Reader Daniel Lieuwen
This FAQ deals with two common Protestant objections to Orthodoxy: the nature of faith and the value of icons.
Classical Protestantism and Orthodoxy on Faith
Question: What is the relationship between faith and works?
While there are strong theoretical differences between the Orthodox
and Classical Protestants on faith, existentially, the gap is less severe.
(I will sometime abbreviate Classical Protestants as Protestants
in this piece-there are many non-classical Protestants whose ideas I will
not consider. Those who think you can have Christ as Savior, but not as Lord
display an anti-nomian spirit so extreme that it is hard to consider them
Christians in even the most nominal sense of the word. The Moslem and the
Orthodox Jew with their reverance for God's law seem closer to the spirit of
Christianity than do such ``Christians.'')
Both Orthodox and Protestants concur theoretically that without God's act in the
Incarnation, man could not leave his unnatural, sinful state and come
to God. He requires grace. Having concurred on this, they disagree
on the function of works. Part of the problem is that the Orthodox
are far more reticient than the Protestants to speak of salvation as
a single event. Rather, our salvation and our sanctification are seen
as part of a continuous process, so that to be technically correct one
cannot talk about having been saved without also talking about being
in the process of being saved, and hoping finally at the Last Judgement
that one will finally and decisively be saved. It is clear to both
Protestants and Orthodox that good works are essential in the process
of sanctification. Existentially, Protestants acknowledge that true
faith must of necessity produce good works. If ones faith does not produce
works, they would warn the person to consider that they may not have a true
faith. What they object to is saying that these good works save us.
It is dangerous to be too precise in these matters. We do know that
Christ says that if we love Him we will obey Him. We must love Him
to enter His Kingdom. We cannot love Him without faith. We cannot be
saved without His saving Passion and Resurrection. We know that without
works faith is dead. On all these, Protestants and Orthodox agree.
The Protestants two camps on election start with the same premise of
``Sola Fide'' (by faith alone). However, in practice, they both, by very
different routes make this statement far less extreme than it seems at
first glance to the Orthodox. Those Protestants who believe in the
possibility of losing ones salvation (as do the Orthodox), acknowledge
that repeated, unrepented sin will cause you to lose your salvation,
because those who so indulge will eventually end up with a conscience
so hardened that faith will die. Thus, works are necessary to salvation
in that position. (We will come to the special case of death bed conversions
later.) Those who believe that one cannot lose one's salvation use a
different expedient. It is clear that many people who initially live
in a very godly manner eventually turn their back on God. Those who
believe in eternal security usually deal with such cases by saying that
those in such circumstances never had true faith. However, existentially,
such a person is indistinguishable during his/her pious stage from someone
who will in fact persevere to the end. One cannot know whether one is
merely deluding oneself or one has true faith. Only perseverance to the
end, which involves good works done out of gratitude for God, demonstrates
the genuineness of the faith in that position. However, this too is not
so far from saying that works are necessary to salvation at least existentially.
Also, the Orthodox concur that faith is the greatest of works. Thus, the
person who is converted on his death bed or on a cross, though he/she has
no material works, does in fact have the work of faith. This is not so
far, in concept if not in terminology, from the position held on this subject
by either school of Protestantism.
I derive no great theories about what goes on in God's eternal counsels.
Certainly, our widow's mites of work add nothing to God's
infinite supply of Goodness. Still, He honors them.
We, on earth, see the necessity of works for ourselves to appropriate the
free gift of God of salvation. To go beyond that into speculations about
the exact function of grace and works seems to lead us back to this conclusion
in the end.
The Value of Icons in the Christian Life
Question: How do icons benefit your walk with God?
I could go on about the theology
of the Incarnation and how Christ's appearance in the flesh sanctifies
all matter. I could talk about how certain strands in Judaism of the New
Testament era used icons, and how the Christian use can be considered a
carry-over of the Jewish heritage of the Church,
much like the use of the Psalms in public worship and the
hours of prayers (Acts 3: 1) which are continued to
this day in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholic
monastaries and are being reintroduced into Protestantism at Taize, France.
I could talk about the importance of obedience
to the Church. However, I'm afraid these points would not much impress
you, so I will use a different approach.
Icons remind us of the ``great cloud of witnesses'' that surround us.
Seeing the icons reminds us of heroic Christian lives and urges us on
to emulate them. For instance, I have icons of two great missionary
saints Ss. Innocent of Alaska and Nicholas of Japan. These men gave their
all to the Gospel, suffering many deprivations, although in different ways.
There missionary techniques are studied to this day even by Protestant
missiologists. Seeing their icon should (and sometimes does) remind me of
the importance of mission work and of giving ones all to
the Kingdom. I have an icon of the Apostle Silas, the travelling companion
of St. Paul. He is the patron saint of the Orthodox Prison and Street
Ministry, and is wearing chains in the icon. His icon reminds me to
pray for the imprisoned. I have an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov, given
me at the convent I visited in San Francisco. It reminds me of the convent.
