Walking to the Precipice

Eat your heart out, Aleister Crowley. 

So, when I was coming to realize my place in Christianity, the call as it were, there was strong resistance to this due to the church’s place in my life growing up which was, due to my own family’s apathy, somewhat distant except for my elementary education in a nondenominational school wherein I was taught the faith. I recall my mom telling me we did not go to church because she figured I was learning everything you learn in church at school which I guess was good enough for me; I did not know any better, but I did not know that I was the odd man out in my class who seemed to far more advanced than me in knowledge. 

I had questions that were always met by an entire classroom of prepubescent children telling me what I guess they learned in Sunday school which led me to assume my own stupidity in relation to the Bible, so I stopped asking questions. This fear of looking ignorant appropriately led to a fully-realized ignorance that I am only beginning to shine a light on, and I confess I feel I am coming at learning all this in a backdoor approach. The call to Christianity, in hindsight, seems like a materialization of True Will found in Thelemic philosophy so seeking a church was predicated on how magical it felt.

Holy Orthodoxy fits that bill, and so by trying to be a part of that tradition it was somewhat a processing of this internal work that is still being done within me where I was uncomfortable calling myself a Christian unless I could somehow show others that Christianity is not really what they think it is, in fact, it is essentially a magical system.

I needed, in a sense, to bring Christianity through the magical lens so that it made sense and made me comfortable. 

This is not how Orthodoxy operates, however, and without going too much into detail I was disillusioned by the lack of mysticism that comes from the tradition. It has an expansive and beautiful theology that is applied so rigidly that one might not know of its richness. Yet, moving away from rigidity of Orthodoxy I found myself doing the same thing with the Episcopal tradition, somehow needing to validate my choices by showing that what this church is, really, is essentially Orthodox. 

Regardless, in both instances it was a slow processing of myself in order to embrace where I was being led by the Spirit… It can be a little frightening to truly listen to oneself and how God might be moving us in our lives so that we might draw closer to Him. And that is the purpose of both high magic and Holy Orthodoxy, that we are doing things that enable us to draw closer to Him. I related this notion in a previous post that the deeper I have investigated the mystical union of Christian practice the more it warrants understanding this faith system, because by understanding our tradition is helping us along the Way toward God.

As much as I wanted to try touching on something else, I am stuck on figuring out faith and works. It is clearly an essential element to our faith and what draws borders around different camps that, as previously mentioned, I feel are talking past each other in relation to what each view as right worship. 

Sola fide, or the doctrine that states we are saved by faith alone, is where I struggle the most, because this is an overly simplistic approach to what Scripture actually states: we are not saved by faith… but we are saved through faith. What this argument conjures in my mind is the armchair occultists who I would see enter discourse online, these people who have a working knowledge of the rituals and the theory behind how they work, but never actually do the rituals themselves. This does not make a magician and neither does it make a Christian.

Christianity, by Christ’s own words and deeds, is a much more rigorous system of belief. 

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18).  

Christ fulfills the Law and reveals this by giving examples of how Christianity is pointing to something deeper than Judaism, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire… You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:21-22/27-28).

This is not a passive religion of faith-based salvation. This is a faith system focused on uprooting sin, exhorting us to become perfect. It is calling us to a deeper relation with God, participating in His uncreated energies, becoming like Him—by grace—perfect. This is the general idea of θέωσις (theosis), called to spiritual perfection by walking with God. 

Θέωσις is typically associated with Eastern Orthodox theology and may seem foreign to those outside of this hallowed tradition, however it does not belong with the Orthodox, it is not owned and patented by the Orthodox. Mystical union is tied to all Christian traditions that profess the sacraments, due to the sacraments being so entwined with this process of perfection, or deification.

When I was finding my home in Christianity it was this process that brought me into comprehending a Christian life… It is truly a religion of the heart because that is where we must uproot our passions. The descension of the wizard’s tower leading to the heart and this M.C. Escher staircase leading me from Orthodoxy to the Western tradition where θέωσις lives, as well, in the Anglican tradition. 

There is no better access to this most important of doctrines within the West than through the work of the Oxford Movement, spearheaded by John Henry Newman, an Anglican priest who wrote in his ‘Lectures on Justification,’ wherein this theologian “expresses this central conviction of the Oxford Movement, the conviction that as we respond to God in Christ, God himself is present in us, in our hearts, drawing us to himself; a conviction which expresses the heart of the patristic doctrine of deification” (Allchin 51, Participation in God). 

It is a part of this processing where the Spirit is leading me, as my Confirmation looms in a couple weeks, that I am no longer interested in validating my choices based on what may feel magical or Orthodox.

What I am interested in is listening to God and giving Him thanks in all things.

I love God. I love God and want to live a life that participates in Him, that draws near to Him, and without disrespecting any tradition of Christianity I want to try to explain my understanding of Anglican theology in relation to θέωσις. This is an important part of our belief system which necessitates a deeper look into justification and atonement theory which I will be looking at through this lens.  

Now, our belief system has been inundated with our assumption that belief means propositional agreement. This entails a set of standards and practices that constitute what one ought to know in order to be a Christian. It is true that there are theological distinctions that make this religion invariably Christian, but this definition of belief is too singular in scope.

Belief, in the Christian sense, can trace its roots to the Latin credo which means “I give my heart to,” “Thus when we say credo at the beginning of the creed, we are saying, ‘I give my heart to God.’ […] Most simply, ‘to believe’ meant ‘to love.’ […] Faith is about loving God.

“The Christian life is about beloving God and all that God beloves. Faith is our love for God. Faith is the way of the heart” (Borg 40-41, The Heart of Christianity).

Christianity cannot continue being a belief based on propositional agreements. Christianity must be understood as a participatory religion that is focused on the love for God which draws us closer to Him in mystical union. And these pieces that I am writing are concerned with the state of the Church right now because I feel that our lack of understanding of our rich tradition is in some way related to the Western tendency to look outside ourselves for spiritual truths.