This Month's Colloqium

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Matthew 13:33 tells of the leaven which the woman mixes in three measures of meal until it is thoroughly leavened. The new leaven is the faith and grace of the Spirit. It does not leaven the whole lump at once but gently, and gradually, we become like this new leaven and eventually, a bread of God. This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal but it is the right road. At present everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.¹

--Martin Luther

What is faith? Clearly it is not reducible to catechetical formulae or the intellectual acceptance of doctrines. Faith is the matrix, mode, or stance in which life is centered, making a person what he is; and Christian faith is the relationship in which God is the all-determining factor. By God's grace alone the Holy Spirit gives justification to the passive recipient, and faith is the grateful reception. Faith is the realization of justification, not its condition, and even this realization is Cod's work: Faith is belonging to God.

Throughout the New Testament, particularly in the writings of St. Paul, it is clear that "faith" is the name of a relationship -- a relationship with God which the Christian has in this life as an "earnest" of the life to come.

Nothing but faith in Christ alone -- belonging to Christ alone -- makes sinners pleasing to God. "Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift though the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by His blood to be received by faith" (Rom. 3:23-25). Whatever is to stand before the throne of God, it is necessary that it be perfect. This then leaves nothing else to be found except the perfect work of Christ, which work is reckoned as their own to those who cling to Christ in faith.

To confuse works with faith, sanctification with justification, is to make all the promises of God concerning the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life unintelligible and uncertain. The divine promise is clear and certain, so that faith may firmly depend upon it (cf. Rom. 4:16). The medieval view against which Luther protested held that salvation was achieved by a combination of serious intentions, righteous deeds whose imperfections were covered by grace, and the sacraments -- a combination of grace and the best acts of men. The Reformation doctrine of imputed righteousness safeguards the unconditional character of God's promises in Christ. Because God looks upon Christ instead of the sinner and awards Christ's righteousness to the sinner, the whole person is righteous and holy, i.e., "hidden in Christ." "The whole man, in respect both of his person and of his works, shall be accounted and shall be righteous and holy through the pure grace and mercy which have been poured out upon us so abundantly in Christ".² If Christ' s righteousness is given to the sinner, he is entirely righteous, not partially so.

How can these two contradictory things both be true at the same time, that I am a sinner and deserve divine wrath and hate, and that the Father loves me?³

Since the paradox is between being righteous and being a sinner, "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"! (Rom. 8:1). Affirming that we are simul justus et peccator, Luther stated that the second article of the Nicene Creed means that God "has completely given himself to us, withholding nothing".⁴ Jesus Christ "is my Lord, who has redeemed me . . . not with silver and gold but with his holy and precious blood and with his innocent sufferings and death, in order that I may be his."⁵

Since sin is not merely the failure to do good or the despair over such failure but is above all the temptation to trust in one's own righteousness, we must have the perfect "alien" righteousness for our salvation - for that righteousness exposes sin as both presumption and despair and attacks it in its totality.

The article on justification is a master and prince over all kinds of doctrine and rules and church and all conscience. Without it the world is dreary and nothing but darkness.⁶

It was precisely this "gospel" which Luther, in letters written from the Coburg palace, urged Melanchthon not to compromise: "that we live by faith and by faith alone" (ex fide vivere et sola fide).⁷ This articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae does not by any means result in an uncatholic reduction in Christian faith and life, but rather, since the Christian is thereby set free from anxiety over salvation, permits a full flowering of spirit and activity. Neither Luther nor St. Paul were antinomians in their emphasis on the sole efficacy of faith for justification. While righteousness cannot be achieved by works, faith naturally issues in love (Gal. 5:6).

The Priesthood of All Believers: New Life in the Image of God

Luther often spoke in terms of "the process of becoming godly," God's "self-communication" and direct involvement in the world's processes, grace as an "energy" of God, and faith as "relationship" and "belonging to God."

