6. Is Spirituality Enough? Differing Models for Living
Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants have significantly different approaches to spirituality—that is, the way we live out our faith commitment. In evangelical perspective, our works of piety and mercy do not merit final salvation (as in the Catholic view). Rather, they bear witness to a salvation already realized and perfected in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Though the Reformers rediscovered the message of salvation by free grace, their movement resulted in a rent in the Body of Christ. Today we need to build bridges wherever possible, hoping and praying that the unity we already have in Jesus Christ might be made visible to the unbelieving world.
ESSAY 6
IS SPIRITUALITY ENOUGH?
Differing Models for Living
Donald G. Bloesch
Whereas evangelical Protestantism tends to uphold a theology of the Word of God, the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have generally gravitated toward a theology of the spiritual life. Evangelicals in the Reformation tradition do not ignore spirituality but always subordinate it to God’s self-revelation in Christ attested in Holy Scripture. Their emphasis is on God’s unmerited grace rather than on the human response in spiritual exercises. Spirituality did, however, become an important part of the theological agenda in the spiritual movements of purification after the Reformation— Pietism and Puritanism—though the priority of God’s act of redeeming grace in Christ was never lost sight of, except in radical Pietism.
Spirituality in the Christian sense is the way we live out our vocation under the cross of Christ. Its principal concern is with the Christian life (praxis) rather than with doctrine (logos). Ideally, praxis and logos are held together in a dynamic tension, but often the paradoxical unity of these dimensions of Christian existence is sundered, one side being emphasized to the detriment of the other.
TYRES OF SPIRITUALITY
The role of spirituality in Christian life and thought will become more evident when seen against the background of a comparative analysis of various types of spirituality.1 Each type has appeared in Christian history and therefore warrants critical examination.
Primitive, or animistic, spirituality is oriented toward gaining the blessing of the gods to ensure worldly security and happiness. The sacred is reduced to an impersonal force (manna) transmitted through holy objects (fetishism) and mediated through seers or shamans that make contact with the higher spirits through ecstasy (shamanism). Magic always plays a pivotal role in the primitive worldview: the goal is to manipulate and control the divine power for one’s own ends. Prayer takes the form of pleading, even cajoling the divine power or powers in order to gain special favors.
Ritualistic spirituality is a more advanced stage of spiritual development in that spiritual relationships are lived out in the context of an ordered community. Grace is regarded as an energy or fluid that can be imparted through the rites of the ecclesiastical institution.2 Sacraments are important in ritualism because they mediate grace through visible signs that are more or less under the control of a priestly elite. Prayer is reduced to incantations that often take the form of vain repetition. The spontaneity so evident in primitive religion is superseded by officially sanctioned forms that ensure the continuity and survival of the religious tradition.
Rational, or philosophical, spirituality often indicates a reaction on the part of sophisticated intellectuals against the na'ivet6 of direct relations with a personal god or gods. Religion is purged of anthropomorphism and made to center in transcendental ideals or ideas that can guide one in ethical living. God is no longer a personal spirit but a universal principle, like the Idea of the Good, or a distant Creator conceived of as the Architect of the Universe. Prayer is reflection on the beneficence of the world order or on the mystery and wonder of nature. We penetrate the realm of spirit by rational thought rather than through prescribed ritual or methodical discipline.
Friedrich Heiler saw the two highest types of spirituality as the mystical and the nrophetic, since they enable the human spirit to ascend beyond the rituals and formulas of human contrivance to a direct relationship with the Unseen.3 Heiler was speaking as a phenomenologist of religion, but as a theologian I too see an advance in spirituality in these two types of devotion because they resonate more fully with the biblical world-and-life view.
Mysticism is a type of religion not confined to Christianity, for it appears in all the higher world religions. Its hallmark is an immediate or direct experience of the Eternal that gives meaning and direction to human life. This experience is ineffable, eluding all attempts to conceptualize it. The God who is experienced is unnameable, for he is far greater and deeper than all our feeble attempts to define him. The God of mysticism cannot be mastered or controlled (unlike the deities in primitive and ritualistic religion). We can gain access to him, however, not by prescribed ritual or rational thought but by allowing ourselves to be grasped by the Infinite who surrounds and upholds us. Or we make contact with the divine by entering into the depths of the soul and finding the point of identity between the self and God.
Christian mysticism draws upon Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Orphism as well as upon the Bible and church tradition. The result is that biblical themes are often subordinated to Hellenistic ones. God is generally rendered suprapersonal or impersonal; prayer is no longer entreaty but now ecstatic union with the ground and abyss of all being.4
Prophetic religion, which inspired the great prophers of monotheistic faiths, is oriented toward a divine revelation in history and is characterized by structured spontaneity in which prayer and devotion break through all prescribed forms. Its focus is not on the human ascent to God as the pinnacle of perfection but on the descent of God to the human condition (and this is especially true of biblical religion). Prayer becomes the pouring out of the soul before God, not with the intent of imposing our will upon God (as in primitive religion) but in order to bring our will into conformity with God’s. Prayer may take the form of wrestling with God, but only for the purpose of discovering His will more fully. Prophetic religion is more cerebral than mystical religion, centering on a revelation that is communicated by words and concepts, even though it can never be fully assimilated except in the power of the Spirit. In prophetic religion we meet God in a divine-human encounter (in which God takes the initiative) rather than in a state of religious ecstasy or in the awe engendered by ritual performance.
