XII. Of Good Works

Angloblography of the Day

Two items I saw today are worth reading.

First, The Address of the Archbishop, Metropolitan, and Primate of All Nigeria to General Synod : Like many others in the Communion, I have become a close watcher of ++Peter Abuia. And I have found speeches like this most helpful in seeing him as a brother in Christ, which can be difficult these days in the midst of the unpleasantness. I certainly don't agree with everything he says and I am worried that he is calling for Africa to go into laager (and I don't mean beer) and about his interpretation of apocalyptic signs. But there is no question when I read his addresses to the Church of Nigeria that God called him to be overseer of that church. He knows how to push their buttons.

Second, Pontifications has a critique of the Paul Zahl article I linked. I'll let the experts on Lutheranism speak to the question of whether Luther really was monergistic, but I think Father Kimel is right to point out that the ARCIC documents are important in this discussion. Yet I should point out that Zahl also mentions the issue of authority. Now Zahl likely only means papal authority, but I think it is important to remember that the issue of authority is also connected to the question of Roman Catholic dogmatic pronouncements that potentially are inconsistent with the Faith of the Undivided Church.

Now onward to further talk about Justification, Sanctification, and all that!

XII. Of Good Works

Albeit that Good Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification, cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's judgment...

Of course, we went through this story yesterday, but I would like to continue to assure you of the hopelessness of our position. But let's take a slightly different tack. There is a story of Jewish wisdom that goes like this. (I am afraid Madonna turned it into a children's book.) As I remember the story, it goes like this: A thief has been caught in the act. He is taken to the village rabbi to be judged. The rabbi asks him to restore what he has stolen and pronounces this sufficient atonement. The people are amazed. There is a woman among the people, a notorious gossip. She continues to feel increasingly guilty and is shunned by her neighbors. Seeing the judgment on the thief, she thinks the rabbi will set her some easy task to atone for her gossiping ways. So she goes to him with her problem. He says that atonement is possible in her case and asks her to bring him a feather pillow. She does so. The rabbi takes the pillow and tears it apart in the midst of a gust of wind. He tells the woman she will atone for her gossip if she can find the pieces of the pillow and put it back together. She is horrified. Is gossip so bad?

The moral of this story is that stolen property can be restored by the falsehoods and embellishments we tell of each other are not so easily taken back. But this is true of so much of our sin. If we live in a universe constantly at the edge of chaos, both metaphysical and mathematical physical, the harm we do is often nearly impossible to heal. Like most chemical reactions, our sins are irreversible and their effects spiral out of control. This is why it is so important that we forgive one another, since restitution often is impossible. But this is also why we should seek and be thankful for God's forgiveness. We potentially are responsible for so much.

For fun, let us consider the illustration Jesus uses in Matthew 18:21-35 of the magnitude of our "debt." (Remember, folks, this is only an illustration. God does not accept Visa.) The smaller debt in question is 100 denarii, actually a somewhat substantial sum. My experience with Roman prices usually fixes it at about $2000. It is a quite believable debt of one servant to another. But the servant owes to his lord, 10,000 talents. There is some debate about how much a talent was in Jesus' day, but let us estimate it to be in the order of magnitude of the sacred talent and set the value of the shekel equal to the denarius for sake of argument. The debt then becomes 30,000,000 denarii (or $600 million or so). Or to be more realistic, this would be a sufficient amount of money to make payroll for a Roman legion for about a century. And Jesus uses this amount to illustrate the burden of sin on a presumably ordinary man. Against such debts in the divine economy, our good works can mean little in the sense of restitution.

Yet they are pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch as by them a lively Faith may be evidently known as a tree discerned by its fruit.

At the heart of this part of the Article likely are two great moments in the Scriptures. The first, of course, is that much disputed and little understood speech of James to the prosperous and connected of the church to which he writes. First, he warns in 2:8-11 that if we do not love our neighbors as ourselves in any way, we participate generally in rebellion against the commandments of God, "For he who said, 'You shall not commit adultery' said also, "You shall not commit murder." And of course, James suggests that we are all under judgment on these grounds, "Always speak and act as men who are to be judged under a law which makes them free." Simul iustus et peccator is not a statement merely about our being in God's eyes, it is a way of summarizing how should we live and comport ourselves. And I would argue that this business of showing mercy to another is a key to justification and sanctification if it is a matter of our participation in Christ, for James says, "In that judgement there will be no mercy for the man who has shown none. Mercy triumphs over judgement."

