Sin, Repentance and Modern Protestantism

Many present-day Christians do not understand why the worship services of the "liturgical churches" are so different and so structured. A common assumption is that in the New Testament, worship was spontaneous. However, worship in the early Christian Church, like Judaism, followed a specific order or form. This "order" has its very roots in the Scriptures. In fact, all of Christianity worshipped this way for 1500 years; the Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Roman Church have been worshiping this way — more or less unchanged — for nearly 2000 years.(www.Liturgica.com)

I subscribe to a fine Christian oriented newsweekly, called The World. As most newsweeklies it has a number of columnists. The other week a guest columnist/blogger urged his reader to get back to the Bible study to get to know God like they did in the early church.

"The Christian Church grew when its leaders stressed biblical study and fervent prayer, each of which was considered, in the early church, a means of knowing God. " (T. Woodlief)

This really struck me as simply wrongheaded. The statement contradicts church history and even established Protestant theology taken at face value. In the early church Bibles were rare and treasured and would not have been disseminated to the laity especially since being hand written they were rare. And the population was largely illiterate. I’m not sure how they would have stressed “biblical study”. Secondly we know God’s Grace but Bible Study doesn’t get us to know God… His truths, yes… God no. God’s essence remains unapproachable for us here.

And technically speaking the Canon (agreed upon list of books) of the Bible wasn’t established until late 4th century. So the Bible wasn’t even fully assembled together in one book to study yet; and yes various inspired books were known for centuries prior to that but not compiled into an agreed upon canon.

Additionally it was understood in the Early Church that God’s Grace was known predominately through His Eucharist or communion after initiation of baptism the cleansing and remission of sins. See above quote from regarding early Christian worship.

But the above quoted statement is very typical of the dim understanding of the average Protestant churchgoer. What is really meant is there’s an emotional attachment to the idea of God. It’s assumed we’re walking with God and maintaining relation with Him when we feel good about God and His plan of salvation. But understanding of the roots of Christianity and worse yet the roots of their own Protestantism is absent.

I think at the very least the current Protestant could re-visit those Reformers. The Reformers will appear as a distant and remote voice to a large segment of modern Protestants today. These Reformers were a response to a dire need for reform in the established Roman Church. The Italian Princes or the Magisterial Popes, captains of their Papal states were primarily focused on raising revenue to run the Curia, that is the papal government, while establishing alliances to maintain his rule over the Papal states, while building the huge St. Peters cathedral used to overawe the Faithful. He was a constant opponent of reform and in many cases a scandal to Christianity. When reform finally took place is it was like a dam broke and the resulting tidal wave swept up much of Europe. The Reformers devised a radical doctrinal response that broke with 15 centuries of viewpoint of the Church.
Prior to my conversion to Orthodoxy my vague understandings maintained that the most important key to Christian life was having a personal “relationship” with God. I gave no thought if this thinking was part of a tradition.
Of course, nowhere in Holy Scripture, neither with the Church Fathers, nor in the early Reformers, will we ever encounter the concept that feelings are predominate in our salvation. This would seem odd to a Lutherans who would point to his baptism and continuing participation in the Lord’s Supper and the Calvinist to evidence of good works, totally unnecessary to salvation but yet a sign of one’s election, as a sign of their salvation. The biggest uncertainty under Calvin’s theology was the lack of assurance of ones salvation. In 18th Century John Wesley founded Methodism, a response to the indifference and uncertainty of the knowledge of ones salvation.
Prior to this the widely held Protestant view was that certain knowledge of your salvation was known to God alone. Good works were to no avail, Almighty God’s grace being sufficient.
It’s important to note that the Ancients focused on building virtue and this character building was central to Christian sanctification, always predicated on God’s Grace. The Reformers rejected this project of sanctification. John Wesley saw sanctification as a climatic emotional experience. I can’t argue against those “mountain top” emotional events; I experienced much like it at Promise Keepers gatherings but the Holy Church teaches us there’s much more to spiritual experience.

