Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy
Faith, Works, Fasting, and Hand-Scooped Milkshakes
Essay on the Fast of the Dormition of the Theotokos
August 1 - 14
(Essay completed August 25, 2005)
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(Continued from p. 1.)
1. The first thing to understand is that fasting is “prescribed” and not “required.” It is not a sin if one doesn't fast. We typically associate the word “prescribe” with the medical field. A doctor prescribes medicine when we are not feeling well. And this usage is apt in relation to fasting: It is medicine prescribed by God to a sin sick world.
At this point the first objection might be raised. Jesus never did require . . . oops, let's rephrase that . . . Jesus never did prescribe fasting to his followers. This objection is technically correct, but fasting was an integral part of the Old Testament Law and when the Pharisees and John's disciples complained that Jesus' disciples didn't fast, Jesus explained why and said that they would no doubt return to their fasting after his resurrection and ascension. There is a strong antinomian (that is, anti-Law) sensibility among Protestants. Our relationship to the Old Testament Law is certainly different now (after Christ's death and resurrection) than it was before, but no one within the authentic Christian tradition claims that the whole Law or the whole Jewish scripture should be thrown out. The Law and the Old Testament practices are certainly seen from a different perspective, but they are not invalidated. This essay is not intended to be an exegetical study of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, so I will simply say that this first objection is nothing more than a red herring offered by those who bristle at discipline.
2. But in what sense is fasting like a medicine? What good does it do? What sickness does it heal? Isn't the only real sickness, the “sickness unto death,” our own sin, and isn't the only true medicine for that the grace of God accepted by faith? This is, very possibly, the quintessential Protestant question which gets at the heart of this whole “faith and works” issue. First, I will make clear that I continue to believe the affirmation stated above, and to the best of my knowledge (and I have studied this rather carefully), it is certainly the position of Eastern Orthodoxy that the only real sickness, the “sickness unto death,” is our own sin, and the only true medicine for that sickness of sin is the grace of God accepted by faith. The “problem” with this quintessential Protestant question isn't the question itself, but the assumptions that lie behind the question. The problem is how the relationship between faith and works is understood.
The problem is the Apostle Paul, and to a certain extent, the Apostle James. But as Peter said of Paul, “There are some things in [his letters] hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). But more than that, the problem is Martin Luther, the seemingly neurotic medieval Roman Catholic monk who was working desperately hard to earn his salvation, and then saw the cure for his neurosis in Galatians (and more specifically, in the grace of God). “You foolish Galatians! . . . Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?” (Gal. 3:1a, 2b. Note that the word “believing” in 3:2 is the same word as “faith.”) “We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16).
Let's rephrase what Paul said: One cannot earn their way into heaven by means of their own merit. To expand on these brief statements by Paul, we recognize that there is a chasm between almighty, immortal, eternal God, the Creator of all, and us frail, sinful, and limited creatures. That chasm cannot be crossed by us, nor do we meet God halfway (in spite of what Michaelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). Salvation is God's work on behalf of humanity accomplished, not because of any merit nor attractiveness on our part, but simply because God is love, and that is the nature of divine love.
But there is a difference between earning our way to heaven and taking hold (and hanging on tight) to the salvation that is offered to us here and now. We are not passive recipients of divine grace, being force fed salvation by Dr. God as if we were comatose patients with a feeding tube running through our nose into our stomach. This sense of taking hold of salvation and hanging on tight is what James is getting at when he exhorts us to be doers of the Word and not only hearers (James 1:22). “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless” (1:26).
The Orthodox take James' warning to heart. Central to their understanding of salvation is the problem of the passions. We were created with a desire for God. (This native desire for God is divine love, given to us as part of the image of God.) But we broke that connection with God. Without that connection, that hunger for God could no longer be properly satiated, and that “desire for God” was forced to turn upon itself. Once this proper desire for God began to get a taste for other stuff, it was no longer interested in God, but since the “other stuff” it was devouring did not truly satisfy the desire, the proper desire was inflamed into very improper and out of control passions that are expressed in everything from an unbridled tongue to greed, gluttony, lust for power, etc. A complete reading of the New Testament (that is, something more than just Galatians and Romans 3) demonstrate that salvation by faith and not by works is achieved by both embracing the divine life offered to us and casting off the passions that control us (which sounds suspiciously like a “work,” if one only reads Galatians and Romans 3).
Of course, we cannot cast off the passions without embracing the divine life. That “desire” was built into us as part of the image of God. So we must first embrace the proper object of our heart's desire before we can cast off the improper passions that inflame our heart. But, conversely, we cannot embrace the proper object of our heart's desire without casting off the improper passions. There's not room for both, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. (You cannot serve two masters. Mt. 6:24) This process is precisely what the Apostle Paul (you know, the “grace alone” guy of the New Testament) was talking about when he said, “seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (Col 3:9f). He begins that paragraph by saying, “Put to death (active verb—this is something we do, it's not something God does to us), therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed (which is idolatry)” (3:5).
What we discover quite plainly is that while Paul and James don't use the word “fast” or “fasting” in the above contexts, they are clearly the ones prescribing this discipline (or at the very least, this sort of discipline) for Christians who desire to walk with God here and now, and not just some time far away in the mists of the future. Nearly two millennia of experience has demonstrated that fasting is the preeminent means of “bridling” (James), and “putting off” and “putting to death” (Paul) the passions that stand in the way of entering into a desire for God and the new life he offers.
(Continued on p. 3.)
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