The Righteous Shall Live by Faith

A word of Andrei Denisov, Pomorian coenobiarch “The righteous shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4)

Many and ineffable blessings are brought about by the virtues; for the sake of them, those who have acquired them are counted blessed with immortal glory.

For every virtue truly embraced crowns its lover with inexpressible beauty and adorns him more brightly than white-shining pearls. By patience the much-suffering Job is glorified. By hospitality the paradise-dwelling Abraham shines. By chastity Joseph and Susanna everywhere excel. By meekness the royal psalmist David is radiant. By burning zeal the fiery charioteer Elijah is admired. Daniel, the man of spiritual desires, is proclaimed. Thus in both the Old and New Testaments the Church shines with the varied pearls of the virtues.

Yet though many stars shine, one heaven contains them all; though a lofty house smiles with fair appearance, it is upheld entirely by the strength of its foundation. So too the Church, though it shines with many virtues, is made radiant above all by the single beauty of Orthodox faith. There are many spiritual buildings, but one foundation: Orthodox catholic faith.

For Paul, the chosen vessel, cries aloud: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Of this faith the prophet cries with a great voice: “The righteous shall live by faith.” With this prophetic voice I, the crude one, desire—by your prayers, I desire—to be granted the gift of speech, to come to your churchly assembly not as one who is sufficient, but as one who has great desire to adorn your God-loving and brother-loving gathering—not with silver or gold, not with the whiteness of pearls, not with the glittering of precious stones, nor with any of the corruptible things by which the world adorns itself in its love of beauty—but with those things in which you delight, by which you are gladdened, by which you are enlightened and enlighten others: namely, the living faith for whose sake you wander as strangers and suffer diversely, by which you are given life, concerning which we are ever bound to speak, to hear, and to be zealous.

Now faith, according to the Apostle Paul, is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It is:

• the assurance of things hoped for,
• the conviction of things unseen,
• the knowledge, as far as human understanding can attain, of the invisible God,
• the Creator known from the creation,
• the assurance of God’s commandments to men,
• the unquestioning demonstration on earth of God’s ancient works as of the unseen splendours of heaven,
• the most certain manifestation of the incarnation of the Son of God,
• the undeceiving obedience to apostolic teaching,
• the inviolable keeping of the fathers’ traditions,
• the unshakable foundation of the Orthodox catholic Church,
• the infallible reception—by agreement with the saints—of the graces of God, both in heaven and on earth.

O wonder of Orthodox faith! O light of it given us by God! Faith is directed toward the one God with the single light of Orthodoxy, yet it shines with diverse rays. What is unseen we believe with utmost certainty more than what is seen.

We do not see God—yet we believe in one God. We neither see nor can see the three Hypostases in the consubstantial, tri-composite Trinity—yet we believe. We have not seen the God who created visible and invisible creation—yet we believe that “all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” We have not seen the Word of God made flesh, who lived on earth in the flesh, was baptized, crucified, rose again, commanded His disciples to teach His commandments and to baptize, and in their sight was taken up in the flesh into heaven—yet we believe without doubt in all His dispensation of loving-kindness toward us. We have not seen, neither in the Old nor in the New Testament, the saving commandments that God commands us to do—yet we believe and do not doubt.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church and do not demand proof. We believe and receive with love the mysteries of the New Testament handed down by Christ and His Church for our salvation. First we believe without measure in the things that are unseen, beyond the things that are seen.

In the water of Orthodox baptism we believe in the unseen descent of the Holy Ghost, by which cleansing from original and other sins is granted, clothing in Christ, and all else that is given us by Orthodox baptism. In bread and wine, in the rightly administered Communion, we believe that which is unseen: the very Body and very Blood of Christ. Through all the other visible sacramental actions of the Church we believe we receive the unseen graces.

Thus the three-barred Cross of Christ we see with our eyes as something small, yet we believe and confess that by the power of Christ crucified upon it, it is wider than the heavens; and by its sign, according to Church tradition, the sacraments are accomplished and all things upon which it is signed are sanctified; and in its signing we believe the mystery of the good faith is mystically confessed.

Therefore the very name of faith is that which, according to the Apostle, is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. What bodily senses cannot perceive, we hope for with the assurance of the mind. What bodily eyes do not behold, we clearly understand with the eye of the soul. What we do not feel or touch before us, we confidently embrace through spiritual comprehension, kiss with love, and delight in with the heart.

But though faith is so great and incomprehensible, whence is true faith poured into us? Whence is the unseen firmly planted in the unseen soul? Paul, the teacher of the nations, says: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” And since the word of God is in His Church—whether spoken by prophets, apostles, or holy fathers, is spoken by the Holy Ghost—therefore it is from God. Thus faith is wrought in us from God by His word made known. For even at the creation God gave the rational soul the power of faith, that it might believe in Him who is unseen and incomprehensible, known by faith alone; and now by His word He builds up, enlightens, and makes faith yet more certain in us.