Luther insisted that the gospel is powerful enough to transform the righteousness of faith into a righteousness of love, but only as a consequence of justification and not as a condition. Love, therefore, is no longer to be understood as "grace in nature" or as a "superadded" gift working for one's salvation through good works. Love is instead the "power of God in the gospel" (Rom. 1:16) moving the sinful creature from egocentric self-righteousness to unselfish love of the neighbor in need. "Faith makes the person, the person does good works; good works neither make the faith nor the person." [Disputntion on Matthew 22:1-14, WA XXXIX.1, 283.] Justification occurs in the "cheerful exchange" of Christ's righteousness and human sin.⁸

Such good as is in the world represents not the improvement of Christians, for nothing can be any more "improved" that the sinner who has Christ's righteousness thrown over him. Rather, goodness represents the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God -- Christ bringing beauty, truth, and goodness to light, even through us. In the words of Vladimir Lossky, "the work of Christ is consummated; the work of the Holy Spirit is waiting for accomplishment."⁹

In the Lutheran Confessions, good works are declared to be meritorious, but "not for the forgiveness of sins, grace, and justification (for we obtain these only by faith) but for other spiritual and physical rewards in this life and in that which is to come."¹⁰

If the omnipresent Christ is man wherever he is God -- the first of the new men for whom creation longs -- the new life in Christ implies a new concept of daily life, of vocation. The new life is not a call to escape the world (much less to exploit it!), for man and the world are siblings.¹¹ Although the Word which renews and restores to man his dignity may speak through nature to ears of faith, the world was not created simply to bring messages of comfort and inspiration to passive souls temporaraily resident in natural bodies. Nature is not only a bearer of salvation but is itself an oblect of God's concern; and people are called to participate in the continuing creation which speeds the day in which the realm of nature will find its fulfillment as the milieu of grace.¹²

Word and faith (the so-called material and formal principles of the Reformation) are thus seen to issue in that which graciously bestowed them: creative love, the "universal spiritual priesthood of all believers" (the so-called social or ethical principle of the Reformation). Set free by grace from concern over one's stock of "virtue," the Christian may give unreserved attention to his proper role in the universal community of grace -- "a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none" and yet "a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."¹³

As strongly as he asserted that the human understanding cannot be the starting point for faith, Luther declared that a true understanding is a fruit of faith.¹⁴ "He who knows God also knows, understands and loves all creatures; for in creation are the footprints of God."¹⁵ Nothing was "mere matter" to Luther; everything in the natural world is sacred.¹⁶ Since no corner of the world is less near to God than another, daily life offers endless opportunities for service and praise. The justified person is called in and loves God through all the roles and stations in life; and Luther spoke powerfully of the times and places in which a person expresses love for God -- to the peasant in trouble, the neighbor in need, even the fish in the Wittenberg pond. Man is not in the world simply "to sing with the angels" but to work amid the materialities of this life.

Thus Luther -- who vigorously declared the total insufficiency of anything a person could do, even in the most "religious" activities, to please God -- arrived at a joyous world-affirmation unparalleled in Christian history. That there should be no distinction between "sacred" and "profane" work, that indeed the latter could be more pleasing and useful to God than ascetic piety -- this was an idea which inaugurated a new cultural period in Western civilization. Although "the priesthood of all believers" is an implication of the gospel which was hardly original with Luther, it was truly a revolutionary teaching in the West, an idea whose time had come.

Conclusion

There would appear to be no real difference between Lutherans and Orthodox Christians with regard to the primacy of God's grace. Differences arise over the appropriation of this grace. Lutherans are not always clear themselves over the meaning of "faith," sometimes allowing assensus rather than fiducia to dominate their thinking. However, when we say what the gospel says we make it clear that the stance or condition in which salvation occurs is trust and assurance, believing in (as opposed to believing that), belonging to God.

Inasmuch as there is a great similarity between what Luther meant by faith and what the Orthodox Fathers have meant by theosis, it would appear that the best fruits of our traditions could be positively reinforcing for both. Beyond doubt, "divinization" or "filial adoption" is what God intends for us; and, were this not true, there would be no hope at all for us. Because of the promises of our crucified and risen saviour, Jesus Christ, we begin even now to experience something of that wonderful life with God to which we look forward with joy and gratitude.

