‘Get on with living your life as a person who loves Jesus and cares about his feelings’ surely means going to a great deal of effort to do our best to get things right in his eyes - which leads inevitably to our recognising where we fail, and moving on, all with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Our ‘yes’ puts us under an obligation to co-operate in our sanctification.
I wonder if there is a difference between "effort" and "works"--that is, between what you just somehow wind up doing, from day to day, because you love him and it's come to your attention that he would like you to handle x or y in this particular way--and a self-improvement program, however spiritually flavored. The latter seems to me dangerous, and that's what I think of when I hear "co-operate" in sanctification.
Works are an outflowing from our relationship with God, while our sanctification is an inflowing from God which relies upon our active acceptance of it - and our co-operation with it in the sense of listening to and acting upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
I like the inflowing/outflowing distinction, though I'm not so sure (being Lutheran!) about the wording of "active acceptance". But I'm fine with "listening and acting upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit." Must think more...
Here’s the thesis in a nutshell: God is wholly responsible for our sanctification, just as he is for our justification.
Or to use less churchy language,
You didn’t save yourself by your own efforts, Jesus did; and you aren’t going to improve yourself and become more like him through your own efforts now, Jesus is handling that too. So stop fussing and bean counting your sins. Leave all that in God’s lap. Get on with living your life as a person who loves Jesus and cares about his feelings.
Or not. Since the premise here seems to be that nothing we do matters, at least as far as God is concerned, it seems one can be just as sanctified living their life as someone who hates Jesus. Or is indifferent to Jesus. Kind of a theistic nihilism where God does everything and people can do whatever they want without divine consequences.
Indeed. I know a lot less about the Lutheran tradition than the Reformed one, but it seems to me that it's easy to caricature both. Which @Croesos seems to be doing in response to @Lamb Chopped's post, as far as I can see.
It's not intended as a caricature. @Lamb Chopped's position, as she explained it, is that nothing people do (like "living your life as a person who loves Jesus and cares about his feelings") can effect their sanctification one way or the other, so it literally doesn't matter how you live, at least as far as the question of sanctification goes. (The law of consequences may catch up with you on other matters, though.)
In other words, there's no reason to believe that a person who lives their life as a person who hates Jesus is any less "sanctified" than someone who lives their life as a person who loves Jesus. They might be, but they could just as easily be more sanctified than the person who lives like they love Jesus, at least according to @Lamb Chopped's proposed rubric.
Excuse my absence during illness.
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Croesos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, which is generally a feature of Christian sanctification in real life, but is not in fact the main point of it, anymore than taking a shower and brushing one's teeth is the main point of the various kinds of preparation one goes through before one's wedding starts!
Moral filth is obviously not going to be a feature of someone who's well along in Christian sanctification. But Christ cares about far more than just morals, and certainly one of the things he cares about is whether you love or hate him (or his people, for that matter).
Sanctification as presented in the Scripture is very closely related to discipleship--it's not possible to a person who is not a disciple of Jesus, because justification--that is, becoming a disciple of Jesus in the first place, by his action--is the very foundation of it. Without that, nothing else stands.
I suppose if you wanted to discuss sanctification from a non-Christian point of view, you could argue that hatred of Jesus would fit in somehow; but that's not what I was hoping we'd discuss in this thread. If someone wants to, would they be so kind as to start a second one?
I've never been tempted to cross the Tiber, although I have a lot of time for the contemplative tradition within the RCC.
It would have been an easier option culturally, though, than crossing the Bosphorus.
I admire Anglo-Catholicism and it can put on a terrific show.
I find it ecclesiastically confused though. It looks and sounds great but doesn't make a great deal of ecclesial sense to me. It seems to want to have its cake and eat it.
I still maintain there's a kind of Sir Walter Scott Romanticism at the heart of it, though. But I'm looking at it from the outside so may miss some of the nuance.
We're getting off topic though.
Nice way to get a jab in then control the narrative in the last sentence. I’m considering whether to take this somewhere hotter.
I think it's better to allow @Lamb Chopped to speak for herself and for her own tradition, @Croesos than try to tell her where her 'schema' may lead.
She's made it clear that she's not addressing the issue of those who 'hate Christ'.
That doesn't mean, of course, that we shouldn't question or challenge her understanding or approach if we feel it necessary and indeed she's inviting us to do so.
In the light of that, I have a question.
@Lamb Chopped: when the Virgin Mary agreed to participate (mind-bogglingly) in the Incarnation - 'may it be done to me according to your word - was that 'active acceptance' or something else?
Fwiw I think that sanctification is rather like gardening - the life is already present in the seeds/plant (in the Christian through regeneration/justification) the gardener cannot produce this. The role of the gardener is to feed and tend the seedlings giving them water, warmth, light and nutrients. Putting them in conditions where they will flourish. Protecting them from weeds and slugs.
We are responsible for cooperating with God and stirring up the life of the Spirit he has graciously given us in Christ.
FWIW and without wanting to teach Shipmates to suck eggs, it's true to say that the Eastern and Western Churches have different 'takes' on these matters.
Without getting into the weeds, I think it's fair to say that the Eastern traditions don't tend to 'disaggregate' things like justification and sanctification in the way some Western approaches do - given the controversies of the 16th and 17th centuries.
It's not that the Eastern (and Oriental?) Churches are unfamiliar with these concepts - rather that for a variety of historical and theological reasons, they haven't been 'separated out' - if I can put it that way - in our thinking and practice.
I'm not saying that's right, wrong, good, bad or indifferent - although I have clearly voted with my feet in terms of affiliation.
But with the best will in the world I can't help but feel that by attempting to fillet these things out the Western traditions have tended to veer towards a somewhat dualistic approach.
Yes. It resonates with me too. It’s somewhat analogous with what medics sometimes say about not healing, but creating the conditions for healing to happen.
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Crœsos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, . . .
Nope, though the notion that these are unrelated and that one can be both holy and immoral/amoral is fascinating, if beyond the scope of this thread. I was taking sanctification to mean a comparison of who is literally holier-than-thou.
Sanctification as presented in the Scripture is very closely related to discipleship--it's not possible to a person who is not a disciple of Jesus, because justification--that is, becoming a disciple of Jesus in the first place, by his action--is the very foundation of it. Without that, nothing else stands.
What's interesting to me here is that under this framework Christian discipleship is seen as something involuntary. Rather than an ongoing practice consisting of deliberately chosen actions and/or beliefs, under this understanding Christian discipleship is something imposed/inflicted upon people involuntarily. "God is wholly responsible for our sanctification", according to @Lamb Chopped's original thesis, so anything that is necessary for sanctification, like Christian discipleship, has to be outside the realm of people's volition. Otherwise people would be at least partly responsible for their own sanctification.
I'm wondering if sanctification could be seen as a status bestowed upon someone becoming a Christian; "you have been made Holy" because you "Have been washed in the blood of the Lamb". " you have been adopted as a child of God, a brother/sister of Christ ".
Sure. And I have done so with my question about the Virgin Mary's role in the 'plan of salvation'.
What if she had said, 'No'?
I'm not a Lutheran and as I've said upthread, it's not a tradition I know a great deal about.
I've heard Reformed people say that Lutheranism is far more 'deterministic' than people accuse their tradition of being - but I've no idea whether that's the case or not.
I do know that the Reformed tradition is far more nuanced that it is often portrayed.
I imagine the Lutheran one to be the same.
All that said, as a former Protestant, I 'get' the emphasis on divine grace and initiative. It seems to me that there is an almost tip-toe breathless concern to ensure that there shouldn't even be any hint of human agency lest we all topple over into salvation by works. Sure. I get that.
We can see it in @Nick Tamen's concern to emphasise that God provides the grapes and the grain in the first place. As if any of us are overlooking that. Now, I hasten to add that I didn't think he was being polemical, but perhaps rather squeamish ...
'Now steady on. You do realise that the grapes and grain come from God in the first place don't you?'
As if that isn't axiomatic.
Heck, in various Anglican and RC (and perhaps other?) communion liturgies we have this stated explicitly - 'which earth has given and human hands have made' and so on.
From an Orthodox perspective all of this sounds unnecessarily complicated. As if we can put justification and sanctification under a microscope to probe how much of it is 'down to us' and how much is up to God. It doesn't work like that.
It is Christ who sanctifies, Christ who saves.
We can't get under the bonnet (hood) and play around with the spark-plugs and pistons to determine how it all works.
