On justification....part deux....

Joel in GA wrote a couple of interesting questions in the comment section of my post on justification.  His comment was:

David,

Thanks for at least bringing up the subject. I had been wondering. I think that, for Lutherans, limiting the discussion of justification to the question of God's forgiveness will satisfy Lutherans. Otherwise the discussion is apt to drift into other areas.

Does or may an Orthodox Christian believe his sins are forgiven? If so, on what basis are they forgiven--God's mercy in Christ, his own good deeds, or both?

My impression from reading Orthodox literature--and in terms of spirituality I lean more Orthodox than Lutheran in some respects--is that in general Orthodox are like Roman Catholics: always in a state of uncertainty about whether they are forgiven and in a state of grace. Is that impression mistaken?

As I referenced in the comment box on that post, the short answers are "yes, we believe our sins are forgiven, and that is based on God's mercy in Christ -- God's love for mankind and His desire that our sins be forgiven."  However, as I also referenced, both the questions and the last paragraph deserve a bit more fleshing out than a combox allows.

I try to avoid deeper theological issues here.  I am just too new to Orthodoxy to go about teaching anyone else.  I have so much to learn myself.  I will try to keep things simple to avoid getting in over my head, but by attempting a response at all, I'm delving into water a bit too deep for my swimming ability.  I therefore welcome and appreciate any commentary any Orthodox readers of this blog wish to add.

With that disclaimer, here goes.

1)  Salvation is not merely forgiveness of sins

For the Orthodox, forgiveness of sins is part of salvation, but it is not the whole of salvation.  And I'm not sure it's entirely accurate that Lutherans view justification as predominately forgiveness of sins so much as God turning us to Himself, giving us faith, etc.  There is a distinction between Lutheran and Orthodox views of salvation, I'm just not sure that's it.  As with the Orthodox, for Lutherans forgiveness of sins is part of salvation, but as I understand it, it's not the whole of it.   Regardless of the Lutheran view, as to the Orthodox salvation is a much bigger, ontological whole than just the forgiveness of our sins.  God forgives our sins, and He does so freely.  But He does not stop there.

2)  Salvation is not caused by our merits, worth or obedience

To answer the second question directly, there is no sense in which our good deeds earn salvation, whether this is defined as forgiveness of sins or something greater than that.   Salvation is freely given by God because He loves us.  Because He desires to save us.  Even limiting the issue to forgiveness of sins, God forgives us ultimately because He wants to.  In no sense does He forgive us on account of the fact that we believe, or repent, or do good works, or anything else He sees in us that would cause Him to look upon us with favor.  God wishes all to be saved.  He saves us because that is His will.


3)  Yet obedience is required for salvation

I know, I know.  "I see what you did there, Garner.  You gave with one hand and took away with the other."  But hear me out, because what I said and what I did not say is very important.  We do not view salvation as solely a juridical transaction, or a declaration of unmerited favor.  It certainly is those things -- God does forgive us, declare us righteous, give us His favor with no credit to us at all.  But it is not solely that.  In Orthodoxy, salvation is best defined as union with Christ.  This is an existential reality, not a judicial one.  We are not saved just because God considers us saved, but because God saves us.  Really saves us.  In Christ and through Him, He changes us from something we were into something He created us to be.

The traditional wording of the Nicene Creed (and the one found in my Service Book and my Prayer Book) is "I believe in one baptism for the remission of sins."  Remission and forgiveness can in a sense mean the same thing.  Many popular Bible verses referencing "forgiveness" in newer translations are translated as "remission" by the King James Version, the American Standard Version, etc.  These include Matthew 26:28, Acts 2:38, and Acts 10:43.  The ASV also translates Acts 5:31 as "remission of sins" rather than "forgive."  I raise this not to question the accuracy of the later translations, but rather to make a point.  If "forgive" and "remit" are synonymous, then "forgiveness" in this sense means a bit more than being declared righteous.  When an oncologist announces his patient's cancer is in remission, he does not mean he has declared the cancer to be abating.  He means the cancer is actually abating.  God's forgiveness does not merely claim that we are not sinners on account of His Son, but rather it actually cleanses our sins, and like cancer in remission, He continues this process through the Sacramental life.  When Orthodox refer to the Sacraments as "the medicine of immortality," we really mean it.  God is making us to be by grace what He is by nature.