It also reminds me of the saying of St. Seraphim, ``Acquire the Holy
Spirit, and thousands around you will acquire salvation.'' I could expand
examples endlessly. In short, icons do the same things that Church Feasts
(e.g. Christmas, Easter, Epiphany which celebrates Christ's baptism)
do-they remind us of important parts of salvation history, a history that
continues to this day. They remind us that others have done marvelous things
for God and encourage us to do them-knowing from the examples that we can
if we will strive with God's help to do so, but only if we are willing to give
up not less than everything.
Moreover, they serve the function of family pictures. Just as I have pictures
of my family in my home and my parents have pictures of our forebears, so
icons are pictures of our spiritual forebears. We keep them because we
love and respect and owe a great debt to those who helped lead us to the
faith, if only very indirectly through converting someone who converted
someone else ... who converted (or helped strengthen in the faith or
increase the conviction of) someone who has benefited us spiritually.
We are all a family, both in heaven and on earth. Family members love to
have pictures of other family members because they love the other family
members. The knowledge of my debt makes me very interested in St. Boniface,
a missionary to Frisia, where my mother comes from. He was martyred there.
Thus, I have been buying books about him. My parents found some material
for me about him in Dokkum (where he was martyred) when they visited the
Netherlands. I owe him a great debt, because he was a pivotal figure in the
conversion of my ancestors. While I have not yet acquired an icon of him
(I am looking), I have found some nice lithographs in books I have acquired.
I would like to acquire an icon, but haven't found one yet. I may
commission one, just like someone would commision a portrait of a distinguished
ancestor-for he is my spiritual forebear.
However, icons are not merely symbols of our love. They do not merely
remind us of the ``great cloud of witnesses,''
but they help us to experience it. The great cloud of witnesses is there
whether or not we are conscious of the fact. Its prescence benefits us
whether we realize it or not, for the Church Militant and the Church
Triumphant are one Church, and the prayers in heaven benefit us. However,
our consciousness of the ``great cloud of witnesses'' helps us in other
ways. It gives us courage, for there are those around us who love us
and want what is best for us. It discourages vice, for a remembrance that
we are surrounded by those who love us makes us wish to avoid doing that
which will disappoint them. Experiencing the saints prescence reminds us
of God's prescence-something we should always keep in mind, but frequently
forget.
Objection raised: Isn't there some danger that the use of icons may be
abused?
I do not dispute that some people abuse icons, that some people move beyond
venerating the person-who-strove-to-please-God behind the icon to worshiping
the person. I do not know anyone who does, but I will not dispute that such
people may exist. However, the abuse of icons is no argument against their
proper use. Even God's law can be abused by sin:
If even God's law, His gift to us can be abused, then
anything good can and will be abused. Food is a wonderful example of this
truth. With food, there are too excesses one can fall into: gluttony and
anorexia (with bulimia, being a combination of the two). Neither are
Christian, or even merely humanly-wise responses to food. The proper use of
food is with moderation. For almost all good things, there are twin
dangers---of excess in the direction of too much or too little. (Pure prayer
being one of the only things you cannot have too much of. That is not
to say that people do not sometime use less-than-pure prayer as an
excuse to avoid their real responsibilities. This realization is a
pre-Christian thought---men can realize this truth apart from direct
revelation---it is part of God's revelation to man written in the
structure of the cosmos.
Protestantism realizes this on many issues, for instance on food. However,
in its reactions to certain abuses of excess in medieval Roman Catholicism,
it forgets this crucial truth in other areas---particularly in the area of
the saints. Because some deluded people turn the saints into idols is not
an excuse to ignore them, to deny that they can be of great benefit to us.
Protestantism, in this area, forgets that the error of refusing a good offered
by God is also harmful. Spiritual anorexia is not better than spiritual
gluttony. In fact, it can encourage it. It is not uncommon for the
anorexic to occasionally go into bulemic mode. In the same way,
when people reject some good thing too long, they may gravitate to its
opposite. When people deny themselves God's gifts, they may become
attracted to Satan's counterfits. It is a spiritual starvation resulting
from denial of important parts of the Christian life (including the example
of the saints and the centrality of the sacraments) that leads people to
the New Age with its fake holy men and its fake sacraments. Some people can
survive a whole life on very little bread and water, but most will not be
able to withstand this---and fall to devouring a poisoned banquet if it
is put in front of them.
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were
by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto
death.
But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein
we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and
not in the oldness of the letter.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had
not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust,
except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all
manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.
For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment
came, sin revived, and I died.
And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be
unto death.
For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and
by it slew me.
Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just,
and good.
Romans 7: 5--12
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