Now Protestantism is as varied as a patch work quilt but they all claim salvation by faith alone and deny any hint of the idea of salvation by works and hold the Bible is authority, although “Higher” Biblical criticism, a scholarly approach to Biblical analysis seen in many of the modern Protestant Churches, greatly degrades the authority of the second. “Higher” criticism for one sees the Bible in the social historical context it was written and moral statements about sexual conduct and such were admonitions relevant to the period only. Thus they segue from Adam and Eve to Adam and Steve.

Anyway, striving for holiness and sanctity as a means to salvation for all Protestants falls under the category of the dreaded idea of salvation by works: nothing we do pleases God, nor can we give Him anything. See Luther’s quote from Bondage of the Will:
Hence it follows that free-will without God's grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good.
Our Will can only will evil left to its own devices. This includes the will to participate in altar calls, not a feature of Christianity until the beginning of the 19th century. And it’s an ephemeral act in large part of which I’ve participated more than once. It’s known that the majority of participants in them don’t hold to their decisions. I certainly had my doubts as I made my way up towards the front…. asking myself what I was doing.

Going back to what we know of God, we, sinners, are granted redemptive Grace necessary for salvation. We can know His Grace but God we don’t know. His ways are not our ways. We know salvation through the incarnation of His Son. His Holy Spirit leads the Church (John 16:12-13) in truth and morals. And ofttimes the emotion attached to the truth of God’s forgiveness and salvation is confused with some special leading of the Holy Spirit. It’s admitted certainly that the Holy Spirit can lead us especially individuals of great holiness. Moses was to have seen the face of God for example: Your average church go-er maybe not so much.

I can imagine one view of this that admits the average Joe Churchgoer access to the Holy Spirit. Blessed Augustine defined the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son. The Eastern Church does not ascribe to this formulation, mind you. Nonetheless Augustine has great authority in the West and his ideas have permeated the Western Church. Under this view where there is Love, there is the Holy Spirit. And thus when the congregant has an emotional response to God then the subtext is that they are communing with the Holy Spirit. I think they’re having a pleasant emotional response which can be a consolation (of the Holy Spirit some would say) but not leadings of the Holy Spirit. Admittedly, many in the Protestant Pentecostal and Pietistic tradition would vehemently disagree.

The more I look into what’s becoming a quagmire for me of competing Protestant views, the more I see that there are many including Calvinists who seen the Holy Spirit working directly with believer. As I said above I don’t see this happening unless these are people of great holiness; more reliance is made of the importance of the guidance of spiritual fathers in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition than the assumption that an untutored individual in a prayerful moment can have heavenly guidance.


I think our churchgoer needs to be educated about the roots of Protestantism, which as I have attempted to research this has led me into a vortex of Protestant meanderings, nuances and trends. My comments are not meant to be in anyway a history of Protestantism but rather a sampling of the currents that have led a large segment of the contemporary Protestant Christianity into its present-day form of worship.

The foremost doctrinal reform was the idea of salvation by faith alone. Martin Luther (1483-1546) former monk, wanted to reform the church based on scripture and faith alone not start a new one. He reduced the Roman Catholic 7 sacraments to 2, simply baptism and Eucharist. These were the only 2 that could be substantiated in the Bible. Our salvation was dependent on receipt of God’s Grace that imputes holiness. This operation is likened to covering a turd with snow. Sorry for the graphic image but Luther uses this analogy; God’s imputed righteousness is the snow and our depraved soul is the stinking waste. Lutherans today will agree with the below “confessions” of faith:

These means of grace are the Word of the Gospel, in every form in which it is brought to man, and the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and of the Lord's Supper.
[An] erroneous doctrine bases the forgiveness of sins, or justification, upon a fictitious "infused grace," that is, upon a quality of man, and thus again establishes the work-doctrine of the papists. (Augsburg Confession 1530)

Here we have the statement of opposition to the dreaded salvation by works, which includes building of character (quality of man). Character, infused grace, doesn’t promote forgiveness of sins or justifies us in the sight of Almighty God. This will contrast sharply with what one of America’s leading Protestant pastors will be quoted as saying, seen later.

