Fr Aidan Kimel has posted another very thoughtful and enriching series that would be of benefit for all Orthodox Christians to read and consider. http://afkimel.wordpress.com/category/justification/ Here is the series in one big re-post:
Eastern Orthodoxy and the Apostle Paul: Where is Justification by Faith?
Where is justification by faith in Eastern soteriological reflection? It’s a curious omission, given that justification is a critical theme in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. How does one preach on the Epistle to the Romans without speaking of justification? If the Apostle’s understanding of justification is governed exclusively by the question “Are the works of Torah binding on the (Gentile) Church?” then I suppose it’s understandable why justification has ceased to have any homiletical or theological function within Orthodoxy. By the 4th and 5th centuries the Church had become a Gentile community and deification had established itself as the preferred way in the Eastern Church to speak of salvation in Christ.
Yet I still find it a curious omission. I am well aware that St Paul’s understanding of justification is identical neither to the Reformation nor the Tridentine understanding of justification; but one might think that with all the recent converts into Orthodoxy from Protestantism, as well as growing awareness by Orthodox priests and scholars of the large body of Pauline scholarship, someone would have attempted a constructive integration of justification into the Orthodox understanding of salvation. But that does not appear to have happened. Justification simply does not exist in Orthodox theology as a topic of serious reflection, and even when it does appear, it is immediately dismissed as a Western problematic (see, e.g., Valerie Karras, “Beyond Justification“; also see Carmen Fragapane, “Salvation by Christ” for a somewhat more sympathetic presentation). Does justification matter?
Orthodox theologian Lucian Turcescu believes that it does matter. In his essay “Soteriological Issues in the 1999 Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on Justification,” Turcescu argues that Orthodoxy should explicitly integrate justification as the first step in its ordo salutis, with deification being the second and final step. Turcescu complains that Orthodox theologians jump too hastily to the second step: before deification there must be justification, the reconciliation of the sinner with his former enemy, God.
Turcescu begins with the Gospel of John. Jesus speaks of the reconciliation between God and humanity as occurring in two steps. First, Jesus calls his hearers out of their bondage to sin and makes them his friends. Second, having become his friends, they become, with him, children of the Father:
In the Gospel according to John, Jesus spoke of two steps toward the full restoration of the broken relationship between humans and God. In their fallen state, humans find themselves in bondage to sin, and Jesus calls humans slaves or servants at this point; then, humans become Jesus’ friends; last, they are said to be adopted by God the “Father” as children. There is thus a progression from a state of bondage, ignorance, and fear that characterizes the master-slave relationship to the state of discipleship that characterizes the friendship state to that of filial knowledge and love that characterizes the parent-child relationship. The passage from bondage to friendship occurs because of reconciliation, as an enemy cannot become one’s friend unless the two have been reconciled. The passage from friendship to adoption occurs by divine initiative and human cooperation. (Journal of Ecumenical Studies [Winter 2001], p. 69)
Turcescu suggests that the Apostle Paul also sees salvation as a two-step process, correlated with justification and adoption: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption” (Rom 8:14-15).
I suspect that those who are well read in Johannine and Pauline studies will find the above analysis seriously flawed. Is it really accurate to speak of a two-step process, as if one first is reconciled to God (justification) and then one becomes a son of God in Christ (adoption)? Though I have been away from biblical scholarship a long time, this just does not sound right to me. Part of the problem is that Turcescu is thinking in terms of “process,” which is unavoidable when one wants to speak of synergistic cooperation with grace (always the preferred Orthodox way of looking at these matters), rather than as divinely-effected translation into an eschatological mode of existence. I note the striking absence of Holy Baptism in Turcescu’s analysis. For the Apostle Paul baptism marks the decisive act in and by which the sinner is incorporated into Christ and his Church and thus justified, sanctified, reborn in the Spirit, and adopted as a son of God (see Rudolf Schnackenburg, Baptism in the Thought of St. Paul). When I was preaching, one of my favorite texts was Galatians 3:21-4:7:
Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not; for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture consigned all things to sin, that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir.
Holy Baptism represents the decisive event in which the convert to Christ is initiated into the Church and the trinitarian life of God. It’s not as if one is first justified and then subsequently adopted as a child of God and made heir to the kingdom. It all happens at the same time! As the Apostle tells his congregation in Corinth: “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). The Spirit breaks into our fallen world and appropriates us to the life and worship of the messianic kingdom. Only on this basis does our liturgical prayer and ascetical practices make proper sense.
But back to Turcescu:
The Greek patristic tradition and Orthodox theology have referred to human participation in the divine nature as deification (theosis), and that has become the fundamental metaphor expressing salvation in the Orthodox Church. The passage from bondage to sin to friendship with God necessitates a reconciliation between humans and God. One cannot become a friend with a former enemy unless the two have been reconciled. It is at this point that I see justification taking place, that is, the declaration by God of the sinful human person as a righteous person because of the faith a human has in Jesus and his work of redemption done freely on behalf of all humanity. (p. 70)
Perhaps Turcescu presupposes baptism as that moment when God declares justification—I presume that he does. Justification thus signifies the beginning of the deification process; but after that, does it have any other function? We are still stuck with preaching the Epistle to the Romans. Might justification be more than a two-step dance?
