January 12, 2005
Askesis: The Biggest Failure of My Heritage Churches
I've written in several posts about my faith heritage in the Restoration (or Stone-Campbell) Movement churches. Some people, when as adults they choose a new religious heritage or identity, one different from that in which they were raised, tend to first relate to their heritage faith antagonistically, emphasizing the failures and blindspots, and how their new found heritage or identity so much better addresses the various realities with which they are confronted. A converted atheist of all people is the most certain of the claim that religion is nothing more than infantile superstition having nothing to do with reason.
In my case, however, I cannot consciously recall ever having any reaction of that sort. I certainly have spoken of what I take to be the failures and weaknesses of my heritage faith, but the fact of the matter is, I know my heritage churches to have many strengths, and have never really considered myself alien to those churches, even in pursuing membership in the Episcopal churches and (now) in the Orthodox Church. If I were ever very critical of my heritage faith, it was while still a student at one of the Restoration Movement Bible colleges--which is what one normally expects of ministry students. From my Restoration heritage I learned to love Jesus, his Church and his written Word. I learned the importance of growing in my understanding and living of that written Word, and of loving my brother or sister in Christ. Equally as important, I learned the importance of speaking the Gospel of my Lord to those with whom I came in contact.
These disclaimers being stated, however, I do want to speak about one glaring weakness of my heritage churches: the failure to develop an asketic of growth in faith and holiness, and concomitantly, the distortion of the biblical asketic.
Askesis is originally a Greek term that is literally equivalent to the English noun “athletics.” An asketic is either an athlete or an athletic regimen. The early Christian martyrs, for example, were often called “athletes of God” for their struggle against the enemies of God, a struggle even to death. And the term “askesis” became a metaphor for the whole of our spiritual struggle in Christ as we grow and mature in our faith. This askesis is a holistic struggle involving the intellect, as we strive to believe the right things about the faith; the body, as we strive to conquer the passions which tempt us to sin and self-indulgence; the emotions, as we strive to be angry and sin not; the will, as we strive each day to take up our cross and follow our Lord; and, encompassing all, the heart as we attempt to keep pure the throne of the Holy Trinity.
My heritage churches did, indeed, attempt to emphasize this sort of holistic sanctification. We were exhorted to complete moral and doctrinal purity, co-striving with God's Spirit in us as Philippians 2:12-13 tells us: “Therefore, my beloved, even as ye always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much rather in mine absence, be working out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is the One Who energizeth in you both to will and to energize for the sake of His good pleasure” (The Orthodox New Testament*). Unfortunately, though given the “what,” we were not given the “how.” Or, rather, the “how” we were given was itself a very narrow and limited part of our human living.
The sort of transformative askesis we were given focused almost exclusively on the intellect. We were to focus on the study of God's written Word. What we learned there, of course, we were to put into practice. But first came the renewing of the mind. Indeed, for the Restoration churches, faith was primarily a rational, intellectual thing. Thus it is inevitable that the primary way one progresses in Christian maturity, according to Restoration Movement practice, is by transforming one's mind.
This emphasis, is, it must be affirmed, a Scriptural one. Paul says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, overthrowing reasonings and every high thing which lifteth itself up against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of the Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). Romans 12:2 was a regular staple of exhortation: “And cease being fashioned according to this age, but be transfigured by the renewing of your mind, in order for you to put to the test what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God.” Indeed, Christ himself called us to the first and greatest commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37, emphasis added; cf. also Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27 which add “with all thy strength”). It is true that if we think rightly about a certain matter, especially matters of Truth, we are better enabled to act rightly. So the emphasis on right doctrine and the conversion of our thoughts was an important aspect of my Christian training both at home and later at Bible college.
I found, however, that this is an inadequate regimen with which to grow in faith and holiness. Precisely because it misses a single most important ingredient: the body.
My Restoration heritage quoted Romans 12:2, but often failed to note the first verse. Taken together, Romans 12:1-2 reads: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, your rational worship. And cease being fashioned according to this age, but be transfigured by the renewing of your mind, in order for you to put to the test what is the good and well-pleasing and perfect will of God.” What are we called to offer? Our bodies as living sacrifices. It is the offering of our bodies that makes for rational worship.