Luther saw Grace administered through Sacraments as obligatory to the Christian life much as a Roman Catholic would. But the receipt of Grace is not predicated on putative “infused grace” or the “quality of the man” or emotional response; this would take us back to papism: that is salvation by works. Additional note the liberal synod of Lutherans (ELCA) would not hold very closely to this sacramental formula, being largely influenced by rationalistic (Enlightenment: Emmanuel Kant) influences. For example their practice of open communion is evidence of this; a sign that participation not need be left to those intimately related to an understanding of the significance of the ritual.
Please, I’m fully aware there are devout members of that denomination that I’d do well by emulating, but I would probably not be in agreement with their thinking about things doctrinal.

To continue John Calvin (1509-64) denied a real presence of Christ, body and blood, in the Eucharist. The Eucharist would be a spiritual communion. The meaning of the Eucharist here is that Christ would be “dynamically” and spiritually present, his resurrected Body present in heaven at the right hand of God not in any wafer or wine: then again more than merely a symbol of remembrance of the Last Supper. Note that the Radicals of Reformers of the day saw the Eucharist simply as a remembrance or symbol, as do much of contemporary Protestantism.

Calvin held the same dismal view of human nature as Luther; human kind deemed depraved and worthy of damnation. He viewed Almighty God’s Grace as irresistible and granted only to the “Elect”. Irresistible Grace gave the Elect saving Faith and Faith alone was all that was required to have Christ impute His Righteousness to us not a level of feeling at a revival meeting. This saving Grace was given by God’s own unconditional election not by individual merit. This salvation of his Elect was accomplished through Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross and was limited to those Elect. Grace from an Almighty God does not fail; grace of salvation is unchanging and permanent.

This doctrine is summarized by the TULIP acronym that represents the 5 points of this doctrine.

Total Depravity (also known as Total Inability and Original Sin)
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement (also known as Particular Atonement)
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)

The particular atonement above refers to an atonement of the elect not all humanity, who under this doctrine are all deserving of damnation, being born in iniquity.

These are the two pillars, Luther and Calvin of the Reformation from whom Lutherans, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptist (admittedly more influenced by the Radical Reformation) can trace their origins.

In opposition to the strict predestination of Calvinism, Jacob Arminius (1560-1609) and John Wesley (1703-1791) become proponents of Arminianism which holds the below:
· God's election is conditional on faith in the sacrifice and Lordship of Jesus Christ.
· God allows his grace to be resisted by those who freely reject Christ.
In this view fallen and depraved human kind can’t desire salvation without God’s Grace but it can be resisted. Oddly, enough this restores in a significant way our free will in regards to our salvation.
And with Wesley the element of emotionalism is brought very much to the fore that is so pervasive in contemporary Christianity.
‘For the century after John Wesley founded Methodism, conversion meant emotion, an intense religious experience lasting moments or days. It established one's salvation and was considered the absolute prerequisite of Christian perfection, or "entire sanctification."’
The Great Awakening of 1741 was meant to arouse the congregant from their damned stupor, by eliciting an intense emotion, that of fear. Jonathan Edward’s sermon “Sinner in the hands of an Angry God”, much in the Puritan tradition the sinner is on the precipice of hell, warns and strives to terrify the indifferent sinner into repentance and salvation. Once again sinner is deemed depraved and very much subject to damnation without the intervention of God’s grace.
"There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of their God." (J.Edwards, 1741)

In contemporary Christianity, the “relationship” with God is all that’s required and leave out the unseemly talk regarding the state of our souls. The Orthodox certainly wouldn’t see God destining souls to hell, but be as serious in regards to the view of spiritual condition.
In the 19th Century revival meetings and altar calls became prominent, whose foremost proponent was Charles Finney, where Methodists grew dramatically using the vaunted Altar Call. This was a means to allow the believer a means to insure ones salvation in light of this damning God.