That's why I like @Twangist's garden analogy and @BroJames's healing one. They are more organic.
Mark 4:28 and all that. First the seed, then the ear, then the full fruit in the ear - to paraphrase.
I'm not trying to be an awkward so-and-so. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.'
Calvinists and Lutherans AIUI believe in what I would refer to as a compatibility view of free will and determinism, just as scientific naturalists do. That is, saying an action is taken of our free will means that it has the appropriate causal basis in our dispositions.
Luther IIRC believed that due to sin no action we took of our own volition could have an appropriate basis in our dispositions: that is, he held that an action is free if we correctly understand the actions as good and so are motivated to do it for that reason - and he believed that due to sin we cannot act purely on that basis.
The details of what Calvin believed I don't know.
Anyway, for both an action taken because God gives us grace is one taken with the appropriate basis in our dispositions and is therefore free.
You didn’t save yourself by your own efforts, Jesus did; and you aren’t going to improve yourself and become more like him through your own efforts now, Jesus is handling that too.
OK, so I don't have to do anything at all, it's all taken care of. Cool
So stop fussing and bean counting your sins. Leave all that in God’s lap.
Don't worry about sinning, not my problem, God will take care of everything. Got it.
Get on with living your life as a person who loves Jesus and cares about his feelings.
This seems at odds with what's gone before. If it's utterly impossible for me to do even the slightest thing to influence my own sanctification/salvation then why should I even try? For that matter, why would it even matter if I love Jesus in the first place?
We can see it in @Nick Tamen's concern to emphasise that God provides the grapes and the grain in the first place. As if any of us are overlooking that. Now, I hasten to add that I didn't think he was being polemical, but perhaps rather squeamish ...
'Now steady on. You do realise that the grapes and grain come from God in the first place don't you?'
As if that isn't axiomatic.
You know, I really don’t think it helps when you read more into comments like these than is intended and then go on and on about them. Please look at context.
I was being neither polemic nor squeemish. @mousethief made a very good point about what God does in the Eucharist, noting (my paraphrase) that before God can do anything with the gifts in the Eucharist, we must provide those gifts. I said
This Presbyterian would agree with all of that [“that” being what you had posted, GG], as well as much of the rest of your post, and would agree with much of what @mousethief said. (Though I’d probably add that before we can make or buy the bread or the wine or the Table, God must provide the wheat and the grapes and the wood or stone.)
So no where did I suggest others might be ignoring that, or that anyone thinks it’s not axiomatic or whatever. I simply said—parenthetically—it’s something I might add if I were the one making the point. Really, nothing more. No comment at all on what anyone else might think or overlook or ignore. No suggestion that it’s not a commonly held and understood concept.
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Crœsos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, . . .
Nope, though the notion that these are unrelated and that one can be both holy and immoral/amoral is fascinating, if beyond the scope of this thread. I was taking sanctification to mean a comparison of who is literally holier-than-thou.
I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what is meant by the bolded bit; I’m not sure how to make it mesh with definitions of sanctification that I’m familiar with.
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Crœsos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, . . .
Nope, though the notion that these are unrelated and that one can be both holy and immoral/amoral is fascinating, if beyond the scope of this thread. I was taking sanctification to mean a comparison of who is literally holier-than-thou.
I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what is meant by the bolded bit; I’m not sure how to make it mesh with definitions of sanctification that I’m familiar with.
It goes back to @Lamb Chopped's definition, that sanctification is about making someone holy. By definition someone who is sanctified is holier than someone who has not.
Is this one of those cases where "literally" is interpreted as an intensifier rather than understood by its dictionary definition?
Ok. Fair-do's @Nick Tamen but I'm engaging in some good-natured banter here but I appreciate that doesn't often come over well online.
I'm really not 'against' the Reformed and Lutheran traditions, but it does strike me that neither are as 'biblical' on these matters as some of their exponents would have us believe.
I'd also suggest that all Christian traditions have some kind of idea of 'complementarity' or 'synergia' however much some may protest otherwise.
I'm quite prepared to accept that Calvinism is not as deterministic as its detractors insist.
I can't speak to the Lutheran tradition as I don't know enough about it. I would be interested in @Lamb Chopped's answer to my question about the Virgin Mary.
Did she have some 'agency'?
Or was she compelled, as it were?
If the latter that's pretty disturbing it seems to me.
I'm certainly not suggesting that Lamb Chopped is arguing that Our Lady or anyone else is 'compelled' to act against their will - and yes, I know that 'free will' can be a problematic concept.
But I'd be interested in hearing a Lutheran 'take' on this one.
Sure. And I have done so with my question about the Virgin Mary's role in the 'plan of salvation'.
What if she had said, 'No'?
Then I believe the prophecies would have been different in the first place (but then I imagine she would not have been asked in that case), since I understand God to transcend time, and thus His “foreknowledge” is really His seeing us make our free-willed decisions across the timeline “all at once,” as it were. Thus, any genuinely Divine revealings of the future to us in the past would include whatever free decisions people make in our “future.”
(It’s all in Boethius, all in Boethius… and Lewis of course ❤️)
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Crœsos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, . . .
Nope, though the notion that these are unrelated and that one can be both holy and immoral/amoral is fascinating, if beyond the scope of this thread. I was taking sanctification to mean a comparison of who is literally holier-than-thou.
I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what is meant by the bolded bit; I’m not sure how to make it mesh with definitions of sanctification that I’m familiar with.
It goes back to @Lamb Chopped's definition, that sanctification is about making someone holy. By definition someone who is sanctified is holier than someone who has not.
Maybe. But it seems to be an out-of-place comparison to me. In my experience, consideration about sanctification compares the person sanctified/being sanctified to their former self, not to others. I am holier/being made holier than I was, just as if I’ve been sick and have been healed, I’m healthier than I was. How my health compares to the health of others doesn't enter into the conversation.
Is this one of those cases where "literally" is interpreted as an intensifier rather than understood by its dictionary definition?
Perhaps it’s more about the use of “holier-than-thou” in this context, given the pejorative meaning it carries.
The point is that everyone can, theoretically, move closer to God at once. This is not a zero-sum point, so it does not follow at all that one person must be further from God in order for another to get closer.
But it seems to be an out-of-place comparison to me. In my experience, consideration about sanctification compares the person sanctified/being sanctified to their former self, not to others. I am holier/being made holier than I was, just as if I’ve been sick and have been healed, I’m healthier than I was. How my health compares to the health of others doesn't enter into the conversation.
Although at the same time your symptoms might also get much worse while the doctor does their work.
Yes. The moment we start comparing ourselves with other people the less holy we become.
But this seems unavoidable if we postulate that God does not sanctify non-Christians. If you start specifying certain groups as unsanctifiable (i.e. that cannot have their holiness increased) there's an implicit comparison involved.
I think it's better to allow @Lamb Chopped to speak for herself and for her own tradition, @Croesos than try to tell her where her 'schema' may lead.
She's made it clear that she's not addressing the issue of those who 'hate Christ'.
That doesn't mean, of course, that we shouldn't question or challenge her understanding or approach if we feel it necessary and indeed she's inviting us to do so.
In the light of that, I have a question.
@Lamb Chopped: when the Virgin Mary agreed to participate (mind-bogglingly) in the Incarnation - 'may it be done to me according to your word - was that 'active acceptance' or something else?
If something else, what was it?
Okay, I can see I'm getting into deeper waters than I intended. The issue of the freedom (or otherwise) of the will is deep waters indeed!
First of all, may I say that I'm not discussing her agreement in the light of sanctification? Let's lay that aside for the moment.
Okay, now on to the Lutheran view of the will, free or otherwise.
The first thing to note here is that Luther seems to disagree with himself, if you look across all his writings. So anyone trying to force me to justify everything in The Bondage of the Will had better go find somebody else to argue with. That was a piece of polemic, not so much a piece of teaching; and what I'm after here is the daily, basic, rubber-meets-the-road of how Christians live in relationship to God.
(deep breath)
Okay. God created human beings with free will. Originally that will was good and perfect and holy--which is to say, not fucked up yet. However, like all of his rational creatures, humanity had the option (if they took it) of using that free will to fuck themselves up--namely, by deciding to insert something (anything) into first place before God himself. There was a decision involved--the story in Genesis makes it an issue of obedience: do I eat from the tree God told me not to, or do I avoid it and go eat from any of the other zillions of trees I could sample?
