Salvation by Grace or Works?
"Christian life," says Fr. Thomas Hopko in his lecture
The Church & Liturgy, "is a miracle of grace." The Orthodox Church definitively teaches and believes that a person is saved entirely by the grace of God. But at the same time, this movement of God towards us does not overwhelm or abolish the human will, as Bishop Kallistos (Ware) notes: "We should consider that the work of our salvation is totally and entirely an act of divine grace, and yet in that act of divine grace we humans remain totally and entirely free." Or, as the second century
Epistle to Diognetes puts it: "God sent his Son to save us – to persuade us but not to compel: for force is alien to God." While Calvin said that the capacity of humans to choose good was destroyed after the Fall, Orthodoxy would say that the will has become distorted and sickly, but not altogether dead. On the Orthodox understanding of the fall and its consequence, humans – retaining as they do the divine image – retain also the freedom to choose between right and wrong" [94].
Historically there has been much suspicion among Protestants as to the role of human will in our salvation—i.e., synergy, or cooperation with God’s grace (see
Note-T). The understanding of the Orthodox position is further complicated because the Pelagian controversy (see
Note-P) was a Western phenomenon, and this in turn makes it all too easy to transfer Western presuppositions onto Orthodoxy. As Hinlicky explains: "In the Western context, Lutherans were allergic to the term ‘synergy’ because of the Pelagian connotation it had for them, suggesting a self-initiated movement to God that, as such, could merit the grace of justification. This allergic reaction rendered them incapable of grasping or utilizing it in its Eastern sense to describe the new person of faith, who works with the Spirit in the battle against the flesh" [95].
Theosis and justification working together can help shed light on the subject of synergy: "Integrating these two anthropologies [Lutheran doctrine of divine righteousness and Orthodox
theosis], we see that justifying faith wholly involves the human will and its uncoerced participation, yet not in any Pelagian sense in which the will retains its Adamic form of autonomy over against God. Justifying faith is the concrete, nonmeritorious synergy of the new person in Christ with the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as on this side of the reign of God’s coming in fullness, the new person in Christ is nothing other than the sinner whom the Lord Jesus mercifully and effectively claims by the Spirit. In this light, the apparent dispute about the freedom of the will is shown largely to be the fruit of conceptual confusion" [96].
Essentially, in Orthodoxy grace and free will are not separated or discussed in isolation, thus preventing doctrinal imbalance, as occurred with Pelagius. Free will and our cooperation with God is
always understood to be an act of grace. Bishop Kallistos is again helpful here. His comments offer a response to Jones’ question in SBP, in which he queries,—"how do the Eastern Orthodox attempt to explain that salvation is ‘not of yourselves?’" His Grace would reply: "When we speak of ‘cooperation,’ it is not to be imagined that our initial impulse towards good precedes the gift of divine grace and comes from ourselves alone. We must not think that God waits to see how we shall use our free will, and then decides whether He will bestow or withhold His grace. Still less would it be true to suggest that our initial act of free choice somehow causes God’s grace. All such notions of temporal priority or of cause and effect are inappropriate. On the contrary, any right exercise of our free will presupposes from the start the presence of divine grace, and without this ‘prevenient’ grace we could not begin to exercise our will aright. In every good desire and action on our part, God’s grace is present from the outset. Our cooperation with God is genuinely free, but there is nothing in our good actions that is exclusively our own. At every point our human cooperation is itself the work of the Holy Spirit" [97]. This is a far cry from the assertion in SBP that in Orthodoxy "the beginning of salvation is purely by grace but the completion of the process is by human effort."
And Clendenin notes that "Interestingly enough, we can say that for the writers of the
Philokalia, the gift of
theosis comes by grace through faith, and not by works (see also
Note-L). Especially significant here is Mark the Ascetic’s
On Those Who Think That They Are Made Righteous by Works. On the contrary, we are, insist Maximus and Peter of Damascus, ‘deified by grace.’ We ‘become god through union with God by faith’" [98]. Orthodoxy teaches, then, that the process of
theosis, accompanied as it is by prayer, fasting, almsgiving, the sacramental life, etc., is totally grace driven—it is
only made possible because of grace, as it is the life of God within us that provides the strength to sustain these spiritual efforts. When St. Paul writes that "if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (Rom. 8:13), this obviously presupposes conscious effort on our part – but it flows from the Spirit, as the epistle says. Similarly, he counsels the Colossians to "Put to death therefore your members on earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry" (Col. 3:5).
