For an in-depth comparison of Orthodoxy versus Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, visit our 11 part series on Orthodoxy vs. Western Christianity.
By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
By 1517, the popes of Rome had been dominating the West for about 500 years – in 1014 the Nicene Creed was uncanonically altered by the bishop of Rome, adding the Filioque clause; in 1054 the Great Schism of Rome with the rest of the Orthodox Church officially began – and the Roman Catholic system was beginning to break down. Violence and corruption were endemic. Desire for change was very much in the air. Martin Luther, of course, was the spark that blew the powder keg apart and who then refashioned a new order from the pieces.
This has been to the detriment of the West. Luther was correct in his assessment of the falseness of the Roman Catholic system. But there was an alternative to the formation of Lutheranism and other Protestant faiths: a return to the Orthodox Church, the original Church of Europe that nourished the European ethnoi for 1,000 years with the Grace of God before the Schism occasioned by papal innovations.
Living at the same time as Luther (1483-1546) was a towering figure of the Orthodox Church of any age: St Alexander of Svir in Russia (1448-1533). He embodies the life that was possible for the West at the time (and remains possible for her today), a life which Luther made very difficult to know. The two of them are quite opposite in some essential ways.
Luther, for instance, in a highly repulsive and rebellious act, renounced his monastic vows and married a woman whom he convinced to do the same. St Alexander never countenanced such an outrageous thing; he actually fled marriage to become a monk, a way of life he greatly admired:
‘Amos [the name of St Alexander prior to his monastic tonsure—W. G.] grew up to be an extraordinary child. He was always obedient and gentle, he avoided games, jokes and foul talk; he wore poor clothing and so weakened himself with fasting that it caused his mother much anxiety. When he came of age, he met some monks from Valaam who had come to the Oyata to purchase various necessities, and on other monastery business.
‘By this time Valaam was already known as a monastery of great piety and strict ascetic life. After speaking with the monks, the young man was fascinated by their account of Skete life (with two or three monks living together) and the solitary life of the anchorite. Knowing that his parents had arranged a marriage for him, the young man fled secretly to Valaam when he was nineteen. An Angel of the Lord appeared to him the guise of a traveler, and showed him the way to the island.’
He would also later convince his own mother and father to join monasteries.
Luther considered monasticism to be a form of ‘works righteousness’, an attempt of man to try to earn his salvation. In Luther’s mind this was a gross violation of the new theology he had dreamt up – that man plays no role in his own salvation. A John Piper disciple Jason Meyer comments:
‘The whole hinge of the Reformation is here. What about human ability? The Reformation was about the powerlessness of man to save himself. That’s what it was. It was about the powerlessness of the will to become or make the person morally beautiful. It wasn’t the Pope, it wasn’t purgatory, it was the powerlessness of the will. So Luther fiercely objected to Erasmus exalting the human will. It made him sick. He said things like, “Your language is so beautiful; it’s like you’re bringing me on a silver tray crap.” The content was horrible.’
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Luther goes further, making man completely passive in the economy of salvation:
‘I condemn and reject as nothing but error, any doctrine that exalts our free will, as being directly opposed to this mediation and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. For since, apart from Christ, sin and death are our masters, the devil is our god and prince, there can be no strength or power, no wit or wisdom, by which we can fit or fashion ourselves for righteousness and life.’
St Alexander lives a different reality, that men and women cooperate with God in their salvation. It is the key to understanding his severe ascetic exploits:
‘Young Amos lived at the monastery as a novice for seven years, leading an austere life. He spent his days at work, and his nights in vigil and prayer. Sometimes, he prayed in the forest bare-chested, covered with mosquitoes and gnats, until it was time for Matins.’
After the death of his parents ‘ . . . Saint Alexander, with the blessing of the Igumen of the monastery, settled on an island, where he built a cell in the crevice of a cliff and continued his spiritual endeavors.
‘The fame of his asceticism spread far and wide. Then in 1485, Saint Alexander departed from Valaam and, after receiving instructions from on high, chose a place in the forest by the shores of a beautiful lake, which was later called Holy Lake. Here he built a shack, living in solitude for seven years, eating only what he gathered in the forest.’
The Lord abundantly blessed these spiritual endeavors of Alexander:
‘During this time, Alexander experienced terrible suffering from hunger, frost, sickness and demonic temptations, but the Lord sustained the righteous one’s spiritual and bodily strength. Once, he was afflicted with a terrible pain in his stomach. Not only was he unable to get up off the ground, but he couldn’t even lift his head. He just lay there and chanted Psalms. Then an Angel appeared to him. Placing his hand on the sore spot, he made the Sign of the Cross over the Saint and healed him.’
Martin Luther, unfortunately, not being formed in the true spirit of monasticism as it has been handed down in the Orthodox Church form the hands of such wonderful saints as Anthony the Great of Egypt, Basil the Great of Cappadocia, Euthymios the Great of Palestine, Moses the Black of Skete, and others, saw no benefit in ascetic practices. Luther recounts,
‘At Rome, I wished to liberate my grandfather from purgatory. So I went up the staircase of Pilate, praying a Pater Noster on each step. I was convinced that he who prayed thus could redeem his soul. But when I came to the top step, the thought came to me, “Who knows whether this is true?”’
And elsewhere ‘He said:
‘If I could believe that God was not angry with me, I would stand on my head for joy. When I was a monk, I wearied myself greatly for almost 15 years with daily sacrifice, torturing myself with fastings and vigils and prayers and rigorous works, like self-freezing, not having any blankets, and I almost froze myself to death, earnestly thinking to acquire righteousness by my works.’
‘But he said It was like I was living in a dream, and that he had a real idolatry because he didn’t know the real Jesus. He just thought of him as that terrible, horrible judge sitting enthroned on top of the rainbow.’
