Thursday, May 7, 2009

Purgation, Illumination and Theosis and Evangelical Christian Distinctives



The Classical Christian Map of Christian Growth has three stages.  In the West it is usually listed as Purgation, Illumination and Union. In the East, Purgation, Illumination, Theosis.  The East and the West both point to the same general stages of Christian growth in grace.  The Orthodox East has
 kept intact its teaching and commitment to this three-fold process, and the West has preserved it here in there in various schools of thought and monastic orders.  

On the other hand the Evangelical Protestant West makes much about various crisis experiences that they urge others to have for themselves.  They talk about being 'born again', about being 'saved',  about being 'filled' or 'baptized' in the Holy Spirit, or about being 'entirely sanctified'; about having 'assurance of salvation' and so forth.  I have often wondered about those
 experiences and how
 they fit in to the classical processes 
of the Orthodox East because I came into Orthodoxy from the evangelic
al protestant movement a dramatic transformation in the way that one lives
 life.  Not so with the Orthodox East. Baptism is spoken of as the New Birth following Jesus' identification of baptism
 with the same in his conversation with Nicodemus when he said in,   John 3:5  ' Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' or as St. Paul spoke when he wrote  of "Tit 3:5 the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;" and again, 1Pe 3:21  "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now
 save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:"

I am not trying to do an exhaustive Scriptural statement that baptism is the new birth but showing Scriptures upon which the Orthodox East leans.  Where does baptism in the Orthodox 
view fall on the continuum?  
It depends.  In the case of St. Paul, who was converted on the road to Damascus, the Orthodox view of his conversion at that point also involved his experience of glorification, in part, because he saw the Uncreated Light of God.  The apostle Paul had progressed along the course of purgation as an Old Testament Jew, and was catapulted, as it were into crises of illumination and glorification at one time.  One expects that his witness of St. Stephen's death was also an illumination, one that he resisted, as he is said by the Lord  to have been 'kicking against the pricks", Acts 9:5.  Beholding the uncreated
 light is a crisis experience of glorification, not in most instances the full glorification that takes place at the Resurrection in the coming Kingdom, but an anticipation of it.  St. Paul went on to be baptized, having his sins washed away in baptism , Acts 22:16, having
 advanced in illumination and even experienced glorification, albeit at the cost of
 physical blindness for which he was afterwards, healed.  Baptism, however, is the beginning of full
 Christian life, though it is a beginning, which leads to experience, only as folks begin to respond to the grace that comes in at that time, like a present, needing to be unwrapped.  Infants bap
tized for an example, often need the sufferings of growing up to bring them to the place where the package is unwrapped; hence, the need of many for adult conversions.  Baptism is also called an
 'illumination', in the Liturgy of Baptism. 
So, it is hard to say really where it falls in the continuum.  It is even recommended that one obtain the prayers of a newly baptized person because at that time, there is for them perfect Communion with the Holy Trinity.  