When I first encountered this notion in Orthodoxy that "obedience is required for salvation," immediately my anti-Protestant meter started to peg.  It sounded like the same pietistic American Protestant notion that we offer our obedience to God, and that we should grow in Christ to the point that we no longer sin.  In certain sects of Protestantism, this typically reveals itself as a Pharisaic self-righteousness, where you have the "Christians" in Church and the "sinners" out there to show us how bad things could be for us if we weren't such good believers.  Before I became Lutheran, this translated for me as despair -- I couldn't keep the Law well enough to please God, so I figured I probably wasn't saved.  This is not what obedience means in Orthodoxy, and it's not how obedience operates in Orthodoxy.

4)  Obedience is not lawkeeping in order to earn favor

Obedience in the sense Orthodox use the term is not merely keeping the Law to try and earn favor with God.  Since salvation is not primarily favor with God but rather being made by grace what He is by nature, part of that salvation is being conformed to the likeness of Christ.  This means living the life Christ has given us to live.  We are obedient not because we hope by our obedience God will find us worthy of salvation, but rather we are obedient because obedience is what salvation looks like. Good works are what we are saved to do.

Every Lutheran worth his salt knows Ephesians 2:8-9:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

But what about Ephesians 2:10?

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

We are saved, not just so that God may call us sinless, but in order to be conformed to Christ -- to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

But our obedience is not meritorious -- even if we were to be perfectly obedient (and none of us are), we are but unworthy servants.  Nor is our obedience due to some autocratic nature in God, as if He tells us what to do in order to boss us around.  Obedience in this sense is doing that which God prescribes for us to do, because it is good for us.  By way of example, I make my children eat their vegetables and I limit the amount of snacks they are allowed.  I don't do this because I enjoy watching my children make faces as they eat or because I want to lord over them to show them who's boss.  Nor do I do it in order to make them worthy of their allowances, or their meals, or their clothing, or their shelter, all of which I give them freely as their father.  Rather, I do it because it is what is good for them.  Because I love them and want them to be healthy and whole.  In the same sense, our obedience is required not because God needs it, but because ultimately we need it.


Lutherans believe this too, at least if properly understood.  They just place all of this under the category of "sanctification" rather than "justification."  Lutherans also tend to equate, in words even if not in actual theology, "justification" with "salvation" and "sanctification" with "the Christian life."  But since for the Orthodox, being justified isn't the whole of salvation, we view the organic whole as being part and parcel of what we refer to as "salvation." Viewing salvation as predominately an ontological reality rather than a declared righteousness, it doesn't make sense to the Orthodox to separate the two. A typical Lutheran objection to having to "do something" in order to be saved is that whatever it is that we must "do" we cannot do perfectly enough to please God.  But remember -- for the Orthodox, we are not trying to "please God."  Rather, we are trying to be whole, to be that which we were created to be.  And not because we think it will attain God's favor, but because that is what is good for us.  So it doesn't depend on how perfectly we do anything, because we are not talking about merit or worth, but life.