You know how the story turns out. And it's particularly egregrious because a) they didn't even know the tempter, let alone have any reason to trust him (such as a pre-existing relationship); b) they did have that relationship with God, whom they not only knew but had received benefits from, so had a reason to trust; and c) for freak's sake, they could have waited a few hours and ASKED him before making an irrevocable decision, as he appears to have been in the habit of visiting them every evening. Yikes.
Whatever. When humanity fucked up, we fucked up our very nature--and that included the faculty of the will. It was no longer truly free--it was (in the analogy I use far too often on the Ship) much like a bent wheel on a supermarket trolley/cart--able to turn and move, yes, but always hellbent on going its own way, and requiring the driver to use main force to prevent it heading off into a stack of soda bottles. Which is why anybody can do good for a limited amount of time, but sooner or later our strength, interest, or oomph just gives out, and our bent will reverts to doing shitty things--whether that be something as momentous as crime or as seemingly tiny as snapping at a family member.
In a world filled with bent creatures, you can see that social problems multiply and grow like hell. And we can use main force on ourselves to "fix" things, at least temporarily, but the constant drag of the bent will means that sooner or later, shit happens again. Which sucks.
This is the reason why the popular idea of doing good and "earning" heaven, or salvation, or God's love, is nonsense. Nobody can manage it. Heck, I don't know anybody awake and alive who can manage it for a single day, if we consider words, thoughts and actions altogether. I sure don't. And this is the state Scripture refers to as "sin."
Sin is a word a lot of people use for single actions or thoughts or words, but it's really more useful if you regard it as a single entity--a kind of infection or infestation, which attacks the original good human nature and gets its scaly tentacles into everything. You can't defeat it by using your will to force back the visible manifestations in your life (for example, by taking a vow of silence or something to stop you being mean to your dog!); it will just pop up in some other area of your life, such as being nasty to people on the internet. To get rid of sin you don't need a more effective self-help book; you need someone to re-create you. Someone to put you to death and raise you back to life--but without the infestation. And that would be Jesus.
Jesus, then, is God himself, come into this world as one of us, with a real human nature, but one that is the way it was originally made to be--not infested and infected with sin. As a result his will (and his intelligence, his affections, his understanding, his judgement, etc.) are not bent. He does what he wants and wants what he does--unlike us, who find ourselves doing stuff we never intended or wanted, and have to say "sorry" all the time!
And in some mysterious way he substitutes himself for us, taking our sin infestation upon himself, and carries it into death for us--his death, on the cross. He leaves it there, along with the guilt and shame that go along with it. And when he rises from the dead, he comes to us as a lover coming to his beloved people, saying, "You can be free now! Let me give you freedom. Let me give you my life, and you will live forever. Only trust me."
But what Jesus is offering is a life that is dependent on his own. If we belong to him, he lives in us, he lives through us--we have no life apart from him. That is also true of justification, sanctification, and free will, along with a ton of other good things. So the choice (if we can call it that) is between slavery to the sin infestation--refusing Christ's gift--or taking his gift and all that goes with it, which includes the indwelling of the Holy Trinity. Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit come to live in us bodily--not displacing us by any means!--but certainly making his/their presence known.
From that point on, the human being is in an odd position. You can read about it in Romans 7. According to our new, recreated nature in Christ, we are holy, blameless, forgiven, clean, new, and living; but the old bent nature is still harassing us, rather like a dead rattlesnake where the head has been chopped off but it's still capable for a little while of biting any idiot who tries to pick it up. A zombie self, yes? And our struggle for the rest of our natural lives is to live according to the Holy Spirit, following him, rather than according to the old dead (but never dead enough, alas) sinful nature.
Justification is the word we use for what Christ accomplishes in us at the moment we come to belong to him. At that point we are immediately living, clean, pure, holy, saved, righteous adopted children of God, and this happens more or less by God's fiat. He declares us so, and so we are. It's his opinion that matters, after all. Though if you need more, it's worth remembering that his word created the universe--so if he speaks us righteous, then that's what we are.
However, for whatever reason, God has chosen to let sanctification be a process--at least, for those of us who live long enough after justification to see it. This is the process by which the Holy Spirit makes us Christ-like--the Bible calls it "conforming us to the image of His Son." That doesn't mean making clones--rather, it means that the Spirit brings to full growth all of the particular gifts, talents and blessings he has poured out on each individual one of us; and he continues to deal with the zombie-like sin nature whenever it pops up, along the way. When we are finished, we will be something marvelous to stare at; but we will all be different masterpieces, not carbon copies.
As we can see from this thread, the Christian church holds many different opinions about how sanctification happens, and the variety is maybe even greater because the viewpoint you use is going to affect the way you express it. From the inside, it does feel very much as if you are "making a decision," at least in my experience--most of the time; though the further you get down the road, the less it feels like a choice (IMHO) and the more it feels like "Well of course I did x, how could I have done anything else?" because "doing x" is becoming normal to you, and anything else feels distasteful--disgusting--finally unthinkable. You are increasingly acting in accordance with the new nature, and the further you go down that road, the more your freedom and your choices become one and unshakeable. Not by God forcing you, but because now that you are finally healthy, you wouldn't WANT to do x or y (ugh).
But that's the view from the inside (and I suspect, Mary's viewpoint as well. Why not?). From outside--from the point of view we use when we're doing science (yes, theology is a science in the old sense--a system of knowledge), the viewpoint is rather different. There we see the Holy Spirit doing the driving in this go-kart, if you'll allow the image; he is not forcing the young Christian, but it's very much like a parent holding a toddler on his lap, both of them with hands on the wheel, and the child gets to "drive" while the parent prevents the whole thing from coming to disaster. Asking how much of the choice depends on the toddler and how much on the parent is ... a bit of a problem to tease out, don't you think? A perfectly skilled toddler wouldn't need the parent's help; but then, no toddler is ever far enough along that we could even contemplate leaving them to drive, say, a semi-truck. Still, even at the beginning, he is not a robot or a puppet. He has real input to the driving.
The fact that the trip around the track does not result in disaster is of course to the credit of the parent; and so also with Christians in our lives, whatever good comes of us we credit to the Lord, and rightly so. But we are not puppets. And the analogy is not a perfect one, for if the Spirit ever stopped supporting us for a single moment, we'd be back in our old dead state; but that isn't true for a toddler left alone in a go-kart (shudder). So please don't overload my analogy.
So, back to human Christian free will in this world before death, while we're still in the process of sanctification.
Some things are morally neutral, and don't create much struggle between the two natures, or the two wills: what color to paint the bedroom, whether to name the cat Mr. Cuddles or Vicious Puma, what to have for dinner. Those are probably the closest to truly "free" choices we make, I think.
Some are morally or spiritually charged, and at that point our two wills (the bent "zombie" will and the new regenerate will) start quarreling. Should I call auntie Doris, who is lonely but will talk my ear off at the end of a day that's been too long already? Should I blow the whistle on my workplace, because they're endangering the public health through dangerous shortcuts, even though I know it'll probably mean I can never work in this industry again? Should I take Y into my home and family, because he's homeless and has no one else to help, and the local safety net is completely fucked up? Is there an alternative? Is it one I can live with, as a Christian?
I don't know any Christians who are so far along the path of sanctification that they don't know what it means to have the two wills quarreling. It sucks. You can deliberately call on the Holy Spirit to get help to quash the zombie will, but that, too, is a choice--at least from the inside, where we experience it. (I generally have to do this when I'm facing a shitty situation like a night in the ER supporting someone who doesn't speak English, and my day has been too long already. My own will, however sanctified, isn't going to get me through).
I have met many old Christians who have become remarkably beautiful--that is, Christlike--in their old age. The sanctification process is finally visible in them. for whatever odd reason, it seems to be least visible to the one undergoing it (probably to prevent spiritual pride, bleah). There are also a lot of newer Christians who have odd lacunae in their lives, where it looks like the Spirit hasn't gotten around to fixing "that" (whatever "that" is), maybe because he has different priorities--and "that" sometimes creates a scandal among those who know the person. Why has Z made so much progress in how he treats his family and neighbors, but he's still addicted to _____? Why didn't God deal with that first? We have no answers. God does what he's gonna do, and rarely explains himself. He'll get around to it in the end, if the person is still living. But even from the inside, you get no answers. (I'm asking right now why God waited to this point of my life to deal with some very fundamental issues of trust. Not getting an answer, as usual.)
I've been long-winded enough. forgive me. Did I miss something you (anyone) asked?
