Created and Renewed – Fr. Gabriel Bunge OSB

The translation is mine (Fr. Gregory) and has been an ongoing process. If you have any suggestions in correcting my English (I am not a native writer/speaker) pls do comment!

Created and Renewed after the Image of God

Concerning the Biblical-theological and Sacramental Foundations of Evagrian Mysticism

By Fr. Gabriel Bunge osb

Evagrios Pontikos (ca. 345 – 399)¹ has from time to time been referred to as a “Philosopher in the Desert”². This is certainly correct if we understand philosophy to be the “highest philosophy” as the Church historian Socrates³ thought of it. This is also how the early Church understood it, and how Evagrios himself – from before he became a monk – understood philosophy as “the highest philosophy.”⁴ For him it is the “doctrine of Christ our Saviour” which consists of praktike, physike and theologike, which is synonymous with “Christianity.”⁵ The very “wisdom” which is here said to be “loved” above all is not the “external wisdom”⁶, the “wisdom of the world”⁷, from which Evagrios expects nothing⁸, but the Logos of God⁹ the “essential wisdom.”¹⁰ To allege that Evagrian Mysticism is, despite its theology (which is admitted to be its “highest goal”) philosophical rather than theological at least in a Trinitarian sense¹¹ and that it is neoplatonic¹², is to fundamentally misunderstand the monk from Pontos. This does nothing to change the fact that such a destructive verdict on this monk who understands himself as a Christian, has been passed on him from a competent side.¹³

To convince oneself how ungrounded this verdict is, it is prudent to inquire into the specific theological foundations of Evagrian mysticism. According to biblical teaching human beings are “created after the Image of God”¹⁴ and in Christ are also renewed after the Image of the Creator¹⁵. This “renewal”, by which the human being becomes “a new creation in Christ”¹⁶ and is also renewed to the “knowledge of God”¹⁷, is received in holy Baptism. Therefore any mysticism which understands itself as Christian mysticism must ultimately have a sacramental foundation. Do we see this in Evagrios?

Some biographical points will first be provided here. Evagrios, when he left Constantinople was a deacon, and he remained a deacon for the remainder of his life.¹⁸ It is unlikely that he ever functioned as such in the Nitrian desert, where only the oldest of the eight priests celebrated.¹⁹ Evagrios spent the last sixteen years of his life as a monk, not as a cleric. This explains why there is so little mention of the Church, whose teaching, and above all Sacraments, practice and administration lie solely in the competence of the Priests (Bishop or Presbyter). When the Church is mentioned, it is only mentioned in a “spiritual meaning,” like one would expect of a “spiritual father.” In other words, Evagrios takes the “Catholic and Apostolic Church”²⁰ for granted; he explains and defends her doctrine and Sacraments only when they are attacked and where their neglect automatically endangers the “spiritual life.” Such is certainly the case when the “consubstantiality” of the Holy Spirit is denied.

*

The way Evagrios read the Holy Scriptures of the Old Covenant in unison with the Fathers, teaches that human beings are created “after the Image of God”. Evagrios specifically applies this to man’s “intellect,”²¹ in so far as this is a bodiless nature,²² is like God Himself who in essence is a “Spirit,”²³ and that therefore He is bodiless.²⁴

Your hands have made me and built me: Made (pepoietai) was the soul, built (peplastai) was the body. Like it is said: Let us make men after our Image²⁵, and also taking dust from the earth he built him.²⁶

The Intellect, by which Evagrios means the “inner man,”²⁷ is simply referred to as the Image of God.²⁸ In principle this holds true even for the sinner,²⁹ despite the fact that Evagrios, reflecting on the “fallen image”³⁰, at one point said that man now has an “animal image”³¹ – in accordance with Ps 48, 13.

What we have here is of course the first of three creations known to Evagrios: creatio ex nihilo, also called the “transition from non-existence to existence”³² (ousiosis). This is a foundational act of the Creator, who makes man to be unchangeably what he is in accordance with his innermost being. The whole economy of salvation in behalf of the “fallen image” is constructed upon this original created being, while this “fallen image” is “renewed” in Christ and only in the eschaton will it be perfected in the “likeness.” But let us first once more return to creation.

From Holy Scripture and the New Covenant we know that only the Son is the “Image of God” the Father in an absolute sense.³³ The biblical statement that man is created after the image of God hereby gains a precise Trinitarian sense: he is after the Image of the Father, that is to say, he is an Image of the Son. In other words man is not “Image of God”³⁴ in the absolute sense. To make this fundamental distinction clear Evagrios sometimes uses Hebrews 1, 3 in this context to refer to both the Son and the Spirit. They are the “exact image and true radiance of the Father’s essence”³⁵ literally the “hypostasis of the Father.”³⁶ The intellect however is “true image and likeness of the Son and the Spirit.”³⁷ The conclusions Evagrios draws from this twofold Archetype – Copy relationship (Father – Son and Spirit, Son and Spirit – Intellect), we will examine below. It is sufficient here to state that the intellect is as it were a created image of the Image,³⁸ namely an image of a prototypos³⁹ or archetypos.⁴⁰

To understand this we must take a look at Evagrian “Christology,” even though at this point we can only establish the very basic outline of this fundamental theme in Evagrian thought. In his “Epistula ad Melaniam” Evagrios posits that the intellect is without mediation the image of the Son and Spirit. In the following “Kephalaion” it is said that:

In the Aeons God will change the body of our humiliation into the resemblance of the glorious body of the Lord⁴¹; and after all the Aeons he will also bring us to the resemblance of the image of His Son,⁴² if the image of the Son is essential knowledge of God the Father.⁴³

Evagrios, then, distinguishes between two phases of salvation. The first phase is that of the change (metas xematizei) and bringing to resemblance (summorphon) with the “glorious Body of the Lord” which will take place within time. For indeed, the aion is the spatial dimension of the kosmos that is commensurate with the temporal dimension of the material creation.⁴⁴ The second phase is that of the “bringing to the resemblance (summorphous) of His Son” which lies beyond this creation (meta ton panton ton aionon) when aion and cosmos have passed away.⁴⁵ As we will see, Evagrios develops the same thought while utilizing other biblical texts.

The implications (and problematic) of the above mentioned two phases, which are decisive for Evagrian eschatology, we cannot further discuss here. Important for our purpose here is the unambiguous distinction which Evagrios makes in the second phase between “Son” and “Image of the Son.” The “Image of the Son” is, as it were, hypostatic. But who or what is meant by this? This “Image of the Son” is “Christ.”