This is the same syllogistic and participatory rhetoric as Romans but implicit. If we die to sin as Christ died, we will live in Him. If we forgive as He did, we will be forgiven. This is not salvation by works in that a man earns salvation through participation, for no man but Christ made effectual those things in which we participate. In a day and age when inheritance has less and less bearing on everyday life, the next analogy I shall give may mean less. But in a Roman will, the testator often could charge his heirs to perform certain obligations before they could enter into their inheritance. The heirs did not earn their inheritance. It was the free gift of the testator, but they did perform some acts to claim the inheritance. It may be this way with us. Though I suspect we still generally don't fulfill those obligations well either, but as the Prayer of Humble Access says, "But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy."

But after this discussion, James says words to mar a press cycle during a Presidential campaign, "What good is it, my friends, for someone to say he has faith when his actions do nothing to show it? Can that faith save him?" And then James presents a poor fellow Christian to his hearers. He asks whether such a person simply should be told to "Fare well, keep warm, and have a good meal." Note his rhetoric: the better-off Christian is wishing health, clothing, and food to the poorer Christian. It is almost a magical formula. James is posing the better-off Christian as someone who has faith that the poorer Christian will be well, yet does nothing. "What good is that?" James next is faced with the growing dichotomy between what we call the active and the contemplative lives. Forget the story of Mary and Martha in this regard. Instead remember that monastics of great contemplation generally are not without charity. But James has a great retort which I'll translate very freely, "Oh, you believe in God, do you? That's great. But even the demons do that and it can scare them back to hell." James desires a faith made manifest. He cites the example of Abraham, whose faith was so great that he tried to sacrifice his only son. He asks his hearers whether their faith is that great.

Abraham's sacrifice apparently remained a high standard for faith in Holy Tradition. In the Institutes of St. John Cassian, we can read of a father who entered a monastery with his son. He was separated from his son during his novitiate but could see the boy being cuffed, scolded, and otherwise ill-treated by his elder monks. Finally, the Abbot wanted to test the strength of the father's faith. He ordered the father to throw his boy in a local stream. The father did so. Fortunately, the Abbot had set other monks to save the boy. But the monks who did so reported to the Abbot that the man had repeated the act of Abraham. Personally, I would have put father and son in different monasteries, so there would be less justification for abusing the boy, but it's still instructive.

So much for the good works of a lively Faith. But what of fruit? The reference comes from Christ's warning about false prophets in Matthew 7:15-20. Simply enough, those you can trust as Christians bear good fruit and those you can't bear bad fruit. The Didache has much to say on telling the bad trees from the good trees. And thus we should beware of televangelists, who generally act like the people we are warned about in the Didache. But if the tree analogy is not quite apropos to the question of good works, the general agricultural and horticultural imagery is more relevant elsewhere. In the Parable of the Sower, we are told of seeds that grew and yielded "a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold." Paul sees good fruit and bad fruit more specifically in the works of the spirit in contrast to the works of the flesh. And we should also remember concerning good works that if others see our good works and glorify the Father, those same others will see our evil works and curse Him. And thus such acts are not well-pleasing to God. This is not the Onion. Jesus is not a sucker.

And we also see the Jacobean (or Jamesian) synergy of faith and works in the more mystical theology of John, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener...Dwell in me, as I you...I am the vine; you are the branches. Anyone who dwells in me, as I dwell in him, bears much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." *Christopher has reminded us that our telos is perichoresis, the mutual communion of our being with God. So far we are from it, but it is our end, the cause and spur of our good works, the spirit of Christ as Article IX says working within us. In a theology proceeding from the ordinances of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, we die in Christ and experience a foretaste through water, through oil, through bread, and through wine of the ultimate and dynamic perichoresis we yearn for in the Trinity. In both my experience and the mystical theology of the sacraments, I can say of the first that it is as if the Holy Spirit moves over the waters of chaos once more that the one baptized may be not merely reborn (as from the womb) but recreated out of nothing. Of the latter, Chrysostom says in Peri Hierosynes that at the Eucharist, Elijah again strives against the priests of Baal. But the sacrifice is yet more marvelous, for fire is sent down on the gifts and they are not consumed. What use are such mighty acts done in our midst and even to us if we believe them and experience them merely as good wishes and empty magic to a world in need of healing?

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may have a lively Faith that does not merely compress and rarefy the air with good wishes but yields the fruits of incarnate mercy: first self-restraint, then food, then clothes, then joy, then peace in the Lord.