A particular challenge to prophetic spirituality on the contemporary scene is the resurgence of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, which constituted one of the principal threats to the gospel in the early church.5 Gnostic spirituality is characterized by a world-denying stance far more radical than that found in Neoplatonism. The goal is to disengage ourselves from the created or material order for the purpose of rediscovering the uncreated element within humanity that links us with the divine. We find God not by His self-condescension to our condition (as in biblical, prophetic religion) nor by the power of love that takes us beyond concepts (as in Christian mysticism) but by knowledge (gnosis), which is none other than self-understanding; the infinite God remains essentially unknowable.
Gnosticism might be regarded as an exaggerated or aberrant form of mysticism that highlights the discontinuity between God and the created order. Human life is portrayed as a falling away from an earlier state of perfection. Whereas mysticism tends to be monistic in its attempt to break through appearance to an all-encompassing reality, Gnosticism is dualistic, underlining the cleavage between the realm of spirit and the realm of matter. Matter does not lead to spirit (as in Platonism) but constitutes an insuperable obstacle to spirit and must therefore be overcome. In some current forms of Gnosticism the cleavage is between a diseased or oppressive society and an enlightened consciousness that can be realized only through arduous discipline, sometimes involving training under a spiritual master.
Another type of spirituality, nomism, focuses on obedience to moral precepts rather than witnessing to a definitive revelation in history. Nomism tends toward legalism, which often goes hand in hand with ritualism. The legalistic mentality can appear in both mystical and prophetic religion, and evangelical Christianity has generally been alert to the intrusion of this alien spirit into the ethos of the gospel.
CATHOLICISM AND HELLENISM
Both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy arc heavily indebted to classical thought and spirituality, from which they derived the conceptual tools and creative insights to implant Christianity firmly in the soil of the ancient world. At their best they sought to baptize pagan concepts into the service of the gospel; at their worst they accommodated the biblical vision to a worldview that contradicted gospel spirituality. Reinhold Niebuhr observed that in endeavoring to relate the personal-dramatic categories of biblical faith to the ontological categories of Greek philosophy, the church fathers frequently sacrificed the former to the latter.6 The biblical-classical synthesis, which was motivated primarily by an apologetic attempt to make the faith credible to its cultured despisers, often ended in compromising the integrity of the biblical message. Some prescient theologians in the ancient world warned against any accommodation to cultural thought in the proclamation of the gospel, but even some of the heroes of the faith—such as Ter-tullian and Athanasius—were unable to disengage themselves completely from the classical worldview.7
Catholic and Orthodox spiritualities have been shaped by an often well-meaning attempt to penetrate the mind of the ancient world by finding common ground with classical philosophy, especially Platonism and Neoplatonism. Roman Catholic scholars such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Eastern Orthodox scholars such as John Meyendorff have duly recognized the Platonic and Stoic intrusion into the thought world of the patristic fathers and have sought to combat it.8 It is this apologetic accommodation of faith to cultural philosophy that resulted in the imbalances in faith and practice that were partially redressed in the Protestant Reformation.
Christian mysticism has proved to be a reservoir of spiritual insight throughout Christian histoiy and has made a lasting impact on Protestant evangelical, as well as Catholic, devotion. \fet too often its claims and goals stand in tension, if not contradiction, with those of biblical personalism. The result is that faith loses its cutting edge and the gospel is transposed into instruction for daily living or a formula for self-realization. Christ becomes the paradigm of creative spirituality rather than the Redeemer who liberates us from the compulsion to make ourselves spiritual or worthy in the sight of God. The mystical tradition in the church has highlighted the importance of manuals of devotion and exercises that strengthen one in the spiritual life, but often to the point of making them a pathway to salvation itself rather than a witness and sign of a salvation already accomplished for us by Jesus Christ in His sacrificial life and death on a cross and by His glorious resurrection from the dead.
In its attempt to come to terms with Hellenism, Catholicism was prone to sacrifice the almost anthropomorphic God of biblical religion for the impersonal or suprapersonal God of mysticism and Platonism. God was depicted as the actus purus (a concept derived from Aristotle)—pure actuality in which all potentiality is realized in the perfection of the tidiness of being. The problem is that, if all possibilities are already realized in God, can God relate meaningtidly to the changing order of creation and history?9 For the fathers and doctors of the Catholic Church, God is ever-willing—but does not God also have the freedom not to will? In Neoplatonism God’s goodness necessarily overflows from His being—but does not God have the freedom to withhold His goodness, to withdraw His presence from His creation? The fathers of the church were adamant that God creates freely, but they too readily defined God’s goodness in terms of creativity or productivity rather than love for a sinful humanity.10 Aristotle’s God was the unmoved mover who moved the world toward him by the sheer force of his ineffable beauty. The biblical God is not One who transcends the world in sublime detachment but One who is actively engaged in the affairs of the world, who seeks and saves those who are lost. The God of Platonism and mysticism was the self-sufficient Absolute, the summit of all perfection, who remains unaffected by the sin and misery of the human creation. The God of the Bible is a God who freely relates Himself to His creation and condescends to share in the trials and agonies of His people. The God of mysticism is immutable and impassible; the God of biblical religion makes Himself vulnerable to the pain and lostness of His people. The God of mysticism is always at rest (Deus semper quietus)·, the God of biblical religion is ever active (Deus per agens).11
The biblical God is indeed unchanging in the integrity of His being and in His will and purpose for humankind, but He freely chooses to alter the ways by which He realizes His purposes for His people. He is essentially independent of His creation, but He makes Himself dependent on the way in which His creation responds to His love and beneficence. He is transcendent over His creation, but He makes Himself immanent in His creation so that He can be immediately available for His people.