Therefore the beauty of faith is born not in the body, nor in bodily senses, nor in bodily works, but in the rational soul itself—though it be aided and manifested by bodily works, or sometimes not so manifested. Yet this spiritual virtue, being unseen, abides in the unseen soul. With the other virtues it has this relation: without it no virtue can be well-pleasing to God; with it hope and love are adorned; by it abstinence, humility, patience are established; by it fasting, chastity, mercy shine forth. For both spiritual and bodily virtues, when joined to faith, become virtues well-pleasing to God.

Not only in union with the other virtues, but, according to the divine Chrysostom, faith is the source of all good things. When faith toward God is warm and constant, it gives birth to prayer, produces mercy, patience, fasting; it builds chastity, orders abstinence and humility. Faith receives the harlot and makes her bring forth the fruit of repentance for the whole world. It receives the persecutor and makes him the preacher to the whole world. It receives the child-loving father and makes him a worker of faith more loving toward God, one who despises the bounds of nature and makes war against his own child (as Abraham). It receives sinners and makes them righteous. It receives gluttons and drunkards and makes them abstinent, fasters, and water-drinkers. It receives the self-willed sluggard and makes him an obedient, diligent, zealous labourer. For to the degree that faith flowers in the heart, to that degree the body hastens to serve, as the heavenly-ladder climber (John Climacus) says.

Therefore when faith is watered by the word of God, when it is kindled warm toward God, when it is undoubting, when it is in agreement with the saints, then all virtues will follow it; then passions yield, sins flee, Pharaoh the tormentor is drowned in the sea of dispassion, the shameless malice of the Egyptians falls silent; Israel, seeing God by faith, is freed from all Egyptian evils, sings sweet songs of victory to God, striking the timbrel of dispassion, and says that the yoke is good and the burden light of the Master.

But this all-effecting faith becomes ineffectual when it is severed from its proper union. When excessive quarrelsome disputations and word-battles are brought into the soul, faith is constrained. When reasoning contrary to the saints is introduced, it becomes unseemly in the soul. When heresies and oppositions are added, faith becomes unrighteous and un-Orthodox in you. When doubt of thought is introduced, faith becomes small. When sins, passions, and evil desires are born, faith is made cold and dead. Just as when dark clouds cover the air, the earth is deprived of the sweet rays of the sun, so a soul that receives things contrary to faith is wretchedly deprived of the gracious workings of faith.

Those who dare by contrary reasonings—as though by works—to offend the holy faith deliver themselves, ill-fated, to eternal perdition. Thus heretics, schismatics, and dividers, thinking contrary to the holy Church and teaching and acting contrary to the saints, have made themselves subject to curse and eternal death; and though they imagine they have faith, they have become offenders of holy faith. For if, as the prophet says, “the righteous shall live by faith,” then they, being unlike the Church, have not been counted worthy of eternal life, manifestly because by some wrong-mindedness they have become opponents of holy faith.

For, as the saints write, he is a heretic and subject to the canons against heretics who deviates even a little from the Orthodox faith. Chrysostom, expounding Paul’s words about anathematization, says: “He did not say ‘if they proclaim something contrary or overturn everything,’ but ‘if they preach even a little beyond what we have preached, if they move even something small—anathema let them be.’”

Since faith is so powerful that those who oppose it and act unworthily of it are condemned, so also it is able to glorify those who worthily acquire it, and it pours out its gracious rays equally upon the rich and the poor who work in it—upon one sitting in purple upon a throne no less than upon one clothed in rags on a dunghill. It is subject to no one except God, but reigns and rules over all—over the simplest unlearned no less than over us who are higher, the hierarchs. Just as God above accepts no man’s person in judgment, so faith is not ashamed of the persons of the glorious and does not neglect the lowly who zealously cleave to it.

Faith abides in hierarchs and priests, walks in them, adorns and is adorned with them—but only when they think and teach worthily of it and in agreement with the saints. But when they despise its greatness and, exceeding its dignity, begin to teach new things and act newly contrary to the saints, then faith, humbling them and hiding its rays of grace, withdraws from communion with them. For Paul cries with a loud voice: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”

But if even those not ordained by hands live worthily in faith and with faith, then faith is adorned in them and adorns them. Thus Meletius, Patriarch of Alexandria, in his epistle to the Belarusians who withdrew from hierarchs corrupted in the faith, speaks laudably, calling them defenders of Orthodoxy, Christ-named sheep, light untainted by darkness, earthly angels, immovable pillars; he marvels especially that they took upon themselves pastoral zeal, did not fall away with the evil shepherds, but remained firm in the piety handed down from the fathers.

