Lead-in: How are we saved? By accumulating “good works,” or by receiving “imputed righteousness” in response to our faith? Maybe this traditional question, so often seen as dividing Catholics and Protestants, is the wrong one to ask.

A Roman Catholic friend (and a good theologian) recently asked me whether the Greek Fathers of the Church understand the term “righteousness” in a forensic sense. He was referring to a Protestant doctrine that holds that God does not “make” us righteous; He “declares” or “counts” us righteous. That is, God imputes righteousness to us, while we remain in a state of sinfulness. Simul iustus et peccator, Luther would say: at once justified and sinful. Reading, for example, St Paul’s letter to the Romans, my friend asked, do the Eastern Fathers also read the notion of “righteousness” forensically? Well no, I thought. But then I had to formulate something of the reason why. After a lot of stumbling, this is what I passed on to him.

 

. . .

. . . Through the indwelling Holy Spirit, followers of Christ are capable of receiving that divine righteousness as a gift – one that can actually work a transformation in human life by enabling us to pray, to wage spiritual warfare against the passions, and to love both God and other people. Human nature (ousia) remains “fallen”; but the human person (hypostasis) is led by the Spirit on a pathway of sanctification.

Salvation is accomplished by grace in response to faith. But that faith cannot be passive; it must express itself, not merely by confessing Jesus as “personal Lord and Savior,” but by feeding, clothing, visiting and otherwise caring for the “least” of Jesus' brethren (Mt 25).