Though the church fathers and theologians of the medieval church spoke much of the love of God, their concept of love proved to be much closer to the eros of Hellenistic philosophy than to the agape of the New Testament. Anders Nygren has shown in his ground-breaking Agape and Eros that a tacit and sometimes conscious attempt was made to harmonize these two opposing concepts, and the biblical idea was consequently diluted or lost altogether.12 Eros is the self-seeking love of human desire that aspires to union with God as the summit of perfection. Agape is the self-sacrificing, other-regarding love best epitomized in God’s descent to sinful humanity in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Eros moves from poverty to riches, whereas agape moves from riches to poverty. Eros is an ascending love that leaves the world in its sin and misery behind; agape is a descending and out-going love that glorifies God by taking us into the dereliction of our neighbor in need.
Augustine’s caritas represented a Mend of eras and agape, but eros emerged as more significant. Augustine did make a prominent place for the downward movement of God’s grace to the world, but the purpose of this grace was to assist mortals in their ascent and elevation to God. A salient theme in his theology was the mystical ladder to heaven, which we ascend with the aid of grace but which is also the condition for receiving eternal glory.13 Interestingly Luther also used ladder imagery but to illustrate or convey the means by which God descends to our level in Jesus Christ.
Among the church fathers the model of salvation was deification or divinization (theosis) rather than justification (as with Paul and the Reformers).14 The purpose of the Incarnation was said to be the divinization of redeemed humanity—transfiguration in the likeness of God. Through the grace of God we are made partakers of the divine nature.15 We have an important role in cooperating with the grace of God in order to facilitate our divinization, which is fully realized at the time of death when mortality puts on immortality. Divinization was a prominent theme of the Greek fathers, though it also entered the Latin church and has become part of the Christian mystical tradition. The idea of divinization ultimately derives from Plato and Neoplatonists, who interpreted salvation as basically the assimilation of the soul to God.16 The church fathers made a place for grace in the divinizing process but ignored or downplayed the biblical theme of salvation by the external righteousness of God—the holiness of Jesus Christ that justifies us while we are still in our sins. Moreover, they gave insufficient recognition to the fact that our union with Christ is realized solely in the gift of faith, not at the end of a long process of spiritual purification.
The fathers and doctors of the church also adopted the classical ideal of happiness (eudaimonia) as the goal of human endeavor. In Plato and Aristotle eudaimonia is achieved through the subordination of the senses to reason, which results in wholeness in being and personality. For the fathers eudaimonia is possible only through union with Christ—the result of faith working through love. The well-ordered soul is the transfigured soul, the soul transformed or divinized by the grace of God. The theologians of Catholicism and Orthodoxy broke with Platonism in stressing the priority of grace in Christian experience, but they continued to accept the egocentric ideal of happiness as the goal of the Christian life. In the biblical vision happiness is a by-product or consequence of a still higher goal—to give glory to God alone through service to our neighbor in need.
Catholic theology for the most part remained true to the Bible by seeing the tragic flaw as sin, not error or ignorance (as in the classical tradition). Yet in explaining the origin of sin, theologians tended to view it in ontological terms—as a privation of being—rather than in historical terms—as a conscious and deliberate rebellion of the human creation against God. Sin becomes separation from undivided unity with God (as in Platonism and Neoplatonism) rather than willful transgression of a known law of God. Salvation becomes reunion with God rather than the unmerited forgiveness of sins. It was not a matter of either/or, since Catholic theology held to both these conceptions, but it seemed that the mystical understanding time and again overshadowed the biblical understanding.17 Catholicism was tempted not only by mysticism but also by ritualism. The sacrament of Penance reflected a legalistic view of sin in which satisfaction of law was supremely important.18
In both Eastern and Western branches of the church the Christian life was by and large articulated in mystical terminology. The stages of the mystical ascent to God—purgation, illumination, union, ecstasy—were spelled out by the Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus and transmitted to the church by Dionysius, the pseudo-Areopagite (ca. 500). In this schema the gift of illumination and the final gift of contemplative union with God are contingent on the struggle of the soul to purge itself of sin and to prepare itself for the visitation of God’s Spirit. In Catholic orthodoxy prevenient grace is necessary to begin the salvific process, but the whole of the Christian life is seen as a mystical ascent or return of the soul to union with God. Salvation is not God’s declaration of undeserved righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ but the outcome of a long process of purification and illumination in which the soul prepares itself for final union with God. One part of the church believed that even before grace reaches us we can do what lies within our power (facere quod in se est) and thereby dispose ourselves to receive grace.19 The Thomistic tradition contended for the priority of grace even at the beginning of the salvific process but held that on the basis of grace we can merit an increase of grace and finally eternal life itself. This position was formally articulated and approved by the Council of Trent (1563), which saw justification as a cooperative endeavor between God and the sinner in which we are enabled to move toward final salvation by the graces available to us in the sacraments. These graces spur us on to good deeds that have meritorious value in God’s sight.20
Prayer in the mystical type of religion is basically meditation and contemplation. Catholic theologians, such as Augustine, also made a place for petition but regarded petition as a lower grade of prayer. Petition is for beginners in the faith; as we progress toward mystical union with God we put petition behind us in order to contemplate the infinite God in His incandescent glory. In contemplation we are emptied of self and taken up into God. Silence is necessary, especially for the higher types of prayer, since union with God requires detachment from the world of things. In silence we seek to get beyond the historical Jesus, even beyond all concepts and images, into unity with the abyss and ground of all being. Christian mystics prize mental prayer over vocal prayer. Angelus Silesius concluded, “We cannot speak of God, He is beyond compare. And so we can adore Him best with silent prayer. ”21 Indeed, “so far beyond all words is He, I know no other way than not to speak. Thus without words I pray.”22 For Plotinus prayer was “the flight of the alone to the Alone.” By contrast, in evangelical, biblical spirituality prayer is calling on the name of God, who is never alone but coexists in fellowship within Himself as a holy Trinity and wills to establish fellowship with all of His people.
