J
JeremiahsBulldog
Guest
Scrupulosity was mentioned in several previous posts.
It is real, a type of cumpulsive disorder.
Sometimes, it could come as an attack from the demons, who always want us to lose hope in our salvation.
Sometimes it's a mental illness. And there is a danger of that, if one focuses too much on his sins and the toll-houses.
Martin Luther fell into this disorder as a RC monk. He actually got depressed from thinking too much about his sins.
The RC Church in Martin Luther's time
The RC Church didn't help much. By Luther's time, it had turned the Orthodox doctrine of salvation it once had - that of cooperation between our will and God's - into a whole obstacle course.
FIRST, there was the doctrine of God. Just as you have an essence (the stuff you are made of) and energies (How you interact with the world around you), so does God. For us Orthodox, God's essence is utterly transcendent (above and beyond all creation) and unknowable (a mystery never to be solved). God's energies are also mysterious, but we can "know" them by their interaction with us.
As an illustration, imagine a town without any physicists. No-one in that town will truly understand how gravity works. But everyone there can "Know" gravity by experiencing its effect. Similarly, we'll never understand God's energies, but we can experience them. They are God's interaction with His creation.
In the middle-ages, the Western Church lumped God's essence and energies together, by teaching that they are the same thing. This can lead to one of two things.
(1) They could emphasize God's transcendent essence. But if His energies are the same as His essence, it would mean that His energies are also infinitely transcendent. This cuts God off from His creation. Or . . .
(2) They could emphasize God's energies interacting with creation. But if His essence is the same as His energies, that would mean that His essence interacts with creation. That amounts to Pantheism.
The scholastic theologians chose option #1. But now, their God was disconnected from creation. So they invented "created grace". Created grace is a kind of Divine "Plasticine". God could make as much of it as He wants, form it into anything He wants, and shoot it into His cosmos. By Luther's time, various created graces had been identified and cataloged.
THEN there was your personal, heavenly bank-account. You had to balance it every day by doing more good deeds than bad ones. Even the smallest bad deed had to be counter-balanced. The easiest way to balance your account was through confession, which wiped out most of the "red ink" of your bad deeds.
If you had too many bad deeds in your account, the Church had a short-cut to help you balance them. If you did a small spiritual act - like saying the "Our Father" or donating money for the upkeep of St. Peter's Basilica - the Church could then dip into a special heavenly bank-account, owned jointly by Christ and the saints, called supererogatory works. It could take a dollop of created grace from that account and deposit it to yours. This heavenly charitable donation from the Church to you, was called an indulgence.
FINALLY, when you died, God would sit in His courtroom as Judge, you would stand in the witness-box, and He would open your heavenly bank-book. If there were more good works than bad works in it, He would say, "you are forgiven", erase all your bad works, and send you off to Heaven. If there were more bad works than good, He would get really angry and punish you by sending you to Hell.
But what if your bank-book was almost, but not quite balanced? What if you left some small bad deeds unconfessed; or had confessed everything, but didn't have time to do a few small good deeds to balance the book? Then, the Lord, after stroking His long white beard for a while, would turn to you, and with a jolly smile and a wink, would say, "Aw, shucks! That's close enough. You're forgiven". But that didn't mean you went to Heaven. Instead, you had to spend some time in Purgatory, where the good Lord would char-broil you until He was satisfied that, by your suffering, you had balanced your bank-account to perfection. Only then would your bad deeds be erased, and you would get to go to Heaven.
Given all of the above, no wonder poor Brother Martin got depressed!
Martin Luther's solution
He invented the equally false doctrine of "salvation by faith alone". From now on, one didn't have to be an accountant to go to Heaven. One simply had to stand before God and admit that: (a) he was a sinner, and (b) he could never do enough good works to earn his salvation (take that, RCC!). Then he had to ask Jesus (apparently Dr. Luther and our Saviour were on a first--name basis) to be his "personal Lord and Saviour". At this point, Jesus would oblige by sending His (created?) Saving Grace. One effect of this grace was that the person praying would become utterly convinced of his salvation. This meant that, in practice, one could "pray the prayer", get convinced that he was saved, and - Bingo! - he was saved! Never mind that, for some, it seemed as if he had simply convinced himself that he was saved.