Let Your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved:

Christ is named face here because he is ‘the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation.’⁴⁶

“Here” (entautha) and on several other occasions Evagrios understands Christ in a fashion derived and further developed⁴⁷ from Origen, as ‘a certain rational and holy soul which came into the life of man⁴⁸ together with the God-Logos” when He became incarnate. He is called Christos – anointed one – because He – as the only one⁴⁹ – was anointed with the knowledge of the monas.⁵⁰ This knowledge of “oneness” is the fruit of his original,⁵¹ essential⁵² and inseparable⁵³ unity with the God-Logos. Thanks to this unity “Christ” (which here refers to a certain holy soul) is “God,” and the Logos is rightly called “Christ.”⁵⁴ When Evagrios thinks about the Son in this unity with “a certain rational and holy soul” he often adds: Christon de phemi ton meta Theou Logou epidemisanta Kyrion.⁵⁵

The unity between the God-Logos and a “certain holy soul” does not exist, according to Evagrios, until the humanization⁵⁶ of the Son of God⁵⁷ because the genesis of the asomata is timeless.⁵⁸ The humanization of the Son of God is an unrepeatable event⁵⁹ and is of decisive soteriological significance. Whenever God manifests himself in history – namely in the Old Covenant – He does so en Christo: the Old Testament theophanies are as a matter of fact christophanies.⁶⁰ The same holds true in case of the kosmopoiia⁶¹ and the creation of the material world.⁶² Consequently Evagrios identifies the “whole of material (enhylos) knowledge” with the “Kingdom of Christ”⁶³, because in Him the God-Logos is not beheld in his Divine Essence (hos pros auton) but in his actions for us (hos pros hemas).⁶⁴ In all this it is of course clear that the above mentioned distinction is strictly a matter of viewpoint (kat’ epinoian): The Lord is always one and the same!⁶⁵

Because it is a given that the soul of Jesus is of the same nature as ours⁶⁶ the question needs to be asked what the relation of this “certain rational and holy soul” is with the other souls. Christ as the Firstborn [of all Creation] (protokos pases ktiseos)⁶⁷, “before whom no others came to be and after whom others came into being”,⁶⁸ “before any rational nature” (pro pases logikes physeos) was created.⁶⁹ But not in a chronological sense since what is bodiless is also timeless,⁷⁰ which means that one intellect is not older than another intellect.⁷¹ The genesis of the logika is, as we have seen, a timeless act. The pro should much rather be understood in an ontological sense of before. A “certain rational and holy soul” is as it were the prototypos⁷² or archetype⁷³ for every rational nature. To put it differently: “Christ” is the hypostatic “Image of God” in which all the other souls participate.⁷⁴ This “rational and holy soul” is in an eternal and ideal purity which cannot be lost in which all souls were intended to be as well and for this reason potentially are. Consequently Evagrios defines the Image of God as “receptivity for the monas”⁷⁵, which is a state of unity between the triune God and his rational creation⁷⁶ – to put it a little less cryptically – as “receptivity for God.”⁷⁷

To be “receptive” (dektikos) means that one is also, in principle, receptive of the opposite,⁷⁸ that means – at least practically speaking – to loose the received good and to fail one’s goal. In reality – for reasons we cannot elaborate here – the entire physis logike exists as “fallen image” with the only exception of “a certain holy soul.” This is where the Evagrian soteriology starts; after all, the Creator is also the Redeemer!

As he killed them, they sought him:

When God kills the old man, which is being destroyed by treacherous desires,⁷⁹ they will seek the new man which is renewed after the Image of the Creator.⁸⁰

“Renewed after the Image of the Creator”, which according to what was said earlier can only mean – and Evagrios confirms it explicitly –, that God has “recreated him in Christ”⁸¹ and that he now “by grace”⁸² once again resembles the Image of the Creator. Only in this man who is “renewed after the Image of God” is there no more “male or female,”⁸³ neither “Greek nor Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian nor Scythian, neither slave nor free: but Christ is all in all.”⁸⁴ This is the fruit of the incarnation of the Son⁸⁵, which the believers receive in the second of three creations known to Evagrios, “the change from evil to good !”

By baptism is man recreated. He is a new creature in Christ.⁸⁶

Holy Baptism and its “spiritual seal”⁸⁷ are a sacramental act of the “catholic and apostolic Church,” in whom we are granted “the forgiveness of sins”⁸⁸ like the eagle sheds its old age⁸⁹ and “ in Christ” is radically “renewed according to the Image!” Whoever denies the true divinity of the Holy Spirit empties out Baptism from its soteriological content because Baptism is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit.⁹⁰ Whoever says the Holy Trinity is a creature, insofar as he says the Holy Spirit was created at a later time “blasphemes God”⁹¹ and immediately involves his own salvation. At the same time he also denies the spiritual life any ontological foundation.

As is clear from the above quoted kephalaion (KG VI 34) Evagrios sees the conformation to the Image of the Son of God as a process which – as has now become apparent – is founded in holy Baptism. Its eschatological completion is not attained “until all the aeons have passed.” This process unfolds gradually, as the following will show.

You have shortened his time:

We must first become like the “days of Heaven,”⁹² that is similar (homoious) to the holy Powers, and then also similar (parempherein) to the “Sun of Righteousness”⁹³ since the prayer of our Lord must be wholly and completely fulfilled. It is after all Jesus who prays “Father that they may be one in us, as You and I are one.”⁹⁴ This is how it will be with us: From then on neither increasing nor decreasing but rather living in the fullness of the Lord.⁹⁵

Evagrios considers the being after the Image of God to be a natural good which has been given to us at the creation of our nature.⁹⁶ The fulfilment of this being after the Image of God into the being in the likeness of God as they are indicated in Gen. 1, 26 (kat’ eikona hemeteran kai kath’ homoiosin) and in 1 John 3, 2 (homoi auto esometha) lies beyond our creaturely nature⁹⁷ and is, as custom has it, supernatural. Insofar as this, in itself eschatological fulfilment, has been graciously founded in the “new creature” by Baptism, our “spiritual life” in a real sense is already a supernatural event as will now become clear.

From Kol 3, 10 Evagrios takes it that the “renewal after the Image of the Creator” takes place eis epignosin in view of the knowledge of God. He is thinking of an unmediated knowledge of God which all physis logike originally possessed⁹⁸ but is at present unique to Christ.⁹⁹ This is where the Evagrian doctrine of the soul as after the Image of God is fully unfolded.