In fairness to the Christian mystics one should acknowledge that they were often inconsistent and that their biblical faith persisted despite the Neoplatonic terminology they drew upon to clarify their faith. While cherishing the ideal of contemplative prayer, the great saints of Catholic and Orthodox mysticism also recommended prayer in the realistic or naive sense—talking with God and asking for His aid and guidance. The contemplative state was never something permanent, and the unmediated vision of God was generally something in the future—to be attained beyond the veil of death. Similarly, whereas their goal was uninterrupted union with God, the mystics in their practical advice and in their own lives often exemplified self-giving love in their relations to other people. When critiquing the Neoplatonic framework in which they articulated their faith, we need to bear in mind that we as evangelical Protestants also necessarily draw upon some philosophical system, whether it be that of Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, White-head, or some other exemplar of cultural wisdom. The important thing to keep in mind is that the gospel must be allowed to stand as a judge over all philosophical concepts and images. Philosophy can be used as a tool of faith, but it must never become its master. Otherwise we risk falling into a new synthesis between faith and cultural thought that subverts rather than enhances the unique claims of biblical faith.
GAINS AND LOSSES IN THE REFORMATION
The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century signified more than a theological correction. It was none other than a spiritual revolution, posing a direct challenge to the mystical and ritualistic spirituality pervasive in Roman Catholicism from the early centuries on. Whereas Catholic spirituality had focused on making satisfaction to pay debts incurred by sins after baptism, evangelical Protestant spirituality emphasized unconditional grace that brings us out of bondage to live a life of freedom and purpose in service to a broken and lost humanity. For the Reformers the Christian no longer needs to suffer penalties for sin, since the supreme penalty has already been borne by Jesus Christ, but we still have to undergo disciplines that equip us for kingdom service. Whereas mysticism placed the emphasis on purification leading to illumination and union, Luther and Calvin contended that faith itself unites us with Christ, and works of purification follow rather than precede faith. The right order is not purification, illumination, and then union, but faith, repentance, and then service. In place of the Catholic mystical understanding of the Christian life as the stairway of the saints or the ladder to heaven, Reformation theology stressed the descent of God to the sinful human condition. It was the difference between a spirituality based on eros, self-regarding love, and one based on agape, the sacrificial, paradoxical love of the cross. The fulcrum of spirituality in Reformation perspective was no longer desire for union with God and possession of the greatest good but readiness to serve wherever God may call, even if this entails placing our spiritual status before God in jeopardy (cf. Exodus 32:32; Romans 9:3).
The Reformers stoutly challenged the Catholic conception that sinful humanity can prepare the way for justification, though always with the assistance of grace. Late medieval theology taught that even apart from prior grace works of contrition can merit justifying grace, albeit only in a loose sense. William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel spoke of merits de congruo, meaning that we can do works that may induce God’s favor, so long as they are done in sincerity and so long as we do what in us lies.23 Merit in the strict sense—works that truly deserve God’s favor (de condigno)—is not possible apart from His assisting grace. The Council of Trent held that works before justifying grace cannot merit grace, but after justifying grace we can merit final justification (i.e., eternal life) through cooperating with grace. The Protestant Reformation challenged this whole legalistic schema by contending that no Christian can merit God’s favor. Base motivations always accompany godly motivations and thereby render us unworthy in the sight of God on the basis of our own goodness. We can do works that are pleasing to God when these works are inspired by faith in Christ’s righteousness, which covers our sinfulness and so makes us acceptable before God.
The Protestant Reformers warned against relativizing the absolute, against confounding the finite and the infinite. The church cannot dispense grace, only receive it. It cannot guarantee the trustworthiness of the biblical revelation, only acknowledge it. The body and blood of Christ are not contained in the sacrament but mediated through the sacrament by the free action of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a magical force or substance that can be controlled by the church or its clerics but the power and action of a personal, living God who disciplines and chastises a church that arrogates power to itself. Glory is to be given not to the church, not to the pope, not to the saints, not to the bread and wine in Holy Communion but only to God (soli Deo Gloria). The Reformation signaled the triumph of prophetic spirituality over both mystical and ritualistic spirituality.