You didn’t save yourself by your own efforts, Jesus did; and you aren’t going to improve yourself and become more like him through your own efforts now, Jesus is handling that too.
OK, so I don't have to do anything at all, it's all taken care of. Cool
So stop fussing and bean counting your sins. Leave all that in God’s lap.
Don't worry about sinning, not my problem, God will take care of everything. Got it.
Get on with living your life as a person who loves Jesus and cares about his feelings.
This seems at odds with what's gone before. If it's utterly impossible for me to do even the slightest thing to influence my own sanctification/salvation then why should I even try? For that matter, why would it even matter if I love Jesus in the first place?
This is one thing I'd like to address separately, if you don't mind. Knowing a little of your struggles from what you've posted, and their similarity to my own during my teens and twenties, I kinda wish you would stop trying. Seriously. Because that's a dead end. But the constant try, try, try made ME wish i was dead before I got dragged out of my legalism and was able to leave it in Jesus' hands.
I had a doctor, a specialist who was also a friend, talk to me about this once. He was RC and he once said wistfully that he wished he had the huge amount of merits (credits) he imagined I and my husband had built up in God's eyes by being missionaries to the urban poor. And I was distressed because I couldn't figure out how to tell him that I'd gladly transfer all that to him, if he wanted it, because it means nothing in our eyes--it's not what we did stuff for, and I'm not even entirely convinced that what we did was good for anything at all in heaven apart from putting a smile on Jesus' face at the moment we do it. We do what we do for the same reason an apple tree bears apples--because that's what comes naturally. And God knows that if it takes that little effort, it shouldn't be worth much in terms of bean-counting, should it? If it's not a sacrifice to drive X to the doctor, then why should it be rewarded as if it were? If it's a positive pleasure to do something that makes Jesus happy (and that's because I love him, and yeah, this gets into sloppy emotional stuff), then shouldn't it be a DE-merit, if anything, because I already have my reward in the moment? Think about that one.
Now it wasn't always that easy, nor was it always that pleasant, earlier in life; but ongoing sanctification means that the further you get down the road, the more likely you are to find it a) simple(r) and b) pleasant(er). So you see how this fucks up the imaginary divine scorecard. If I (at this point of my life) do Y, and so does Joe Blow (who is a new Christian and finds all of this very, very difficult), surely Joe deserves more credit for the same deed. Right? And eventually we reach the point (when I'm a hundred years old or so) where pretty much everything is a delight to do for Jesus' sake--which means I'd be amassing NO credit at all, or maybe losing credit! If the whole credit idea was real, I mean.
It's stuff like this that makes the whole "earn brownie points with God" scheme unworkable to me. Besides the fact that it's totally against Scripture.
And in practical terms, it's a helluva lot less worry and trouble to let the Holy Spirit deal with my sanctification, and just get on with living my life.
@Lamb chopped wrote: didn’t save yourself by your own efforts, Jesus did; and you aren’t going to improve yourself and become more like him through your own efforts now, Jesus is handling that too. So stop fussing and bean counting your sins. Leave all that in God’s lap. Get on with living your life as a person who loves Jesus and cares about his feelings.
Setting apart as holy is the definition of to sanctify, right? So if only God can do that then whether he has done it or not is the issue. Also.. If he has saved then to sanctify is surely part of the package.
It's true, I don't think he justifies anybody he doesn't sanctify. In fact, that stirs a memory...
Aha! Romans 8:
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
I take it that "conformed to the image of his Son" is sanctification.
I've never been tempted to cross the Tiber, although I have a lot of time for the contemplative tradition within the RCC.
It would have been an easier option culturally, though, than crossing the Bosphorus.
I admire Anglo-Catholicism and it can put on a terrific show.
I find it ecclesiastically confused though. It looks and sounds great but doesn't make a great deal of ecclesial sense to me. It seems to want to have its cake and eat it.
I still maintain there's a kind of Sir Walter Scott Romanticism at the heart of it, though. But I'm looking at it from the outside so may miss some of the nuance.
We're getting off topic though.
Nice way to get a jab in then control the narrative in the last sentence. I’m considering whether to take this somewhere hotter.
Apologies, I didn't see this earlier. Ok, it was a jab but intended more as a light-hearted cuff than a punch to the solar plexus.
But I apologise for causing offence.
I do find Anglo-Catholicism perplexing in some ways but I'd say the same (and worse) about my own Tradition.
My remarks crossed a line though and I'm happy to tone them down or withdraw them.
Nice way to get a jab in then control the narrative in the last sentence.
It is a pattern of posting behaviour.
Whose? You were the one accusing other Shipmates of 'talking shit' about Saint Augustine when nobody, as far as I could see, has actually begun to do so or come close to doing so.
Is that a pattern of posting behaviour?
Although I'll readily concede that there have certainly been instances of people 'talking shit' about Augustine and much else besides, of course.
It's true, I don't think he justifies anybody he doesn't sanctify. In fact, that stirs a memory...
Aha! Romans 8:
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
I take it that "conformed to the image of his Son" is sanctification.
Well, that seems certainly Paul’s thinking. But then discussion may naturally lead to the question of eternal security. If you are saved can …??
I have an RC background and it seems to me their theology filtered down to doing works to retain the grace but even though that is like believing 2 impossible things before breakfast, you still have the issue of how important is how you live and Paul answers that for us too. “Shall I sin that grace may abound..by no means..”
Meanwhile, thanks for the reply and no need to apologise for its length. These things can't be reduced to sound-bites.
I like your supermarket trolley (shopping cart) analogy. The wonky wheel
I think you've addressed my question about Mary - the Theotokos, BVM, Our Lady, address her how we may - albeit in a roundabout kind of way. I understand your reasoning process there and can see why you decided to 'park' some aspects for the time being.
I don’t see that as you avoiding the question. Far from it. I think some of the issues around 'justification' and so on probably deserve a thread of their own.
I'm still getting to grips with my own Tradition's understanding of these things but you'll appreciate that whilst we don't dismiss them entirely, we tend to think that Protestants often over-emphasise some of what might be called the more 'legal' or 'forensic' aspects.
I'm not accusing you of doing that, I hasten to add.
However we cut it, as you say the key thing is how this all works out in practice where the rubber hits the road - which in my case clearly involves paying due attention to my posting style and reining in my sinful propensity towards teasing and jibeing to the point of crossing lines of acceptable behaviour.
This is one thing I'd like to address separately, if you don't mind. Knowing a little of your struggles from what you've posted, and their similarity to my own during my teens and twenties, I kinda wish you would stop trying. Seriously. Because that's a dead end. But the constant try, try, try made ME wish i was dead before I got dragged out of my legalism and was able to leave it in Jesus' hands.
I had a doctor, a specialist who was also a friend, talk to me about this once. He was RC and he once said wistfully that he wished he had the huge amount of merits (credits) he imagined I and my husband had built up in God's eyes by being missionaries to the urban poor. And I was distressed because I couldn't figure out how to tell him that I'd gladly transfer all that to him, if he wanted it, because it means nothing in our eyes--it's not what we did stuff for, and I'm not even entirely convinced that what we did was good for anything at all in heaven apart from putting a smile on Jesus' face at the moment we do it. We do what we do for the same reason an apple tree bears apples--because that's what comes naturally. And God knows that if it takes that little effort, it shouldn't be worth much in terms of bean-counting, should it? If it's not a sacrifice to drive X to the doctor, then why should it be rewarded as if it were? If it's a positive pleasure to do something that makes Jesus happy (and that's because I love him, and yeah, this gets into sloppy emotional stuff), then shouldn't it be a DE-merit, if anything, because I already have my reward in the moment? Think about that one.
Now it wasn't always that easy, nor was it always that pleasant, earlier in life; but ongoing sanctification means that the further you get down the road, the more likely you are to find it a) simple(r) and b) pleasant(er). So you see how this fucks up the imaginary divine scorecard. If I (at this point of my life) do Y, and so does Joe Blow (who is a new Christian and finds all of this very, very difficult), surely Joe deserves more credit for the same deed. Right? And eventually we reach the point (when I'm a hundred years old or so) where pretty much everything is a delight to do for Jesus' sake--which means I'd be amassing NO credit at all, or maybe losing credit! If the whole credit idea was real, I mean.
It's stuff like this that makes the whole "earn brownie points with God" scheme unworkable to me. Besides the fact that it's totally against Scripture.
