The
South is a place where a lot of focus has been placed on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Since the Great Revival in the
South that started in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, this focus has tended to
be framed by the idea of a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus Christ. But there is a problem with this. Yes, the Lord Jesus did take on human flesh
and condescends to our weaknesses, but to restrict our relations with Christ to
fallen human limitations, turning Him into something like a cosmic best buddy,
is a tragic error.
We
see this limiting of our relations in the writings of various Protestant
Evangelicals. Joyce Meyer gives a good
ensample:
God wants to be involved
in everything we do. He wants us to fellowship with Him, which means
communicating with Him throughout our day just like we do with someone who's
our close friend or family member.
Knowing God loves us, loving Him, spending time with Him, and being grateful
for what He's done and is doing in our lives can help us have a real
relationship with Him.
But
we were not made for external relationships with God, mankind, or the
creation. We were made for union with
all of them. The hardened boundaries
between ourselves and the things around us and God are a result of the fall. It will not be like this in the age to
come. We get a foretaste of it now in the
sacramental life of the Orthodox Church, and also in true prayer when men and
women unite all things in the heart, the spiritual center of human beings
(which prayer, it must be said, cannot be separated from the ascetical,
liturgical, sacramental life of the Church).
On
union with Christ our Lord, which is the fullest potential of our ‘personal
relationship’ with Him, here are some words from the Orthodox pastor,
Archbishop Chrysostomos:
. . .
Keeping in mind these
general principles with regard to the source of genuine theology (empirical theology),
let us examine what St. Gregory Palamas says about the person. To begin with,
we must say something about the Orthodox understanding of man. Man exists both
in essence and in hypostasis (and the word hypostasis is one
which Palamas seems to prefer over the word person, having drawn much of his
language in this regard from both St. Basil the Great and St. John of
Damascus). The essence of man (bear in mind that this word derives
ultimately from the verb to be, as Metropolitan Ierotheos reminds us) describes
his state of being, which he shares with all others. His hypostasis (person),
however, is that which distinguishes him from others. (Needless to say, one
should not naïvely confuse the terms used here in describing the human being
with the Hypostasis and Essence of God, which have wholly different
meanings and which apply to God alone. The Essence of God is ineffable; and the
Hypostasis of God is uncreated, while that of man is created.)
The human person is
the hypostatic manifestation of the human essence, the realization of who
a human being is as an individual: being, again, common in his essence but
individual in his hypostasis or person, as St. Gregory Palamas affirms.
It is primarily the human person to which the therapeutic and salvific methods
of Hesychasm, as the spiritual teachings of Palamas are called, are directed.
The cleaning and enlightenment of the individual human mind, the purification
of the human heart, and the restoration of the passions (which have been
misdirected and perverted, as a result of the Fall) constitute the Hesychastic
way of life. And the way of life that effects these things leads to the
restoration of the individual, the human person, who freely turns from a
life of sin to one of synergy with God. In short, one can say, though risking
theological difficulties in overstating this point, that the restoration of the
human being in Christ centers on the person, on the restoration of the
person, and on the cure of the process of disease which separates the
individual from the full realization of his potential in Christ.
In the purest
anthropology of the Fathers, expressed perfectly in the Hesychastic teachings
of St. Gregory Palamas, we come to understand that the essence of man, his
being, has been restored through the divinization of human nature by the
Incarnation of Christ, Who, in His Resurrection, lifted human existence above
what it was even before the Fall. The personal salvation of the human being
lies in his free acceptance of the potential for restoration in Christ, his
ascetic struggle to free himself from the taint and illness of sin, and his
restoration of the human person, his hypostasis, through the vision of
God. And this vision of God, according to St. Gregory Palamas, is communion
with God, the divinization of the human person (theosis), and his union
in energy with Christ. In this divinization by Grace, man comes to an intimate
knowledge of God. His mind cleansed and enlightened, his heart purified, and
his passions cleansed and directed towards the love and attainment of holiness,
man finds salvation.
And once more, this
salvation is personal, centered on the distinct human being who draws on
his essence—renewed in Christ—and who, in his person, becomes a small Jesus
Christ within Jesus Christ, to quote one Church Father. So it is that Jesus
Christ is our personal Lord and our Savior. In this profound sense of the
personal, and in an apocalyptic encounter with redemption (for salvation is
closely united to spiritual vision and to the noetic revelation and knowledge
of God), we find, through experience, what the more fundamentalistic
Protestant Evangelicals understand only in empty form. We know through the
attainment of true personhood in Christ, which is the enlightenment or
salvation of man, what these seekers know only intellectually and in terms of a
theology of affirmation and commitment crippled by the unrestored senses and
passions.