Another emphasis of the Reformers was the primacy of Holy Scripture over both church tradition and religious experience. But this was not Scripture as a book in the power of the church but Scripture as the sword of the Spirit of God who judges and renews the church. The Reformation criterion was Scripture in its paradoxical unity with the Spirit, who inspired its words and continues to speak through its witness, calling the church to renewal and repentance.24
Although the mainline Reformation retained the sacraments as instruments that the Spirit uses to strengthen faith, its real sacrament was the preaching of the Word. Preaching was no longer a moral homily (often brief and only tangentially related to Scripture) introducing the sacrifice of the Mass but the faithful proclamation of the gospel and the law, convicting people of sin and driving them to repentance. The sacraments have no efficacy unless they are grounded in the Word, and the service of worship is defective unless it is centered in the Word.
In their doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, the Reformers challenged the clericalism of the church, which viewed the priest as a mediator between God and the congregation. Every Christian, they claimed, can go directly to God through Christ and can and must intercede for the whole company of the saints.25 Moreover, every Christian is called to full-time kingdom service. Even in the midst of secular and household duties we can fulfill our holy vocation of being ambassadors and heralds of the gospel. The Reformers contradicted the prevalent Catholic conception that the religious life is a surer road to perfection than the secular life, that those who place themselves under the counsels of celibacy, poverty, and obedience exemplify the ideal of discipleship under the cross. The religious life is no more meritorious than the secular life and may actually foster the illusion that we can get closer to God through prescribed spiritual exercises than through the toil and hardship of daily life in the world. The universal call to sanctity and discipleship has been affirmed in Vatican II, a sign that the wind of the Spirit is still blowing in the ancient church of Christendom.26
It has been fashionable in evangelical Protestantism to regard the Reformation church as the true church of Christ and the Roman Catholic church as the false church. A more biblical stance is to see one holy and apostolic church irremediably fractured by the Reformation. Both separated churches now fall short of the fullness of truth that characterizes the invisible church—the holy catholic church that crosses all denominational lines. Jaroslav Pelikan rightly described the Reformation as a tragic necessity, and this is how we should view it today, especially in light of the continued fragmentation of Protestantism and the erosion of its biblical moorings.27 It was necessary because the theology of works-righteousness that had permeated the life and thought of the church had to be reversed. It was tragic because it split the church in two, and the wounds left from this schism continue to fester. Augustine wisely observed that when Christians are separated from one another their perception of the truth is dimmed. The key to apprehending the truth of the mystery of divine revelation is to be found in the unity of the churches, and yet paradoxically this unity can come only on the basis of a fresh apprehension of truth given by the Spirit of God. The key to both truth and unity therefore lies in a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the church. Yet we must do more than simply wait and pray. We must work actively to overcome the obstacles that divide Christendom, and we must do so in a spirit of love as well as in a spirit of zeal for the truth.
The Reformation brought about solid gains in both theology and spirituality: it highlighted themes that had fallen into partial eclipse—the absolute priority of grace over works (sola gratia), the centrality of the cross in accomplishing the salvation of believing humanity (solus Christus), and the cruciality of personal faith in receiving the grace of justification (sola fide). It also made the Bible central again in the lives of the laity, for whom the Bible was largely inaccessible, since the oily versions generally available were in Latin.
Appreciation of these facts should not, however, prevent us from recognizing that there were also losses in the Reformation—more conspicuous in the children of the Reformation than in the Reformers themselves. One of these was the diminished perception of the divinity of the church. In the new ethos engendered by the Reformation the church came to be conceived as an assembly of like-minded individuals who gather to hear the Word and have fellowship with one another. The church as the mystical body of Christ, the mother of the faithful in whose womb we are borne into the kingdom, belonged to a discarded heritage. The sacraments were reduced to ethical ordinances, no longer means of grace. Worship came to be centered exclusively in the written and proclaimed Word, and the visible Word became an appendage to the service of worship rather than its fulfillment (as in Luther and Calvin).
The Reformers sounded the call to universal discipleship, but in the process special forms of discipleship, such as religious orders, disappeared in the life of the Reformed churches. Monasticism had to be opposed because of its infiltration by a theology of works-righteousness, but the idea of separated communities performing special services to the wider church is not in itself un-biWical and may be necessary in certain periods of the life of the church. Marriage was endorsed over celibacy, but as a result the vocation to celibacy, which is solidly based in the New Testament, was denied or downplayed.
The Reformers rightly protested against the veneration of the saints and the adoration of Mary, glaringly apparent in popular Catholic devotion, though only the worship of the Triune God was officially sanctioned by the church. At the same time, they lost sight of the biblical truth that the church always stands in need of models of holiness that can guide the Christian in the way of truth and righteousness. All Christians, to be sure, are saints, but only some become great saints—not through their own endeavors and merits but by being specially chosen by God to be public signs and witnesses of the truth of the gospel in a particular time and place. Mary as the mother of Christ was respected in Reformation theology, but Mary is no longer called Messed in every generation in the churches of the Reformation (cf. Luke 1:48).
Finally, the Reformers frowned upon ascetic disciplines chiefly because the Catholic church treated them as meritorious, but as a result the very idea of spiritual disciplines to equip us for the rigors of Christian service fell by the wayside. An interest in the disciplines of the spiritual life revived in the Pietist and Puritan movements of spiritual purification after the Reformation, but in modern evangelicalism asceticism is for the most part considered a threat to faith rather than an opportunity for service on the basis of faith.