And in practical terms, it's a helluva lot less worry and trouble to let the Holy Spirit deal with my sanctification, and just get on with living my life.
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Croesos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, which is generally a feature of Christian sanctification in real life, but is not in fact the main point of it, anymore than taking a shower and brushing one's teeth is the main point of the various kinds of preparation one goes through before one's wedding starts!
Moral filth is obviously not going to be a feature of someone who's well along in Christian sanctification. But Christ cares about far more than just morals, and certainly one of the things he cares about is whether you love or hate him (or his people, for that matter).
Sanctification as presented in the Scripture is very closely related to discipleship--it's not possible to a person who is not a disciple of Jesus, because justification--that is, becoming a disciple of Jesus in the first place, by his action--is the very foundation of it. Without that, nothing else stands.
This is far from comforting for someone like me who believes in, but does not love, Jesus. I don't have the motivation of doing "something that makes Jesus happy" or "putting a smile on Jesus' face" (at least not without the implied "because if you do then he may refrain from destroying you"), much less that "it's a positive pleasure to do something that makes Jesus happy".
And, frankly, if I were to truly "stop trying" then "moral filth" would be very much a feature of my life. Especially if sanctification and salvation are utterly unconnected to anything I do in this life, because that turns everything into a sort of reverse Pascal's Wager - you should ignore God's Law and do whatever you like in this life because either (a) you're going to be Saved anyway or (b) you're going to be Damned anyway, so either way why not just have some fun while you can? After all, if nothing we do can affect our eternal destination then that cuts both ways - no amount of good deeds gets us one step closer to Heaven, but neither do any amount of evil deeds get us one step closer to Hell.
If everybody gets Saved, then what might make Jesus happy is effectively irrelevant to my life - I'll go to Heaven anyway, and if one needs to achieve a certain level of sanctification to fully appreciate being there then I'll have all eternity to sort that out. Conversely, if not everybody will be Saved then by your words that makes the deciding factor whether a given individual loves Jesus or not, which means I'm fucked and may as well get my jollies while I can before my inevitable eternity in Hell.
Your stated position on this thread boils down to "nothing you do matters, as long as you love Jesus". For me, that means guaranteed damnation. If what you say is true, then I can either keep trying to follow God's Law even though my heart isn't in it in the vain hope that that will be enough to spare me the inferno, or just fucking give up and eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow I die. Which do you recommend?
[<snip>Your stated position on this thread boils down to "nothing you do matters, as long as you love Jesus". For me, that means guaranteed damnation. <snip>
Lamb Chopped can answer for herself whether she agrees with that assessment of her position. For my part I’d say “…as long as you accept Jesus’ love for you”.
That gift of love comes with an invitation to respond by seeking to transform one’s life to be more like the life of Christ, with the recognition that true transformation is the work of God within us, with which we are called to co-operate.
Nobody will arrest you for being an asshole father.
Nobody will arrest you for being a terrible husband.
As long as you meet certain external technical requirements - do not assault your partner or children, do not fail to provide the necessities of life for children - you can be as awful as you choose.
Is that the kind of relationship you want?
ISTM that's a way in which you and Lamb Chopped are talking past each other, because you're working from different models. If you think of God only in juridical terms - God requires certain external technical requirements, and you believe you have met those, then I guess you're... good? Yay?
Maybe the idea that that you will not be arrested, charged, and convicted just because you did not transgress a minimum standard in your behaviour with other human beings provides some kind of relief to you. Maybe your partner and offspring will know you as someone who did not break certain technical external requirements in your relationship with them. Is that how you would like to be known and remembered?
Relationship is such a different starting point from forensic accounting.
I suspect Croesos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, which is generally a feature of Christian sanctification in real life, but is not in fact the main point of it, anymore than taking a shower and brushing one's teeth is the main point of the various kinds of preparation one goes through before one's wedding starts!
So, back to human Christian free will in this world before death, while we're still in the process of sanctification.
Some things are morally neutral, and don't create much struggle between the two natures, or the two wills: what color to paint the bedroom, whether to name the cat Mr. Cuddles or Vicious Puma, what to have for dinner. Those are probably the closest to truly "free" choices we make, I think.
Some are morally or spiritually charged, and at that point our two wills (the bent "zombie" will and the new regenerate will) start quarreling. Should I call auntie Doris, who is lonely but will talk my ear off at the end of a day that's been too long already? Should I blow the whistle on my workplace, because they're endangering the public health through dangerous shortcuts, even though I know it'll probably mean I can never work in this industry again? Should I take Y into my home and family, because he's homeless and has no one else to help, and the local safety net is completely fucked up? Is there an alternative? Is it one I can live with, as a Christian?
Who's taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement now?
From outside--from the point of view we use when we're doing science (yes, theology is a science in the old sense--a system of knowledge), the viewpoint is rather different. There we see the Holy Spirit doing the driving in this go-kart, if you'll allow the image; he is not forcing the young Christian, but it's very much like a parent holding a toddler on his lap, both of them with hands on the wheel, and the child gets to "drive" while the parent prevents the whole thing from coming to disaster. Asking how much of the choice depends on the toddler and how much on the parent is ... a bit of a problem to tease out, don't you think? A perfectly skilled toddler wouldn't need the parent's help; but then, no toddler is ever far enough along that we could even contemplate leaving them to drive, say, a semi-truck. Still, even at the beginning, he is not a robot or a puppet. He has real input to the driving.
The fact that the trip around the track does not result in disaster is of course to the credit of the parent; and so also with Christians in our lives, whatever good comes of us we credit to the Lord, and rightly so. But we are not puppets.
Umm, in that analogy we are puppets. We get to pretend we're driving a go-cart with our puppetmaster maintaining the illusion of self-determination, but really any control is literally* in someone else's hands while we travel around a pre-determined route without any real power to change direction or go somewhere else.
*Again in the dictionary sense, not as an intensifier.
Umm, in that analogy we are puppets. We get to pretend we're driving a go-cart with our puppetmaster maintaining the illusion of self-determination, but really any control is [literally] in someone else's hands while we travel around a pre-determined route without any real power to change direction or go somewhere else.
Nope. We can actively choose the wrong direction or reverse.
You're right in that our ability to choose is limited. We can actively choose any number of wrong directions. God's Spirit inspires and empowers us to go in the right direction.
Umm, in that analogy we are puppets. We get to pretend we're driving a go-cart with our puppetmaster maintaining the illusion of self-determination, but really any control is [literally] in someone else's hands while we travel around a pre-determined route without any real power to change direction or go somewhere else.
Nope. We can actively choose the wrong direction or reverse.
Can a toddler in a go-kart with their parent's hand also on the wheel really choose a new course or to reverse direction? This is @Lamb Chopped's analogy, not mine, but taking the trouble to specify that "the parent prevents the whole thing from coming to disaster" would seem to preclude a wide variety of options that would be available to an unsupervised toddler in a go-kart. It wouldn't be too far to say that the toddler in that situation is a puppet of their parent. Certainly if the whole thing did indeed come to disaster we'd ascribe responsibility to the parent, not the toddler, largely based on the toddler's lack of agency in that situation.
It wouldn't be too far to say that the toddler in that situation is a puppet of their parent.
Maybe, maybe not. When children are taught to go in the right direction, are they merely puppets of their parents? Or are they learning, taking on, and living the parent's guiding spirit?
Not my analogy either, and to paraphrase the apocryphal direction given in Ireland, "Well, I wouldn't start from here." But here we are.
Comments
I like the inflowing/outflowing distinction, though I'm not so sure (being Lutheran!) about the wording of "active acceptance". But I'm fine with "listening and acting upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit." Must think more...
Excuse my absence during illness.
I think I would have done better to define sanctification, since I take it by definition that such a thing is impossible to anyone who hates Jesus. The root of the term comes from the Greek "hagiazo," to make holy, that is, to set apart (for divine service and use). I suspect Croesos is taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement, which is generally a feature of Christian sanctification in real life, but is not in fact the main point of it, anymore than taking a shower and brushing one's teeth is the main point of the various kinds of preparation one goes through before one's wedding starts!
Moral filth is obviously not going to be a feature of someone who's well along in Christian sanctification. But Christ cares about far more than just morals, and certainly one of the things he cares about is whether you love or hate him (or his people, for that matter).
Sanctification as presented in the Scripture is very closely related to discipleship--it's not possible to a person who is not a disciple of Jesus, because justification--that is, becoming a disciple of Jesus in the first place, by his action--is the very foundation of it. Without that, nothing else stands.