Calvinism
Other reformers, like former RC priest John Calvin, went even further. They believed in salvation by Divine Election. This meant that, Before God created the Universe, He held a lottery for everyone who would ever be born (even though they weren't born yet). The winners - the "elect" - got a free pass to Heaven, which they could use upon their deaths. The losers - the "vessels of wrath" - were out of luck.
The Orthodox solution to scrupulosity
FIRST, don't get rid of traditional doctrines. That's never a good idea. For instance, imagine a man lives near a forest and visits it often. Some visitors come to his house. He tells them, "be careful of the wolves in the forest. If you go there, protect yourselves by travelling in groups, or some other way". Some of the visitors use this advise wisely. But others might develop an irrational fear of wolves. Does that mean that he shouldn't warn anyone about the wolves?
SECOND, we don't need toll-houses to make us overly scrupulous. Biblical passages like Mt. 5:17-20 work just as well (at least for me).
FINALLY, we should learn the EO doctrine of salvation. If the Orthodox Church ever gets a catchphrase for its doctrine of salvation, it would probably be, "Salvation by God's mercy, through synergy". Synergy, of course, refers to the cooperation between our will and God's will.
(1)We fight the devil by submitting to God, and uniting our will/energy with His uncreated Will/energy/Grace, starting with prayer. (Jms. 4:7-10).
(2)As our will becomes more "in tune" with the Lord's will, God grants us greater virtues - the "Armor of God". (Eph. 6:10-18). The overly-scrupulous should pay particular attention to the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. These offer strong protection against the despair that the demons try to put into us.
(3)Finally, we will be able to say, "God is with us, who could be against us? . . . ". (Rm. 8:31-39).
In cases where scrupulosity does come from a mental illness, the person in question might need to be referred to a mental health professional. This must be done with compassion and without judgement.
Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that, because of a few cases, we should hide the truth from everybody.
It is real, a type of cumpulsive disorder.
Sometimes, it could come as an attack from the demons, who always want us to lose hope in our salvation.
Sometimes it's a mental illness. And there is a danger of that, if one focuses too much on his sins and the toll-houses.
Martin Luther fell into this disorder as a RC monk. He actually got depressed from thinking too much about his sins.
The RC Church in Martin Luther's time
The RC Church didn't help much. By Luther's time, it had turned the Orthodox doctrine of salvation it once had - that of cooperation between our will and God's - into a whole obstacle course.
FIRST, there was the doctrine of God. Just as you have an essence (the stuff you are made of) and energies (How you interact with the world around you), so does God. For us Orthodox, God's essence is utterly transcendent (above and beyond all creation) and unknowable (a mystery never to be solved). God's energies are also mysterious, but we can "know" them by their interaction with us.
As an illustration, imagine a town without any physicists. No-one in that town will truly understand how gravity works. But everyone there can "Know" gravity by experiencing its effect. Similarly, we'll never understand God's energies, but we can experience them. They are God's interaction with His creation.
In the middle-ages, the Western Church lumped God's essence and energies together, by teaching that they are the same thing. This can lead to one of two things.
(1) They could emphasize God's transcendent essence. But if His energies are the same as His essence, it would mean that His energies are also infinitely transcendent. This cuts God off from His creation. Or . . .
(2) They could emphasize God's energies interacting with creation. But if His essence is the same as His energies, that would mean that His essence interacts with creation. That amounts to Pantheism.
The scholastic theologians chose option #1. But now, their God was disconnected from creation. So they invented "created grace". Created grace is a kind of Divine "Plasticine". God could make as much of it as He wants, form it into anything He wants, and shoot it into His cosmos. By Luther's time, various created graces had been identified and cataloged.
THEN there was your personal, heavenly bank-account. You had to balance it every day by doing more good deeds than bad ones. Even the smallest bad deed had to be counter-balanced. The easiest way to balance your account was through confession, which wiped out most of the "red ink" of your bad deeds.