Paul's passage in 1 Corinthians is well-noted here: “Ye know, do ye not, that they who run in a stadium all indeed run, but one receiveth the prize? Thus keep on running that ye might obtain. And everyone who contendeth exerciseth self-control in all things; indeed then, those do it that they might receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I run therefore thus, not as uncertain; thus I box, not as beating the air. But I buffet my body and bring it into bondage, lest, having preached to others, I myself should become unapproved” (9:24-27). In other words, my Restoration Movement heritage emphasis on intellectual or mental transformation left virtually untouched the battle that Christians must wage in their as-yet-mortal and not-yet-resurrected bodies.
Don't misunderstand. I knew well the moral and Christian prohibitions against bodily sins, largely sexual. I also knew well that sin meant not just merely spiritual consequences, but had bodily consequences as well, not the least of which was death (on which more in a moment). But when it came to actually fighting against sin and death in my body, I knew only one thing: negative will-power. I must exercise my will in resisting bodily sins. Of course, I drew on Philippians 2:12-13 above, knowing that my will power alone was not sufficient for fighting the battle, that I must always also draw on the strength of God and implore him for victory over temptation. But this, though much, was as far as it went.
What I did not understand was the place of the passions, and how these passions had “infected” if you will my mortal body, a contagion I had voluntarily brought into myself through my own sins, as well as being born with a mortal nature susceptible to such “infection.” As Paul say, “For when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins, which were through the law, were energizing our members to bear fruit to death” (Romans 7:5, emphasis added). This is the warfare within himself to which he makes reference at the end of Romans 7, how he does that which he does not wish to do, and the good which he knows he is to do that he does not do. It is the battle between his mortal and sinful nature, revealed through the holy and pure Torah of God, and the new man which he put on in baptism. Indeed, since we have been buried with Christ in Christian immersion, “Therefore let not sin be reigning in your mortal body, so that ye obey it in its desires” (Romans 6:12). From the fact that “they who are of the Christ crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts” (Galatians 5:24), we can then bear the multi-faceted fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As Christians, we are under obligation: “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5).
How we do this, how we mortify the passions, fighting the contagion is through prayer and the word of Christ, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation (cf. Colossians 3). But there are preeminently the Mysteries of God, the Sacraments. As we've already seen, in Holy Baptism we encounter forgiveness of sins, the reception of the Holy Spirit, the new, spiritual man, the energizing grace of God. And most importantly, there is the Lord's Supper, or Holy Eucharist. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of the Christ? For we who are many, are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). The communion of the body and blood of the Lord has bodily effects. Just as our body partakes of the sanctified elements, our bodies take on the sanctified aspects of the elements. For as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Or know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, Whom ye have from God, and ye are not your own? For we were bought with a price; glorify then God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.” (One should note that it is precisely this fact, that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that Christians are not to cremate their dead.) Paul notes that “whosoever may eat this bread or drink this cup of the Lord unworthily [i. e., without examining himself] shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. . . . For the one who eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and a considerable number are falling asleep” (1 Corinthians 11:27, 29-30).
But this is not a treatise on fighting the passions, nor on sacramental theology. It is only to point out that my heritage faith missed out on some essential Apostolic teaching on how to grow in faith and holiness. My heritage churches, coming as they did out of the Enlightenment (Alexander Campbell was said to have carried copies of John Locke's writings in his pocket) quite naturally emphasized the intellectual aspects of Christianity. Some Restoration Movement historians understand Campbell to have said that the Holy Spirit works only through helping us understand the written Word, the Scriptures.
But growth in faith and holiness is clearly much more than merely about the intellect. It is about the body, the will, the emotions, and the heart which is the center of our selves. By fighting the passions in our body and soul through disciplining our body; by prayer and worship; by participation in the Sacraments—this offering of our bodies as living sacrifices—we grow in faith and holiness, and in the image of the Christ.
The Orthodox Church offers me this by offering worship, sacraments, and disciplines which are both bodily and spiritual. I get to keep my faith heritage's emphasis on the renewing of the mind, and also get to find its fulfillment in the holistic faith and worship that has been part of the ancient and Apostolic Church from the beginning.