I suppose if you wanted to discuss sanctification from a non-Christian point of view, you could argue that hatred of Jesus would fit in somehow; but that's not what I was hoping we'd discuss in this thread. If someone wants to, would they be so kind as to start a second one?
Nice way to get a jab in then control the narrative in the last sentence. I’m considering whether to take this somewhere hotter.
She's made it clear that she's not addressing the issue of those who 'hate Christ'.
That doesn't mean, of course, that we shouldn't question or challenge her understanding or approach if we feel it necessary and indeed she's inviting us to do so.
In the light of that, I have a question.
@Lamb Chopped: when the Virgin Mary agreed to participate (mind-bogglingly) in the Incarnation - 'may it be done to me according to your word - was that 'active acceptance' or something else?
If something else, what was it?
We are responsible for cooperating with God and stirring up the life of the Spirit he has graciously given us in Christ.
Without getting into the weeds, I think it's fair to say that the Eastern traditions don't tend to 'disaggregate' things like justification and sanctification in the way some Western approaches do - given the controversies of the 16th and 17th centuries.
It's not that the Eastern (and Oriental?) Churches are unfamiliar with these concepts - rather that for a variety of historical and theological reasons, they haven't been 'separated out' - if I can put it that way - in our thinking and practice.
I'm not saying that's right, wrong, good, bad or indifferent - although I have clearly voted with my feet in terms of affiliation.
But with the best will in the world I can't help but feel that by attempting to fillet these things out the Western traditions have tended to veer towards a somewhat dualistic approach.
The Orthodox have their own problems.
There are a lot of weeds in my garden though.
Nope, though the notion that these are unrelated and that one can be both holy and immoral/amoral is fascinating, if beyond the scope of this thread. I was taking sanctification to mean a comparison of who is literally holier-than-thou.
What's interesting to me here is that under this framework Christian discipleship is seen as something involuntary. Rather than an ongoing practice consisting of deliberately chosen actions and/or beliefs, under this understanding Christian discipleship is something imposed/inflicted upon people involuntarily. "God is wholly responsible for our sanctification", according to @Lamb Chopped's original thesis, so anything that is necessary for sanctification, like Christian discipleship, has to be outside the realm of people's volition. Otherwise people would be at least partly responsible for their own sanctification.
Given that she issued the invitation "Anyone want to fight with me?" I think some degree of picking apart her claims is justified.
What if she had said, 'No'?
I'm not a Lutheran and as I've said upthread, it's not a tradition I know a great deal about.
I've heard Reformed people say that Lutheranism is far more 'deterministic' than people accuse their tradition of being - but I've no idea whether that's the case or not.
I do know that the Reformed tradition is far more nuanced that it is often portrayed.
I imagine the Lutheran one to be the same.
All that said, as a former Protestant, I 'get' the emphasis on divine grace and initiative. It seems to me that there is an almost tip-toe breathless concern to ensure that there shouldn't even be any hint of human agency lest we all topple over into salvation by works. Sure. I get that.
We can see it in @Nick Tamen's concern to emphasise that God provides the grapes and the grain in the first place. As if any of us are overlooking that. Now, I hasten to add that I didn't think he was being polemical, but perhaps rather squeamish ...
'Now steady on. You do realise that the grapes and grain come from God in the first place don't you?'
As if that isn't axiomatic.
Heck, in various Anglican and RC (and perhaps other?) communion liturgies we have this stated explicitly - 'which earth has given and human hands have made' and so on.
From an Orthodox perspective all of this sounds unnecessarily complicated. As if we can put justification and sanctification under a microscope to probe how much of it is 'down to us' and how much is up to God. It doesn't work like that.
It is Christ who sanctifies, Christ who saves.
We can't get under the bonnet (hood) and play around with the spark-plugs and pistons to determine how it all works.
That's why I like @Twangist's garden analogy and @BroJames's healing one. They are more organic.
Mark 4:28 and all that. First the seed, then the ear, then the full fruit in the ear - to paraphrase.
I'm not trying to be an awkward so-and-so. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.'
Luther IIRC believed that due to sin no action we took of our own volition could have an appropriate basis in our dispositions: that is, he held that an action is free if we correctly understand the actions as good and so are motivated to do it for that reason - and he believed that due to sin we cannot act purely on that basis.
The details of what Calvin believed I don't know.
Anyway, for both an action taken because God gives us grace is one taken with the appropriate basis in our dispositions and is therefore free.
OK, so I don't have to do anything at all, it's all taken care of. Cool
Don't worry about sinning, not my problem, God will take care of everything. Got it.
This seems at odds with what's gone before. If it's utterly impossible for me to do even the slightest thing to influence my own sanctification/salvation then why should I even try? For that matter, why would it even matter if I love Jesus in the first place?
I was being neither polemic nor squeemish. @mousethief made a very good point about what God does in the Eucharist, noting (my paraphrase) that before God can do anything with the gifts in the Eucharist, we must provide those gifts. I said So no where did I suggest others might be ignoring that, or that anyone thinks it’s not axiomatic or whatever. I simply said—parenthetically—it’s something I might add if I were the one making the point. Really, nothing more. No comment at all on what anyone else might think or overlook or ignore. No suggestion that it’s not a commonly held and understood concept.
I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what is meant by the bolded bit; I’m not sure how to make it mesh with definitions of sanctification that I’m familiar with.
It goes back to @Lamb Chopped's definition, that sanctification is about making someone holy. By definition someone who is sanctified is holier than someone who has not.
Is this one of those cases where "literally" is interpreted as an intensifier rather than understood by its dictionary definition?
I'm really not 'against' the Reformed and Lutheran traditions, but it does strike me that neither are as 'biblical' on these matters as some of their exponents would have us believe.
I'd also suggest that all Christian traditions have some kind of idea of 'complementarity' or 'synergia' however much some may protest otherwise.
I'm quite prepared to accept that Calvinism is not as deterministic as its detractors insist.
I can't speak to the Lutheran tradition as I don't know enough about it. I would be interested in @Lamb Chopped's answer to my question about the Virgin Mary.
Did she have some 'agency'?
Or was she compelled, as it were?
If the latter that's pretty disturbing it seems to me.
I'm certainly not suggesting that Lamb Chopped is arguing that Our Lady or anyone else is 'compelled' to act against their will - and yes, I know that 'free will' can be a problematic concept.
But I'd be interested in hearing a Lutheran 'take' on this one.
Then I believe the prophecies would have been different in the first place (but then I imagine she would not have been asked in that case), since I understand God to transcend time, and thus His “foreknowledge” is really His seeing us make our free-willed decisions across the timeline “all at once,” as it were. Thus, any genuinely Divine revealings of the future to us in the past would include whatever free decisions people make in our “future.”
(It’s all in Boethius, all in Boethius… and Lewis of course ❤️)
Maybe. But it seems to be an out-of-place comparison to me. In my experience, consideration about sanctification compares the person sanctified/being sanctified to their former self, not to others. I am holier/being made holier than I was, just as if I’ve been sick and have been healed, I’m healthier than I was. How my health compares to the health of others doesn't enter into the conversation.
Perhaps it’s more about the use of “holier-than-thou” in this context, given the pejorative meaning it carries.
Although at the same time your symptoms might also get much worse while the doctor does their work.
But this seems unavoidable if we postulate that God does not sanctify non-Christians. If you start specifying certain groups as unsanctifiable (i.e. that cannot have their holiness increased) there's an implicit comparison involved.
Can they? This seems at odds with the proposition that people can't do anything about their own sanctification.
I think that’s a comparison being inferred, not implied.
Okay, I can see I'm getting into deeper waters than I intended. The issue of the freedom (or otherwise) of the will is deep waters indeed!
First of all, may I say that I'm not discussing her agreement in the light of sanctification? Let's lay that aside for the moment.
Okay, now on to the Lutheran view of the will, free or otherwise.
The first thing to note here is that Luther seems to disagree with himself, if you look across all his writings. So anyone trying to force me to justify everything in The Bondage of the Will had better go find somebody else to argue with. That was a piece of polemic, not so much a piece of teaching; and what I'm after here is the daily, basic, rubber-meets-the-road of how Christians live in relationship to God.