Thus faith enlightens worthily those who hold it, and likewise the places created in honour of God and of faith it makes most radiant. She who is uncontainable by places glorifies wonderful temples, worthy churches adorned with holy icons, glorified by many reliquaries of saints’ bodies, shining with ranks and orders brightly arrayed, glittering in gold-shining vestments, dropping honey with songful sweetness and readerly beauty, resounding in due season with clear-ringing, light-thundering bells, gathered with Orthodox peoples as with most bright stars—above all shining like a second sun with the holy mysteries and the very Body and Blood of Christ, becoming magnificent spectacles resembling heaven, radiantly luminous.

But this happens only when faith in agreement with the saints is preserved in them undefiled. If, alas, holy faith is offended in them by novelties, heresies, and divisions, then—woe, what sorrow!—it cannot endure to dwell offended in such bright temples, but often departs and suffers with those who suffer in prisons for Christ and His laws; it flees with those who flee for God’s sake, wanders with those who wander for God, hides in secret houses for fear of persecutors, and is settled in uninhabited empty places. In all these it abides with those who worthily honour and hold it—even when there are no priests, no visible churches, no liturgies.

Thus it was with the equal-to-the-apostles Thecla in suffering and in the wilderness; with Galaction and Episteme in peace, wilderness, and suffering; with many other saints told of in Scripture; with Paul of Thebes who hid from persecution in the desert, whose soul the great Anthony saw carried to heaven with great glory; and in the Old Testament, which prefigured the New, faith was ever with the saints in times of necessity: with Joseph in Egypt, Jonah in the whale’s belly, Manasseh in the brazen field, the captive Israelites in Babylon without sacrifices or visible temples, with Daniel in the lions’ den, and with the three youths in the furnace—who cried to God with faith: “Master, we are brought low above all nations, and we are humbled in all the earth this day for our sins. And at this time there is no prince, no prophet, no leader, no burnt offering, no sacrifice, no oblation, no incense, no place to offer before Thee and to find mercy. But let us be received with contrite soul and humble spirit… for there is no shame to them that hope in Thee.”

Therefore with fervent zeal the prophet proclaims: “The righteous shall live by faith.”

And if there is no salvation outside the Church—yet Chrysostom says: “The Church is not walls and roof, but faith and life”—then with right faith and good life, in every time and place, salvation is granted to every man.

The Jewish high priests, after the crucifixion of Christ, gathered in the Holy of Holies of the temple without faith, and were not heard by God; but the prayer of the Church for Peter, who was bound by them in prison—prayer offered outside any visible church, in a locked house, yet fervent—freed Peter and condemned the high priests.

In old Rome, when the popes dared to corrupt the faith, Anthony and the monks hid from their persecution in the desert. But when persecution was added to persecution and they were scattered, Anthony alone remained—a dweller in stone, a temple-less inhabitant, a bloodless sojourner, a persecuted confessor of the holy faith, voiceless yet the clearest voice, the accuser of papal corruption. The pope, meanwhile, was in temples built of stone and shining with gold, with the lofty ranks of their hierarchy, in churches adorned beyond counting—yet above all beauties rested the most sacred bodies of the glorious luminaries of the world, Peter and Paul. There, with bells and lofty processions and gatherings of all the people, they performed services and supplications. Anthony, alone with the One God upon a single stone, offered the prayerful service of right-believing faith. The difference and the struggle were plain to see: one against many, the simple against hierarchs, the unlearned against cunning tongues, the weak and fugitive against a multitude of nations.

But what did He who lives on high and looks upon the humble do? He exposed the false belief of the many together with their hierarchs, and glorified the one sufferer with right faith. He commanded the sea to roar beyond nature, that its louder voice might accuse the Latins. He stirred the waves to rage fiercely, that the fierce waves might be helpers to the right-believing warrior. He changed the heavy substance of stone into something lighter than a ship; the insensible became more obedient than the rational. The sea laid its back beneath, lifted the stone like a ship; the stone leapt upon it as though winged, bore a man higher than man. The waves, boiling with speed, leapt one after another, carrying the stone in flight. A marvellous sight: some angel, swifter than an eagle, became a stone-sailor. He crossed seas; the rivers Neva and Volkhov rejoiced and made glad their streams; they delivered to Novgorod the supernatural herald, the accuser of Latin crooked-belief, the clarifier and demonstrator of Russian right-belief.

Thus faith glorifies those who glorify her; thus she makes dishonourable those who dishonour her. Thus she is bound not to high ranks nor to most radiant places, but to good will, yoked to the right laws of the Church, and easily contained in the rational soul. As the chosen vessel says: “Ye are the church of the living God, as God hath said: I will dwell in them and walk in them.”