Let’s assume that integrating justification by faith into a comprehensive understanding of salvation would be a constructive and positive thing for Eastern theology to do. I can think of several reasons why. First, justification is an important theme in the New Testament, particularly in the epistles of the Apostle Paul. At the very least the Orthodox preacher must have an understanding of St Paul’s understanding of justification in order to preach these texts and to be able to correlate justification with other themes of salvation, such as regeneration, communion, adoption, and theosis. But more importantly, the preacher may discover that deep engagement with the Apostle will help him to proclaim the gospel more effectively. Second, here in North America Orthodoxy finds itself surrounded by people who have been raised in Protestant and evangelical households. Their understanding of the Christian faith has been shaped by the language of justification. Rather than encouraging them to simply jettison justification, they need to be shown how it is corrected and deepened in the theology and praxis of Orthodoxy. If Orthodoxy does not thoughtfully engage the task of integration, then it will inevitably give poor answers to the many questions put to it by non-Orthodox and Orthodox alike. Third, as formulated at the Reformation, the question of justification (how am I put right with the holy God? how may I know that God forgives and accepts me?) is a very human question. It’s not just a product of Western juridicism and pathology. The exegetical, theological, and spiritual struggles of the Reformers and their successors may well have something to offer to Orthodoxy.
In his book The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, Douglas Campbell examines the three dominant models for understanding the gospel according to the Apostle Paul: the justification by faith model (JF), the salvation history model (SH), and the pneumatological-participatory-martyrological-eschatological model (PPME—why didn’t an editor step in and say to Campbell, “please give this model a shorter name”? Jeesh).
The Justification by Faith Model
At the heart of the heart of JF is the transfer, mediated by the faith of the believer, from a state of condemnation to a state of forgiveness and forensic acceptance (salvation):
The first state is “legalism,” within which people try to work their way to heaven. It presupposes a judgment according to works and desert. But a sensitive conscience soon realizes that this scheme is hopeless and that, far from obtaining salvation, it only ensures one of a certain eventual fate of eternal damnation. Repeated transgressions make one liable to the just wrath of God, which will be experienced in full on the Day of Judgment. A state of anxiety and guilt therefore ensues. But this is a good thing because this phase is essentially preparatory; it is not an end in itself. At this point, the proclamation of the gospel must be greeted by great delight. If one only believes in the gospel then one is forgiven all one’s various sins and is transferred to a new state of salvation. One cannot but be interested, especially in view of one’s experience of the previous unsaved state, which resulted in guilt, anxiety and even terror. The transfer is effected, on God’s part, by a cunning piece of dual-entry accounting. The sinner’s transgressions are credited or imputed to Christ on the cross, and so dealt with there. And Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited to the sinner, clothing him/her with perfection (although some suggest that this second action is not strictly necessary). So God’s justice is satisfied but the human transgressor is not condemned and destroyed during the process. All that is needed for the transaction to take place is faith on the part of the individual. Faith is therefore the trigger or catalyst for appropriation of salvation by the individual. (p. 34)
JF is fundamentally juridical, forensic, and transactional: because of Christ’s saving work on the cross, the sinner is acquitted of his transgressions and declared to be justified—by faith or through the means of faith or on account of faith (various theories of faith are offered by JF advocates). In one form or another JF has dominated the theology and preaching of Protestantism. Thus the Augsburg Confession:
Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. (IV)
And the Westminster Confession:
Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. (XI)
The Protestant teaching of justification by faith is typically coordinated, though not always, with a penal theory of Christ’s atoning work.
Back in the 60s Presbyterian pastor James Kennedy started an evangelistic program based on the justification model. The evangelist was instructed to confront the potential convert with this question “Suppose that you were to die today and stand before God and he were to say to you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’ what would you say?” (Hint: there’s only one correct answer.)
The strength of the justification by faith model is that it gives straightforward instruction on what one must do to achieve salvation; but the salvation offered is juridical, restricted to the reversal of the divine condemnation. The model assumes that God himself, manifested in wrath and judgment against sinners, is the critical problem humanity faces. By Christ’s atoning death on the cross, received in faith, God ceases to be the problem and instead becomes the solution. And it’s all by grace, since God is the one who has provided the means by which he has reconciled himself to the ungodly. As John Piper puts it: “Justification is the moment or the event when you put your faith in Jesus Christ and at that moment God is no longer against you—he’s for you, and he counts you as acceptable, forgiven, righteous, obedient because of your union with Christ. You are perfectly acceptable to God and he is totally on your side.” We were once children of wrath, but now, by faith, we are justified.