Prophets have appeared in the Reformation churches reminding their peers of a lost spiritual heritage that should be reclaimed in a new form. Philip Spener sounded the call in the seventeenth century for regenerated pastors and laity in a time of mounting formalism and secularism.28 Missionary societies were born out of the evangelical revivals (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) that made a place for full-time service on the mission field both single and married people. S0ren Kierkegaard in the nineteenth century pointed to the need for a new kind of monasticism as a sign of protest against creeping worldliness in the churches. In the twentieth century Dietrich Bon-hoeffer pleaded for a rediscovery of discipleship as not contradicting the gift of grace but instead as fulfilling its demands.29 We are saved by grace alone, but this grace is not cheap; it is cosdy. It cost God the life of his own Son, so it must also cost us our lives—in service to the world for whom Christ died.
Protestantism after the Reformation separated into rationalism cm the one side and Pietism on the other.30 Both movements betray an unwarranted confidence in human capabilities, which constitutes a deviation from the Reformation emphasis on salvation by undeserved grace. In rationalism spirituality was reduced to ethics; in Pietism it became a blend of ethics and spiritual exercises. In both movements character training was regarded as more important than the adoration of the living God. The Bible became a manual for holy living rather than a sacramental vessel through which the Spirit performs the miracle of saving grace. Revelation was equated with general principles relating to faith and conduct (as in rationalism) or with interior experiences that guide us in our daily living (as in Pietism). Agape, the love of the cross, was transmuted into humanitarian love that tries to raise the unfortunate to the level of social responsibility. The coming of the kingdom was believed to rest on human effort rather than on the latter-day outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The company of true believers constituted the human agents who bring in the kingdom rather than being signs and witnesses to what God is doing in fashioning a new social and spiritual order.
If the secularization of the church and the domestication of evangelicalism in particular are to be reversed, it is incumbent on us to rediscover the catholic heritage of the Reformation and seek to realize the ideal of the original Reformers for a reformed catholic church. But in our dialogue with our Catholic and Orthodox brethren, we must remain firm in our commitment to what is genuinely biblical and evangelical in the churches of the Reformation. The Roman Catholic church needs the correction of the Protestant Reformation in order to become truly catholic and fully biblical. Modern evangelicals need to draw upon the witness of sacred tradition in order to appreciate the wider implications of the witness of Holy Scripture.31 The church must always be under the Word, but the Word in turn is operative and effective only in the context of a community of faith and discipleship.
ENDURING ISSUES
While earnestly seeking for Evangelical-Catholic unity, we must not close our eyes to the seemingly insurmountable issues that still divide us— and indubitably will continue to divide us for some time. It is only by thinking through and talking through the great themes of faith that we can hope to make any progress at all toward Christian unity.
The doctrine of salvation by the free grace of God alone (sola gratia) is still a barrier to ecumenical conversations. Catholic theology will gladly accept salvation by grace, but it is adamant that this is grace that assists human free will and therefore is not grace alone. Likewise Catholics can affirm justification by faith, but this is faith formed by love, not faith alone (sola fide). The Council of Trent concluded that even before coming to faith we can dispose ourselves to receive God’s justifying grace. Consequently, salvation was portrayed as a cooperative endeavor between the gracious God and the human sinner, though we cannot move toward God on our own apart from His grace. In evangelical Protestantism grace does more than enable our free will; it liberates our will for faith and service. Grace does not simply bring us the possibility of a salvation yet to be realized; it brings us the reality of a salvation already accomplished. Our role is not to cooperate with God in procuring grace or justification but to celebrate and proclaim a salvation won by Christ alone (solus Christus). We are not agents of God’s saving work but witnesses to His saving work. His grace when it first comes to us is irresistible, for it breaks down the resistance of the old nature and in effect implants within us a new nature. The decision of faith is a sign that grace is working for us and in us; it is not the condition for receiving grace.
One should recognize that modern evangelicalism is probably closer to semi-Pelagianism (which viewed salvation as partly the work of the human subject and partly the work of God) than to traditional Catholicism because of the prominent role assigned to natural human free will in the effecting of salvation. In classical Protestantism faith is not a theological virtue (and thereby meritorious) but an empty vessel that only receives what is given by Christ.
The role of merits and rewards in the Christian life is another divisive issue that must be frankly faced. Reformation Protestants are willing to speak of rewards for acts of kindness and loving service, but these rewards are blessings that God brings those who are already justified and sanctified by his grace. Justification itself must not be treated as a reward for services rendered to God or humanity, for this is an unmerited gift extended to us while we are still in our sins (cf. Romans 3:21-31; 4). Nor is final salvation a reward in the strict sense, since this too is given to the undeserving (Matthew 22:8-10; Luke 17:10). But the privilege of being allowed to perform needed services for Christ and the people of God is a special grace showing that God is pleased with those who remain true to His word, though we can do so only in the power of His Spirit. Happiness in the sense of enjoying the blessings of life in this world can be a reward for diligence and faithfulness in our calling (cf. Proverbs 25:22). Our good works will also be recognized in the life hereafter (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:14; Colossians 3:24; 2 John 8) but not as the ground or cause of our justification. The rewards we receive for faithful endeavor are always to be regarded as gifts from God that enable us to do what we can for Christ and His kingdom. We can never be truly worthy of receiving Christ’s blessings, but we can be used by the Spirit to do acts of service that deepen our happiness and bring us the peace that passes all understanding.
