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THOMAS HOPKO

A LEXANDER Schmemann, the well-known Orthodox pastor and teacher, remarked on

more than one occasion that it would serve Christian theology, preaching and spiritual direction immensely if several words were dropped for a while from the Christian vocabulary. One of these words was grace.

The word grace, Fr. Alexander believed, has become so compromised and confused over centuries of controversy between Eastern and Western Christ­ians, as well as between Roman Catholics and Protest­ants, and among Reformed Christians of differing con­victions, that the word can hardly be used anymore in ways which are meaningful and clear.

A way forward, Fr. Alexander suggested, might be for people to describe their spiritual experience and articulate their theological convictions in non-technical everyday language. If this were done it would not only demonstrate that people, especially preachers and teachers, actually know what they are talking about, but it would also compel their hearers to come to terms not merely with terms, but with God and God's reality and activity in human being and life.

If we were to heed Fr. Alexander's request, and not use the word grace in our preaching and teaching, what would we Christians say?

Those in the spiritual and ecclesial tradition of Fr. Alexander would say that God through his divine Son, Word and Image incarnate as Jesus Christ, and the Holy -Spirit, speaks and acts in creation from its very beginning. God's creatures do not merely have words and images and ideas about God; we have God himself with us through the divine activities of God's "two hands": the divine Word and Spirit.

We would say that God's truth, love, goodness, mercy, power, beauty, wisdom, glory...and indeed all of God's qualities .. .actually enter into our creaturely existence and activity. We truly experience and partici­pate in God's supradivine being and life.

We would say that God's speaking and acting in our world, and God's entrance into our creaturely being and life is a free gift of God's mercy and love for us, that there is nothing that we can do to earn or deserve it, and nothing that we can do to stop or prevent it. We

would say that there is no human life without partici­pation in God's self-manifesting activity, and that we human beings are who and what we are because we are made in the image and likeness of God, male and female, for unending divine life.

We would say that it is not a matter of God choosing us without or against our will, nor of our choosing or rejecting God. The mystery of God-with-me and I-with-God depends wholly on God to the extent that there is no "I" without God. When I am with God, then I am who and what I am. When I am against God, I am struggling to destroy who and what God creates and saves me to be. This struggle is futile; I cannot rid myself of God's presence in my being and life. To persist in it is madness and hell.

It must be clearly affirmed, nevertheless, that I am not God and God is not me. Without God, I am nothing and can do nothing. With God, I am who I am and can do all things through God who vivifies, illumines and strengthens me.

In Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Church, through the preaching of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments, the presence and power of God is given as a gift: pressed down, running over, lavished upon us. All is given by God whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not. When we like it and want it, it is paradise. When we resist it, it is the hell whose very pain is the presence and power of God who is love and truth, peace and joy, beauty and bliss.

God is with us. This, simply put, is the meaning of grace. God's gift of divinity to human persons is undeserved and unmerited, unconditional and unstop­pable. It cannot be resisted, yet it may be madly unsuc­cessfully resisted from our side forever.

To speak in this way, without using the term grace which was intended to say it all in a word, may allow us to say things reasonable to the human mind, verifi­able to the human heart, adequate to Christian worship, and proper to the experience of God accessible to creatures who are made for this wonderful reality in which alone we find life.

Father Thomas Hopko is Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary, Crestwood, New York.

20 · THE LIVING PULPIT / JANUARY-MARCH 1995

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