Campbell identifies a number of theological and pastoral problems with JF, perhaps the most important being its misrepresentation of the character of God:
By orienting the model’s first phase to God’s retributive justice, the model in fact commits the entire theological programme to this basal understanding of the divine nature; if all else fails or does not unfold, God will still, at bottom, be retributively just. It follows from this that any different attributes—for example, mercy—must in effect be super-added to God’s existing nature. They are accidental or occasional qualities, while the divine justice lies beneath them permanently. Indeed, they can be exercised only if the requirements of divine justice have first been satisfied. So even divine love and grace can only operate within a just framework, if that can be provided. Moreover, any subsequent revelations cannot overthrow this basic insight into the divine nature; if they did, then the model itself would collapse. The model is locked in from the outset to this view of God. (p. 166)
Nor is Campbell persuaded by the counter-argument that the attributes of justice and mercy are reconciled at Calvary. The penal construal of atonement makes justice prior to mercy: the latter can only be displayed once the demands of justice are fulfilled.
Campbell also notes an unexpected consequence of the justification model. Intended to provide a solution to a conscience burdened by guilt and anxiety, the model can also generate anxiety because of the contractual significance accorded to faith: if you believe, you will be justified. But what does it mean to believe, and how does one know when one has fulfilled the condition of saving faith? The history of Puritanism witnesses to the problem of assurance that appears to be intrinsic to the JF model, a problem that is magnified a thousand-fold when the doctrine of absolute predestination is added into the mix. The conditional nature of salvation, Campbell explains, ultimately throws the sinner back on his own resources:
And even though the condition for Christian salvation has been reduced from full law-observance to faith—a generous reduction, it must be granted—this still looks forbidding to the deeply sinful person. Even faith is difficult, and on certain days, nigh on impossible. We are, at bottom, utterly dependent on the reliability of our own faithful activity in the JF model in order to be saved, and yet, as human beings, we fear that all our activity is, at bottom, unreliable. Hence the JF model creates a fundamental anxiety within its converts; they are radically insecure. And not a great deal of solace can be expected from the church. (p. 172)
Martin Luther found his own “non-Protestant” solution to the problem of assurance: do not look within yourself but rest instead on the promises of baptism (see “Why Luther is Not Quite Protestant” by Phillip Cary).
The exegetical foundation for the justification by faith model is actually slimmer than it might first appear, relying heavily, perhaps too heavily, on Romans 1-4, Galatians 2-3, and Philippians 3:7-11. This alone has led many scholars to question whether justification by faith is as central for the Apostle as the Reformation Churches have historically maintained. But when the exegetical weaknesses are combined with the theological flaws, a different paradigm for understanding the Apostle Paul seems called for. Campbell goes so far as to predict that the days of the JF model are numbered (p. 27). Scholars are just now beginning to fully understand the profound exegetical and theological flaws of the model.
The literature is vast, and I’ve been away from this subject for several years; but I would like to commend a collection of essays Rereading Paul Together. The two essays by Joseph Fitzmyer and John Reumann provide excellent biblical analyses of the justification by faith model, from Catholic and Lutheran perspectives; and the essay “Interpretations of Paul in the Early Church” by David Rylaarsdam is one of the best patristic surveys I have come across on this topic.
An increasing number of biblical scholars are finding the justification by faith model (JF) unpersuasive as a comprehensive way to understand the Apostle Paul. This first came to my attention early in my seminary education (back in the dark ages) when we were assigned Krister Stendahl’s important essay “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” JF is grounded upon a negative assessment of Torah and the Apostle’s alleged crisis of conscience: on the road to Damascus Saul realizes that, despite his vigorous efforts to obey the Law, he stood condemned by the Law and would always be condemned by the Law. “Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them” (Gal 3:10). No one can obey the Law perfectly, but it is precisely this perfect obedience that is necessary if anyone is to be enjoy a right relationship with God. Like Martin Luther 1500 years later, Saul of Tarsus discovers that the only solution to this existential crisis is faith, faith in the One who justifies apart from the works of the Law.
But, Stendahl observes, the New Testament provides little evidence that Paul ever struggled with guilt in the way that JF demands. In his Epistle to the Philippians Paul even says that as a Pharisee he was blameless before the Law. Evidently he did not suffer from a tortured conscience, at least not until he met the Lord and realized that as a persecutor of Christians he was in fact persecuting the risen Messiah of Israel.
A year or so after I read Stendahl, I read E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism. This book changed everything. Sanders confirmed what I had long suspected—ancient Judaism was not the legalistic, works-righteousness religion that advocates of JF typically maintained. Sanders’s thesis thus opened up fresh possibilities for integrating the theological convictions of Paul into a positive understanding of Israel, Torah, and the covenantal history of salvation. Over ten years would pass, but eventually I would be introduced to the writings of N. T. Wright. Wright is perhaps the foremost presenter of what Douglas Campbell calls the salvation history model (SH) for interpreting St Paul. Wright has written extensively on the Apostle, including Paul: In Fresh Perspective, What Saint Paul Really Said, and Justification; but his major work is due to be published later this year, Paul and the Faithfulness of God.