What then in classical terms is the experience of evangelicals that they call being 'born again', since in classical terms, the new birth is the same as baptism?  The experience that evangelicals
 have falls more or less within the stage of illumination, although one cannot rule out it having
 some aspects of purgation.  Purgation in classical terms is the putting away from oneself sinful habits.  Purgation in a way is preparatory to illumination; however, most authors say that it really continues throughout the Christian life.  Most believers who grew up in Christian churches have the experience of being in an outward relationship to God; reading the Bible, saying prayers, trying to be good, all without an interior sense of communion with God, or inward graces from God to strengthen, or consolations of the Spirit inwardly.  If they go on with God, there is an inward revelation, of the presence of the Lord within the heart and an inward communion with Him.  This transition for those who have grown up as Christians, many evangelicals call the 'new birth',  and in a way it makes sense for it is an often dramatic transition
 into a new dimension of living.  However, it is in classical terms, an outworking of the grace of baptism- it is a sort of unfolding of baptismal grace.  From this perspective, the Christian life before this inward illumination was not wasted, but was preparatory. It was not mere 'churchianity' but a relationship to God before the person was inwardly prepared and ready for it.  It was not a stage of Christian life to debunk, therefore, but a part of purgation, a part of the stage of Christian life that leads, one hopes to illumination, and to illuminations.  The period of time leading up to the illumination that many evangelicals call 'being born again', corresponds to the relationship that the apostles had to Christ, before they had been inwardly illumined by the Spirit to the fact that the One to whom they were relate, was none other than the son of God.  Peter's 'illumination' -
 flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you'  -  corresponds to the experiences that many evangelicals call being born again, when the terminology is applied to baptized believers, who
 have a later awakening of personal relationship inwardly to Jesus Christ.  Peter knew Jesus
 Christ, in his humanity, but had a deeper realization of Him, after the revelation of the Godhead
 of the son of God to Peter's heart.  Likewise, many Christians begin Christian life, knowing the humanity of Christ, the body of Christ, that is to say the Church, before they know Him inwardly, mystically, and by the Divine Energies that flow in through inward Communion.  In the amazement of inner experience of knowing Christ, many have an adolescent sort of reaction and reject their former status as being unworthy of the name Christian. However, it is just that- an adolescent reaction, and one that can and will cause problems down the road, and one must go beyond it.  The Incarnation rescues us at this point. We as Christians are 'saved' by the Incarnate Lord.  We are saved by a God who is  both fully human in the full sense of the word, as well as full Divine.  The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His Glory the Glory of the Only Begotten, full of Grace and Truth.  And that same Word, after His resurrection and ascension, continued to manifest His Glory in Humanity, in the fullest sense of the word- in the humanity of His Church, so that now, we are saved not only by the inward Word of Christ within the heart, the inward communion with a Personal, Mystically
 perceived, saviour in the heart, but also by the Christ who is Incarnated in the Humanity of the Church, which is His Body
.  We are saved, then, by the whole Christ, human and divine, mystical and incorporate, and not just by a personal relationship to Him in our heart.
Many of us, as did the apostles, get to know Him in His humanity, before His mystical word
 comes to our heart and we know Him inwardly.  Both are necessary, just as the Incarnation was essential to our salvation. We need our personal relationship to Christ the head, and incorporation into His Body.  
In fact, theologically,  Incorporation into His Body, is the ordinary precursor to  the experience of 'gift's of the Spirit, as we learn in I Corinthians 12.  For by one Spirit are we baptized into one Body, we are told.  In baptism the Spirit is operating to incorporate us into the Body of Christ.  In
 another way, in baptism the Church is acting with the Spirit to remit sins.  Christ gave the Church authority to remit sins  on earth, prior to His ascension. Shortly after that, at the day of Pentecost, the Church begins to remit sins on earth by baptizing.  "Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."  Peter says in Acts 2:38.  The Church is announcing the forgiveness of sins and administering the 'Mystery', that is to say, Baptism, whereby sins are remitted.  In baptism the logic of the Incarnation is continued.  In Christ, the Incarnate One, matter became redemptive, and the death of a very human and material Body purchase Eternal life. In baptism, matter continues to be redemptive, material water conveys the remission of sins, the efficacy of Christ's blood shed for us, the effective intercessions of Christ who offered His blood for us at the mercy seat in heaven.  The redemption, not only of souls, but of all the Cosmos, is unfolded, as matter again begins to be the conduit of Etneral Life.  
The streams of Paradise, once blocked by Adam's sin, begin to flow again into the Baptismal Font
.  The tree of life, Christ's cross, opens the way thereof, and the Fruit of that Tree His Body and Blood again begin to Feed us who have recovered Paradise.  The first fruits of the Redemption,
 not only of souls, but of the entire Cosmos begins in the Church, anticipating the full redemption for which all Creation cries in suffering until now, awaiting the revelation of the Sons of God.  
Worship in the Old Testament was worship in Type and Symbol.  The Temple and Tabernacle were types of the heavenly which was the Anti-type.  The Old Testament Prophets are types of Christ who is the anti-type.  In the New Testament, we have been delivered of worship in types and symbols.  We have entered into a new reality in which the
 material things we do on earth, properly done, are participations in heavenly realities and not mere types, shadows, symbols. Scripture speaks specifically to this issue with respect to baptism.  Baptism is not a type or a symbol of a heavenly reality, but is itself an anti-type. It is a reality, not a symbol or a type.  
We are told that in I Peter 3:21.  Baptism is the anti-type to the flood of Noah which was the type.  Baptism is grace, for it present to us the cleansing blood of Christ. It is a "Mystery"- a paricipation in His death.  It is an anamnesis, as is Holy Communion- a bringing forward into the present the 'once and for all' passion of Christ.  Of course, we are saved by Faith, 
but faith operates according to Grace which Baptism is.  We are not saved by Faith alone, apart from grace; we are not saved by faith alone, apart from the Body of Christ.  Any reversion to worship by type and symbol, of which the doctrine of baptism as symbol is, is a reversion to Judaism, a Judaizing of the Faith, as much as insistence on 7th Sabbath as worship observance is.
  

