This post and the one preceding it, got started when I was thinking about New Year resolutions. With these previous posts as background, I want this time to discuss God's energies and the passions.
First, let me start with a disclaimer. I am not well-versed in the Church's teachings on God's energies and the fallen human passions. I only know enough to know that Orthodox are unique among the various churches in their teaching on God's uncreated energies, and emphasize, as other churches generally do not, the passions and the struggle against them as part of the daily struggle of Christians as they grow in holiness. But even this “knowledge” is sketchy and incomplete.
This post, then, is little more than a very simple Bible study, as I look at the references in the New Testament of the energeia and pathema word groups. It is certainly incomplete, and not exhaustive. More to the point, it is my own individual attempt to grasp what Scripture says. It does not necessarily reflect the mind of the Church. In fact, I ask any of those reading this who detect departures from Orthodox teaching or other mistakes to please correct what I've written—for my own edification and so as not to inadvertently lead my readers astray.
We first of all note some very basic facts. The noun energeia—working, or operation—occurs some eight times, all in Paul, three times in Ephesians, twice each in Colossians and 2 Thessalonians, and once in Philippians. We note also, that energeia is always used of supernatural beings: God (all three times in Ephesians, once in Philippians, both times in Colossians), Satan (once in 2 Thessalonians), and the influence of error God sends on the followers of Satan (the other reference in 2 Thessalonians). This working of God is tied to the growing of the Church into her Head, Who is Christ (Ephesians 4), and to the Resurrection of Christ from the dead (Colossians 2).
So the working or operation is a supernatural working, either of God or of Satan. It is not merely human activity.
The verb energeo—to be at work—occurs some nineteen times. It twice refers to the spiritual powers at work in a purportedly resurrected John the Baptist, which Herod feared in Jesus (the parallel passages in Matthew 14 and Mark 6). It twice refers to the working of God and the Spirit in the spiritual gifts in the Church (1 Corinthians 12), as well as Peter's and Paul's apostleship and the similar works God does in the Galatian Christians (Galatians 2 and 3; cf. the noun form in relation also to Paul's apostleship in Ephesians 3). It is the working of God in the Church and her members such that they will and do God's good will (Galatians 3, Philippians 2 and Colossians 1), to build themselves up into the head (for the noun form in Ephesians 4), the same sort of working that raised Jesus from the dead, and that works all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1; cf. the noun form in Colossians 2). In fact it is our faith, working out itself in love (Galatians 5) that is the substantive force of our salvation as opposed to mere ritual compliance or the casting off of ritual. This power works in us through the word of God handed down to us from the apostles and our spiritual fathers (1 Thessalonians 2). The mortality one faces in persecution on account of Jesus may work death in one's body—though that may well mean life for one's fellow Christians (2 Corinthians 4). Indeed, our salvation works in us patient endurance and consolation in the face of suffering (2 Corinthians 1). Finally, the prayer of a righteous man is exceedingly efficacious when it is “energized” by this power of God (James 5).
There is also, however, a spirit of lawlessness that works in the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2 and 2 Thessalonians 2). This spirit works in the lawless one according to the power of Satan (2 Thessalonians 2), and it is in concert with this that God sends the influence of error (cf. the noun form in 2 Thessalonians 2). And, in fact, the passions of the sins can “energize” death in our bodily members (Romans 7).
The final two word forms are another noun (energema), used twice to speak of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, and an adjective (energes), used three times: once in 1 Corinthians 16 to speak of the effectual door opened to Paul in the face of (or because of) the opposition he faced, once to speak of the communion of faith of Philemon and Onesimus that it might become effectual in the knowledge of the work of Christ in him, and once in Hebrews 4 to famously refer to the Word of God, which is living and active, and effectual toward discerning hearts and thoughts.
So we can in general emphasize that the sort of power working in the Christian for his salvation is the supernatural power of God in His Spirit who “energizes” the Christian to want to do and to accomplish God's will. It is a power triumphant over mortality and death, the power, in fact, that raised Christ from death, which turns suffering and death into consolation and life. This power is exhibited in the faith that works itself out in love, in the Logos of God which judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart and which we receive from the apostles and our spiritual fathers, in the gifts of ministry the Spirit gives to us for the building up of the Church into her Head, and in the prayer of a righteous man.
But there is another spiritual energy at work in us, as well. Speaking generally, it is the power of the passions of sins which work in us death and mortality. This spirit is a spirit of disobedience which energizes the enemies of God, particularly the lawless one and Satan. And God even works to confirm such willful rebellion with an efficacious influence of error.
It is here, in the energy of the passions, that our energeia word group and the passions (or, pathema) overlap. Pathema in the New Testament speaks generally of suffering and experience. In very general terms pathema are those things that happen to us, that affect us. There is a sense in which we are “passive” and the pathema which we experience or suffer is the active agent.
But in addition to these general senses of the word, there is a specific sense, which overlaps with our study here thus far. There are five overwhelmingly negative references (out of a total of twenty) for pathema, pathetos and pathos: passions of dishonor (Romans 1), passions of the sins (Romans 7) or of lusts (1 Thessalonians 4), and passion as an item in the sin lists of Galatians 5 and Colossians 3.
In Romans 1, these dishonorable passions are the judgment of God on those who insist on opposing God and his life-giving will. They are a sign of God's final handing over of rebellious human beings toward their own determined and willed ends. In Romans 7, these passions work death in our physical bodies, which bodies and their passion principles war against the Spirit. Apart from the deifying energies of God in us, we have no real ability to overcome these passions. (Which seems to me to be the point of Romans 7, though I know the interpretation of this chapter has been a point of contention in soteriological dialogues.) Indeed, we are twice expressly told to put to death, to crucify, to mortify these passions (Galatians 5, Colossians 3), and enjoined not to behave in passionate lust like those who have no life-giving knowledge of God (1 Thessalonians 4).
In summary, then, the passions are death-dealing forces at work in our bodies which war against our will to want and to do God's will. They are dishonorable and not to be entertained. Indeed, we are to put them to death. This war against the passions (as the conjoining of our two word groups, energeia and pathema in Romans 7:5 indicates) can only be done in the energies of God, that “Resurrection power” which is at work in us by the Spirit.
Having laid the foundations of a Christian anthropology and a biblical survey of the energies of God and the mortal passions, I can now pass on to speak of the thinking that got this whole process started: my New Year “resolution” to fight the passions.
Posted by Clifton at January 26, 2005 06:30 AM | TrackBack