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Just Another Jim
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Eastern Orthodoxy


Essays on Eastern Orthodoxy

Terrible Grace and Ugly Glory, pt 2

Essay on the Mystery of Divine Love
June 28, 2006

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(Continued from p. 1.)

There is yet another striking difference between Western and Eastern theology. Theology, in the West, tends to be triumphalistic. That triumphalism begins innocently enough, because this theology ultimately talks about the triumph of God. And this is certainly embraced by a theology of grace and glory. Grace is about God’s victory over sin and death and his salvation of humanity (and in some theologies, the salvation of all creation). Triumphalist theology per excellence is certainly Dispensationalist theology which describes six periods of time that are all leading to God’s glorious overthrow of sin, death, and evil, and his triumphant reign for ever and ever.

Western theology is the theology of Handel’s Messiah and grand evangelistic campaigns proclaiming the victory of our God. But triumphalism also has a darker side, as human agents seek to execute God’s victory (or judgment, but in this context they are viewed as the same thing). From things as frightening as the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials to more mundane examples, such as denominations condemning each other for surprisingly trivial matters, triumphalism too often degenerates into the enthronement of human opinion.

But divine love is not triumphal. The enigmatic fact is that the loving God is the losing God. Fr. Thomas Hopko, when talking about the sword of Christ in the Apocalypse (the book of Revelation), said that the thing that must be remembered is that, when viewed from the perspective of the whole New Testament, it is not Christ wielding the sword, but his sword that is wielded by others against himself. This is the mysterious nature of the love Christ revealed to his disciples when he told Peter to put away his sword. Physical power is not the power of God.

The love of God meant that God’s Son died on the cross. The Son, in order to obey the Father had to empty himself. The only way God was able to get through to the Patriarch Jacob was to wrestle him, a wrestling match God couldn’t win until he put Jacob’s hip out of joint. Jesus told his disciples that the sign of their authentic discipleship would be their martyrdom. This truth is painted in bold colors when the Apocalypse is read with the eyes of love rather than the triumphal vision of glory. Who is it that finally wins in the end? The martyrs who have spent so much time crying, “How long?”, and the crucified Lamb.

Of course this sensibility is not completely foreign to Western and Protestant theology. The third verse of Fosdick’s previously quoted hymn is as follows:

Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.

Grace and glory and human gratitude for divine grace are wonderful biblical themes, but only when seen from the perspective of love can we begin to appreciate the inscrutable nature of their wonder. Nothing is uglier than grace nailed to a cross. Nothing is stranger than the glory of God descending to Hades. Nothing is more beautiful than a skin-and-bones child, pocked with sores and barely covered with rags, if in that child we recognize Christ. Nothing is more abhorrent than a perfectly manicured lawn in front of a perfectly designed mansion, used only for self-aggrandizement.

And this is precisely how grace a glory are incorporated into Orthodox theology. Following the lead of the very un-triumphal approach to grace and glory found in the New Testament, Orthodox theology sees them as a product of suffering. To quote Thomas Hopko again, “Theosis is not possible without kenosis.” Let’s consider what Hopko is getting at.

Theosis is the ultimate human state of grace and glory. The Orthodox doctrine of theosis follows the lead of the Apostles John, Peter, and Paul. In the Gospel of John Jesus says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (Jn 15:4). Paul says, “For if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. . . . So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:5, 11). And we conclude with Peter. “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:3f).

The Orthodox, unlike Protestant Fundamentalism, interpret these passages literally. Being “in Christ” is not a metaphor for closeness; it’s nothing like walking in the garden alone with him. Our aliveness to God can only occur if we are actually in and a part of Christ, or in Peter’s words, unless we partake in the divine nature. The passage from 2 Peter is problematic because the word “nature” took on a technical meaning after the Arian debate (4th century) that is a bit more specific than what Peter seems to have had in mind. To our modern ears, “nature” refers to that which is exclusively limited to God. Jesus Christ was one person but two natures—divine and human, as the Council taught. But what Peter is clearly referring to is that which flows out of God; not God’s inner being, but rather God’s real and living power (v. 3). By the time we arrive at the 11th century, it had become normative to distinguish between the essence and energies of God. Both are really and truly God, but God’s essence is reserved unto the Godhead alone, while it is possible to participate in the divine energies. This is the “divine power” which God has granted to us to allow us to participate in the Divine Nature (Peter) or to “abide in him” (John), to participate in his very life (Paul). This is theosis.

But the grace and glory of theosis comes at a tremendous price, not only to God in Christ, but also to us. Again, as Paul says, if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we can then be united in his life. This is what Hopko is referring to when he says that there can be no theosis without kenosis. Kenosis is a Greek word that means “emptying” and is a reference to the great Christ hymn in Philippians. Although Christ “was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied [kenosis] himself, taking the form a a slave, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:6f).

This is hardly a triumphalistic path to grace and glory. It is rather humiliating. (Not in the way a professor is “humbled” when he is named dean or president, but in the way a previously respectable person is “humiliated” when they are caught in the act of a crime and punished.) But the humiliation that Christ, and in turn we, are put through is not because of some evil we did. In a sense the humiliation, the kenosis, is undeserved. Christ was humiliated because he was hated. We are humiliated, or we humble ourselves, because we are associated with Christ. And only as we travel that path of emptiness and true humility, will we find that we are entering ever deeper into the divine life (abiding in him) where grace and divine glory—that ugly sort of glory, not that beautiful human glory—are experienced.

It is a grace and a glory that can only be experienced when one truly loves and is loved, because it is an unpleasant grace and a humiliating glory, when viewed from a human perspective. And it makes me wonder, when John the Evangelist was gazing with wonder over his shoulder into heaven, what was it that he saw? I suspect it was every bit as surprising as the grace and glory of God.

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