For this reason faith, together with the other virtues, is wondrous and most glorious—though love is proclaimed greater than it and than all the others by the Apostle Paul, because love never fails and abides also in the age to come. Yet faith is the mother of all virtues and the beginning of the rest.

So great must faith be in us that it agrees with the apostles, is not torn away from the prophets, is of one mind with the holy councils, proclaims the same as all righteous spirits. So carefully must it be guarded that it has no communion with those of contrary belief, separates from the divisive, and rejects those disobedient to it and those who cling to abominable unlawful deeds. For faith without good works is dead—not that catholic faith which abides ever-living in all the saints, but the faith of a soul that has cut itself off from it because of filthy desires; in such a soul faith is dead.

Therefore right faith is so necessary to us that, according to Holy Scripture, without it we cannot be saved.

As the sun, rising to its height in springtime, beholds the whole universe more clearly; drives away winter, destroys the frosts, takes the barren and fruitless earth—like an old woman bent double, buried under heaps of snow—and makes her young again and fruitful, adorned with flowers, enriched with fruits; gives waters to the valleys, swift currents to rivers, ships to the sea, swimmers to the waters, tillers to the fields—so, if faith somewhere ascends to the height of heaven and raises heaven itself, and like a second equinox shows equal agreement with the saints, then the wintry disorder of evil belief will be driven away, the frosts of heresies destroyed, the snows of sins and iniquities melted by the rays of its light. Right-believing souls will blossom with the beauty of the vision of God and be shown rich with the fruits of the virtues.

Therefore the righteous shall live by faith; but faith without works is dead. It is needful for the right-believer to work right-believing works in right belief, that from right belief he may be shown a righteous doer of right-believing works, and from the truth of living right belief may live immortally.

For good faith is envied, the envied is attacked, the attacked is preserved with patience. Yet for that reason the faithful man must not, because he must suffer, abandon good faith—unless he wishes to become faithless or evil-believing. For the Saviour in the Gospel, choosing us who are right-believing for this very thing, said: “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

If pagans and heathen, for the sake of their godless and abominable beliefs, stand so firmly, refuse to depart from their laws, and are compelled to wallow outside beauty in godlessness—some even waging war against Christians with many hardships, battles, sorrows, and deaths; if Mohammedans, pleasing the foul tradition of Mohammed, do thus; if others live like wild beasts among beasts, necessarily without speech—like the Samoyeds, Votyaks, Voguls, and other steppe Tatars—living a wretched life of misery only to be eternally accursed and suffer for ever in the deepest darkness; if Christians deceived by heristic errors are so strengthened in their newly-invented corruptions that each group imagines and proclaims its own party to be better than all laws on earth— how much more ought we, right-believing Christians—not for foul pagan laws, not for heretical newly-dared traditions, but for the pure Orthodox faith, the evangelical faith, the apostolic faith, the conciliar fatherly faith preserved by the saints and handed down to us by custom and writing; the faith that savingly preserves those who keep it and makes them worthy of eternal life— how much more ought we to stand manfully, suffering with patience and godly hardships, not weakening ourselves, trampling demonic counsels of the enemy, conquering passionate desires, destroying sins; not rejoicing in spacious ease and wealth apart from faith; not falling in poverty, sorrows, and persecutions while holding fast to Orthodox faith!

Thus, O Orthodox assembly, the word shows how the righteous shall live by faith. In accord with this we have many instructions and many examples in the holy books. Having heard them, let us rejoice in the glory of faith, let us be glad in her riches, let us triumph in her unconquerable power and in the beauty of her majesty. Let us be zealous, let us love to be with her and in her—who makes the poor worthy of immortal riches and the low-born worthy of heavenly nobility. Let us show all diligence to cleave to the goodly beauty of Orthodoxy, to acquire in our hearts this ever-warm faith toward God—this faith that abides with Christ in heaven, this faith that ever rejoices in the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, this faith in agreement with the saints. Let us ever warm her with Scripture, prayers, and church hymns; let us join to her hope and love that are never parted from her; let us adorn her and make her warm with the light of the virtues. Let us not dishonour her nobility with evil deeds; in anger, envy, and pride let us not darken our souls; with excessive disputations and questionings let us not be troubled; with divisions and strifes let us not tear asunder the unity of true belief. Let us not exchange her eternal glory for temporal glory, her endless light for corruptible beauty, her priceless riches for fleeting, rotting wealth, her heavenly sweetness for foul lusts.

But let us abide in peace and love and unity and in the traditions of the fathers, enduring with fasting and prayers, adorning ourselves with purity, temperance, and humility; let us walk in seemliness by grace, mercy, freedom from anger, and beneficence; in persecutions, hardships, and sorrows let us run with patience, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

To Him, Christ, the true Son of God, be glory with the Father and the Holy Ghost unto all ages. Amen.