Jones does not seem to allow for a concept of "will" and "working" that is found in the thought of St. Paul—the kind that is predicated upon grace. He also writes to the Corinthians: "I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Cor. 15:10). We can follow St. Paul’s directive to the Philippian church to "work out your salvation in fear and trembling" because it is now "God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Php. 2:12-13). His use of the analogy of a runner competing in a race to the life-long process of salvation is another prime example of how we co-operate with the grace of God (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24-27). These Scriptures, and others besides (cf. Eph. 2:8-10), form the core understanding of "work" and "effort" in the Orthodox spiritual tradition [99]. But again, even this conception is evidently anathema to Jones, for he asserts that "climbing up the chain of being, even when aided by grace, is Plotinus again, not New Covenant faith." This is simple misrepresentation, and we can turn to Clendenin again for a more informed explanation concerning the nature of the effort exerted within the life of the Christian: "In Pauline language, we labor and strive, but only through the empowering grace of God working in us (Phil. 2:12-13; 1 Cor. 15:10-11). What direction, exactly, does the human effort take? At the risk of oversimplification, we can summarize the
Philokalia and the human means of
theosis in one Greek word,
nepsis—that is, vigilance, watchfulness, intensity, zeal, alertness, attentiveness, or spiritual wariness. The ‘neptic’ mind-set recognizes the reality of our spiritual warfare, that our Christian life is a strenuous battle, fierce drama, or ‘open contest’ (
Theoretikon), and responds accordingly" [100].
The Orthodox concept of synergism, far from being a departure from Apostolic Faith, is attested to in Scripture and repeated throughout the centuries. "It is for God to grant His grace," said St. Cyril of Jerusalem; "your task is to accept that grace and to guard it" [101]. St. John Chrysostom exclaims, "All depends indeed on God, but not so that our free-will is hindered. [God] does not anticipate our choice, lest our free-will be outraged. But when we have chosen, then great is the assistance He brings to us." St. Augustine himself witnesses to a synergism between God and Man, as Thomas Oden explains: "Though not the first, Augustine was the most brilliant exponent of how the action of grace can be both ‘from the will of man and from the mercy of God.’ Thus we accept the dictum, ‘It is not a matter of human willing or running but of God’s showing mercy,’ as if it meant, ‘The will of man is not sufficient by itself unless there is also the mercy of God.’ But by the same token the mercy of God is not sufficient by itself unless there is also the will of man." Commenting on Romans 9:16, St. Augustine states that "If any man is of the age to use his reason, he cannot believe, hope, love, unless he will to do so, nor obtain the prize of the high calling of God unless he voluntarily run for it." Finally, Oden notes "That the synergy of grace and freedom became the consensual teaching of the believing church is clear from the Third Ecumenical Council, held in Ephesus in A.D. 431: ‘For He acts in us that we may both will and do what He wishes, nor does He allow those gifts to be idle in us which He has given to be used and not to be neglected, that we also may be cooperators with the grace of God’" [102].
The Orthodox doctrine of synergy came to its fullest and most refined articulation with the Sixth Œcumenical Synod (680-681). This Synod declared that Christ has both a divine and a human will, and that these two wills co-operated synergistically. This has tremendous ramifications for Christian anthropology. Those who have been organically united to Christ in Holy Baptism (Gal. 3:27) have the Spirit of God living in them; and this Spirit quickens our soul and makes it alive unto God. Our own will then freely co-operates with this newly given Divine Energy which is ever renewed in us through ascetic struggle and participation in the Mystery of His Body and Blood. Thus, the Œcumenical Synods that defined and refined the doctrine of the Person of Christ set forth that, for us who are made in His image, it is not only God’s will that is operative in us (this would be a monoenergistic anthropology – one held by many Reformed Protestants), nor is it our own will working apart from God (this would be Pelagianism), but rather it is the two working together in harmony, neither overwhelming the other (cf. Phil. 2:13-14)."
The Orthodox Church unquestionably and definitively affirms that we are saved by grace through faith. It would be expedient to close this section with an excerpt from an essay on the subject of grace authored by Fr. Thomas Hopko, for in it he concisely summarizes the themes discussed in this section: "We would say that God’s speaking and acting in our world, and God’s entrance into our creaturely being and life is a free gift of God’s mercy and love for us, that there is nothing that we can do to earn or deserve it, and nothing that we can do to stop or prevent it. We would say that there is no human life without participation in God’s self-manifesting activity, and that we human beings are who and what we are because we are made in the image and likeness of God, male and female, for unending divine life. We would say that it is not a matter of God choosing us without or against our will, nor of our choosing or rejecting God. The mystery of God-with-me and I-with-God depends wholly on God to the extent that there is no ‘I’ without God. When I am with God, then I am who and what I am. When I am against God, I am struggling to destroy who and what God creates and saves me to be. This struggle is futile; I cannot rid myself of God’s presence in my being and life. To persist in it is madness and hell. It must be clearly affirmed, nevertheless, that I am not God and God is not me. Without God, I am nothing and can do nothing. With God, I am who I am and can do all things through God who vivifies, illumines and strengthens me. Through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Church, through the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments, the presence and power of God is given as a gift: pressed down, running over, lavished upon us. All is given by God whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not. When we like it and want it, it is paradise. When we resist it, it is the hell whose very pain is the presence and power of God who is love and truth, peace and joy, beauty and bliss. God is with us. This, simply put, is the meaning of grace. God’s gift of divinity to human persons is undeserved and unmerited, unconditional and unstoppable. It cannot be resisted, yet it may be madly unsuccessfully resisted from our side forever"
To read the ENTIRE article which is pretty lengthy and covers the issue well, CLICK CLICK CLICK
The article is titled:
Salvation By Christ: A Response to the Credenda/Agenda
(A Response to Credenda / Agenda on Orthodoxy’s Teaching of Theosis and the Doctrine of Salvation)
by Carmen Fragapane
