Finding Christ Ready to Greet Us

Orthodox Witness in the Public Square

To understand how rugged individualism can be a preparation for the Gospel, we need to understand first something of how the Church approaches her evangelical vocation. This, in turn, will help us understand one of the distinctive features of OST. Though not uncritically, the Church generally has taken an affirming stance toward the surrounding culture. Even under the Ottoman yoke and during the Communist era, the Church looked to co-operate with secular authorities. As the witness of martyrs and confessors testify, this didn’t rule out sharp differences between the Church and the World. In the main though, the Church has been more willing to accept the status quo not so much as morally good (much less ideal) but simply as the context within which God has called the Church to bear witness to Christ.

For the Church all human cultures as being in some way or another a preparation for the Gospel. Somewhat cheekily Fr Alexander Schmemann once pointed out that a missionary is someone who plans to bring Christ where He is not only to find our Lord there waiting for him.

This notion of finding Christ hidden among a people is one with deep biblical and patristic roots. The Apostle Paul begins his epistle to the Romans (1:20-21) by reminding the faithful of that church that

…since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful…

In his sermon on the Areopagus, Paul offers a more developed, evangelical form of this point. Seeing an altar dedicated to an “unknown god” he tells his listeners “the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you” the Creator of the cosmos and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who Himself “will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:24, 31).

St Justin Martyr (Second Apology, 13) also talks about the “hidden” or “unknown” presence of Christ. Looking around him he sees here and there the spermatikos logos or the seminal presence of the Logos in the human heart. In our fallen world, he says, demons “disguise…the divine doctrines of the Christians.” Rather than allowing himself to become angry, he responds with goodhearted laughter “both at those who framed these falsehoods, … at the disguise itself and at popular opinion” in the hope of “turn[ing] aside others from joining” the demons.

The evidence of his winsome irenicism comes immediately afterward

…I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians.

He goes on to praise each philosopher for speaking “well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word.” This elevates the teaching of pagan philosophers. Whatever their errors, to the degree they say something which is true, they are also speaking about Christ. The saint is indulgent in his view of pagan wisdom. Through no fault of their own, they err because they lacked “the heavenly wisdom and the knowledge which cannot be spoken against.” As for the truths they stumble upon, these “are the property of us Christians.”

The saint’s commitment to Christ and the Gospel requires that he not only accept but praise the truth where ever it is found and no matter how disfigured by demonic disguise. As he says

For next to God, we worship and love the Word who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became man for our sakes, that becoming a partaker of our sufferings, He might also bring us healing. For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them. For the seed and imitation impacted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the thing itself, of which there is the participation and imitation according to the grace which is from Him.

There is nothing contrived in Justin’s words here. His kindness is not merely a means to an end but reflects a sincere love for both God and neighbor. We can’t forget that for all his generosity and winsome response to the surrounding pagan culture, Justin dies a martyr. And yet, even in the face of his own impending execution, affirms the truth of pagan philosophy.