So the 'new birth' when the term is applied to Christians who have more or less grown up as Christians is an experience in the Process of Illumination.  We have mentioned the gifts of the Holy Spirit as well.  Scripture states that the general order for the reception of gifts, is first baptism, incorporation into the Body of Christ, then the reception of gifts.  The giving of gifts is
 linked in Scripture to the asension of Christ,  when he had ascended on high He gave gifts to men.
The gifts of the Spirit are graces given for ministry within the Church.  All believers are given gifts; they are given by the sovereign dispostion of God. This does not exclude the seeking of gifts- for we are told to covet the best gifts, in Scripture and we are even told in Scripture that
 the desire for the gift of the Bishopric is good.  The experience of the reception of gifts or their manifestation are experiences as well of illumination.   
In a similar way, the experiences called baptism in the Spirit, and being filled with the Spirit,
 when they happen to folks who are already baptized believers are experiences in the process of illumination, as is the Methodist 'entire sanctification'.   Folks who are called 'born again' by evangelicals who are coming to faith in Christ for the first time, are more classically called
 'converts', who need subsequent instruction and baptism.  Such an experience may be the beginning of purgation, or may contain experiences that fall along the spectrum of illumination.  
Many people who have an awakening to the saving work of Christ and see it in a forensic manner, have begun purgation.  
So, we see any number of experiences that point to purgation and illumination. 
 
This begs the question- what of glorification?  In glorification, in Scripture, people see visions of Christ, or see the Uncreated Light, or in some rare instances experience the Divine Darkness as in the case of Moses.  The selected apostles, for example, saw the Uncreated Light at the time of the Trasnfiguration. 
 My reading of evangelical literature has left me the conclusion that the experience of Theosis, or of Union, and the experiences of glorification involved therein, is pretty much uncharted territory for evangelicals.    There is
 a reason for this that I know of (and probably many that I do not).  The experiences of Purgation and Illumination have a direct connection to Scripture, on the one hand, and to the Voice of Christ, on the other.  The Energies, or graces of God comes to us through Scripture to bring us into the process of purgation. 
 The voice of Christ revealed to us brings us into the process of Illumination.  But is entry into the Stillness and the Silence of the Father that leads us progressively into Theosis or Union.  What do we mean by Theosis or Union-  the early Fathers stated it succintly  to become , by Grace, everything that Christ is by Nature'.  'God became a man so that man could become God', they say.  
Athanasius said The Word ``was made man so that we might be made God'' (De Inc 54.3; Robertson 65).  In Alexandria, Clement wrote, ``the Logos of God had become man so that you might learn from a man how a man may become God'' (Prot 1.8.4; Pelikan 1:155). Irenaeus mentioned the concept several times, with only brief explanation (evidence that he assumed that his readers would be familiar with the term). He noted that Chris
tians could be called God: ``There is none other called God by the Scriptures except the Father of all, and th
e Son, and those who possess the adoption'' (Against Heresies, book IV, preface, section 4; AnteNicene Fathers 1:463). We are human in the beginning, but ``at length gods'' (IV 38.4; ANF 1:522). We are raised up ``to the life of God'' (V 9.2; ANF 1:535)

