It Works with Grace

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The reformer’s traditional protest that we are saved by grace, and not by works, is a textbook example of the false dilemma, which you will remember from Logic 101 as an informal fallacy. By falsely opposing works to grace, protesters against classical Christianity believe they can escape the ascesis wherein you “work out your own salvation in fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2.12) The next verse goes on to complete the conjunction, “for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” Classical Christianity believes that both works and grace are essential for the Christian’s salvation. This is a teaching known in the eastern Orthodox Church as synergy. God’s grace energizes our own activity, and we are made holy — just as the athlete is made stronger by the synergy of her own actions with the energizing food that sustains her.

Today, Orthodox Christians begin one of four fasts in the Christian calendar: the Dormition fast. This fast prepares us for the commemoration of the Dormition (“falling asleep”) of Our Most Holy Lady, Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary. Coming at the end of the church year, in the Virgin’s falling asleep we see and contemplate our own mortality. We strive to perfect ourselves, to be “holy, even as God is holy,” and our striving synergizes with the grace of God to bring us to perfection. Just as she was assumed bodily into glory by her divine Son, we also offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God in the hope of the resurrection.

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