Sarx

LOVING God: Walking fully in the path of Jesus, without denying the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity;

Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Matthew 11:28-29

Then spoke Jesus again unto them, saying, “I am the Light of the world. He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”
John 8:12

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold. Them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.
John 10:16

For he that is not against us is on our side.
Mark 9:40

As Christians, we find spiritual awakening, challenge, growth, and fulfillment in Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. While we have accepted the Path of Jesus as our Path, we do not deny the legitimacy of other paths God may provide humanity. Where possible, we seek lively dialog with those of other faiths for mutual benefit and fellowship.

We affirm that the Path of Jesus is found wherever love of God, neighbor, and self are practiced together. Whether or not the path bears the name of Jesus, such paths bear the identity of Christ.

We confess that we have stepped away from Christ’s Path whenever we have failed to practice love of God, neighbor, and self, or have claimed Christianity is the only way, even as we claim it to be our way.

At least from where I blog, I don’t see anything wrong with the claim that, “Path of Jesus is found wherever love of God, neighbor, and self are practiced together…” it is my sense that the Orthodox Church teaches this very thing. This is why Heiromonk Damascene can write meditations on the face of Christ in Taoism, or why one can find intimations of Orthodox Christianity in even the writings of Aleister Crowley. St Paul says God has sown the truth in everyone’s heart. Truth being Jesus, what ever is true - even if it bears not his name, is his.

We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious.
Justin Martyr’s First Apology, Chapter 46

Generally speaking there are three different schools of thought when talking about religion: Exclusivist, in which a given religion in the Only Way and (pretty much) everyone else is consigned to damnation; Pluralist, in which all are equal - some would say all “secretly” say the same thing; and a third way, Inclusivist, in which, by the Grace of God acting all paths may be unequal but God may bring all home.

This third way is, I think, a valid Orthodox opinion, spurred on by the prayers we offer during liturgy “for the salvation of all” and “For all mankind”. Only a very strident fundamentalist would hold that everyone outside of the Orthodox Church is damned. Full stop. Many - even the most traditional - say “out side the Church we just don’t know”. Some would go beyond that and say God is working there as well.

A fourth way is Universalist and, in a Christian Context, that would say “by virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ all *are* saved”. Full Stop. The problem with this approach - as pointed out by several readers of these pages - is that Universalism does away with Man’s free will. Woman can still enter hell of her own choice. Man can still walk away from God, or at least so we say.

When speaking or thinking as an Inclusivist, I can allow that God may be using the faith or tradition in which you were born to help you to “work out your salvation in fear and trembling.”

St John Cassian tells us that the dominical petition “Thy Will be Done, on earth as in heaven” can be “understood to mean that it is God’s will that all should be saved, in accordance with St Paul’s well known-words: ‘God wills that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim 2:4)… Therefore when we say, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ we are praying: “Like those who are in heaven, may all those who are on earth be saved, Father, by the knowledge of thy name.” (Conferences IX,20)

One realises that this Inclusivist position allows us to question the reality or value of Divine Judgement against sin and heresy. Is the Church’s judgement also God’s? Should the Church judge?

“Do not say that God is Just” says St Isaac of Nineveh in the Ascetic Treatises. “David may call him just and fair, but God’s own Son has revealed to us that he is before all things good and kind.” He goes on to cite the parable of those who labour in the vineyard and the parable of the Prodigal Son as examples of God’s kindness over his justice. “Where is God’s Justice? Here, in the fact that we were sinners and Christ died for us.”

St John Chrysostom, while maintaining a rather strident stance, reads the parable of the Wheat and Tares (Mat 13) to be a command for mercy, noting that the tares may change into wheat.

of the very tares it is likely that many may change and become wheat. If therefore ye root them up beforehand, ye injure that which is to become wheat, slaying some, in whom there is yet room for change and improvement…
And again:
So long as they stand by the wheat, we must spare them, for it is possible for them even to become wheat…

Sadly it is a mercy based on political power and not on living the gospel:

He doth not therefore forbid our checking heretics, and stopping their mouths, and taking away their freedom of speech, and breaking up their assemblies and confederacies, but (he does forbid) our killing and slaying them.

It is clear that the parable does allow for man’s final free choice: that we should be able in the last to refuse God ourselves.

I believe we can hold an Inclusivist position - one focused on Christ - as distinct from a Universalist postion, which denies God’s gift of Free Will to mankind, on the one hand, and a Pluralist position, which denies the unique gift to the World of God’s action in Christ. Yet, at the same time, it allows for God to act in other ways, other “folds”. All of humanity has a great advocate with the Father, as St Dionysius reminds us:

Is in not true that Christ draws near with love to those who turn away from him? That he struggles with them, begs them not to scorn his love, and if they show only aversion and remain deaf to his appeals, becomes himself their advocate.

Material from John Chrysostom came from here. St Isaac of Nineveh and St Dionysius were quoted from citations contained in Olivier Clement’s Roots of Christian Mysticism.

A word on process: I have often heard the claim that the Fathers are not a Talmud. But it is very clear that we have often used them as one. In reality, the Fathers are Midrash: part of the community’s (the Church’s) commentary on the Scriptures and our way of life. Indeed, some of the scriptures themselves are Midrash. (Did Jesus talk about the “abomination of desolation” and then add, himself, “let the reader understand”? No - that was a commentary inserted by the evangelist. Many other parts of NT Scripture are thus as well - and often we, the Readers, fail to understand.)

So the Fathers are Midrash: we are free to hear them, to dialogue with them them, to debate with them. I make this claim because no one seems able to point me at the boundary between what is and what is not. Where one part of St Ingatius is beautifully inclusive, a couple of paragraphs later he is exclusive again. Because traditionalists have, historically, highlighted the Exclusive and ignored the Inclusive, does that mean we must do the same? I don’t think so.

Claims that 100% of the Fathers are 85% Orthodox, happily noting that the excluded 15% is conveniently that with which we already disagree; these seem circular reasoning that leave us a little flat. Perhaps Orthodoxy is really as wide as was taught in the early years. But to get there we will have to forego a lot of later “tightening”. Then again, perhaps I’m wrong.

These posts are a call for dialogue rather than flaming refutation.