Evagrian mysticism is – despite all prejudices – deeply trinitarian. In KG VI 34 it is said that in the eschaton we will become similar to “the Image of the Son” and that this “Image of the Son” in fact means the “essential knowledge of God the Father.” Because the Primal Cause¹⁰⁰ and the Final Goal¹⁰¹ is strictly speaking the Person of the Father and for this reason Evagrios indicates Him to be the Producer of “essential knowledge.”¹⁰² For creatures the Father is known only – which is completely biblical¹⁰³ – by means of the Son and the Spirit, in fact – so says Evagrios – because of the double relation Archetype – Copy relationship in which as the Son and the Spirit stand to the Father so stands the Intellect to the Son and the Holy Spirit.¹⁰⁴ Due to its creaturely ‘being after the Image of God,’ the intellect is a “receiver of the knowledge of the Father,” and as Evagrios will specify more precisely, it is exclusively the intellect which has been renewed to the knowledge of the Image who also created it!”¹⁰⁵

As we have seen we are dealing with an eschatological event. “For ever,”¹⁰⁶ “without end,”¹⁰⁷ “unchangeably,”¹⁰⁸ creatures will delight in the “bottomless depth of the Father’s love,”¹⁰⁹ without creaturely mediation, but (only) through the mediation of His Son and Spirit, once the “beloved end”¹¹⁰ has become full reality. Yet the faith teaches us that, because of holy Baptism, we have a foretaste of the future glory. This is where mysticism begins with the personal experience of “final blessedness”¹¹¹ while yet here on earth during the time of prayer.

Because in a “true” prayer or “spiritual prayer” the prayer which is “in Spirit and in Truth” which is “the worship of the Father in His Holy Spirit and His Only-Begotten Son,”¹¹² does the intellect “dialogue with the Father”¹¹³ “without any mediation”¹¹⁴ of a creature or even the thought of a creature.¹¹⁵ Because now “it no longer honours the Creator from His creatures, but it praises Him in hymns from itself” (ex autou auton anhymnei).¹¹⁶ Such a praying person has in the true sense of the word become a theologian,¹¹⁷ since he does not merely know something about God but he has seen Him.¹¹⁸ And of course, this must not be forgotten; such a person is in Christ!¹¹⁹

*

Let us sum things up. As we have remarked previously, Evagrios has been called a “philosopher in the desert,” and this is certainly correct insofar as one understands “philosophy” in an Evagrian sense. It would be more appropriate to call him “the great theologian of the desert,” and to use it in a very precise sense in which Evagrios himself uses this term. Theology is the pinnacle of a supra-rational, personal realization of unity with the triune God. Theology is ultimately reserved to the eschaton but a “pure heart” can tap into it already while yet here on earth by means of grace “at the time of prayer.”

Yet Evagrios also proves himself an excellent theologian in the modern sense of that word. His mysticism, after all, has a solid biblical and theological foundation: the doctrine that the intellect is after the Image of God, which alone makes it capax Dei. Perhaps most surprising to many is the fact that for Evagrios the “theologos” is not man in general, but only the man renewed after the Image of the “Creator” in Christ by means of holy Baptism, and who therefore is the “new man.” Put differently: Evagrian mysticism, despite its scarce references to Church and Sacraments, has an undeniable sacramental character; as one ought to expect from any mysticism which understands itself to be a Christian¹²⁰ mysticism.

Evagrian Christology which fell into disrepute¹²¹ rather quickly – I think because it has been completely misunderstood¹²² – finds its true raison d’ être in this mysticism of the being after the Image of God. It is here that Evagrios attempts to understand the essence of the Intellect “being created after the Image of God” and the “renewal” after this Image of the intellect by “a certain and holy soul” (the latter was from the moment of its creation essentially and indivisibly united with the God-Logos, and together with the Son also has become man). This “certain and holy soul” serves as an example to what the soul essentially is, and what the soul despite its fall will potentially always remain to be, and what the soul will eternally be in the end by virtue of the saving economy of the Son and the Spirit. Evagrian Christology is therefore not merely the at the heart of soteriology, but it is also the central theme which connects protology, cosmology, soteriology, and eschatology.

We have designated “a certain and holy soul” as the hypostatized “Image of God,” as the “prototype” (or archetype), after the example of which all other souls are created and renewed. This justifies the question how Evagrios thinks of “our Saviour Jesus Christ”, the Son of God who became flesh in the human Person of Jesus. It is now clear that Evagrios develops his Christology using the Incarnate One as his basis, because without the Incarnation we know nothing about “the soul of Christ”!¹²³ But how does he conceive of the Incarnate One Himself?

The answer to this question will not be found in the writings dedicated to physike, such as the “Kephalaia Gnostica,” but rather in writings of a more personal nature, such as the “Letters”¹²⁴ or the “Exhortation to a Virgin.” Here we encounter a very intimate Christ-mysticism which – it is important to notice that the “Exhortation to a Virgin” is directed to a nun – rises to a true bridal mysticism.¹²⁵ When Evagrios speaks¹²⁶ of “imitation of Christ” it is precisely the human Person Jesus Christ he has in mind, despite the present metaphysical context. By means of Jesus Christ, and His Old Testament prefigurations Moses and David, Evagrios makes clear what this “imitation” which alone makes us well-pleasing to God is: “Meekness” which for him is the concrete manifestation of Christian agape. It alone makes a human being receptive of the knowledge of God and His personal Presence. Love is the quintessential point of praktike¹²⁷, the practical-ascetical life which without having been completed there can be no mysticism and also no “theologia”.

*

Translated by Fr. Gregory Wassen

1 On the person and work of Evagrios see besides the known lexicon articles also: G. Bunge: Evagrios Pontikos. Briefe aus der Wüste, Trier 1986. 17 ff.; M. O’ Laughlin: Origenism in the Desert, Diss. Cambridge Mass. 1987. For the life of Evagrios see also G. Bunge and A. de Vogüe: Quatre ermites égyptiens d’après les fragments coptes de l’Histoire Lausiaque, Bellefontaine 1994 (SO 60), 153 ff. – Abbreviations of cited works by Evagrios: Ep.: Epistula LXII, editor by W. Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus, Berlin 1912. Translation G. Bunge: Evagrios Pontikos. Briefe aus der Wüste, Trier, 1986. Ep. fid.: edited by J. Gribomont, in: M. Forlin Patrucco (Publisher): Basilio di Cesarea. Le Lettere, Vol. 1, Turin 1983, 84 ff. Ep. Mel.: Epistula ad Melaniam, edited by W. Frankenberg (first part); G. Vitestam: Seconde partie du Traité, qui passé sous le nom de “La grande letter d’Evagre le Pontique á Mélanie l’Ancinenne,” Lund 1964. Translation G. Bunge: Briefe. Gn: Gnostikos edited by A. Guillamont, Evagre le Pontique. Le Gnostique ou A celui qui est devenu digne de la science, Paris 1989 (SC 356). in Eccl: Scholia in Ecclesiasten, edited by P. Géhin, Evagre le Pontique. Scholies à Ecclesiasté, Paris 1993 (SC 397). in Prov: Scholia in Proverbia, edited by P. Géhin, Evagre le Pontique. Scholies aux Proverbes, Paris 1987 (SC 340). In Ps: Scholia in Psalmos. By the kind agreement of Mlle M.-J. Rondeau we use the collation of the Vat. Gr. 754 manuscript which she has made. See also the following.: Le Comementaire sur les Psaumes d’Evagre le Pontique, in: OCP 26 (1960), 307-384. KG: Kephalaia Gnostika, edited by A. Guillamont, Les Six Centuries des Kephalaia Gnostica d’Evagre le Pontique, Paris 1958 (PO 28). M.c.: De Diversis Malignis Cogitationibus. PG 79, 1200 ff. Mn: Ad monachos, edited by H. Gressmann, Nonnenspiegel und Mönchsspiegel des Evagrios Pontikos, Leipzig 1913 (TU 39, 4). Or: De Oratione Capitula CLIII, PG 79, 1165 ff. Instead of these fragmented – and corrupted text we use the manuscript Paris, BN Coislin 109, as in the Philakolia in the Bd. 1, Athen 1957 edition, 176 ff., the numbering and chapter division of which we also use. Pr: Praktikos, edited by C. and A. Guillamont, Evagre le Pontique. Traité Pratique ou le Moine, Paris 1971 (SC 170-171). Translation: G. Bunge: Evagrios Pontikos. Praktikos oder Der Mönch, Köln 1989.