Catholic theology, and especially Catholic mysticism, reminds us of the decisive role of spirituality in the plan of salvation. We are summoned not only to faith but also to a holy life, and this entails living under spiritual disciplines in order to make ourselves available for kingdom service. For evangelicals, however, spirituality is not enough, since it does not make us acceptable before God. Even the faithful remain sinners and stand in constant need of God’s forgiveness.
Spirituality in the evangelical sense is not the precondition for salvation but its fruit and consequence. A holy life is a sign of our election by God to eternal life, but it is not a means by which we merit eternal life (as in the Catholic view). Holiness does not entitle us to heaven, but it does make us fit for heaven (John Wesley). It is not a means to salvation but the demonstration and manifestation of a salvation already realized. It is not a ladder by which we reach up to God but the way we live out our vocation of being heralds of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.
Is spirituality sufficient? Both Catholic and Protestant theologians would reply in the negative if we are thinking basically of the attainment of salvation, though both would regard it as necessary for living in the full dispensation of Christian freedom. Whereas evangelical Protestants contend that efforts toward a spiritual life do not in any way procure the grace of justification, Catholic theology tends to make a modest place for human effort in preparing the way for justification and also in meriting final justification—the culmination of the salvific process. In evangelical Protestantism the human race is dead in sin and needs to be raised to new life by the Spirit of God. In Catholic theology the human will is weakened but not immobilized by sin and can therefore be used by the Spirit in moving us toward Christ and toward grace.
Catholic and Protestant theologians might be able to agree that our calling as Christians is to holiness and not to happiness, that happiness is the result rather than the goal of Christian living. Holiness moreover does not mean moral uprightness but transparency to God—living in close communion with God. The pivotal question is motivation. Do we seek to live holy lives in order to ensure the permanence of our salvation or to gain assurance of our salvation? Or do we seek to live holy lives as a token of our gratitude to a merciful God for his redeeming work on our behalf in the person of Jesus Christ?32 Are we motivated by the desire for rewards in heaven or by the love that seeks no reward but only the good of others and the glory of God?
In evangelical Protestantism holiness is best achieved not in the solitude of the desert (as in the Catholic monastic tradition) but in the hurly-burly of the world. The holy person is not a spiritual master removed from the pain and squalor of the world but a humble disciple of Jesus Christ who absorbs the anger and hurt of the world in his or her own person. Many of the church fathers upheld the Stoic ideal of apatheia—mastery of the passions—though they christianized this ideal by stressing the role of grace in realizing such mastery. The perfect Christian was said to be both impassible and imperturbable, remaining above the discord and travail that mar the world in its sin and ignominy.33 The Reformers, on the other hand, called the Christian into deeper immersion in the world in order to counter its temptations and deceptions more effectively.
The Christian life is characterized by passive sanctity and active holiness.34 We cannot make ourselves holy, but we can demonstrate and manifest the sanctity that the Spirit of God secretly works within us. We receive sanctity from the Spirit; we do not procure or create it. Our role is to be ambassadors and heralds of Christ, but the fulfillment of this glorious vocation is always subsequent to what is done by the Spirit for us and in us. We are to be salt and light in the world so that people might see our good works and give glory to the Father in heaven (Matthew 5:13-16). are not co-redeemers in procuring salvation, but we are co-workers with God in spreading the good news of salvation.
In our dialogue with our brothers and sisters in the Catholic and Orthodox churches we must not simply repeat what was said in the past but try to understand anew the issues that unite and divide us. The language of faith, and this includes doctrinal and creedal formulation, is shaped by history as well as by the Spirit of God. We need to discover what is of abiding value and what is chaff that can now be discarded. In promoting dialogue we must not see the Catholic church as primarily an adversary but as a community that has kept alive the flame of faith and the integrity of the gospel even when many Protestants have sold out to the culture.
I urge my fellow evangelicals to reexamine the witness of the great saints and mystics of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and they will doubtless be surprised at the strong defense of free grace that we find among many of these people. Hans Kung points us to some of their prayers and testimonies that illustrate their commitment to salvation by free grace.35 Therese of Lisieux confessed that she had no confidence in her good works and therefore chose to enwrap herself solely in the righteousness of Christ. Challenging the spirituality of her own convent, she perceived the need for a lift to heaven instead of the traditional stairway to heaven.36 Claude de la Colombfere prayed, “Others may support themselves on the innocence of their lives, on the strictness of their penitence, on the number of their charities, or cm the fervor of their prayers. Thou, O Lord, in hope alone hast established me. For me, Lord, this is all my confidence, it is my confidence itself.”37 The Reformers themselves appealed to such saints and genuinely Catholic luminaries as Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux in support of their theology of grace. Pascal has been a source of inspiration for many modern evangelicals because of his strong appeal to Scripture as the final norm for faith and practice and his commitment to the gospel that we are saved by grace through faith.38 Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was greatly influenced by Karl Barth, saw the heart of authentic spirituality in God’s descent to our level in Jesus Christ rather than in the aspiration of the soul seeking for mystical union with God.39
We evangelicals should remember that the road to unity and truth does not lie in conversion to a church that is still burdened with metaphysical and spiritual baggage from the past that sometimes clouds its understanding of the mandates of God in Holy Scripture. On the other hand, we need to become painfully aware of the full extent of the penetration of both works-righteousness and cheap grace in our own communions. We are called to build bridges where bridges can be built and allow the cleavage to remain where it cannot be overcome. Wherever possible we should seek for points of convergence with our Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. Final unity will come as a gift of God, but we can prepare the way for at least a higher or deeper unity by speaking the truth in love, by being willing to be corrected in our own faith understanding, by recognizing that the full perception of truth lies beyond our present human capabilities—mainly because we are divided from one another and will remain so for some time to come.
