Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

Some Evangelical Protestants want to make justification and sanctification distinct, one
instantaneous by faith alone, the other, progressive by conformity to Christ throughout one‟s
life. They make a distinction between imputed righteousness and imparted righteousness.
Catholics tend to fuse the two, but both insist that justification is God‟s work alone and is
achieved by grace and not by man‟s own efforts. If Christians rely on their own good works
to save them, they are not being true to their Biblical heritage and, sadly, much folk religion
in all three traditions is of this kind.
Similarly, the Orthodox insist that good works do not save us.
Recently I attended a Greek Orthodox Sunday morning service of the divine liturgy, and the
bulletin given to all who attended as they entered the church contained a little homily on good
works. Quoting „St Mark the Ascetic‟, the paper read, „…do not imagine that works
themselves merit either hell or the Kingdom. On the contrary, Christ rewards each man
according to whether his works are done with faith or without faith in Himself.‟ A further
note, from the editor of the paper, reminded us that when Jesus was asked, „What shall we do,
that we may work the works of God?‟, he answered, „This is the work of God, that you
believe him whom he sent.‟ It concluded by showing that true faith in Christ produces
„works of faith‟ in action and attitudes.
But while Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox are so near on such a fundamental matter of
faith, there are growing differences in matters of ecclesiology.
Since Vatican II an issue has arisen which seems to have put to an end any realistic hopes of
union between the Anglican Church and both Rome and the Orthodox Churches. This is the
ordination of women priests and bishops.
In June 2006 Cardinal Walter Kaspar gave warning to the House of Bishops that the
consecration of women bishops in the Church of England (a step that seems inevitable) would
end ecumenical dialogue with the Church of Rome. In this he was echoing the position of the
Orthodox Church as expressed by Archbishop Hilarion of Vienna at the 9 th Assembly of the
WCC at Porto Alegre. If anything, the Orthodox position on the question is more inflexible
than the Roman. For Archbishop Hilarion, „A revelation from above is needed for Orthodox
Churches to start ordaining women.‟
The idea of Anglicans and Orthodox sharing the Eucharist together, as once hoped for, is,
according to the Archbishop, now „completely impossible.‟ 155 He maintains that the
Anglicans‟ moral stance (no doubt referring to the homosexual-practice debate) has made
dialogue even more difficult. All this reinforces my view, that the path to Christian Unity is
not along official channels, but must proceed by working out a „spiritual ecumenism„, by
meeting fellow Christians on an unofficial level on the basis of a shared love for Jesus as
Lord and Saviour, an acknowledgement of the authority of the Scriptures and the joint
confession of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
155 Church of England Newspaper, 16 June 2006 and 22 August 2008. Bishop Hilarion repeated his
warning that, for the Orthodox church, Anglican moves to instal women bishops would mean the
exclusion of „even the theoretical possibility of the Orthodox churches acknowledging the apostolic
succession‟ of Anglican bishops.
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