For the same reason, obedience need not lead to self-righteousness in Orthodoxy, nor to despair.  We keep fasts, we have prayer rules, we attend Church as faithfully as we convince ourselves we are able.  We strive to keep the Commandments and love our neighbor.  So we should be in pretty good shape, right?  Actually, what ends up happening is in trying to maintain even the slimmest measure of obedience, we learn quickly how inadequate we really are.  I can't even keep a simple fast properly.  We don't fast from all food -- just meat, dairy, fish, oil and wine.  And we can still eat shellfish -- lobster fast anyone?  I can't even do that right.  It's not that I intentionally cheat so much as even where I keep the letter of the fast, I know in my heart I haven't kept the spirit of it.  One can eat the "right" foods and still eat pretty well.  Similarly, one can say the "right" prayers and still rush them, or be inattentive, or pay more attention to correcting the kids than to the prayers themselves.  In Lutheranism, in our experience, the Law is preached to show us our sin, and the Gospel is preached to declare our forgiveness.  In Orthodoxy, this same precept is at work, except in Orthodoxy, obedience is lived and manifestly shows us our sin, and the Gospel is given in the Liturgy and the Sacramental life and unites us to Christ.  Again, not necessarily a foreign concept to Lutheranism (for one, Lutherans have a strong sacramental theology), but a difference in approach to be sure.

5)  Certainty of salvation versus certainty of Christ and His promises

I can see why this is an issue.  When we became Orthodox, something that was a bit of a stumbling block for us is the typical Orthodox understanding that "we cannot know ultimately if we will be saved."  This is not, to my understanding, a declaration of our lack of assurance in God, but rather a simple statement of fact.  The Orthodox view salvation as threefold -- we have been saved (by Christ on the cross, trampling down death by death), we are being saved (in the Sacramental life of the Church), and we hope to be saved (on the last and final day).  Our Lord says "all men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved."  Matthew 10:22.  We trust in God's promises.  We trust in Christ's work for our salvation.  We trust in Christ's gifts.  What we don't trust is us.  I can know that as I stand here today, God forgives my sins, and I am living within the Sacramental life of the Church and therefore being united to Christ day by day.  That much is sure and certain.  What I cannot know is my future.  What I cannot know is what I will do tomorrow, or next year, or in 20 years.  And as with obedience, this is not a matter of how perfectly I am living the Sacramental life, but a matter of whether I will continue in it at all.

In addition, it is not ours to judge.  While I have assurance of my salvation based on the promises of God, it is still Christ's to judge.  Matthew 25.  So I cannot judge my ultimate salvation, nor anyone else's, because it is not given to me to judge.  That doesn't mean I am uncertain about my salvation.  It simply means that ultimately, I have to live with the fact that judgment is given to the Son, not to me.  My hope is in Christ's Word, His promises, His gifts.  Those are sure and certain.  But my judgment is in His hands, not my own.  And thanks be to God for that!

I hope this answers the questions adequately.  And again, I welcome and humbly request correction from Orthodox readers of this blog who may wish to comment.  Please forgive me where I have erred.

Saved in Community

One of the truly rich things about Orthodoxy is the idea of community.  By this, I do not mean coffee hour, or potlucks, or Bingo night, or adult social night.  I mean there is a firm belief among the Orthodox that we are not saved in isolation, but rather we are saved in community.

This sense is also present in other communions as well, particularly those who still maintain the historic Western Mass, which notably says in the Preface "....with angels, and archangels, and all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify your glorious Name, evermore praising You and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy......" (the Roman Mass is quite a bit longer than this, but has essentially the same idea at work).  I humbly suggest, however, even in those communions it is still not present to the degree it is in Orthodoxy.  We view salvation not as an intellectual construct or a declaration of our worthiness to be received into heaven, but rather as union with Christ.  We view the Church not just as a gathering of believers, or those who maintain a certain intellectual assent to core doctrines, but as those who are in union with Christ through His Body, the Church.  In this sense, when we say "the Church is Christ's Body," we are not saying it is His Body in a merely symbolic or intellectual sense, but in a very real, physical, tangible sense.  Again, this is not something entirely lost on the non-Orthodox -- I don't mean to say it is.  But in my experience it is uniquely vivid and perceptible in the Orthodox Christian Church.  The iconography, the way the Liturgy is done -- never in isolation, always with at least the smallest of congregation present, and the very real and, in Orthodoxy, visible connection with the departed Saints all demonstrate this view that we are saved not by ourselves, but in community with the Church writ large.  Looking at an iconostasis and the multitude of iconography in the Church, one is struck by how large this cloud of witnesses really is.

