This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

How Askesis Saves

Matt Nelson made a comment to my post yesterday, which has moved me to reflect a bit further on askesis. First of all, what I take to be Matt's overall point—the danger of a sort of super-correct convert legalism—is a point with which I agree (and said so). Our salvation is by faith through grace, and not from works. Given my own sinful weaknesses, this is a point for which I need frequent reminding. Thankfully, our parish priest knows, or suspects, this about me and frequently negates my all-too-frequently o'erweening zeal.

But Matt also says something to which I want to respond. He writes, “Personally, I believe that the traditions of Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodox all offer sound models for salvic spiritual acesis.” Here I want to object. In point of fact, I do not believe Anglicanism (I cannot speak for Catholicism) does not “offer a sound model for salvic spiritual ascesis.” Indeed, what it offers is positively deterimental to one's spiritual health.

With that inflammatory comment out of the way, let me offer my clarification. I believe that at one time the Anglican tradition may well have offered a sound model. But it does so no longer. At one time there was indeed a common Book of Prayer, with liturgies firmly entrenched in the historical life of the Church. There was an agreed moral framework, similarly situated on the patristic consensus. And these two things: a common liturgy and a common set of moral virtues are essential for a model to be both truly asketic and therefore in some way salvific.

The problem with the model Matt alludes to (and one can hardly expect an exhaustive theory in a blog reply) is not its “volunteerism.” After all, the Orthodox Church, whose mind I am attempting to conform to, is synergist. The work of grace done in us is one in which we co-struggle with God. Rather, the problem with the Anglican askesis today (and this seems to be implicit in Matt's reply) is its individualistic character bereft of the support and co-struggle of the church community. Even in a diocese and a parish with such rich Anglo-Catholic ties as that in which I came into the Episcopal Church, any spiritual discipline I undertook I undertook alone. Although my priest and I did from time to time fast together, there was nothing obliging him (or me, for that matter) to do so. And although I sought his guidance—which itself was good—there was no larger connection to the parish, let alone the Episcopal Church, or the Anglican tradition, as a whole. I may as well have walked the labyrinth and practiced TM as fasted and prayed the office. Either would have been supported by one or another priest, not that such support was in any way obligatory on me.

The big difference for me in Orthodoxy is that there is one standard to which all are obliged, with that standard being specially fitted to us by our parish priest or spiritual father. I know that on Wednesdays and Fridays of almost every week, I will not be the only one fasting from meat. On Sunday mornings, I know that I will not be the only one who hasn't consumed any food or drink since the night before. I know that each morning, at meals, and each evening all the members of our parish will be offering their prayers (different though they will be in their various forms, to suit each age and condition in life). I am tied to my community. And not just my parish, but the entire Orthodox Church throughout the world.

Will there be Orthodox who fail to do these things? Will there be priests who allow a lax, secularistic attitude to these universal expectations? In short, will there be many who fail to do these things? Indeed, there will be, with me, chiefest sinner, among them.

But even in these failures one of the most important, and salvific, facts of askesis will still be front and center: there is no salvation outside the Church. If we are saved, we are saved together. If we perish, we do so alone. My askesis almost certainly fails to be salvific if it is just me and Jesus. But if I do it with the People of God, though it still may fail to be salvific, it will fail in spite of that, not because of it. Individualistic askesis must always toe the line of perdition.

The reason for this is, ultimately, eschatological and ecclesiological: the Church is the Body of Christ. By communion with, and our living and willful participation in, the Church, we contact the Life of God in His Son. Askesis saves because it is from the Church, and because the Church is Christ's Body, askesis opens to us the Life of our Lord.