2 So for example the title of a well known article by A. Guillamont “Un philosophe au desert: Evagre le Pontique,” RHR 181, (1972), 29-56.

3 Socrates, HE IV 23 (PG 67, 516 A).

4 Ep. fid. 1, 8 ff.

5 Praktikos 1. Ep. fid. 4, 20 f.

6 Ep. fid. 2, 5.

7 KG I 73; VI 22

8 In Ps 62, 4b.

9 See Ep. fid. 4, 19.

10 Ep. fid. 6, 2; See also 7, 9.

11 I. Hausherr: Les leçon d’un contemplatif. Le Traité de l’Oraison d’Evagre le Pontique, Paris 1960, 99.

12 Ibid. 7.

13 Besides Hausherr see also H. U. von Balthasar: Metaphysik und Mystik des Evagrius Ponticus, in: ZAM 14 (1939), 31-47. A. Guillamont expresses it much more carefully: La Preghiera pura di Evagrio e l’influsso del Neoplatonismo, in: Dizionario degli Instituti di Perfezione, vol. VII, Rom 1983, 591 ff., who attributes Neoplatonic influence to the verbal formulation of Evagrian mysticism, and in my opinion he does so correctly (ibid. 593).

14 Gen 1, 27.

15 Col 3, 10.

16 2 Cor 5, 17.

17 Col 1, 17.

18 See Palladios: Historia Lausiaca 38 (Butler 116, 6 and 117, 3).

19 Ibid 7 (Butler 26, 9 ff.).

20 in Prov 24, 6 (Géhin 266, 6).

21 M.c. 19; See also KG III 32.

22 in Ps 38, 6d.

23 Joh 4, 24.

24 in Ps 140, 2a.

25 Gen 1, 26.

26 in Ps 118, 73lb. Last quotation from: Gen 2, 7.

27 See G. Bunge: Nach dem Intellekt leben. Zum sog. “Intellektualismus der evagrianischen Spiritualität,” in Festschrift W. Nyssen, Köln 1989, 95-109.

28 Ep 28, 3; 48.

29 in Ps 118, 113.

30 Gn 50.

31 Ep. Mel 46. Here Evagrios refers to the opinion of someone else.

32 Ep. fid. 11, 7; in Ps 32, 9m (genesis = ousiosis).

33 2 Cor 4, 4; see also in Ps 16, 2a.

34 See KG II 23.

35 Ep Mel 19.

36 Heb 1, 3: apaugasma tes doxes kai charakter tes hypostaseos tou Patros. See also KG II 23.

37 Ep Mel 19.

38 See Origen, Comm. in Rom. 1, 3 (Philakolia, c. 25, 2).

39 See Pr 89.

40 See Gn 50.

41 Phil 3, 21.

42 Rom 8, 29.

43 KG VI 34.

44 in Ps 138, 16m

45 According to P. Arch. II, 6. The background to KG VI, 34 Com. In Rom. 1, 3.

46 in Ps 79, 8d. Col. 1, 15: protokos pases ktiseos.

47 See Peri Archon II, 6. For the background for KG VI, 34 see Com. in Rom. I, 3 (Philakolia 25, 2).

48 in Ps 131, 7e.

49 KG III

50 in Ps 44, 8z.

51 KG VI 18.

52 KG VI 79

53 KG VI 14.

54 KG IV 18.

55 in Ps 44, 8z; 88, 9d; 104, 15i; 118, 3b; KG VI 14 (the translation needs correction) [Fr. Bunge is referring to the Syriac translation of the original Greek].

56 in Ps 109, 3a.

57 KG VI 18.

58 KG VI 9, see also Ep 49, 1. Timeless is by no means equivalent to beginningless in Evagrios! Because the intellect is created it also has a beginning: Ep. Mel. 30.

59 in Ps 113, 11e.

60 KG IV 41. 43; Ep 33, 3.

61 in Eccl 6, 10-12 (Géhin 52, 14).

62 KG 58.

63 Ep. fid. 7, 22.

64 Ep. fid. 7, 42.

65 Ep. fid. 7, 11; 25.

66 KG VI 79.

67 Kol 1, 15.

68 KG IV 20.

69 in Ps 109, 3b.

70 Ep 49, 1.

71 KG III 45.

72 Pr 89.

73 Gn 50.

74 in Ps 104, 15i: “These christoi are called christoi because they participate in Christ (metechontes); Christ on the other hand is called christos because he participates in the Father. “I call Christos the one who is the Lord who came together with the God-Logos.” The being in the image of God of the soul is ultimately grounded in the Son who is the Image of God in the absolute sense. But in the Son in his union with a “certain rational and holy soul” in and through which He works ad extra. On the position of “Christ” see also the in depth contemplations of KG VI 14 (translation in need of correction).

75 KG III, 32.

76 This concept has a protological meaning in Evagrios (Ep. fid. 10, 19; KG I 49 etc.) and an eschatological meaning (Ep. fid. 7, 55; KG I 65 etc.). Right now only Jesus Christ possesses this state of being (KG III 2.3; IV 21 = in Ps. 44, 8j). See on this subject more fully Gabriel Bunge: Henade ou Monade? Au sujet de deux notions centrals de la terminologie evagrienne, in Le Museon 102 (1989), 69-91.

77 KG VI 73.

78 KG I 4.

79 Eph 4, 22.

80 in Ps 77 id; also in Ps 95, 1a; 149, 1a. Final quote: Col 3, 10.

81 in Ps 44, 4g

82 M.c. 18

83 Gal 3, 28.

84 M.c. 3 Final quote: Kol 3, 11.

85 Ep Mel 56 ff.

86 Ep Fid 11, 9ff., 3 quoting from 2 Cor 5, 17.

87 Mn 124.

88 in Ps 31, 1a; 84, 3a.