The Salvation History Model
For the exponents of SH, “Paul is basically driven by his eschatological consciousness of mission within a broader historical schema linking salvific promise within Judaism to its fulfilment in the Messiah Jesus and the subsequent efforts of the early Christians in the church, who are now the new ‘people of God’” (Douglas Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, p. 37). Unlike JF, which centers on the individual’s repudiation of works-righteousness and surrender to Christ (“and so is inevitably committed to describing Paul’s Jewish experience in negative terms,” writes Campbell), SH employs a historical narrative of promise and fulfillment (p. 37). Romans 9-11 are foundational for SH reflection.
Wright’s ecclesial and covenantal construal of justification by faith exhibits the critical concerns of salvation history model:
How then does “justification by faith” actually work? … Paul has already spoken in Romans 2 about the final justification of God’s people, on the basis of their whole life. This will take place at the end, when God judges the secrets of all hearts through the Messiah. The point of justification by faith is that, as he insists in [Romans] 3.26, it takes place in the present timeas opposed to on the last day. It has to do with the question, “Who now belongs to God’s people?”, and “How can you tell?” The answer is: all who believe in the gospel belong, and that is the only way you can tell—not by who their parents were, or how well they have obeyed the Torah (or any other moral code), or whether they have been circumcised. Justification, for Paul, is a subset of election, that is, it belongs as part of his doctrine of the people of God. …The point is that the word “justification” does not itself denote the process whereby, or the event in which, a person is brought by grace from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith, true worship and renewal of life. Paul, clearly and unambiguously, uses a different word for that, the word “call.” The word “justification,” despite centuries of Christian misuse, is used by Paul to denote that which happens immediately after the “call”: “those God called, he also justified” (Romans 8.30). In other words, those who hear the gospel and respond to it in faith are then declared by God to be his people, his elect, “the circumcision,” “the Jews,” “the Israel of God.” They are given the status dikaios, “righteous,” “within the covenant.” (Paul, pp. 121-122)
For Paul justification is thus a way to speak of the legitimacy of admitting Gentiles into the Church without requiring circumcision and other Jewish identity markers. As one might expect, Wright has received vigorous criticism on this point from JF exegetes.
According to SH, the heart of Paul’s theology lies not with justification by faith but in the way God has worked in the history of Israel (Old Testament) and the Church (New Testament) for the good and salvation of the world, culminating in the death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah and the outpouring of the Spirit. Each SH practioner develops the model in his own way, of course. According to Wright the gospel of Paul is a fourfold announcement about Jesus:
1. In Jesus of Nazareth, specifically, in his cross, the decisive victory has been won over all the powers of evil, including sin and death themselves.2. In Jesus’ resurrection the New Age has dawned, inaugurating the long-awaited time when the prophecies would be fulfilled, when Israel’s exile would be over, and the whole world would be addressed by the one creator God.3. The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along, Israel’s Messiah, her representative king.4. Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true king of the world, the one at whose name every knee would bow. (What Saint Paul Really Said, p. 60)
Campbell is sympathetic to the SH model but also critical. Both JF and SH share aprospective structure: both begin with the past and work their way forward. JF begins with the negative experience of life under the Law and moves forward to justification; SH begins with historical Israel and moves forward to the fulfillment of promise in Christ and the Church. But the third model to be considered works the other way around.
Source: http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/becoming-a-new-creation-with-the-apostle-paul/
Shortly after I graduated from seminary, I “tried on,” if you will, the penal substitutionary view of atonement, as articulated in the writings of J. I. Packer. Some of you may have read his classic book Knowing God. I read it on the recommendation of my evangelical friends. Packer is very persuasive on the atonement. So for a little while I appropriated the satisfaction theory into my preaching. But it never quite fit. While I felt comfortable preaching that, in some undefined sense, God has stood in our place and borne God’s judgment against our sin, I never felt comfortable proclaiming a full-blown presentation of penal substitutionary atonement. I couldn’t see a way to reconcile such a theory with my deep conviction that God is absolute and unconditional love … indeed, the two positions seem quite contradictory. God does not need to reconcile love and justice within himself. He does not need to mete out punishment before he can be merciful. And so I put my copy of Knowing God aside. I would have to know God without Dr Packer.
If one does not believe that the Apostle Paul held a penal substitutionary view of the atonement, as I and many others do not, then the justification by faith model becomes less compelling as an expression of the Apostle’s deepest concerns. One can continue to employ the language of justification in one’s preaching and teaching as a way to bespeak the unconditionality of God’s grace, as do Lutherans like Robert Jenson and Gerhard Forde; but when reading the Apostle, we need a different and more illuminating model through which to interpret his letters.