It is also a great comfort.  The knowledge that I am not alone, that the Church is there, and will strengthen me where I am weak, that the Saints are not separated by some veil or firmament way up in heaven, but are actually with us, pray for us and strengthen us means I do not have to rely on myself.  It is for this reason, in part, that the too-often repeated charge of Pelagianism against the Orthodox falls flat.  For what is typically meant by "Pelagian" is "you believe you can save yourself."  Rather, I believe the Church can save me, which is no less than to say I believe Christ can save me, for the Church is His Body.  The fact that I am a small, insignificant part of that is therefore no credit to me.  It is a credit to Christ.  Viewed in this sense, I can no more save myself than my thumb can cause the rest of me to live.

I suppose it was inevitable....

This evening, I posted what must be my 20th or 30th Facebook post related to the Orthodox Church, after having announced our conversion and Chrismation on that very forum nearly 2 months ago. A Lutheran e-friend who didn't get the memo responded and pointedly corrected my comment about enjoying the service for the Feast of St. Gregory the Theologian by kindly informing me today was St. Timothy's feast day. When I mentioned that St. Gregory is in fact the correct feast on the Eastern calendar, he asked why we were on the Eastern calendar. When I told him we had converted to Eastern Orthodoxy and indicated we were Chrismated at the Nativity, this was the response:


"That's too bad. I'm going to unfriend you. Vows are serious to me."

He did, too. He didn't even hang around long enough to read my response. C'est la vie.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I don't really get upset if anyone wants to unfriend me for whatever reason. I've never even met this particular person, so it's not like a childhood friend deciding to never speak to me again. But really? "Vows are serious to me?" This is your hill to die on?

Making a vow....

Let's examine that for a minute. Leaving aside the quite obvious fact that this man's church was begun by a man who violated his own vow of celibacy by getting married to a nun (who, obviously, was also violating her own vow of celibacy with his encouragement), there is another irony here. When I converted to the Lutheran confession, having been Southern Baptist all my life, no one said squat about vows, commitment, promises made to honor God. No one questioned my conversion then. No one wondered if I was committing some grievous sin against my prior promises to God and man then. To be fair, none of the people who were actually there have accused me of breaking my vows now -- that accusation belongs solely to my former e-friend. Further, since this person is a convert to Lutheranism himself (from his Facebook profile -- "formerly a NonDenominational Pentecostal-YWAMer"), I can only assume he has a bit of a double standard when it comes to vows.


The implication, of course, is that by supposedly breaking my confirmation vow, I have lied. If that's how my actions must be viewed, I can live with that. I certainly have worse sins to confess. But before I concede the point and brand myself a liar, lets examine briefly what those vows were.

At my confirmation in the Lutheran Church, I confessed the Apostles Creed. I was asked "Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty?" I responded "yes....." and recited the First Article. "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son?" "Yes...." Second Article. "Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?" "Yes...." Third Article. "Do you intend to hold steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?" "I do so intend with the help of God." I was asked whether I held the Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God, confessed the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as expressed in the Book of Concord and held the same to be faithful and true, and I responded "I do." I was asked if I desired to become a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and I responded "I do."


Then I was asked if I intend faithfully to conform all my life to the divine Word, to be faithful in the use of God's Word and Sacraments, and in faith, word and action to remain true to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even to death. I said "I do."


So here is where the rubber meets the road. When convinced, as I am, that the Lutheran confession is not the fullness of the Faith of Christ, when convinced that the true Church is found in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and when my conscience is bound that "remaining true to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even to death" means becoming Orthodox, what am I to do? I have not renounced the Apostles Creed. I have not renounced the Word nor the Sacraments. So exactly which portion of these vows have I broken? Answer: only that portion which binds me to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Which brings us to the real question: to whom was this vow given and to whom is fidelity owed?