If you had too many bad deeds in your account, the Church had a short-cut to help you balance them. If you did a small spiritual act - like saying the "Our Father" or donating money for the upkeep of St. Peter's Basilica - the Church could then dip into a special heavenly bank-account, owned jointly by Christ and the saints, called supererogatory works. It could take a dollop of created grace from that account and deposit it to yours. This heavenly charitable donation from the Church to you, was called an indulgence.
FINALLY, when you died, God would sit in His courtroom as Judge, you would stand in the witness-box, and He would open your heavenly bank-book. If there were more good works than bad works in it, He would say, "you are forgiven", erase all your bad works, and send you off to Heaven. If there were more bad works than good, He would get really angry and punish you by sending you to Hell.
But what if your bank-book was almost, but not quite balanced? What if you left some small bad deeds unconfessed; or had confessed everything, but didn't have time to do a few small good deeds to balance the book? Then, the Lord, after stroking His long white beard for a while, would turn to you, and with a jolly smile and a wink, would say, "Aw, shucks! That's close enough. You're forgiven". But that didn't mean you went to Heaven. Instead, you had to spend some time in Purgatory, where the good Lord would char-broil you until He was satisfied that, by your suffering, you had balanced your bank-account to perfection. Only then would your bad deeds be erased, and you would get to go to Heaven.
Given all of the above, no wonder poor Brother Martin got depressed!
Martin Luther's solution
He invented the equally false doctrine of "salvation by faith alone". From now on, one didn't have to be an accountant to go to Heaven. One simply had to stand before God and admit that: (a) he was a sinner, and (b) he could never do enough good works to earn his salvation (take that, RCC!). Then he had to ask Jesus (apparently Dr. Luther and our Saviour were on a first--name basis) to be his "personal Lord and Saviour". At this point, Jesus would oblige by sending His (created?) Saving Grace. One effect of this grace was that the person praying would become utterly convinced of his salvation. This meant that, in practice, one could "pray the prayer", get convinced that he was saved, and - Bingo! - he was saved! Never mind that, for some, it seemed as if he had simply convinced himself that he was saved.
Calvinism
Other reformers, like former RC priest John Calvin, went even further. They believed in salvation by Divine Election. This meant that, Before God created the Universe, He held a lottery for everyone who would ever be born (even though they weren't born yet). The winners - the "elect" - got a free pass to Heaven, which they could use upon their deaths. The losers - the "vessels of wrath" - were out of luck.
The Orthodox solution to scrupulosity
FIRST, don't get rid of traditional doctrines. That's never a good idea. For instance, imagine a man lives near a forest and visits it often. Some visitors come to his house. He tells them, "be careful of the wolves in the forest. If you go there, protect yourselves by travelling in groups, or some other way". Some of the visitors use this advise wisely. But others might develop an irrational fear of wolves. Does that mean that he shouldn't warn anyone about the wolves?
SECOND, we don't need toll-houses to make us overly scrupulous. Biblical passages like Mt. 5:17-20 work just as well (at least for me).
FINALLY, we should learn the EO doctrine of salvation. If the Orthodox Church ever gets a catchphrase for its doctrine of salvation, it would probably be, "Salvation by God's mercy, through synergy". Synergy, of course, refers to the cooperation between our will and God's will.
(1)We fight the devil by submitting to God, and uniting our will/energy with His uncreated Will/energy/Grace, starting with prayer. (Jms. 4:7-10).
(2)As our will becomes more "in tune" with the Lord's will, God grants us greater virtues - the "Armor of God". (Eph. 6:10-18). The overly-scrupulous should pay particular attention to the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. These offer strong protection against the despair that the demons try to put into us.
(3)Finally, we will be able to say, "God is with us, who could be against us? . . . ". (Rm. 8:31-39).
In cases where scrupulosity does come from a mental illness, the person in question might need to be referred to a mental health professional. This must be done with compassion and without judgement.
Nevertheless, this doesn't mean that, because of a few cases, we should hide the truth from everybody.
Last edited:
Upvote
0