The New Creation Model
Of the three models discussed in The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, Douglas Campbell advances one in particular as the most helpful lens through which to read the Pauline epistles. He titles it the “pneumatological-participatory-martyrological-eschatological” model (PPME). Yeah, right. The title is accurately descriptive (and indeed Campbell might well indeed have added a couple more adjectives, e.g., “trinitarian,” “transformative,” “personalist,” or “apocalyptic”—PPMETTPA). Yet even PPME is just too unwieldy. Elsewhere in the book Campbell momentarily entertains “participatory-eschatological,” but in the end he goes for the longer title. Well … the longer title simply will not do, and since this is my blog article, I hereby exercise my blogger authority and dub the third model as the new creation model(NC). (I’m confident that Campbell will recognize the advantages of my title and will immediately contact his publisher and ask them to re-issue his book, with appropriate changes. Credit need not be given, Doug [wink].)
Campbell proposes the Pauline phrases “in Christ,” “in Christ Jesus,” “in the Lord,” and “in the Spirit” as the key to entering into the Apostle’s thought and imagination. These phrases, unlike “justification by faith,” are found throughout Paul’s letters. Though sometimes trivial or conventional, they are often deployed by Paul at critical points in his arguments (esp., Rom 5-8 but also several other places). “In these sections,” Campbell writes, “it is difficult to escape the idea that Paul is speaking of a profound transformation of the person through a partial identification with Christ”:
The very being of the sinful believer is taken up into Christ’s on the Cross, crucified, buried, then resurrected in a transformed state, and here free from sin, according to Paul. In a sense, then, a person is absorbed into the Easter events, and transformed through them and by them. Hence Paul can speak of a new creation, or of a new Adam, that is a new humanity, refashioned and remade “in Christ” as anyone experiences his resurrection—and here the connection with broader eschatological categories becomes apparent. And this is not just an idea, or a mental identification. Paul clearly believes that something quite real has happened; it is irreducibly concrete. The process also takes place in some relation to the Spirit. Indeed, for Paul the presence of the Spirit in the lives of Christians is the main testimony to the reality of the event. When the transformation is complete the Christian exists in a radically new way, in a relationship of filial intimacy with God through the Spirit (cp. Rom. 8.14-17; Gal. 4.1-7). (pp. 39-40)
I can imagine my Orthodox and Catholic readers nodding their heads and saying to themselves, “Yes, yes, yes. That is how I understand St Paul. This is what we experience in the Holy Eucharist.”
At one point in the exposition of NC, Campbell even strikes a Zizioulian note:
I would suggest that Paul’s locative or spatial imagery about the Christian in relation to Christ (“into” and “in” Christ) is a metaphor for being or ontology, and its radical transformation. Hence the important thing for Paul is the new set of relationships created in Christ, as well as the new relational capacity humans possess “in” him. Through Christians’ relationships with the Spirit, they now relate, in Christ, to the Father. In short, Christ makes Christians into fully relational beings, that is, into real full persons. “In him” they can relate to God and to each other as they ought to. Outside of him, humanity is enslaved to hostile and evil forces that curve people in on themselves, away from God and from others, corrupting and distorting all their relationships. (p. 41)
At the heart of the new creation model, proposes Campbell, is the narrative of the Son who has descended to earth to assume humanity’s fallen condition and to bear it unto death. This narrative, in turn, directs us back to the book of Genesis:
The story that describes “the problem” is, I would suggest, a modified version of Genesis 2-3. However, in Paul’s account, Eve is not deceived by the serpent, going on to beguile her dull-witted husband, but a generic figure, Adam, is deceived by the evil intelligence of Sin itself. As a result of humanity’s first transgression, Sin enters creation permanently, taking up residence within the very constitution of humanity, that is, in the Flesh. And the entry of Sin facilitates the arrival of the still more powerful and oppressive Death, creating a fundamental human condition of slavery within a kingdom ruled by evil forces. Indeed, the whole of creation has been joined to humanity’s enslavement and shares in its screams and groans. … Paul’s solution to this plight centres on the story of a protagonist, God’s “Son,” Christ Jesus, who enters the oppressed state of humanity in obedience to his Father’s wishes, assumes its enslaved nature, and then dies. However, he is raised to new life by the divine, life-giving Spirit, and exalted to the Father’s right hand, where he now reigns, judges and intercedes. (pp. 57-58)
The story as stated, though, is incomplete. It describes the divine mission of Jesus; but it does not tell us how humanity is saved by this mission. At this point Paul introduces the salvific work of the Holy Spirit:
Again apparently drawing on the first chapters of Genesis, Paul seems to view the present activity of the Holy Spirit as a repetition of his initial activity in the creation of humanity. Where the breath of God brought the figure of dust to life in Genesis 2, creating a “living being” (Gen. 2.7; cp. 1 Cor. 15.45), so too Paul seems to view the present activity of the Spirit in fundamentally creative terms. But whereas the template of the original humanity was a creature modelled from the earth, the template of the new humanity is the second Adam, Christ, a figure who has undergone a starling termination and reconstitution. Hence as the Spirit “maps” or “moulds” people onto Christ’s prototypical trajectory, salvation is realized as the old state of bondage to Sin and Death in the Flesh is terminated, and a new resurrected eschatological state is effected (so also 1 Cor. 15.22, 42-49). (p. 59)
By the Spirit believers participate in the Son’s obedience, sufferings, death, and resurrection. The divine work of transfiguration has begun. Hence Paul exhorts his brethren to live their lives on the basis of what they are becoming rather than what they once were. Campbell writes: “as the Spirit configures people to the template of Christ—specifically to his descent into death and ascent into glory—they too are thereby delivered from their present oppressed and corrupted condition by means of its termination in Christ’s execution and their recreation in a new liberated and transformed condition that is grafted onto his resurrected existence and is now no longer inhabited by the powers of Sin and Death” (p. 59).