I was asked at my confirmation whether I confessed the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as taught in the Small Catechism and the Book of Concord. I responded "I do" because I did. I don't anymore. I have been convinced otherwise. And lets be clear -- this is not the same as breaking the "I do" of a marriage vow, because the portion of the vow in question is not directed to God, but to a particular understanding of God. Just as my marriage vows are given to my wife and not my best man or groomsman or even the Pastor, my confirmation vow is given to God, not the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Am I keeping that vow by remaining in a confession I no longer share fully, that I now believe does not fully express His Church? Would I be keeping it by refusing to unite myself to what I now believe is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church merely to avoid stepping on someone's feelings? Should I have remained Lutheran and believed and spoken as if I were Eastern Orthodox? Or should I have just remained Lutheran and lied to everyone about what I believe?

More to the point, by leaving the Lutheran confession and becoming Orthodox, have I somehow disunited myself from Him Who received the promise? If the marriage vow is the parallel here (and I think it is), to whom did I promise myself at my confirmation? I fully understand my former "friend" considers his tradition to be equal to the pure and Holy Word of God, but you know what? So does everyone else. If I determine that is not the case, to whom should I remain faithful? To whom is my fidelity owed? The guy to whom I made no vow, but who nevertheless feels jilted because I disagree with his view of the Christian Faith, or the One to Whom the vow was made?

Martin Luther and Katharina Von Bora

Given these questions, lets take another look at Luther. Did he not take his vows seriously? Does Luther get the same flippant condemnation I received because he married a nun, vows be damned? Or did Luther honestly believe his word was given to a higher authority than the people who criticized him for violating his celibacy vow? Which raises the question - to whom did Luther give his vow? Notably, it was not to Rome, despite the fact his ordination vows required him to be obedient to Rome (another vow he quite obviously broke when he was asked to recant his writings and refused to do so). I contend Luther, bound as he was by his conscience, had no choice but to break these vows. To remain celibate when convinced marriage of priests is an honorable and holy estate sanctioned by the Church Catholic and the Holy Scriptures would make Luther a hypocrite and a liar. To remain faithful to the Bishop of Rome when asked to recant what Luther thought was a clear and accurate exposition of the Word of God would make him, in his own eyes, a heretic. Since Luther's vow was made to God, and since Luther remained in the clergy, he could either break the vows of celibacy and obedience or be truly unfauthful to God by pretending to believe something he thought was contrary to God's Word and Christ's Church. Since my former e-friend is a Lutheran, I'm guessing he would agree with those sentiments. So why is Luther's vow-breaking honorable and mine abhorrent?


At the end of the day, consistency requires us to treat vows into our own tradition the same as vows away from our own tradition. If the person who so indignantly unfriended me takes vows so seriously, he should be consistent and tell all who will listen that they should never convert to the Lutheran confession from another tradition. After all, he wouldn't want to be complicit in someone breaking their vows. Then again, being a convert to Lutheranism himself, maybe not.


I don't mind being "unfriended." I do wish those doing the unfriending would put a half ounce of thought into their reasons for doing so. Kyrie eleison.

Catholicity - finding a silver lining in the cloud of jurisdictionalism

Because I was away on business, I was unable to attend the feast of Saints Athanasius and Cyril at our home parish Monday night.  Instead, I visited St. Paul Greek Orthodox parish in Savannah, where my business had taken me.  It was a wonderful service, and the experience struck me as a good example of the Catholicity of Orthodox Christianity.