It behooves me to
note, here, that God transcends all human categories of thought, all human
conceptualization, and even our understanding of His existence. The personal
experience of the redemption of Christ, therefore, occurs beyond the dimensions
of the human intellect, as I said above, since the true encounter with Christ
is an encounter with God Himself. This encounter is the result of our union
with God's Energies, and thus occurs noetically and spiritually, through the
mind made new in Christ, the heart transformed by Grace, and the person
restored to the image of God in union, by Grace, with the God-Man. Divine
vision is, in effect, vision beyond vision, just as personhood in Christ is
beyond the personal as we understand it, since the fallen personality is not a
true person, but the product of passions and fallen proclivities.
In conclusion, I
should emphasize that the therapeutic path towards the restoration of
personhood in Christ is, and must be, focused, of course, on the life of
the Mysteries, which are the very life of the Church and which cannot be
separated from the Church in any manner whatsoever: among other things, the
emptying-out (kenosis) of sin through confession and the infusion into our
hearts, joints, and reins of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy
Eucharist. The spiritual faculty of man, the noetic faculty, having been
displaced from its natural place in the heart, as St. Gregory Palamas teaches
us, must be brought back into the heart, back to its natural place, so that the
human person can be restored and, cleansed by the Mysteries, rise above his own
nature, attaining what is above nature, transcending human nature through union
with Christ. As a result of this, the human being transcends even his own
person, his restoration in Christ touching on all mankind. Gaining the gifts of
the Spirit, he sees all things clearly, not only for himself, as St. Gregory
writes, but revealing what he sees to others, and thus helping them to gain
their salvation through the vision of God.6 In this sense, Christ is not only
our personal Lord and Savior, but He is also the Universal Person, Who renews
us each individually and, so made manifest in us, reveals to us a far greater
dimension of personal salvation than we can imagine.
One
other note on the Evangelical view of the personal relationship with God: It is opposed to the apostolic command to
practice asceticism, to the idea that we must war against our corrupted
passions, in order to prepare ourselves for union with Christ and to be able to
live a holy life. Quoting again from the
same Joyce Meyer article as above:
When we have a real
relationship with God through Christ, life gets exciting because He stirs up a
passion inside us to love people—and we don't have to struggle to do the things
He calls us to do. It just happens naturally.
The
importance of the differing approaches has been touched on by the Archbishop
above and will be seen again in the passage from St Symeon below.
The
iconography of both Evangelicals and Orthodox illustrates well the points we
have been discussing.
On
the Evangelical side, this expresses their ideas of personal relationship very
well, the ‘Jesus as a good buddy/close friend’ teaching, where the divinity of
Christ is swallowed up by his humanity:
The
Orthodox Church, as we said above, also emphasizes the true humanity, the
approachableness of Christ:
But
she does not lose sight of the fact that He is, in addition to being perfect
man, also perfect God. Therefore, a fully
realized ‘relationship’ (if that word must be used) with Christ will take place
on a different plane of existence than the interpersonal relationships fallen
human beings are accustomed to. The Lord
Jesus is more than just a supernatural best friend Who hugs us and gives us
emotional support. He gives us life and
knowledge of Himself and etc. by our union with His resurrected, glorified, and
ascended Body through holy baptism:
The
journey toward full union with Christ is expressed beautifully by one of the
Orthodox Church’s great saints, Symeon the New Theologian (+1022). In his account, one will see something of the
poverty of the usual Evangelical Protestant approach to the Christian life:
A man by
the name of George, young in age - he was about twenty - was living in
Constantinople during our own times. He was good-looking, and so studied in
dress, manners and gait, that some of those who take note only of outer
appearances and harshly judge the behavior of others began to harbor malicious
suspicions about him. This young man, then, made the acquaintance of a holy
monk who lived in one of the monasteries in the city; and to him he opened his
soul and from him he received a short rule which he had to keep in mind. He
also asked him for a book giving an account of the ways of monks and their
ascetic practices; so the elder gave him the work of Mark the Monk, On
the Spiritual Law. This the young man accepted as though
it had been sent by God Himself, and in the expectation that he would reap
richly from it he read it from end to end with eagerness and attention. And though
he benefited from the whole work, there were three passages only which he fixed
in his heart.