Notes
1. For the classic woik on a phenomenology of religion, see Friedrich Heiler, Prayer, trans. and ed. Samuel McComb (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1958).
2. See Thomas F. Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1948). See esp. pp. 133-41.
3. Heiler, Prayer, 135-71.
4. See Donald G. Bloesch, The Struggle of Prayer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 97-130.
5. See Kuit Rudolph, Gnosis, trans. P. W. Coxon and K. H. Kuhn, ed. Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983); Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, trans. Anthony Alcock (Oxford UK: Blackwell, 1992); The Gnostic Scriptures, trans. and ed. Bentley Layton (New York: Doubleday, 1987); loan P. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis, trans. H. S. Wiesner (San Francisco: Harper, 1992); and Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1963).
6. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Scribner’s, 1951), 2:129-148; and Niebuhr, The Self and the Dramas of History (New York: Scribner’s, 1955), 94-104.
7. William A. Clebsch, “Preface,” in Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. and intro. Robert C. Gregg (New York: Paulist, 1980), xvi.
8. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, trans. A. V. Littledale (New York: Paulist, 1961), and John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 126.
9. I do not deny that actus purus can be used in a Christian sense indicating God’s being not as static perfection but as unlimited act and energy (Mascall). At the same time, God must not be regarded as “the sum or essence of event, act, and life in general.” See Arthur C. Cochrane, The Existentialists and God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 116. Also see Eberhard Jungel, The Doctrine of the Trinity: God's Being is in Becoming (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976); and Colin Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978).
10. See Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976), 67-98.
11. See Hans Kung, Does God Exist? trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 605-6.
12. See Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip S. Watson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953).
13. Although Alister E. McGrath (lustitia Dei [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Ptess, 1986]) sees only the early Augustine focusing on the ascent to perfection, he acknowledges the Hellenistic flavor of Augustine’s final view, which identifies justification with “the restoration of the entire universe to its original order ... an understanding not very different from the Greek doctrine of cosmic redemption” (1:36). He also recognizes that the later Augustine in his discussion of justification “frequently places the concepts of adoptive filiation and deification side by side” (1:32).
14. See William G. Rusch, “How the Eastern Fathers Understood Wliat the Western Church Meant by Justification,” in Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, ed. H. George Anderson, T. Austin Murphy, and Joseph A. Burgess (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985), 131-42.
15. In the fourteenth century Gregory of Palamas emphasized that we become partakers of the communicable energies of God but not of His essence. See Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality.
16. See Rusch, “How the Eastern Fathers Understood,” 135.
17. See Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, trans. Olive Wyon (New York: Scribner’s, 1939), 131, 137, 466, and Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, trans. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 151-56.
18. See Gustaf Aufen, Christus Victor, trans. A. G. Hebert (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 81-95.
19. See Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Me-dieval Nominalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967).
20. See Rudolf J. Ehrlich, Rome: Opponent or Partner? (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965), 168-89.
21. Angelus Silesius, The Cherubinic Wanderer; cited in David Manning White, ed., The Search For God (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 71.
22. The Book of Angelus Silesius, trans. Frederick Franck (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 95.
23. In his Commentary on Sentences Thomas Aquinas also taught that the unregenerate person can merit grace de congruo by doing what lies within human power, but Thomas abandoned this view in his mature work. See the discussion in Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 1:85-87.
24. See my discussion in Donald G. Bloesch, A Theology of Word and Spirit (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 1992), 12-15, 20-24.
25. See Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 2:104-30.
26. See “Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity,” in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott (Chicago: Follett, 1966), 486-525.
27. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism (Nashville: Abingdon, 1959), 45-57.
28. See Philip Spener, Pia Desideria, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964).
29. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, trans. R. H. Fuller (London: SCM, 1959).
30. See Emil Brunner, Truth as Encounter, trans. Amandus W. Loos and David Cairns (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964), 75-85.
31. Thomas Oden (“The Bible and Me,” Christianity Today 37, no. 8 [19 July 1993]) advises: “Beware of the ‘evangelical’ who wants to read the Bible without the historic voices of the church, who is only willing to listen to his own voice or the voices of contemporaries in the dialogue. Evangelicals have usually been the losers when they have systematically neglected the saints and martyrs and consensual writers of the earliest Christian centuries” (p. 40).
32. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) states that gratitude is the principal motivation in Christian ethics (Part 3, Q. 86). See Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century, ed. Arthur C. Cochrane (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), 305-31.
33. Harvey D. Egan, “Indifference,” in A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, ed. Gordon S. Wakefield (London: SCM, 1983), 211-13.
34. See Regin Prenter, “Holiness in the Lutheran Tradition,” in Man's Concern with Holiness, ed. Marina Chavchavadze (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970), 121-44.
35. Hans Kung, Justification (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1964), 274.
36. See Ida Friederike Gorres, The Hidden Face, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959).
37. Kung, Justification, 21 A.
38. See Emile Cailliet, The Clue to Pascal (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1943).
39. See Werner Loser, “Being interpreted as love: Reflections on the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Communio 16, no. 3 (Fall 1989): 475-90.