One of the true clouds hanging over the Orthodox Church in this country is the scandal of jurisdictionalism.  Put in simple terms, this is the uncanonical situation where various Orthodox jurisdictions will have Bishops in the same City or geographic area.  Canonically, there is supposed to be only one Bishop for each city or geographic area, but in America, we literally have various Orthodox jurisdictions tripping over each other.  In Atlanta alone, there are eighteen Orthodox parishes, but those eighteen parishes are spread over eight separate canonical jurisdictions.  While I wish to state I am not defending jurisdictionalism, it is in part because of jurisdictionalism that I was able to observe the Catholicity of the Church in practice.

Being recent converts, and having never darkened the doors of an Orthodox Church before the late Spring of 2010, Stephanie and I have limited exposure to various jurisdictional and cultural differences in Orthodoxy.  Besides our home parish, we have visited only one other, and that was another Antiochian parish.  Rather than a separate parish in our Archdiocese, St. Paul Greek Orthodox Church was a parish not only from another Archdiocese, but in fact a different Antimension from a different Bishop under a different Archbishop within a different Patriarchate.

I confess I harbored a small amount of anticipation as I entered the Church.  It is a beautiful parish, as the photographs attest, but I am a new convert and I am rather comfortable with the particulars of the Church of Antioch.  Our home parish utilizes familiar translations, almost exclusively uses English in the Liturgy and prayer services, and has the beautiful sing-songy tones that are the hallmark of Arabic Christian liturgy.  Going outside that comfort zone, I did not quite know what to expect.

At St. Paul, the Liturgy was mostly in English, but Father Vasile used more Greek that I am accustomed to.  That's fine -- I actually understand more Greek than I do Arabic (which is to say "next to none" rather than "almost literally none"), so I was able to follow along without too much problem.  The English in use was more modernized -- more "yous and yours" and less "thees and thous."  The homily was at the end of the Liturgy rather than in the middle as I am used to seeing.  Instead of venerating the cross at the end of the Liturgy, the faithful were invited after the homily to receive the antidiron (blessed bread) and receive a blessing from Father Vasile. 

And yet, in the differences, what struck me was the utter sameness.  The Liturgy was different in the particulars, but it was still the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in all its fullness.  The piety was different in the particulars, but the piety was strong and uniquely Orthodox nonetheless.  The Church was laid out differently, but it was still the same iconostasis, the same essential order of icons -- Christ to the right of the Royal Doors, the Theotokos to the left, St. John the Forerunner to Christ's right, the patron Saint of the Church, St. Paul to Mary's left, and so on.  If we were all members of one "American Orthodox Church," under the same Metropolitan or Archbishop, with all parishes in the same geographic area under the same Bishop, it would be difficult to observe how the cultural distinctions not only between parishes, but in fact between Patriarchates, still result in fundamentally the same Church.  So while I grieve over the jurisdictional problem, and pray it is resolved quickly, I have to confess there is great comfort in actually being able to see with my own eyes that regardless of her local peculiarities, the Church remains truly whole, complete, and full. 

I hope my non-Orthodox friends will forgive me this observation, but as I departed St. Paul, a thought occurred to me:  "so this is what it means to be One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic!"

On Justification....

Snow days make you stir crazy.  I spent much of my third one going through some old bookmarks, and one of them was Dan Woodring's conversion story (to Roman Catholicism).  In it, he reminisced about reading Father John Neuhaus' conversion story (also to Roman Catholicism) years ago, and a complaint resonated a bit with me.   Woodring recalled that when he first heard the story, he lamented that Father Neuhaus did not spend enough time talking about justification.

This is a common complaint among Lutherans (Woodring was a Lutheran when he first voiced the complaint), and one I used to frequently voice when I heard conversion stories -- why don't they ever address justification?  After all, it's the chief article of the Christian faith, the article on which the entire Gospel rises or falls!  I recall wondering whether these new converts had just abandoned this important article of faith and didn't want to talk about it.