(deep breath)
Okay. God created human beings with free will. Originally that will was good and perfect and holy--which is to say, not fucked up yet. However, like all of his rational creatures, humanity had the option (if they took it) of using that free will to fuck themselves up--namely, by deciding to insert something (anything) into first place before God himself. There was a decision involved--the story in Genesis makes it an issue of obedience: do I eat from the tree God told me not to, or do I avoid it and go eat from any of the other zillions of trees I could sample?
You know how the story turns out. And it's particularly egregrious because a) they didn't even know the tempter, let alone have any reason to trust him (such as a pre-existing relationship); b) they did have that relationship with God, whom they not only knew but had received benefits from, so had a reason to trust; and c) for freak's sake, they could have waited a few hours and ASKED him before making an irrevocable decision, as he appears to have been in the habit of visiting them every evening. Yikes.
Whatever. When humanity fucked up, we fucked up our very nature--and that included the faculty of the will. It was no longer truly free--it was (in the analogy I use far too often on the Ship) much like a bent wheel on a supermarket trolley/cart--able to turn and move, yes, but always hellbent on going its own way, and requiring the driver to use main force to prevent it heading off into a stack of soda bottles. Which is why anybody can do good for a limited amount of time, but sooner or later our strength, interest, or oomph just gives out, and our bent will reverts to doing shitty things--whether that be something as momentous as crime or as seemingly tiny as snapping at a family member.
In a world filled with bent creatures, you can see that social problems multiply and grow like hell. And we can use main force on ourselves to "fix" things, at least temporarily, but the constant drag of the bent will means that sooner or later, shit happens again. Which sucks.
This is the reason why the popular idea of doing good and "earning" heaven, or salvation, or God's love, is nonsense. Nobody can manage it. Heck, I don't know anybody awake and alive who can manage it for a single day, if we consider words, thoughts and actions altogether. I sure don't. And this is the state Scripture refers to as "sin."
Sin is a word a lot of people use for single actions or thoughts or words, but it's really more useful if you regard it as a single entity--a kind of infection or infestation, which attacks the original good human nature and gets its scaly tentacles into everything. You can't defeat it by using your will to force back the visible manifestations in your life (for example, by taking a vow of silence or something to stop you being mean to your dog!); it will just pop up in some other area of your life, such as being nasty to people on the internet. To get rid of sin you don't need a more effective self-help book; you need someone to re-create you. Someone to put you to death and raise you back to life--but without the infestation. And that would be Jesus.
Jesus, then, is God himself, come into this world as one of us, with a real human nature, but one that is the way it was originally made to be--not infested and infected with sin. As a result his will (and his intelligence, his affections, his understanding, his judgement, etc.) are not bent. He does what he wants and wants what he does--unlike us, who find ourselves doing stuff we never intended or wanted, and have to say "sorry" all the time!
And in some mysterious way he substitutes himself for us, taking our sin infestation upon himself, and carries it into death for us--his death, on the cross. He leaves it there, along with the guilt and shame that go along with it. And when he rises from the dead, he comes to us as a lover coming to his beloved people, saying, "You can be free now! Let me give you freedom. Let me give you my life, and you will live forever. Only trust me."
But what Jesus is offering is a life that is dependent on his own. If we belong to him, he lives in us, he lives through us--we have no life apart from him. That is also true of justification, sanctification, and free will, along with a ton of other good things. So the choice (if we can call it that) is between slavery to the sin infestation--refusing Christ's gift--or taking his gift and all that goes with it, which includes the indwelling of the Holy Trinity. Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit come to live in us bodily--not displacing us by any means!--but certainly making his/their presence known.
(continued)
Justification is the word we use for what Christ accomplishes in us at the moment we come to belong to him. At that point we are immediately living, clean, pure, holy, saved, righteous adopted children of God, and this happens more or less by God's fiat. He declares us so, and so we are. It's his opinion that matters, after all. Though if you need more, it's worth remembering that his word created the universe--so if he speaks us righteous, then that's what we are.
However, for whatever reason, God has chosen to let sanctification be a process--at least, for those of us who live long enough after justification to see it. This is the process by which the Holy Spirit makes us Christ-like--the Bible calls it "conforming us to the image of His Son." That doesn't mean making clones--rather, it means that the Spirit brings to full growth all of the particular gifts, talents and blessings he has poured out on each individual one of us; and he continues to deal with the zombie-like sin nature whenever it pops up, along the way. When we are finished, we will be something marvelous to stare at; but we will all be different masterpieces, not carbon copies.
As we can see from this thread, the Christian church holds many different opinions about how sanctification happens, and the variety is maybe even greater because the viewpoint you use is going to affect the way you express it. From the inside, it does feel very much as if you are "making a decision," at least in my experience--most of the time; though the further you get down the road, the less it feels like a choice (IMHO) and the more it feels like "Well of course I did x, how could I have done anything else?" because "doing x" is becoming normal to you, and anything else feels distasteful--disgusting--finally unthinkable. You are increasingly acting in accordance with the new nature, and the further you go down that road, the more your freedom and your choices become one and unshakeable. Not by God forcing you, but because now that you are finally healthy, you wouldn't WANT to do x or y (ugh).
But that's the view from the inside (and I suspect, Mary's viewpoint as well. Why not?). From outside--from the point of view we use when we're doing science (yes, theology is a science in the old sense--a system of knowledge), the viewpoint is rather different. There we see the Holy Spirit doing the driving in this go-kart, if you'll allow the image; he is not forcing the young Christian, but it's very much like a parent holding a toddler on his lap, both of them with hands on the wheel, and the child gets to "drive" while the parent prevents the whole thing from coming to disaster. Asking how much of the choice depends on the toddler and how much on the parent is ... a bit of a problem to tease out, don't you think? A perfectly skilled toddler wouldn't need the parent's help; but then, no toddler is ever far enough along that we could even contemplate leaving them to drive, say, a semi-truck. Still, even at the beginning, he is not a robot or a puppet. He has real input to the driving.
The fact that the trip around the track does not result in disaster is of course to the credit of the parent; and so also with Christians in our lives, whatever good comes of us we credit to the Lord, and rightly so. But we are not puppets. And the analogy is not a perfect one, for if the Spirit ever stopped supporting us for a single moment, we'd be back in our old dead state; but that isn't true for a toddler left alone in a go-kart (shudder). So please don't overload my analogy.
(continued)
Some things are morally neutral, and don't create much struggle between the two natures, or the two wills: what color to paint the bedroom, whether to name the cat Mr. Cuddles or Vicious Puma, what to have for dinner. Those are probably the closest to truly "free" choices we make, I think.
Some are morally or spiritually charged, and at that point our two wills (the bent "zombie" will and the new regenerate will) start quarreling. Should I call auntie Doris, who is lonely but will talk my ear off at the end of a day that's been too long already? Should I blow the whistle on my workplace, because they're endangering the public health through dangerous shortcuts, even though I know it'll probably mean I can never work in this industry again? Should I take Y into my home and family, because he's homeless and has no one else to help, and the local safety net is completely fucked up? Is there an alternative? Is it one I can live with, as a Christian?
I don't know any Christians who are so far along the path of sanctification that they don't know what it means to have the two wills quarreling. It sucks. You can deliberately call on the Holy Spirit to get help to quash the zombie will, but that, too, is a choice--at least from the inside, where we experience it. (I generally have to do this when I'm facing a shitty situation like a night in the ER supporting someone who doesn't speak English, and my day has been too long already. My own will, however sanctified, isn't going to get me through).
I have met many old Christians who have become remarkably beautiful--that is, Christlike--in their old age. The sanctification process is finally visible in them. for whatever odd reason, it seems to be least visible to the one undergoing it (probably to prevent spiritual pride, bleah). There are also a lot of newer Christians who have odd lacunae in their lives, where it looks like the Spirit hasn't gotten around to fixing "that" (whatever "that" is), maybe because he has different priorities--and "that" sometimes creates a scandal among those who know the person. Why has Z made so much progress in how he treats his family and neighbors, but he's still addicted to _____? Why didn't God deal with that first? We have no answers. God does what he's gonna do, and rarely explains himself. He'll get around to it in the end, if the person is still living. But even from the inside, you get no answers. (I'm asking right now why God waited to this point of my life to deal with some very fundamental issues of trust. Not getting an answer, as usual.)
I've been long-winded enough. forgive me. Did I miss something you (anyone) asked?
This is one thing I'd like to address separately, if you don't mind. Knowing a little of your struggles from what you've posted, and their similarity to my own during my teens and twenties, I kinda wish you would stop trying. Seriously. Because that's a dead end. But the constant try, try, try made ME wish i was dead before I got dragged out of my legalism and was able to leave it in Jesus' hands.