The first
of these three passages read as follows: 'If you desire spiritual health,
listen to your conscience, do all it tells you, and you will benefit.' The
second passage read: 'He who seeks the energies of the Holy Spirit before he
has actively observed the commandments is like someone who sells himself into
slavery and who, as soon as he is bought, asks to be given his freedom while
still keeping his purchase-money.' And the third passage said the following:
'Blind is the man crying out and saying: "Son of David, have mercy upon
me" (Luke 18:38). He prays with his body alone, and not yet with spiritual
knowledge. But when the man once blind received his sight and saw the Lord, he
acknowledged Him no longer as the Son of David but as the Son of God, and
worshipped Him' (cf. John 9:38).
On reading
these three passages the young man was struck with awe and fully believed that
if he examined his conscience he would benefit, that if he practiced the
commandments he would experience the energy of the Holy Spirit, and that
through the grace of the Holy Spirit he would recover his spiritual vision and
would see the Lord. Wounded thus with love and desire for the Lord, he
expectantly sought His primal beauty, however hidden it might be. And, he
assured me, he did nothing else except carry out every evening, before he went
to bed, the short rule given to him by the holy elder. When his conscience told
him, 'Make more prostrations, recite additional psalms, and repeat "Lord,
have mercy" more often, for you can do so', he readily and unhesitatingly
obeyed, and did everything as though asked to do it by God Himself. And from
that time on he never went to bed with his conscience reproaching him and
saying, 'Why have you not done this?’ Thus, as he followed it scrupulously, and
as daily it increased its demands, in a few days he had greatly added to his
evening office.
During the
day he was in charge of a patrician's household and each day he went to the
palace, engaging in the tasks demanded by such a life, so that no one was aware
of his other pursuits. Every evening tears flowed from his eyes, he multiplied
the prostrations he made with his face to the ground, his feet together and
rooted to the spot on which he stood. He prayed assiduously to the Mother of
God with sighs and tears, and as though the Lord was physically present he fell
at His most pure feet, while like the blind man he besought mercy and asked
that the eyes of his soul should be opened. As his prayers lasted longer every
evening, he continued in this way until midnight, never growing slack or
indolent during this period, his whole body under control, not moving his eyes
or looking up. He stood still as a statue or a bodiless spirit.
One day, as
he stood repeating more in his intellect [not the discursive reason but the
nous, the faculty that allows us to have unmediated apprehension of God--W.G.]
than with his mouth the words, 'God, have mercy upon me, a sinner' (Luke
18:13), suddenly a profuse flood of divine light appeared above him and filled
the whole room. As this happened the young man lost his bearings, forgetting
whether he was in a house or under a roof; for he saw nothing but light around
him and did not even know that he stood upon the earth. He had no fear of
falling, or awareness of the world, nor did any of those things that beset men
and bodily beings enter his mind. Instead he was wholly united to non-material
light, so much so that it seemed to him that he himself had been transformed
into light. Oblivious of all else, he was filled with tears and with
inexpressible joy and gladness. Then his intellect ascended to heaven and
beheld another light, more lucid than the first. Miraculously there appeared to
him, standing close to that light, the holy, angelic elder of whom we have
spoken and who had given him the short rule and the book.
When I
heard this story, I thought how greatly the intercession of this saint had
helped the young man, and how God had chosen to show him to what heights of
virtue the holy man had attained.
When this
vision was over and the young man, as he told me, had come back to himself, he
was struck with joy and amazement. He wept with all his heart, and sweetness
mingled with his tears. Finally he fell on his bed, and at that moment the cock
crowed, announcing the middle of the night. Shortly after the church bells rang
for matins and he got up as usual to chant the office, not having had a thought
of sleep during the whole night.
As God
knows - for He brings things about according to decisions of which He alone is
aware - all this happened without the young man having done anything more than
you have heard. But what he did he did with true faith and unhesitating expectation.
And let it not be said that he did these things by way of an experiment, for he
had never spoken or thought of acting in such a spirit. Indeed, to make
experiments and to try things out is evidence of a lack of faith. On the
contrary, after rejecting every passion charged and self-indulgent thought this
young man, as he himself assured me, paid such attention to what his conscience
said that he regarded all material things of life with indifference, and did
not even find pleasure in food and drink, or want to partake of them
frequently.
As
confused and materialistic as Southerners have become in recent decades, there
still remains a strong desire among many of them to find Christ. The true Christ is waiting for them in the
Orthodox Church.
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