This stage of Christian growth, of Theosis or Union, takes place when the Word who is ever sent forth by the Father, takes us back to the Silence of the Father, and it is the the Silence of the Father that the process of Theosis or Union incubates, as it were, and the experience of the
 Word.  Since it is the Silence of the Father that incubates Theosis, evangelicals with their strong Scripture only stance and fear of anything mystical that is without the Word, find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to Theosis or Union.  For them to experience it, they must run a
foul some seriously held positions on Scripture, and ignore some pretty serious fears that they inherit from the 5 century old reaction to Medieval Catholicism.  For example, when one
 embraces that Revelation is Propositional as was argued by the late Francis Schaeffer, then anything that takes place in Silence, in fact the very notion of entering the Silence of the Father, becomes suspect.  
Revelation, in Orthodox thinking, is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and that is the revelation of a Person, a very speical person, and is beyond words and concepts.  Scripture in this sense is not
 revelation but a pointer to the experience of revelation.  And Scripture is not revelation recorded but the words of men who attempted to put in concepts they had of Revelation which was beyond concepts.  
Another way of stating it is that there are two tiers of revelation.  There is Revelation with a capital 'R',  which is the revelation of Jesus Christ to the heart, classically termed the 'nous', on the one hand; on the other is revelation with a little 'r' which are the thoughts and words of Scripture primarily, and then the writings of the Fathers of the Church through the ages.  One needs a more subtle concept of Revelation if one is to proceed with the possibility of ent
ering deeply into Theosis.  Otherwise one's teaching does not shape one's mind to the possibility of such experiences which are its operative conditions.  
But Jesus said it Himself, "You search the Scriptures, thinking that in them you will find life, and it is they that speak of Me."  The Scriptures  propositionally as revelation point to Christ who is the Revelation.  Human created concepts point us to Divine uncreated Word.  
So, the stage of Christian growth known as Theosis in the Orthodox east tends to be neglected or
 suspected in the evangelical literature that I've read, and some ministries amongst evangelicals sound alarms against any tendencies in this direction. For example, the spiritual formation movement of which Dallas Willard (whose book, Hearing God, is the best I've ever read on hearing the voice of God and on Divine Guidance) and Richard Foster  (whose book, Celebration
 of Discipline is a Protestant classic) are noted leaders, is opposed by them as being a descent into eastern and demonized mysticism.  Many of the accusations are based upon guilt by association, but there is the general muddiness in the West as to the pursuit of Thesosis that may contribute to the problem. Both the Catholic and Protestant West passed through  scholasticsm that has left its mark upon the expressions of the Faith.
Most notable was the loss of touch with the mystical Tradition of the ancient divided Church that
 took place in a number of ways, requiring whole libraries to explicate.  We have already touched upon the change in the doctrine of revelation amongst protestants. This took place as the Reformers uniformly embraced philosophical nominalism as a theological tool, out of which flowed the necessary notion of propositional revelation.  
In scholastic Roman Catholic Thomism, the chief organ of revelation was the intelligence or the reasoning brain, and contemplation turned in to mere thought.  In the process, the organ of spiritual attention, called in the East, the 'nous', was lost to Christian thought. This was a tragedy anthropologically because the nous is the organ that is receptive to  Revelation in a capitol 'T'  that is beyond thought and reason.  Without an idea of the nous, Christian experience was reduced to thought, and the high revelations of God that progressively transform the believer were not conceptualized for the seekers. 
 Theology was no longer the province of the man who prayed, as was said by Evagrius
 Ponticus, but was the work of the man who thought and philosophized.  
Modern Christians, cut off from the Mystical Tradition of the East, have, nevertheless
, out of sheer hunger partially overcome the dirth of experiential faith, throug