89 in Ps 102, 5j

90 Ep fid 10, 6-14; in Prov 22, 28 (Gehin 249, 6f.).

91 Mn 134.

92 Ps. 88, 30.

93 Mal 3, 20 according to Ps. 88, 37. Sun of Righteousness is a biblical symbolism name for Christ (the Logos in union with “a certain rational and holy soul”), in whom the Father abides (in Ps 18, 6b; also 26, 5d). The goal is therefore to achieve an abiding of the triune God in the soul which is at the present the exclusive prerogative of Christ. To this theme many sections of the Epsitula ad Melaniam are dedicated without the name Christ being mentioned even once!

94 Joh 17, 21For the various meanings Evagrios attributes to this verse see: G. Bunge Mysterium Unitatis. Der Gedanke der Einheit von Schöpfer und Geschöpf in der evagrianischen Mystik, in Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 36 (1989), 449-469.

95 in Ps 88, 46im.

96 Gen 1:27.

97 Ep Mel 62. Evagrios quotes from John 10, 10 and Dan 4, 36 (Theodotion).

98 KG VI 75; also II 3.

99 KG I 77; III 3; in Ps 44, 8 z; 8, 9, 8d; 88, 43ig.

100 Ep Mel 25.

101 Ep Fid 7, 9.

102 KG VI 28.

103 Mt 11, 27 (the Son), 1 Cor 2, 10 (the Spirit).

104 Ep Mel 12. 18. 19.

105 Ep Mel 16.

106 Ep Mel 23.

107 Ep Mel 63.

108 Ep Mel 14.

109 Ep Mel 31.

110 Ep Mel 67.

111 Ep fid 7, 19; see also Pr prol 51. Also G. Bunge, Das Geistgebet. Studien zum Traktat De Oratione des Evagrios Pontikos, Köln 1987, Kap. VI: “In Geist und Wahrheit.”

112 Or 59.

113 Or. 55.

114 Or 3.

115 Or 56-58.

116 Or 60.

117 Or 61.

118 KG V 26, also Or 4.

119 KG II 90. The image of “first light” and “both lights” perhaps originates with St. Gregory of Nyssa, C. Eun 1 (PG 45, 416 BC).

120 Here I remind the reader that von Balthasar qualified this mysticism as Buddhist rather than Christian in his article Metaphysik (Anm. 13).

121 According to A. Guillaumont: Les Kephalaia Gnostica d’ Evagre le Pontique et l’Histoire de l’Origenisme chez les Grecs et les Syriens, Paris 1962, 117 f.; F. Refoule: La Christologie d’Evagre et l’Origenisme, in OCP 27 (1961), 221-266; A. Grillmeier: Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche, Bd. 1, Freiburg 1982, 561 ff.

122 The misunderstanding lies in the way in which Evagrios uses the names of “Christ.” The Christology of the monk from Pontos cannot be reconstructed from the “Kephalaia Gnostica” alone. And it seems that the “Kephalaia Gnostica” was the only text available to the redactors of the 15 anathemas dating to 553. Only in the light of the “Scholias on Psalms” does it become evident that Evagrios took up Origen’s doctrine of the soul of Christ and independently developed it. Let it be noted here that Evagrios did not first develop this respective doctrine in Egypt under the influence of the Origenism of the Origenist monks. Rather, as we see in his “Epistula Fideï,” he presumes this kind of Christology to be a familiar one and completely non-offensive, and brought it with him from Cappadocia! The sources for this Christology are to be sought in the “Origenist” circle of Basil of Ceasarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, the two most prominent teachers of Evagrios.

123 From this it is possible to understand why Evagrios turns against “heretics” who “speak only of the soul of Christ” (in Ps. 108, 19 ie.). After all “he who rejects Christ cannot know God” (Mn. 134).

124 Bunge, Briefe [Anm. 1], 126 ff.

125 According to J. Driscoll: Spousal Images in Evagrius Ponticus, in SM 38 (1996), 243-256. See also P. Gehin: Evagriana d’ un manuscript basilien, in Le Museon 109 (1996), 59-85, hier: 71 ff. (A l’imitation du Cantique des cantiques).

126 M.c. 14.

127 Pr. 84.

M. Harl on Origen and the Heavenly Jerusalem

In my research for my MDiv thesis I came across an article referenced by Fr. John Behr in  his The Way to Nicea written by M. Harl. In it an interesting suggestion is made concerning Origen and the often repeated claim that he taught a preexistence of the disembodied soul and that embodiment is a result of sin in this preexistent state. My friend Fr. Christopher (a monk from St. John the Wonderworker Monastery, California) translated the passages in question and I have edited them for publication on my blog (I thought it might be interesting). The article is an older one and does not exist in an English translation (to my knowledge).

Fr. Gregory

The preexistence of souls or divine foreknowledge?

What does one of the most famous texts say which Origen cites to evoke the heavenly Jerusalem, (Hebr. 12 22-23), this place where the just shall be “gathered together/assemble” (and not dispersed), to wit, “the firstborn are inscribed there ekklesia prototokon apogegramemmenon en ou ouranois? Are we dealing here with a “preexisting” Jerusalem or Church in the sense in which the expressions of late Judaism are often understood? ¹ and which the Christians take up again on behalf of the Church borrowing from Psalm 73, 2 LXX according to which God “aquired for himself” his assembly “from the beginning,” ap’arches? Certainly one can say of this “heavenly Jerusalem,” which is “the City of God” (Ps. 47, 2-3 et al.), that according to the prophets, men have distanced themselves from this city and that they will be “re-established” there (apokathistamenon, in Ccels 7, 29). What is the meaning of this? Origen says that he has explained it in his commentaries on Psalms 45 and 47 (Ccel 7 31), which we do not possess. For him, if we accept the distinction between ktisis and katabole kosmou, all of the texts which say “before the constitution of the world,” or even “starting from the beginning,” can refer to the beginning of human history, to the beginning of this aion which is inscribed in time. He [Origen] uses Psalm 73 vs 2 to say that the Church did not begin with the coming of the Savior but rather that it has existed from the beginning of the human race which, however, does not refer back to a pre-cosmic or preexisting world. The Church is founded not only on the Apostles but also on the prophets and all the saints since the beginning of this world (Com. SoS p. 157, 13 s. GCS). Even though St. Paul says that God has chosen his saints “before” the katabole kosmou (Eph. 1, 4), this predetermination is not situated in a preexisting world but at the beginning of the history of the “world,” that is to say, of men. Origen places on the same level the following two expressions of Psalm 73, 2 (constitution of the Church) and Romans 8, 29 (the foreknowledge and predestination by God of those who will be in conformity with the Son’s image) (Com. SoS p. 157, 11-158, 13 and Comm. Mat. 17, 4). Does foreknowledge (or predetermination, for that is the problem) not explain that those who are destined to form the Lord’s assembly “shall be inscribed in heaven”? In his treatise On First Principles, Origen was unable to insist upon divine election, for this would offer an argument to the Gnostics in support of the determinism of natures, as one sees in P Arch II.9.7: that beings have various states not as a result of their works but “by the will of him who called them” “according to election.” In this context, Origen responds with “anterior causes,” which God knows and which direct the distribution of fates/destinies in a “just” manner; he thus touches on the theme of sins committed before birth in a way which remains in the realm of allusion and theory. In his later texts when he takes into account the theological meaning of the Epistle to the Romans which cites the example of Jacob and Esau (Rom. 9.10-13 with the citation of Ml 1.2 s.), he no longer speaks of “anterior causes,” but only – so it seems to me – of divine foreknowledge: in the large fragment on Rom. 1.1 preserved in Philokalia XXV, in Chapters 5 and 6 of the treatise On Prayer, and in the Commentary on Rom. 9, he says that “since the moment that infants come to birth” (from before they come thither) God knows the choice they shall make and organizes their fates in correspondance with these choices. “Before birth” may mean not in a previous life (which is no longer the question) but “from the maternal bosom,” as other biblical texts say. Likewise, “before the constitution of the world” (Eph. 1.4) means “since the beginning of this world (ab initio saeculi).” The “causes” that reconcile the inequality of human destinies with the affirmation of God’s “justice” are not in a pre-cosmic pre-existence, but in the foreknowledge, beyond this world, of all the history of men. I wish neither to affirm the disappearance of the thesis of the pre-existence of souls, nor its reconciliation with divine foreknowledge or election; rather, I wish to highlight two types of languag which emphasize different ideas.