*All New Testament citations are from The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent. I have chosen this translation for the primary reason that it is the best rendering of the Greek New Testament in English which reflects the ancient Christian Faith. Admittedly, however, as in the Philippians 2:12-13 passage above, the rendering is less than elegant.
November 23, 2004
How the Restoration Movement Plea Directed Me to the Orthodox Church
For my brothers and sisters in the Restoration Movement churches, the following statement may seem fundamentally contradictory and nonsensical: It is the Restoration Movement Plea itself that directed me to the Orthodox Church.
The Restoration Movement Plea has never been officially formulated. Its end is, as Thomas Campbell put it, “simple Evangelical Christianity.” Of course, he did not mean by that what we know usually mean by evangelical. Rather, “simple Evangelical Christianity” is “that original simple form of Christianity expressly exhibited upon the sacred page.” The means to attaining that end are variously expressed as the reform of the present churches toward or the restoration to them of the apostolic beliefs and practices of the New Testament Church.
The Restoration Movement churches arose historically out of the primitivist and revivalist trends of the then-frontier lands of Ohio and Kentucky. And many of the original leaders, particularly Barton Stone and Thomas and Alexander Campbell, were Presbyterians. These early Stone-Campbell Movement (as the churches are also known) leaders stressed two things: unity and purity of doctrine. Stone and his followers tended to emphasize unity. The Campbells and their followers tended to emphasize purity of doctrine. Whether by accident or design, those who sought unity through apostolic doctrine gained the printing presses, and thus the minds and imaginations of the young movement.
As the Movement leaders put it: they sought the common denominator all churches had, the New Testament Scriptures. As Thomas Campbell put it, “[T]he New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship, discipline, and government of the New Testament Church, and as perfect a rule for the particular duties of its members, as the Old Testament was for the worship, discipline and government of the Old Testament Church, and the particular duties of its members” (Declaration and Address). But what rule were Christians to follow in using the New Testament to restore apostolic belief and practice? That which is “expressly enjoined by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles upon the New Testament Church; either in expressed terms or approved precedent” (ibid).
Many of these sentiments and principles can be found online in the fundamental texts of the Restoration Movement:
- “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery”
- Alexander Campbell, The Christian System
- Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address
It is here, in these principles, of course, that we begin to see the problem. Not all Christians agree as to what is “expressly enjoined.” The Stones and the Campbells lived at a time in European and American history that gave great weight and authority to human reason. There was a certain naivete as to the ability of reason to go straight as an arrow to the truth, if one could but eliminate subjective prejudices. In this atmosphere, the Restoration Plea, so simple, so self-evident, so reasonable, was winsome. The Restoration Movement grew at a brisk clip in those early decades.
But the naivete of these early impulses were brought home as following the Civil War, the Stone-Campbell churches split over the use of instruments in worship. Instruments were not “expressly enjoined by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles” said most of the southern “Campbellites.” More of the northern brothers and sisters stated that instruments were not expressly forbidden, and thus were permissible. Forbearance won the day for a time, but since the division was predicated on more than instruments (it is hard to see how the sociopolitical tensions did not influence the split), in time this unity movement divided in two.
But reared as I was in the Restoration Movement churches, and educated and trained for ministry at one of the Movement Bible colleges, I was a firm believer in the Plea. Like the Stone-Campbellites of old, I loathed the divisions, having experienced their hateful effects in my own developing faith. But given my education, I also knew I could not just merely accommodate my beliefs to whatever Christian group I found in which I felt most at home. Many of my high school friends were Baptists, but I could not give up the belief that baptism was by immersion and which administration brought forgiveness of sins and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But my heritage churches, though begun with noble principles and labor, had fallen prey to the same schism they had sought to remedy. And by the time I was born, the Movement had split again, and now the three branches of Restoration Movement heritage were merely three more options among the vast sea of other Protestant divisions.
So as I entered my last couple of years at Bible college I knew that if I were to discover that New Testament Church toward which I had been inculcated to give my allegiance and all my labor, it would have to be beyond naive rationalist hermeneutics and simple primitivism. With Barton Stone and others I, too, willed that my heritage churches “die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling” (“The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery”).