So it is that I begin this latest post.  I have no intention here to try to espouse an Orthodox understanding of justification, nor to try to write a polemic against a Lutheran understanding of justification.  For one, I'm not so convinced the two traditions are that far apart -- I'll say directly that I have not embraced a doctrine of justification that can fairly be viewed as "salvation by works."  For another, that's just not the purpose of this blog.  For a third, as you will see by reading on, I think it would be impossible to do.  What I would like to talk about, however, is my opinion about why this topic comes up so seldom in conversion stories, particularly to the Orthodox Church.

First, the Orthodox Church doesn't really view the article of justification as the "chief article of the Christian faith."  That's probably not something that hits converts immediately, but it was pretty apparent to me up front.  It's not that justification is not important -- it is.  It's more that it's not any more important than, say, the incarnation, or the sacraments, or ecclesiology.  The Orthodox tend to view salvation as a more organic whole.  Instead of saying "well, if you get this wrong, you get all the rest wrong, too," we tend to see it as "if you get ANY of it wrong, you get it all wrong."  We view all of doctrine in a very interdependent way.  There is no article of faith that can be segregated out and set above all others.  There can be starting points, but there can be no heirarchy of importance.  It's all important.

Second, and this is probably more pertinent, the view of justification held by the Orthodox relies upon other Orthodox views that are largely foreign to Protestants.  One cannot understand an Orthodox view of salvation without also understanding the Orthodox view of anthropology, person and nature, essence and energies, and numerous other understandings of the person, nature and work of Christ and the nature of humanity and what it means to live out salvation as a human person.  Trying to explain Orthodox soteriology to Protestants without first laying this groundwork is fruitless.  It will result in the Protestant believing the Orthodox has "abandoned the Gospel," and the Orthodox being hopelessly frustrated with the discussion since the Protestant will be hearing Orthodox words with "Protestant ears."  And laying this groundwork takes time, and, more than that, patience on the part of the one hearing the conversion story.

Finally, newly chrismated Orthodox are rarely in a position to be espousing doctrines they themselves have just learned.  We can say why we believe what we believe, and we can usually say why we left, what the differences are, etc.  But it is neither wise nor appropriate for a student to put himself in a position as teacher.  We are still learning.  That is one reason I try to avoid polemics on this blog.  I am very comfortable discussing Christian "issues."  I am less comfortable getting into deep theological discussions, since I have so much yet to learn myself.

For a more in-depth treatment of Orthodox-Lutheran discussions on justification and sanctification, I recommend to your attention this excellent post from my friends at "Orthodoxy for Lutherans."

Good thing we made it to Church yesterday......

......because in the vernacular of the South in which I grew up and live, ain't nobody goin' nowhere today......

.....and just to let you know it's not just our neighborhood, courtesy of Rachel here is a picture of the Church parking lot and cemetery.......

......and the Church itself......

On Sacred Space and the sanctification of time.....

From the Energetic Procession blog:

The Divine Liturgy entails sacred acts and sacred words done within a sacred space. Outside of this space, those looking in are just voyeurs. What is the Divine Liturgy if I can fold laundry or pop a cold one while watching it, and do so in my pajamas, or pause it to answer the phone?

My friends at Energetic Procession make a much wider point than I wish to make here, and I refer you to their excellent blogsite for the full post, which is well recommended.  My reason for posting this beautiful snippet is to highlight that in the Divine Liturgy and the prayer services of the Church, something truly extraordinary, beautiful and yes, sacred is going on.  While it occurs in space that is set aside for the purpose of pointing us to the sacred, it occurs outside of time and space.  In short, the Divine Liturgy is a cosmic event, not a local event.  The current trend toward de-sanctifying the Church service either ignores that reality or, more likely, confesses the absence of that reality in the place doing the de-sanctifying.

There is a billboard near my parents' home that says "Church for people who don't do Church."  How sad that it is not enough to merely "do Church."  Similarly, the sign for the Baptist Church next door to the first Lutheran Church we attended said "It's not just church, it's Life" (note the capitalization).  I once joked to our then-Pastor we should make our sign read "It's not life, it's just Church."

Food for thought.