiphany that hooked together grace and obedience to Jesus in the proportions that most Orthodox find to be “according to our Holy Fathers.”
Grace freely forgives us so that we may take up our cross and follow Our Lord Jesus Christ. The call of our Lord is to “sin no more,” to “follow Him.” The idea that Jesus forgave only so that you would not need to worry about entering heaven is incorrect. He has died for our sins and our entrance to heaven is standing wide open. But, as St. Paul says, we were bought with a price. Slaves are bought. We were bought. And, though he calls us friends (as he told the Apostles), yet we were bought to be his bond-servants, not simply to sit back and relax in the surety that we need do nothing and we will still enter in. What unfaithful servants that makes us out to be!
The assurance of salvation is always for those who are striving, even if they are not fully successful. It is the assurance that Our Lord Jesus Christ has covered our many sins with His blood so that we are free to strive to serve Him without the guilt for every time that we serve Him incorrectly. Cheap grace creates “followers” who are not obedient, who are not disciples, who always find an excuse for why they cannot obey Him. Costly grace, true grace, requires that we submit ourselves to Him who created the heavens and the earth. Costly grace is not as hard as people might think. We have the grace of the Holy Spirit to guide us and to strengthen us and to help us when we choose costly grace. It is cheap grace that is difficult to maintain, for God is not present therein.
How correct would it be to say that it is for us to strive, but only for God to create progress? That the sinfulness of one who strives is really a measure of the necessary state the physician of our souls deems for our continued healing?
It certainly seems to solve the problem of “works righteousness sneaking into the Church”, but still demands our extreme participation.
Do we celebrate great saints because they accomplished something or rather they were faithful and God accomplished something in them? That God chose them and worked through them and that they are Holy by such teleological intervention?
Are we not like the eye which is great not because of itself but because of what it gazes on and so is filled with something infinitely greater than itself?
The Confession of Dositheus says:
“For thus Scripture would be opposed to itself, since it promises the believer salvation through works, yet supposes God to be its sole author, by His sole illuminating grace, which He bestows without preceding works, to show to man the truth of divine things, and to teach him how he may co-operate with it, if he will, and do what is good and acceptable, and so obtain salvation. He takes not away the power to will — to will to obey, or not obey him. But than to affirm that the Divine Will is thus solely and without cause the author of their condemnation, what greater defamation can be fixed upon God?”
Hmm, do you notice that the statements appear to somewhat contradict? Yep, here we go again. MYSTERY!!!! The Confession of Dositheus does not worry about works-righteousness because (if you read that section in full) it affirms two things. Man is saved by works. Man is saved solely by God’s grace. It does not try to resolve the contradiction. It simply says that both are stated in Scripture and thus we also must state both.
well said, and very true. thanks, Ernesto!
I finally got around to picking up Archimandrite Meletios Webber’s book, Bread & Water, Wine & Oil. He says up front, “Everyday substances–oil, water, bread, wine–together with simple actions–offering, blessing, washing, anointing–are the means by which God intervenes in our lives. These interventions, in which God does all the world and our only contribution is to be prepared and present, color and shape our lives beyond the extent that would be possible in any human encounter. Moreover, unlike most human interactions, they do not take us from a place of ignorance to a place of knowledge. Rather, the Mysteries lead us deeper and deeper into the Mystery which is the presence of God Himself.”
This seems to preserve our responsibility to be engaged, but not raise that engagement to the level of sufficiency, and to maintain the unknowable as both process and destination (as they are the same thing).
I thought I’d add this, because it seems Fr Webber is speaking something I sensed but couldn’t express properly until I started reading his book.
Thank you Fr Ernesto, for your statements regarding Pastor Bonhffer.
I am a fairly recent convert to Eastern Orthodoxy & every-so-often go through my “protestant baggage” & re-examine it. Sometimes I am horrified at what I find but it is nice to know that some things are not necessarily “lost in translation.” Thank you!
There are some among the Orthodox–or among Romans or among Protestants–who are not simply convinced that other Christian groups believe wrongly but who go as far as believing that other Christian groups are not right about anything. The second position is not a sound position.
Fr Ernesto, is “lost in translation” a common problem for converts? I’m getting to a point where I’m a little reticent to read new Orthodox books. Thank you Fr Ernesto
Some converts never really make the transition to really Orthodox thinking.
At the deepest part of our thinking are the structures created by the culture in which we grew up. For Americans, of course, it is the culture of the USA. This means, in passing, a rampant individualism with very little understanding of any type of culture which values the community. But, more than that, even the USA is part of Western European culture, descended from Roman culture, with all its attachments to laws and juridical ways of thinking.
But, Eastern Orthodoxy comes from another cultural background. The Greeks actually influenced the Romans more than the Romans every influenced the Greeks. And the Middle East was a close and present reality, much more so than for the Romans. From there it spread north to the Slavic countries and to Russia and to the East. The cultures behind Eastern Orthodoxy are not oriented towards juridical ways of thinking, and every one of them is much much more oriented towards the community than any of the Western European cultures after the Enlightenment.
Westerners read books to understand. We are oriented towards the mind. The East and the Desert Fathers would say to experience–as well as learn–but to experience. We read books and see the inevitable contradictions and intellectual disagreements between the Orthodox. The Orthodox see the unity of purpose and the community and unity of outlook of the fathers and hierarchs and have no problem saying that there is an unbroken unity of Apostolic Witness from then to now.
The longer that I am Orthodox the more that I understand the difference in outlooks and the difference in orientation over what is basic. This is not to say that I reject Western culture. Unfortunately, way too many converts strive to reject the West without realizing that their deepest interpretative structures are from the West. But, it is to say that the longer I am Orthodox, the more that I appreciate the communal outlook, and the emphasis towards doing that is present within Orthodoxy. I do agree with those who say that the West got carried away in a juridical and individualist direction. This has hurt the Christianity of the West. Not destroyed it, but hurt it.
So stop reading books for a while. You will never reach an united Orthodox doctrine and viewpoint. There is no such thing because that is not the most valued thing in Orthodoxy. We are united in much doctrine, but not in all. We are united in community, experience, and worship. Go to worship, put the service book down, learn the responses, and concentrate on worship. I suspect that this will help.
You are correct, but I don’t think there is any way to avoid this path Father. I think for many western Christians (particularly the naturally contemplative and intellectual) we have to go “through” the books and come out the other side. No short cuts, no ideal preferable path. Some books (and websites) are clearly better than others for this.
Until our thinking can be overwhelmed by experience (either by a series of extreme experiences or better the slow march of experience crushing our resistance over years) we cannot properly surrender. I’m just barely learning what it might mean to surrender.
Bonhoffer’s opposition to wish-dreaming concerning a community was probably the single biggest assistance for coming to the East and gaining a more Eastern mind about community. No Orthodox author realized that they even needed to say this stuff, but I needed to hear it, and I needed to experience it once I heard it. That’s starting to happen.
Thank you so much for your ministry Father. Your blog has been most helpful.
Thank you so much Fr Ernesto. I appreciate your explanation.