The Apostle’s theology is pneumatological, for by the Spirit the believer is made a new creation in Jesus Christ. It is participatory, for by the Spirit the believer is united to Christ and thus participates in his Sonship and work of redemption. It is martyrological, for by the Spirit the believer is conformed to the story of Christ’s suffering and death. It iseschatological, for by the Spirit the believer now lives the life of the coming Kingdom.
And at the heart of the salvation bestowed upon the Church is the unconditional and infinite love of God. “The PPME model does not understand salvation to be motivated by anything other than the limitless love of God for humanity,” explains Campbell. “So there is no implacable divine commitment to justice that must be bloodily assuaged, whether on the cross, or on the Last Day. The cross—and the resurrection!—are moments of divine identification and transformation, not punishment” (p. 144). The individual cannot by an act of will bring himself into new life nor raise himself from the dead. He cannot incorporate himself into Christ and make himself a son of God. He cannot create for himself an eschatological mode of existence. “This rebirth into a new way of being and relating is, from start to finish” Campbell elaborates, “a gift of God. It comes to people purely out of God’s freedom and grace, so, as I understand Paul, it is completely unconditional. No one can, strictly speaking, do anything to receive it or to make it happen—we cannot transform ourselves! It is therefore something of an extraordinary miracle, given to Christians purely because of the goodness of God. It is an act of sheer grace, although Paul does seem to allow for the possibility of this event’s repudiation—a position that links up with negative Arminianism. One can still it seems be a prodigal, but one cannot by dint of one’s own efforts be a son” (p. 41).
One would expect at this point for Campbell to talk about baptism as the sacramental location for God’s gifting of salvation, but curiously he avoids the topic. I have to wonder to what extent his own ecclesial commitments are guiding his exegesis, but this is a problem for everyone who reads the Bible, of course. Perhaps at some time in the future he will interact with the work of Rudolph Schnackenburg, George Montague, and Edmund Schlink, to mention just a couple of scholars who immediately come to mind. The kind of divine unconditionality that Campbell wants to assert cannot be maintained without a sacramental moment in which the convert is graciously identified with the crucified and rising Christ and reborn in the Spirit.
The JF and SH models may both be described as prospective: they begin with a pre-understanding of the pre-salvation state and then define the soteriological solution. The NC model, on the other hand, is retrospective: it begins with the gift of salvation encountered in Christ and from this revelation begins to reflect on everything that came before it; it begins with the solution, and from the solution learns of humanity’s soteriological plight. JF and SH work forward; NC works backwards.
If I were a young, well-trained Orthodox theologian, with a reading knowledge of both New Testament and patristic Greek, I would adopt the project of exploring the Pauline new creation model and would attempt to connect it with subsequent Eastern reflection ontheosis. St Paul has important things to say to the Orthodox Church.
Cheap Grace, Costly Grace, and the Justification of the Ungodly
Source: http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/cheap-grace-costly-grace-and-the-justification-of-the-ungodly/
When preachers begin to be troubled by the many nominal believers in their congregations, or perhaps by their own nominal faith, they often begin to stridently declaim Bonhoeffer’s distinction between cheap and costly grace. Perhaps someone will be convicted and commit themselves to a deeper seriousness of faith. In Bonhoeffer’s oft-quoted words: “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Cheap grace is the easy word of absolution that we speak to ourselves as a way of justifying our personal status quo and protecting ourselves against repentance and spiritual transformation. Eastern Orthodoxy is often, and rightly, presented as a way of being Christian that eschews all forms of cheap grace. With its rich ascetical and liturgical tradition Orthodoxy is that “strong medicine” that every sinner needs and yearns for, a way that offers liberation from self-bondage, not through instant magical recipes but through patient perseverance in self-denial, prayer and fasting. “There is no more ascetic feat more difficult, more painful,” Elder Sophrony states, “than the effort to draw close to God Who is love.”