Altar Call is oddly termed since the Protestants, who participate in it, don’t have sacred space in their churches, as do the Ancient Churches. There a preaching space and a hymn singing space but no holy place cordoned off from the laity as did the Romans and do the Orthodox and Coptic for that matter, where the miracle of the real presence of Christ is performed. There’s no re-enactment of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross in the Protestant worship center, as celebrated in the sacramental churches. In other words there’s simply no altar to be called too.

Phoebe Palmer (1801-1874) led a movement that featured the idea that carnal nature of humanity can be cleansed through faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This became the Holiness movement and later influenced Pentecostalism. In the populist practice what seems to be lost is the all important need for repentance, fear in the face of Almighty God’s Awesomeness and the prospect of hell outside of God’s grace. The emphasis, as I understand it at least in some circles, is merely one need to name and claim the Holy Spirit.

The sacramental churches (Roman, Eastern) see the Holy Spirit working individually in average joes and janes in a much less pronounced way than in highly sanctified and holy people, like the Saints and most assuredly through the Church, the assembly of God . It was only in the 19th Century the populist view began to hold sway that the average churchgoer could acquire instant access to the Holy Spirit.
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In contrast the early Christians are people who sought out the desert as another means of martyrdom, when martyrdom by the Roman Empire began to be less frequent. There was present a very heavy strain of asceticism. Asceticism is a life style of denial where all extraneous avocations are meant to be set aside. Imagine if you turned off TV including sports, internet, texting, phone and stopped recreational eating and hobbies and well…. as unimaginable as the possibility sounds, abstain from physical relations with your spouse or live-in and concentrated on prayer and celebrating church and reading Holy Scriptures. Virtually all Christians in America would be besides themselves in a matter of hours if not less than few minutes… in this over stimulated non meditative environment… now put me very much in that category mind you. But with one difference I know my frailty, my indifference to eternal spiritual truths and sloth towards attaining holiness and fear God’s Holiness and Righteous Judgment. This is the beginning of repentance. Luther began the opposition of this ascetic journey of sanctification, so there’s a long history of denial of validity of that path.

For the Orthodox heartfelt repentance is the first step towards re-conciliation with God. That involves recognition of our sinful state and evoking God’s mercy. Each Matins (morning service) and Divine Liturgy Psalm 51 is recited; it is King David’s cry for mercy and act of repentance after his sin with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12: 1-15). A small portion is used in part in Lutheran liturgies as well.


Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy great mercy,
According to the multitude of thy tender mercies,
Blot out my iniquities.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me….
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me….
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with your generous spirit...
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness of O God, the God of my salvation,
And my tongue will shout aloud of thy righteousness.
O Lord, open thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth your praise…. (Psalm 51)


These types of sentiments are very much missing in modern Protestant Christianity. And of course the thinking is why the need to cry for mercy, didn’t Jesus accomplish all on the Cross and reconcile us? We’re free from the need to recognize our sin by the power of the Cross, it would be thought. In contrast Orthodox would say we are delivered from the power of Satan, but remain a corrupted and stained sinner, worthy of destruction and strive in athletic like-endeavor for our salvation.
The thing that Orthodox has in common with the early Reformers is an understanding of our standing in the sight of God. We are in a frightful sinful state and desire only our will not God’s; in contrast God is Almighty and Holy. Both views saw how deeply ingrained sin is in mankind and both demanded repentance in light of God’s Justice and Holiness. The Reformer denies man’s God-like nature and ability to transfer that nature, however; sanctification is imputed to the Christian.
Which brings me to an interesting quote, that shows how much contemporary Christianity is ignorant of its roots. A fine Christian like Rick Warren of Saddleback, California mega church fame can be found to be quoted as saying:
We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness. (R. Warren)
A medieval Catholic Saint might have been heard saying this. However, Luther, the former monk, couldn’t have disagreed any more, being convinced self improvement projects of that ilk are doomed to failure and are in no way pleasing to God. Pastor Warren’s sentiments mirror the Ancient Church but largely contradict his Protestant roots: no longer fully Protestant and not Ancient either, but an admirable sentiment nonetheless.