1(God created the patriarchs ‘before the creation of the world,” all the souls “were prepared before the constitution of the earth”: 2 Enoch 23, 5 according to the long version[Note 13])

Justification by Faith (pt. iv)

Conclusion of Justification by Faith

So the gift of the Holy Spirit is not regarded by Protestants as something definitely imparted by an external sacramental act which may be done by Christ’s human representatives acting in His Name and Person (as e.g. in Acts), but as an inspiration which any man receives in aswer to his own interior desires, which is guarenteed to him by his own emotional and volitional response. So absolution from sin is for Protestants no longer something to be bestowed or withheld by Christ’s representatives (as in John xx) but something which any individual claims to obtain for himself at need in secret from God. So the Gospel rite of unction of the sick (Mk. iv. 13) has virtually been silently banished from Protestant practice, because the whole idea of God acting in response to or through an ecclesiastical material rite to either to give bodily healing or (still more) healing of the soul by the forgiveness of sins (James v. 15) is repugnant to the essential Protestant principle. Earnest prayer by individuals, i.e. prayer made with great psychological ‘attention’ by those praying, would be the only means to which a sincere Protestant would naturally look for such results.

There is left therefore only the organisation of opportunities for corporate prayer and praise as the main field of Protestant Church life. Corporate worship undoubtedly provides and safeguards those particular ‘values’ which indiviual worship cannot easily supply. But by no means all men equally appreciate the need of those particular ‘values’. If they do not want them or if they can find them for themselves in other ways, there is literally nothing which a Protestant Church can do for them which even a believing and religious man may not feel he can equally well do for himself, and which a spiritually slothful or undisciplined man will not claim to do for himself. The Church in such circumstances can have as such no decisive claim whatever on even the Christian life of its members. So far as individual Christians are concerned, it can only be at best or a convenience of the spiritual life for those who find it so. For others, stronger souls, it is something which they may have a duty to help and support, because it needs them, but which for themselves they could dispense with at will.

It is the same with the Ministry. Since the Sacraments do not cause grace in those who receive them but are only ‘tokens’ that the receivers have obtained grace in another (wholly individual) way, the Sacraments can no longer be conceived of as actions of Christ and His Body the Church (or better, of Christ through His Body the Church) really excercising His redemptive work on the receivers. They are actions of the receivers themselves, and only of them. Their administration is a set of ecclesiastical occasions for the edification of individual Christians, many or few, at which these can and should ecxercise their won faith and piety. There is therefore no need, nor indeed possibility, of a ‘priesthood’, of men authorised (as others are not) to act in the Name of Christ and His whole Church to perform these corporate actions of the Body towards individual members. The commission of the Christian Ministry is wholly other than this. They are men set apart to fulfil the function of proclaiming the fact of the Redemption accomplished in the first century A.D., which challenges individuals to make the saving act of faith. This is what the Church is for, and its Minsitry is essentially only a preaching ministry. As Luther said, Ordination is a ‘solemn ceremony for the appointment of public preachers in the Church’. Since the celebration of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper is in fact only a species of preaching by symbolical actions, it is fitting that they should normally be conducted by those to whom the preaching office is committed. But in doing this they excercise no supernatural power or authority from Christ and His Church which other Christians have not received. All Christians are ‘priests’ (1 Pet. ii. 5). Any confinement of the performance of these actions to the ordained ministers is only for the purpose of seemliness in their administration and the good order of the Christian society. This is the classical Protestant conception of the Minsitry. (But it is right to say that all Calvinists have always laid much more emphasis on the disciplinary authority of those set apart for the discharge of the preaching ministry than have the Lutherand and Independents. And, in Scotland especially, Presbyterians since the seventeenth century have recovered from the Catholic tradition a definite doctrine that minesterial authority is derived from God by their ordination at the hands of othet ministers, and not from the Church by the fact of their choice by the congregation.)

You will see, I hope, how central is the doctrine of ‘Justification by faith alone’ in the whole of Protestant conception of Christianity, and how directly all the rest of the Protestant system flows from it, so that if that is removed the other ideas are left as it were rootless – mere negations.

Dom Gregory Dix OSB

Justification by Faith (Pt. iii)

Part iii of Justification by Faith by Dom Gregory Dix

Thus Protestantism retained the idea of the Church, despite its awkwardness in the Protestant scheme of thought. But the New Testament idea as the ‘Body of Christ’, not only His instrument to proclaim His Gospel, but His Body, one with Him, living with His life, holy with His holiness, energising with His Spirit, so that her worship is His worship of His Father, her mission is His mission to men, her faith is His unclouded vision of God, her action is His Redemption – all this was fatally impoverished. In the New Testament the Church is the ‘fulfilment of Christ (Eph. 1, 23) without which He Himself is incomplete and fruitless, but with which and through which alone He is ‘Redeemer’. A doctrine of ‘Redemption’ which had no logical place for all this, which made the Church only the secondary instrument of a Redemption which is completed in the recesses of the individual’s own mind, in essential independence of the life of Christ in the Church and through the Church, such a doctrine was something artificial and new. It could not regard the Church as the ‘organism’ of Christ, a life into which one must be incorporated to live in Christ at all. It was bound to regard the Church at best as an ‘organisation’ to serve Christ. And there was no sufficient reason why it should not be regarded as ultimately a purely ‘voluntary organisation’ for that end, with which the ‘Justified’ individual could dispense entirely if it did not seem to him to be serving that end; or which he could refashion to do so as seemed to him good, in order the better to proclaim the Gospel as he himself had found it in the Scriptures. In any case such an ‘organisation’ has and can have no further claims on his obedience than he himself chooses to give it.