But there is a danger here, and it is a real danger. I know this danger from almost thirty years of pastoral ministry—on too many occasions I found myself scolding my parishioners for their (apparent) lack of commitment. I have heard it in the homilies to which I have listened during the past eight years. I have seen it embodied in the eucharistic disciplines of traditional parishes that seek to protect the “unworthy” from the consuming fire of God. 1 Corinthians 11:27 (“Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord”) has been ripped from its pastoral context and elevated as a divine law above all grace and mercy. Somethingmore, we feel, is needed than simple faith in Christ, and inevitably this more becomes aconditioning of the grace of God. We must first become worthy and pure before God will forgive and enter into a saving communion with us.
But perhaps there is another way to think of the cheap and costly grace distinction.
“Grace is not cheap but costly,” writes Thomas F. Torrance, “costly for God and costly for man, but costly because it is unconditionally free: such is the grace by which we are justified in Christ Jesus” (“Cheap and Costly Grace,” God and Rationality, p. 56). Grace is infinitely costly to God, for it is “grace through the blood of Christ.” We are not speaking of a sentimental affection that merely affirms and accepts, excuses and blesses. The God whom we know as unconditional love is the God who has entered into the depths of our fallen reality, appropriated our sin, and borne it unto death and resurrection. Only in Christ, through his passion and sufferings and paschal victory, do we know the unmerited and unconditioned mercy of the Creator. We know it not as a philosophical principle but as a living, personal, concrete reality who is the Crucified. Grace is costly but not in the sense that we must first make ourselves “worthy” before we may receive it. The grace of God is unconditionally free. In Jesus Christ the Father “will only be grace and nothing but grace, immutably, unrelentingly, invincibly sheer grace” (p. 66). As the Apostle Paul so powerfully expressed the scandalous love of the Savior:
While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation. (Rom 5:6-11)
Christ died for the ungodly. Do you qualify? I am reminded of a story related by James Stewart about a woman who refrained from partaking of the Holy Communion because of her unworthiness. The old Scots minister wisely counsels, “Take it, lass, it’s meant for sinners!”
But we must not think that the unconditional grace of God entails no cost to us, for this grace means for us nothing less than our death and resurrection. By grace God embraces us in our sin—Christ died for the ungodly!—yet he does not leave us in our sin. He will make us fit for the kingdom of heaven. Repentance alone will not suffice. More radical surgery is needed. We need not entertain scholastic notions of created grace, yet our existential condition calls for something far more drastic, and painful, than mere change of mind. “If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Gal 2:21). The unconditionality of divine grace means that we must abandon all hopes of justifying ourselves before God. We can only renounce our egocentrism and surrender ourselves to God in faith and allow him to accomplish in us in his transformative work of redemption. To be loved by the Father is to be to be slain and raised to new life in the Son and reborn in the Spirit. “Truly, truly, I say to you,” the Savior declares, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). In the words of the Apostle: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).
And immediately the objection comes: if the love of God is truly unconditional, then we may delay conversion and simply continue in our self-will and sin. Let the status quo remain status quo. Why not exploit the grace and mercy of God? But this is not a new objection. It was raised against the teaching of Paul while he was still alive. Observe how the Apostle responds to the objection:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:1-14)
We are new beings in Christ. We have died to sin in baptism and been raised with Christ to new life. We are no longer the kind of people who seek to abide in sin (that we do so is the mystery, scandal, and challenge of our baptismal existence). What Paul does not do is to dilute the explosive radicality of his proclamation. In Christ we are free for God; our lives have been set on a new foundation. We now live in the coming kingdom.
Eastern Christians may be particularly concerned about the impact of the Pauline gospel on our commitment to the ascetical life. Why pray and fast? But why draw the inference that because God loves us unconditionally we do not need to embrace the spiritual disciplines? This is but another form of the question posed to Paul in Romans 6. The concern has some validity, given Protestantism’s historic difficulties with integrating the ascetical life into its understanding of justification by faith; but this only means that we must learn from Protestantism’s failure and read the Scriptures within the wholeness of the catholic tradition (see George Florovsky, “The Ascetic Ideal and the New Testament“). Hidden beneath the worry, I suspect, is our attachment to self-justification. Perhaps we can save ourselves through our ascetical practices and good works, we secretly hope. But asceticism and the moral life only make sense when they are understood as life in the Holy Spirit.
If you are a pastor and preacher, and no one ever accuses you of preaching antinomianism, then you are not faithfully preaching the gospel given to St Paul.
What is the solution to the desire of the baptized to continue in sin and faithlessness? The preaching of the gospel! Only the word of radical grace can liberate us from our bondage to self and creaturely goods and attach us to Jesus Christ. The gospel convicts, converts, and justifies; the gospel gives life and Holy Spirit. We are no longer slaves but sons in the Son. Christ alone justifies. Christ alone deifies.