I had discovered that my own churches had not lived up to their own principles. Yet I believed in those principles as fervently as ever--and even more so today. If my churches had failed, yet had had the proper basic impulses and original principles, what could I do to correct those mistakes, at least in my own individual efforts, and at the same time still live my heritage?
To begin with, I had to note where these principles were driving me. I was driven, of course, to the New Testament Church, but I was also driven to reexamine my supposed “objectivity.” The hermeneutic I employed, although it resonated in certain respects with other ancient practices, such as that of the Antiochene school, in its historical, grammatical emphases, by the same token, it was an alien mind forced upon the documents. The Scriptures were not originally interpreted as much as they were performed. That is to say, the Corinthians did not read the epistles addressed to them to ascertain as to whether or not spiritual gifts were still operative in their day, or had to come to some understanding as to the place of head coverings on women during worship. Rather, they heard the epistles in the context of the Eucharist and with an ear to doing that which had been enjoined upon them.
But how was I, removed by some eighteen centuries, by continents and oceans, cultures and language, to hear the texts as the Corinthians heard them? In the end, the very Restoration Movement Plea I was attempting to live gave me my clue: I would have to hear with the ears of the Christians who had heard the ones who had hear Paul. I would have to read the apostolic fathers (Ignatios of Antioch, the Didache) and the sub-apostolic fathers (Justin the philosopher, Irenaeus of Lyons) to best hear the New Testament as it was meant to be heard and obeyed.
This led me to read, as is often quipped by Protestant converts to Orthodoxy, all the parts I hadn’t underlined. I looked at 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 with new eyes, heard the text with new ears, and discovered that the Stone-Campbell understanding of the Lord’s Supper was profoundly mistaken. Indeed, far from restoring a New Testament practice, the Restoration Movement understanding of the Lord’s Supper as simply a memorial remembering what Christ had done, and nothing more, was only as old as the Reformation. In fact, Ignatios of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, and, to put it plainly, the entire apostolic Church, had always believed that in the Lord’s Supper, the elements of bread and wine become the very Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I heard again, what I had so egregiously missed the first several times, that bishops are as old as 1 Timothy 3. I heard for the first time that tradition, far from being an evil thing, was absolutely necessary to genuine Christianity. It’s how, Paul told the Thessalonians, one tells the true from the counterfeit. I began to realize the full implications of Jesus’ promise that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his Church.
In the end, the Restoration Plea drove me to the historic Church. I first started with the Benedictine monastic movements, and the classical texts on spiritual disciplines, worship and prayer. Simultaneously, I sought not only the origins of the apostolic Church, but sought, too, to trace its historical lineage. If I truly believed in the Incarnation and Jesus’ promise of the endurance of his Church, then it only made sense that I would be able to trace the Church from the New Testament era down to the present. Only if schism and division could make Jesus’ promise fail would my search be unsuccessful. But then, as the early Restoration Movement leaders expressed it, “Could anyone frustrate the desire and prayers of the Lord himself for the union of his Body?”
Of course, I believe that the search enjoined upon me by my devotion to the principles and desires of my heritage churches is ended in the Orthodox Church. Here is the apostolic Christianity I was taught to seek. Here is the basis and foundation for unity among all Christians. Here is no sect, or another party of Christians, but the Church of Jesus Christ itself. As Thomas Campbell said, “Were we, then, in our Church constitution and managements, to exhibit a complete conformity to the apostolic Church, would we not be, in that respect, as perfect as Christ intended we should be? And should not this suffice us?” (Declaration and Address). He, of course, did not mean, then, the Orthodox Church. But the implication for me is inescapable. The Orthodox Church is that apostolic church Thomas Campbell, his son, Alexander, Barton Stone, and many other early Restoration Movement Christians were seeking. My own search is at an end. All that is left is to arrange, as best I can, the final arrival of me and my family.
I said at the beginning that my claim that the Restoration Movement Plea drove me into the open arms of Orthodoxy would seem contradictory and nonsensical to my brothers and sisters in the Restoration Movement churches. I hope that such a peregrine journey as mine has been will now seem more reasonable and necessary. For my brothers and sisters in the Orthodox Church who have come from the Restoration Movement churches, you know well what I mean here. And please pray for me and my family that we may soon join you.