You see once more how central in Protestantism is its doctrine of ‘Justification’. It leads directly and inevitably to the typical Protestant conception of ‘the Church’, as something to which a man adheres in so far as he finds it helpful to his personal religious life, not as something which embodies the God-given ‘redeemed’ life of souls into which each individual must come to share that life. You see, too, how it leads directly to the untrammelled religious individualism and the insensitiveness to schism which mark Protestant Church life. It leads, too, to the repudiation of all final authoritative standards of doctrine other than ‘the Scriptures’, and these uninterpreted. For the Church’s mission is only to ‘proclaim’  the self-sufficient Scriptures, and no human ecclesial authority can be allowed decisively to limit their meaning by imposing its own particular interpretation upon them.

It is the same with the Sacraments. Few other Protestants have had the courageous logic of the Quakers in simply disregarding the facts that our Lord instituted certain external or material signs, actions and forms for His followers, and that the New Testament plainly attributes to these operative significance in the life of grace. They were retained by most Protestants, but emptied of their Scriptural significance as signs which cause what they signify, and regarded instead as mere ‘tokens’ (either to the receiver himself or even other people) of a grace received wholly independently of them by psychological operations of the believer’s own mind. It is no wonder that in course of time they have sunk to the position of ‘optional appendages’ to the practice of Protestant piety.

Thus the rite of baptism is no longer for most modern Protestants what it is in the New Testament, the actual ‘putting on’ of Christ, the ‘incorporation’ into Him, so that the baptised are truly ‘one with’, ‘members of’ Him. So far as this mystical union is envisaged, it is attributed to the act of faith or to ‘conversion’. Thus it is not baptism which makes a man a ‘member’ of most Protestant Churches, or even the fact of being a communicant, but his own voluntary ‘adherence’. And his reception of these ordinances is nowadays regarded as an optional element in that adherence. Such use as he chooses to make of them is a consequence, not a cause, of his life and membership in that Church; and most English Protestant bodies no longer limit their administration of them strictly to their own ‘adherents’, but welcome to them any ‘believer’ who may present himself to them. Any other view would be incompatible with ‘Justification by faith alone’; for any other view there would be in such sacramental actions an element of human co-operation, of man’s own ‘good works’ combinig with the divinely-given confidence in the finished sacrifice of Christ, to bring about this ‘Justification’ and Sanctification. On the Protestant principles this is wholly inadmissible.

To be continued – and finished

Justification by Faith (ii)

Part II from Dom Gregory Dix on Justification by Faith

I have put it briefly, because I have no intention of criticising it here or of pointing out its great differences from the Catholic doctrine of Justification, except under one aspect. (I will only say in passing that it is a one-sided deduction from parts of St. Paul’s teaching, and that it is partly a development of and partly a reaction against teaching on the subject which was current during the fifteenth century mediaeval Latin Church, which we are always apt to forget was the nursing mother of all the Reformers.) But this root-idea of Protestantism had many consequences and ramifications, though, it has in itself – granted its catastrophic premises – a majestic and logical simplicity – too simple indeed to be adequate either to the profundity of the New Testament or the complexity of fallen human nature. All I want to point here is that it denied that thorough ‘renewal of the inward man’ by the action of God’s grace as a consequence of Redemption by Christm with which the New Testament fairly rings and thunders. And it left out altogether the ideas of the Church and the Sacraments from the whole operation of Redemption and sanctification.

Augsburg Confession

True, Protestants could not help seeing that the New Testament represents our Lord as having instituted the Church, and appointed His Apostles to act in the Church in His Name and Person. It also records that he deliberately ordered and instituted certain external actions and signs for His followers as having a vital relation to their being His. Neither of these facts was easily reconcilable with the doctrine of ‘Justification by faith alone’, which insisted not only that man needed nothing more but actually could do nothing more than know the story of Redemption in the first century A.D. and put his entire trust in that. Yet the New Testament made it impossible not to retain the Church and the Sacraments in some sense. Protestants therefore kept them both, but they were forced to empty them of much of their Scriptural meaning.

The idea of ‘the Church’ was reduced to the only one compatible with Protestantism – it was regarded chiefly as the divinely founded society for continually proclaiming the history of Redemption as it had happened long ago on Judea, and so challenging every individual in other ages and countries that first-century Palestine to make that personal act of faith which alone saves. The only necessary equipment for such a tasl was of course the authoritative account of how Redemption had actually happened – the Gospels – and the authoritative explanation of it and commentary upon it in the Old Testament and the other Apostolic writings. This alone was what could provoke the saving act of faith in individuals, and the Church existed to thrust it upon their individual notice. You see how directly the doctrine of ‘Justification by faith alone’ led to the idea of ‘the Bible and the Bible alone religion of the Protestants’. If the Church was necessary to present the Bible in every generation, yet the Church existed for the Bible, not the Bible for the Church. (In point of fact the Church had existed before the Bible and had compiled the Bible and authorised the Bible. Between 150 and 200 A.D. the Church began to select those particular documents which now make up our Bible out of many others, Jewish and Christian then in circulation, all professing to be more or less authoritative. These alone were after that to be received by the Church as ‘inspired’ and authoritative ‘Scriptures’. The ‘Old Testament’ was a selection from books then currently accepted as ‘Scripture’ among the Jews. The grounds for inclusion in the ‘New Testament’ were partly historical – evidence that these particular documents had genuinely come down from the Apostolic age and their competitors had not; partly doctrinal – that these documents agreed with the standard Christian teaching which had been going on in the Church ever since the Apostolic age, and their competitors did not. Thus there was a time when the teaching of the Church had been quite independent of our present Bible, viewed as a collection; and there was also a time when the documents of the Bible had been judged by the teaching of the Church and not vice versa. This was really fatal to the Protestant view both of the Bible and the Church. But the facts were not all known in the sixteenth century, and those that were known were ignored.)

To be continued

“Justification by Faith” (Pt. i)

… an excerpt from a letter (published in The Question of Anglican Orders: Letters to a Layman) by the Anglo Catholic theologian Dom Gregory Dix:

[The differences between Protestant ans Catholic accounts of Christianity are] not, as we often pretend, to be found in such questions as whether the Body and Blood of Christ are or are not substantially present in the consecrated Sacrament of the Altar (Luther, the original Protestant, sided with the Catholics on that point against the Protestants) or whether others besides Bishops can ordain, or whether we ought to say the Hail Mary or use incense in church, or the other side-issues on which English Protestants and Catholics usually concentrate. These things are only superficial symptoms. The really profound differences – and they are very profound indeed – all centre around the word ‘Justification’. One does not often hear it mentioned to-day in religious arguments or even in serious theological discussions. But when the Reformation was actually happening – in the sixteenth century – that word provided the dynamite for the whole terrific explosion. Everey Protestant leader insisted time and again that this and this alone was ‘the article of a standing or a falling in the church’, and that in comparison with this no other point in controversy was of final importance. (This would still be the case now, if Protestantism had not so greatly changed from its original principles during th nineteenth century.)