The state in which this reality has become ours is called "faith," which, being synonymous with "belonging to God," may also be stated as "divinized." Hence, it may be proper to say that salvation is justification by grace through theosis.

Lutherans have stressed the initiative of God and the simultaneity of justification and sin, and the Orthodox have stressed the experience of the belonging itself -- both to give all honor and glory to God alone. So long as complacency and "cheap grace," on the one hand, and legalism and self-righteousness, on the other hand, are clearly rejected, I see nothing but gain for both Lutherans and Orthodox m learning from each other.

In any case, our hoped-for reunion is not merely a technical problem to be solved by competent specialists, but rather a command from our Lord to be obeyed through prayers for spiritual renewal and transformation -- theosis.

Deification (Greek theosis) is for Orthodoxy the goal of every Christian. Man, according to the Bible, is "made in the image and likeness of God" (cf Gen. 1:26), and the Fathers commonly distinguish between these two words. The image refers to man's reason and freedom, that which distinguishes him from the animals and makes him kin to God, while "likeness" refers to "assimilation to God through virtues" (St. John of Damascus). It is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become god by grace. This doctrine is based on many passages of both OT and NT (e.g. Ps. 82 (81).6; II Peter 1.4), and it is essentially the teaching both of St. Paul, though he tends to use the language of filial adoption (cf. Rom. 8.9-17; Gal. 4.5-7), and the Fourth Gospel (ci: 17.21-23).

The language of II Peter is taken up by St. Irenaeus, in his famous phrase, "if the Word has been made man, it is so that men may be made gods" (Adv. Haer V, Pref.), and becomes the standard in Greek theology. In the fourth century St. Athanasius repeats Irenaeus almost word for word, and in the fifth century St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we shall become sons "by participation" (Greek methexis). Deification is the central idea in the spirituality of St. Maximus the Confessor, for whom the doctrine is the corollary of the Incarnation: "Deification, briefly, is the encompassing and fulfilment of all times and ages, and of al that exists in either. This encompassing and fulfilment is the union, in the person granted salvation, of his authentic origin with his real authentic consummation" (Philokalia, Vol. 2 ET 1981,p. 240).

It should be noted that deification does not mean absorption into God, since the deified creature remains itself and distinct. It is the whole human being, body and soul, who is transfigured in the Spirit into the likeness of the divine nature, and deification is the goal of every Christian, to be reached by the faithful following of Christ in the common life of his body the church.¹⁷

¹Defense and Explanation of`All tlhe Articles, WA VII, 337; LW XXXII, 24.

²SA III, xiii, 1-2.

³WA, XL. 1, 371.

⁴LC II, 26.

⁵SC, II, 4.

⁶Die Promotionsdisputation von Palladius uncl Tilemann, WA XXXIX.1, 205.

⁷WA, Br. V, 500.

⁸Eric W. Gritsch, The Origins of the Lutheran Teaching on Justification, Justification by Faith, p. 166. His last reference is to Luther's Freedom of`a Christian, WA VII, 55; LW XXXI, 351.

⁹The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1976), p. 155.

¹⁰Cf. Ap IV, 194 and 365-369 (BC, pp. 133 and 163).

¹¹See Sermon on the Articles of Faith, WA XLV, 13-14.

¹²"Through faith a Christian becomes a creator" (Sermons of` 1528, WA XXVII, 399 [my translation]).

¹³The Freedom of a Christian, WA VII, 21-22; LW XXI, 344.

¹⁴WA XL.3, 221. Cf. Lennart Pinomaa, Faith Victorious. An  Introduction to Luther's Theology, trans. Walter J. Kukkonen (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), pp. xiv and 1.

¹⁵Lectures on Genesis, WA XLIII 276; cf. LW IV, 195 [my translation].

¹⁶See WA I, 20; III, 200; XL.1, 348.

¹⁷The Westminster Dictionary of'Christian Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), pp 147-148.