Justification as Eschatological Existence
For in Christ Jesus the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2:9-12)
As noted in a previous article, Lucian Turcescu has proposed that Orthodoxy should explicitly integrate justification as the first step in its ordo salutis, with deification being the second and final step. I criticized Turcescu’s reduction of justification to forgiveness or reconciliation. Justification must also be simultaneously understood as regeneration into an eschatological mode of existence. I had hoped to elaborate further on this in some depth, but I realize now that I have a lot more reading to do, both on the Apostle Paul and on the Finnish Orthodox-Lutheran dialogues, about which I know very little, except what I have read in Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s excellent little book One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification. But I’d like to reflect a little bit regarding my unease with Turcescu’s proposal. It comes down to the use of the language of “process.”
On multiple occasions in his essay, Turcescu speaks of “the process of salvation.” This way of speaking, of course, is not unique to Turscescu. Just about everyone speaks this way. We speak of ascending into God. We speak of growing in the Spirit. Salvation is pictured as a movement away from sin toward holiness, ultimately consummated in theosis. Given our temporal existence, how can we not speak of process? This is the language of Scripture and the Fathers.
Yet I direct our attention to the above citation from the Apostle Paul. Right there smack dab in the middle of the process is our death, and whatever else death is, it is the end of process. In baptism we are buried with Christ Jesus. The old Adam has been crucified. The font is our tomb. And from that tomb emerges a new person who has been reborn in the Holy Spirit and united in the most intimate way with the risen Lord. The baptized now live the life of the coming kingdom; they have been given an eschatological mode of existence. This existence is not yet ours as possession. It will become so only at the general resurrection. This side of the grave, it can only be received and lived by faith.
But what does it mean to live the future life now? If we have died with Christ and been translated into the life of the kingdom, how can we speak of process? At the very least we need to recognize the oddity of our language:
What is this life that we propose to form and nurture in the Christian church? There can be only one possible answer—that life that emerges from the waters of baptism. That is the only answer that anybody has ever seriously given in the whole long history of the church. Now notice the language I used: “emerges.” For baptism is itself the casting of the old into the waters and the appearance of the new. Not just in Luther but in the whole tradition, baptism has never been understood as merely thebeginning of new life. Baptism is that ending of the old and beginning of the new which is life, and which here is the specific new life we want to nurture. … So aware of this was the New Testament church and the ancient church, that the very occurrence of any time after baptism was a problem for them: Do we not emerge straight from the water into the kingdom of God? Why this sad waste of time in between? The old life ends when I submit myself to the waters, and the new self is an eschatological self, a self in the Spirit. And this ending and this beginning, this baptism, are the life of God’s saints. So how come all that space—for most of us anyway—between the bath and the kingdom? If there is a space there, it seems one ought to move on from baptism to something else to occupy it. But what would that something else be?It is not too much to say that this question has been the tormenting question of western theological and liturgical history, the question upon which the geniuses of western civilization have beaten their heads until, as far as I am concerned, Luther answered it. What we do between baptism and the kingdom, said Luther, is not to march forward from baptism to something else but rather again and again to return to baptism—indeed, to “creep back into” it. Once it has been said, it is clear that this is the only answer Christianity can give. The only thing that one can say is to occupy the space between the bath and the kingdom, is that one lives in the bath, one returns to it. (Robert W. Jenson, “The Return to Baptism,” inEncounters with Luther: 1975-1979, pp. 217-218)
I do not know how Orthodox theologians might respond to Jenson’s construal of life after baptism as a continual return to baptism; but it’s the only answer that has made sense to me since I first encountered Jenson’s writings on the sacraments some thirty years ago. Note how Jenson’s proposal rhymes with St Paul’s use of baptism in Romans 6 & 8: the Apostle invokes the one baptism to remind his readers that because they have died with Christ and have been raised with him to new life in the Spirit, they can no longer entertain a life of sin and disobedience. Their eschatological mode of existence excludes living “according to the flesh.” The baptized are now free to live according to the Spirit.
I have wondered how Met John Zizioulas might receive Jenson’s proposal. Are there not similarities here between Jenson’s “eschatological self” and Zizioulas’s “ecclesial hypostasis” (Being as Communion, p. 56)?
St Ambrose speaks of Holy Baptism as the “sacrament of justification.” May I suggest that here is where we need to begin. Perhaps with Turcescu we may and should speak of justification as initiating the process of salvation; but this event of justification needs to be explicitly and firmly anchored in baptism and the eschatological existence that it bestows and grounds. Justification is not just a moment that happened to us in the past: to be incorporated into Christ and to share in the divine life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is to be justified. Justification is theosis.
And the question remains: What is life in the Spirit of the kingdom? In what sense may it be described as a “process”? Our baptismal life is a journey to the kingdom, yet the kingdom is rushing upon us. “The end is where we start from” (T. S. Elliot).
(Return to the first article "Eastern Orthodoxy and the Apostle Paul: Where is Justification by Faith?" Source: http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/eastern-orthodoxy-and-the-apostle-paul-where-is-justification-by-faith/ )