‘Justification’ is the technical term for the fundamental process in the religious life of any Christian man or woman: i.e. that by which fallen man, a creature born in a state of alienation from God and therefore prone to sin, unable of himself altogether to avoid actually sinning to some extent in this life, is through redemption by Christ brought into union with an infinitely holy God, to serve Him in righteousness, to love Him with his whole being and ultimately to enjoy Him eternally. You will see that this concerns the very heart of the Christian religion – and it was about this that Protestants and Catholics differed violently in the sixteenth century. How does the ‘Justification’ of the sinner through Christ happen?

The Protestant answer was unanimous and simple. It happened through a man’s total surrender to one particular idea and to the emotion it evoked; it happened entirely and completely inside a man’s own mind. Protestantism sprang from a radically and unrelieved pessimistic estimate of human nature. This was the personal invention of Martin Luther but it became the common presupposition of all Protestant teaching. Luther taught and Protestantism believed that man is totally and incurably corrupted in his nature by the effects of ‘original sin’, and that his ‘original sin’ is to be simply identified with ‘concupiscence’, i.e. with that susceptibility to temptation which we all know in ourselves. If this identification is accepted, there is no hiding the fact from ourselves that this ‘total corruption’ always persists in us, even in the ‘justified’ and those who appear to be leading and trying to lead a holy life. It is so irremediable, so ‘total’, that even a man’s apparently ‘good works’ are in themselves in the eyes of God damnably sinful. Nothing that a man can do in itself ever have the least value in the eyes of God, on this theory.

Man has therefore but one hope of salvation. God the Father sent His only Son to become Man and be crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem in the first century A.D.; thus He offered the one, true, perfect, sufficient and complete sacrifice to atone for all human sin. To the end of time anyone, however sinful, who believes and fully accepts that fact, and trusts altogether and only to the merit of that sacrifice, is forthwith ‘Justified’ in the sights of God. He needs nothing more, can do nothing more, than be conscious of feeling of confidence, for it is all that stands in between him and eternal torment. Yet even so, he cannot really undo the terrible effects of ‘original sin’ in his soul. The fact that he feels this confidence does not render anything he does or could do in itself pleasing to God. he is not in any way made holy even by ‘justifying faith’; otherwise his own actions would aid in his own redemption and sanctification; grace would no more be the absolutely free gift of God, but something man had at least partially ‘merited’. He is therefore emphatically not made holy but simply ‘accounted holy’ by God, for the sake of Christ, Whose righteousness is ‘imputed to’ the believing sinner by God through a sort of fiction. But in himself the redeemed and ‘justified’ sinner remaisn an entirely sinful sinner still,a nd only the consciousness of his own faith in the redeeming merits of Christ stands between him and the damnation his own inescapable sinfulness entails.  That is the famous doctrine of ‘Justification by faith alone’, which in the eyes of all Protestants was the very essence of Protestantism. ‘Justification’ was a matter of surrendering unconditionally to that one idea, something any individual can do – but can only do – for himself alone, in the absolute isolation of his own mind and heart.

( To be continued )

Ways to Church Reunion (III)

Part III and conclusion to Ways to Church Reunion

There still remains another point, namely, that of the canonical nature of any Reunion achieved through Eucharistic fellowship. There is a firm conviction that Reunion can only be the act of higher ecclesiastical authority. Possibly this may be true as regards complete Reunion of entire Church bodies, a reunion which is as yet outside historical relaity. Even so, such a Reunion from above, a so-called diplomatic Reunion, would have to acquire sanction from the body of Church people, which may even refuse to accept it. Generally speaking, the above point of view can only be accepted logically to the Roman Catholic Church, in which one can say that the voice of the Pope is the voice of the Church, but otherwise such a theory is quite out of place both for the Orthodox and the Anglican hierarchy. Within the same Church we find different sections and people, who even differ from one another dogmatically (as in the Anglican “comprehensiveness”). Even to a greater extent is this true of theological thought and cultural level. To expect, therefore, complete uniformity before Reunion is possible would be completely fruitless and unnecessary. Why cannot separate parts or groups belonging to the different Church bodies – Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican – unite in Intercommunion, if this actually expresses their true dogmatic and Church relationship?

One more objection might be raised here which has become stereotyped in the course of centuries and has trned into a real superstition – viz., that Eucharistic fellowship with the non-Orthodox impairs the priesthood and Sacraments of the entire Church, if any members of that Church enter into such communion. This would be even more true in a case of communion say with the Anglo-Catholics, for through them the Orthodox would enter into communion with Evangelicals and the Modernists, in so far as all the members of the Anglican Church are in communion with one another. Therefore, it is argued, such Intercommunion woud be impossible for the Orthodox. We feel that such prejudice is exaggerated if not absolutely incorrect. Actually the entire Christian world in a certain sense is in communion in so far as this concerns the Sacrament of baptism, which is recognized by all. Nevertheless, through this its priesthood is not impaired. One must interpret the power of priesthood in a much deeper and bolder way, so as not to be able to fear its being impaired through Eucharistric intercommunionwith those of the non-Orthodox who can truly participate in it sacramentally. Therefore group or partial intercommunion does not threaten the integrity of the priesthood in the participants, as it never impaired the priesthood of the Orthodox, who remained in intercommunion with the Roman Catholics for a long time after the schism of 1054. But this type of communion can only be canonically justified through the consent and blessing of the appropriate ruling bishop, for the fulness of the sacraments is concentrated in the bishop, and no priest can celebrate the Sacraments who has severed the link with his bishop. Actually the Church is a union of bishoprics, but every ‘cell,’ that is diocese, lives also with its own special life, though in contact with the others. Consequently, it is all a question of fact. Will a diocese be found in which the corresponding groups of persons could enter into Eucharistic Communion, within the realm of Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, and also of Roman Catholicism? It is a question of the limits of Church centralism. Do the bishops form independent centres, though ones which are co-ordinated with one another? Or, is there only one centre, the episcopus episcoporum, the Pope, who may be one person, or a collective? (The last two alternatives are the same for our particular problem.) A partial, or local union of different Church bodies in the Eucharist, their organic merging, might serve as a mystical and religious foundation for the Reunion of the Churches, which is vainly expected along the paths of canonical and dogmatic Church diplomacy alone. Meanwhile it is important to make a beginning with Church Reunion in those points where it is possible, and so ultimately to carry the problem forward beyond the existing deadlock which our sinful fear and indifference has produced.

# # # #