I had a doctor, a specialist who was also a friend, talk to me about this once. He was RC and he once said wistfully that he wished he had the huge amount of merits (credits) he imagined I and my husband had built up in God's eyes by being missionaries to the urban poor. And I was distressed because I couldn't figure out how to tell him that I'd gladly transfer all that to him, if he wanted it, because it means nothing in our eyes--it's not what we did stuff for, and I'm not even entirely convinced that what we did was good for anything at all in heaven apart from putting a smile on Jesus' face at the moment we do it. We do what we do for the same reason an apple tree bears apples--because that's what comes naturally. And God knows that if it takes that little effort, it shouldn't be worth much in terms of bean-counting, should it? If it's not a sacrifice to drive X to the doctor, then why should it be rewarded as if it were? If it's a positive pleasure to do something that makes Jesus happy (and that's because I love him, and yeah, this gets into sloppy emotional stuff), then shouldn't it be a DE-merit, if anything, because I already have my reward in the moment? Think about that one.
Now it wasn't always that easy, nor was it always that pleasant, earlier in life; but ongoing sanctification means that the further you get down the road, the more likely you are to find it a) simple(r) and b) pleasant(er). So you see how this fucks up the imaginary divine scorecard. If I (at this point of my life) do Y, and so does Joe Blow (who is a new Christian and finds all of this very, very difficult), surely Joe deserves more credit for the same deed. Right? And eventually we reach the point (when I'm a hundred years old or so) where pretty much everything is a delight to do for Jesus' sake--which means I'd be amassing NO credit at all, or maybe losing credit! If the whole credit idea was real, I mean.
It's stuff like this that makes the whole "earn brownie points with God" scheme unworkable to me. Besides the fact that it's totally against Scripture.
And in practical terms, it's a helluva lot less worry and trouble to let the Holy Spirit deal with my sanctification, and just get on with living my life.
Setting apart as holy is the definition of to sanctify, right? So if only God can do that then whether he has done it or not is the issue. Also.. If he has saved then to sanctify is surely part of the package.
Aha! Romans 8:
I take it that "conformed to the image of his Son" is sanctification.
Apologies, I didn't see this earlier. Ok, it was a jab but intended more as a light-hearted cuff than a punch to the solar plexus.
But I apologise for causing offence.
I do find Anglo-Catholicism perplexing in some ways but I'd say the same (and worse) about my own Tradition.
My remarks crossed a line though and I'm happy to tone them down or withdraw them.
Whose? You were the one accusing other Shipmates of 'talking shit' about Saint Augustine when nobody, as far as I could see, has actually begun to do so or come close to doing so.
Is that a pattern of posting behaviour?
Although I'll readily concede that there have certainly been instances of people 'talking shit' about Augustine and much else besides, of course.
Well, that seems certainly Paul’s thinking. But then discussion may naturally lead to the question of eternal security. If you are saved can …??
I have an RC background and it seems to me their theology filtered down to doing works to retain the grace but even though that is like believing 2 impossible things before breakfast, you still have the issue of how important is how you live and Paul answers that for us too. “Shall I sin that grace may abound..by no means..”
I like your supermarket trolley (shopping cart) analogy. The wonky wheel
I think you've addressed my question about Mary - the Theotokos, BVM, Our Lady, address her how we may - albeit in a roundabout kind of way. I understand your reasoning process there and can see why you decided to 'park' some aspects for the time being.
I don’t see that as you avoiding the question. Far from it. I think some of the issues around 'justification' and so on probably deserve a thread of their own.
I'm still getting to grips with my own Tradition's understanding of these things but you'll appreciate that whilst we don't dismiss them entirely, we tend to think that Protestants often over-emphasise some of what might be called the more 'legal' or 'forensic' aspects.
I'm not accusing you of doing that, I hasten to add.
However we cut it, as you say the key thing is how this all works out in practice where the rubber hits the road - which in my case clearly involves paying due attention to my posting style and reining in my sinful propensity towards teasing and jibeing to the point of crossing lines of acceptable behaviour.
That's all great, but you also said:
This is far from comforting for someone like me who believes in, but does not love, Jesus. I don't have the motivation of doing "something that makes Jesus happy" or "putting a smile on Jesus' face" (at least not without the implied "because if you do then he may refrain from destroying you"), much less that "it's a positive pleasure to do something that makes Jesus happy".
And, frankly, if I were to truly "stop trying" then "moral filth" would be very much a feature of my life. Especially if sanctification and salvation are utterly unconnected to anything I do in this life, because that turns everything into a sort of reverse Pascal's Wager - you should ignore God's Law and do whatever you like in this life because either (a) you're going to be Saved anyway or (b) you're going to be Damned anyway, so either way why not just have some fun while you can? After all, if nothing we do can affect our eternal destination then that cuts both ways - no amount of good deeds gets us one step closer to Heaven, but neither do any amount of evil deeds get us one step closer to Hell.
If everybody gets Saved, then what might make Jesus happy is effectively irrelevant to my life - I'll go to Heaven anyway, and if one needs to achieve a certain level of sanctification to fully appreciate being there then I'll have all eternity to sort that out. Conversely, if not everybody will be Saved then by your words that makes the deciding factor whether a given individual loves Jesus or not, which means I'm fucked and may as well get my jollies while I can before my inevitable eternity in Hell.
Your stated position on this thread boils down to "nothing you do matters, as long as you love Jesus". For me, that means guaranteed damnation. If what you say is true, then I can either keep trying to follow God's Law even though my heart isn't in it in the vain hope that that will be enough to spare me the inferno, or just fucking give up and eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow I die. Which do you recommend?
Loving Christ isn't about being all goo-ey about him.
Can someone who doesn't 'love Christ' please Christ?
Sure. I don’t see any reason why not.
Just as those who purport to love Christ can easily displease him too.
That gift of love comes with an invitation to respond by seeking to transform one’s life to be more like the life of Christ, with the recognition that true transformation is the work of God within us, with which we are called to co-operate.
Nobody will arrest you for being an asshole father.
Nobody will arrest you for being a terrible husband.
As long as you meet certain external technical requirements - do not assault your partner or children, do not fail to provide the necessities of life for children - you can be as awful as you choose.
Is that the kind of relationship you want?
ISTM that's a way in which you and Lamb Chopped are talking past each other, because you're working from different models. If you think of God only in juridical terms - God requires certain external technical requirements, and you believe you have met those, then I guess you're... good? Yay?
Maybe the idea that that you will not be arrested, charged, and convicted just because you did not transgress a minimum standard in your behaviour with other human beings provides some kind of relief to you. Maybe your partner and offspring will know you as someone who did not break certain technical external requirements in your relationship with them. Is that how you would like to be known and remembered?
Relationship is such a different starting point from forensic accounting.
Jesus did not teach us to call God "Our Auditor."
Who's taking sanctification to refer to moral improvement now?
Umm, in that analogy we are puppets. We get to pretend we're driving a go-cart with our puppetmaster maintaining the illusion of self-determination, but really any control is literally* in someone else's hands while we travel around a pre-determined route without any real power to change direction or go somewhere else.
*Again in the dictionary sense, not as an intensifier.
Nope. We can actively choose the wrong direction or reverse.
You're right in that our ability to choose is limited. We can actively choose any number of wrong directions. God's Spirit inspires and empowers us to go in the right direction.
Can a toddler in a go-kart with their parent's hand also on the wheel really choose a new course or to reverse direction? This is @Lamb Chopped's analogy, not mine, but taking the trouble to specify that "the parent prevents the whole thing from coming to disaster" would seem to preclude a wide variety of options that would be available to an unsupervised toddler in a go-kart. It wouldn't be too far to say that the toddler in that situation is a puppet of their parent. Certainly if the whole thing did indeed come to disaster we'd ascribe responsibility to the parent, not the toddler, largely based on the toddler's lack of agency in that situation.
Maybe, maybe not. When children are taught to go in the right direction, are they merely puppets of their parents? Or are they learning, taking on, and living the parent's guiding spirit?
Not my analogy either, and to paraphrase the apocryphal direction given in Ireland, "Well, I wouldn't start from here." But here we are.
I like the emphasis on 'relationship' rather than 'forensic accounting', @Leaf.
I'm not sure what analogies I'd deploy. Can't think of any!
At least being Orthodox I can take 'it's a Mystery' out of context and hide behind that... 😉
If