h prayer, and have de facto redisovered the nous to some extent, simply calling it the spirit.  Others call it their 'knower.' 
Another great doctrinal deficit is the distinction between the Energies and the Essence of God, a distinction that begins to appear at the time of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa, and
 fully articulated in an apophatic way against the scholastic Augustinianism and Thomism of his protagonist Barlaam. When men begin to talk of becoming God or being united to God there is a problem, for if such is taking place, then those men are God and are worthy of worship that is due to God.  But if union with God is not possible, how is it that we may speak of it at all or seek it?  That is the problem encountered in the theological attempts of such thinkers as Norman Grubb, it seems to me, as he explored the idea of union and even had for a time a magazine with such a name.  This was never a problem in the Orthodox East were the Energies and Essence of God were carefully distinguished.  The Essence of God is God who is Unknowable.  The Energies is God existing outside of his Essence and is knowable.  The Energies of God are truly God yet outside of His Essence.  Our Union, if it is achieved, is with the Energies
 of God and not His Essence.  
The Energies of God are also the one and same as the Grace of God- with grace being the
 enabling powers of God and not a forensic state where sins are not imputed in some way.  Grace doesn't let us off the hook, it enables us to get on the hook, as it were.  In Scripture, unfortunately the greek words rooted in the idea of energy were generally lost to the West with the translation of the Septuagint, Greek Bible, into the Latin Vulgate by St. Jerome, and continued to be lost through the successive translations that were informed by that tradition of translation.  Thus, the strong Biblical stance that mentions the energies of God was lost to the West and that also
 contributed doctrinally to decline as far as being able to talk about Theosis was concerned.  
So, the West has been in a pickle as far as Theosis is concerned. It had not a doctrine of the nous, it had ceased to understand revelation in a deeper sense,  it failed to distinguish the Energies of God from His Essence, and it lost the Scriptural pointers to the Energies.  
Fortunately, in this melting pot which is the United States of America, and also to some extent the intellectual melting pot which is the Internet,  we have been given great treasure houses to explore that didn't exist for most of humanity in the Past.  And the Orthopraxy of Theosis, chiefly preserved by the monks of Eastern Orthodoxy is available for exploration and for mining.  
The Mystical Tradition of Theosis in the Orthodox East can be viewed as a stand alone entity, but it is really one fabric with the totality of Orthodox Christian life, many argue.  Theosis is set in the tradition of unceasing prayer, at whose heart is the Jesus Prayer.  The Jesus Prayer
 
is set within the tradition of Repentance as a way of life.  Repentance as a way of life is set in the tradition of the Mystery of Confession, whereby consciences are cleansed.  The Mystery of Confession leads
 inexorably to the Mystery of Holy Eucharist, the heart of all Christian worship.  Eucharist is set in the Tradition of the Church, with its prayers all drawing us towards Eucharistic adoration of Christ.  Eucharist is set within the Hierarchical Ministry of the Church with its Bishops, Priests and Deacons.  They Hierarchical Ministry is set within the Foundational Doctrine of the Laying on of Hands, the chief expression of which is Apostolic Succession.  Apostolic Succession brings us home to Christ who promised to build His Church, and to enable it to stand until He returned
 again, and that it would prevail against the Gates of Hell.  And the Church of C
hrist brings us back to our essential Confession, that Jesus Christ is Come in the Flesh, that is to say, the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, brought about by the 'so be it unto me according to thy word', spoken by our lady, the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary.  
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent His son into the world not to condemn the world
 but that the world through Him might be saved."

Glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Son, together is worshipped and glorified, One God, now and ever and unto the ages of ages, amen. 









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