Luther’s view of God is the worst part of all of this. Later Protestants like Mr Meyer try to dress it up in pretty words – ‘Unconditional election comes from somewhere, it comes from unconditional love.’ – but they can’t hide the reality of Luther’s and their view of God as ‘that terrible, horrible judge’ who condemns some people to hell and saves others for life in heaven quite apart from anything they have done, all for the sake of His insatiable, jealous desire for glory:
‘God’s glorious grace is at stake. Free will theology has fallen sinners brazenly break into the throne room of heaven, steal all glory from God, smuggle it back to earth, and share it with their sinful cronies. The Reformation is a gospel ambition for Luther and the Reformers to be on a mission to take all that stolen glory back and ascribe it back to God, saying, “This is yours. This was wrong for the Roman church to steal this from you. We have a glory ambition to bring it back and say, ‘It’s all yours.”’
But God does want to share his glory with man: ‘ . . . he [man] is the image and glory of God’ (St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 11:7). This is why He allows mankind to be ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (II Peter 1:4), with the resultant outpourings of miracles from the saints that follow. St Alexander is an excellent example of this over many centuries:
‘Countless miracles of healing took place at his grave for those who came there with faith.
‘ . . . The incorrupt relics of Saint Alexander were removed from the Svir Monastery by the Bolsheviks on December 20, 1918 after several unsuccessful attempts to confiscate them. There was an infamous campaign to destroy the relics of the Saints which continued from 1919 to 1922. Many relics of Russsian Saints were stolen and subjected to “scientific examination” or displayed in anti-religious museums. Some of them were completely destroyed.
‘A second uncovering of Saint Alexander’s relics took place in December of 1997.
‘The relics were found to be incorrupt, just as they were when they were confiscated. The saint’s appearance matched the description in the records from 1641. Once it was determined that these were truly the relics of Saint Alexander, Metropolitan Vladimir of Saint Petersburg permitted them to be taken to the church of Saint Sophia and her three daughters Faith, Hope, and Love (September 17) for four months before they were returned to the Monastery. As people venerated Saint Alexander’s relics, they noticed a fragrant myrrh flowing from them.
‘The holy relics were taken to the Saint Alexander of Svir Monastery in November 1998, and miraculous cures continue to take place before them.’
Luther’s remains, resting underneath a Protestant pulpit in Germany, work cures for no one.
Part of Luther’s deformed theology is his unbalanced exaltation of the written word of the Bible; it inhibits any thought of theosis/union with God. The Orthodox life in Christ is reduced to an external relationship with a book:
‘What Luther stressed was the externality of the truth of God, because externality was essential for its purity. Here’s what I mean. He stressed first, the external written word. He wrote articles that were to unite the political and military alliance of the Lutheran princes, and here’s what he wrote about Scripture:
‘“We must hold firmly to the conviction that God gives no one his Spirit or grace, except through or with the external word . . . The Spirit of God and the word of God are tied together like this.”
‘ . . . So precisely for the sake of the incarnate Word, Luther exalts the written word, the external word. Do you see what Piper’s saying? He’s saying you have to keep them together, and the external word does not shackle the incarnate Word; the external word keeps the incarnate Word, Jesus, from being shackled. It’s not the Jesus of your imagination, it’s not the Jesus Calling that you feel; it is the Jesus of the Bible, and they can’t be twisted.’
Contrasting with Luther’s God confined to the pages of the Bible is the unmediated encounter of the Holy Trinity through the Orthodox Church’s life of prayer, asceticism, and the Holy Mysteries/Sacraments, as witnessed in the life of St Alexander. Two encounters reveal the difference starkly. The first unfolds in this way:
‘In 1508, twenty-three years after he came to this secluded spot, the Life-Creating Trinity appeared to Saint Alexander. One night he was praying in his cell. Suddenly, there was a dazzling light, and he saw three Angels in resplendent white garments approaching him. They shone with a pure brightness greater than the sun. Each held a staff in His hand. Saint Alexander fell down in terror, and after recovering his senses, he prostrated himself upon the ground. Raising him by the hand, the Angels said: “Have faith, blessed one, and do not be afraid.”
‘The Saint was told to build a church and a monastery. He fell to his knees, protesting his own unworthiness, but the Lord raised him up and ordered him to carry out the instructions he had been given. Saint Alexander asked to whom the church ought to be dedicated. The Lord said: “Beloved, as you see us speaking with you in Three Persons, so build the church in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial Trinity. Peace I leave you; my peace I give you.”
‘Then Saint Alexander beheld the Lord with outstretched wings, moving along the ground until He became invisible.’
Saint Alexander of Svir experienced a rare and miraculous vision in 1508 when the Holy Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit—appeared to him in three distinct, shining figures.
And then the second:
‘Toward the end of his life, Saint Alexander decided to build a stone church in honor of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos. One evening, after chanting an Akathist to the Mother of God, he settled down to rest in his cell. Suddenly, he said to his cell attendant Athanasios, “Child, be sober and alert, because at this very hour we shall have a wondrous and astounding visitation.”
Then a voice like thunder said, “Behold, the Lord and His Mother are coming.”
‘Saint Alexander hastened to the entrance to the cell, which it was illumined by a great light shining throughout the monastery, brighter than the rays of the sun. The Saint beheld the Most Pure Mother of God upon the foundation of the Protection church, and sitting where the altar would be, like a Queen upon a throne. She held the Infant Christ in her arms, and a multitude of Angels stood before her, with shining with indescribable radiance.’
Humility kept St Alexander from being puffed up with pride when he received such gifts:
‘A year before his death, Saint Alexander foresaw the time of his departure from this life. He summoned the brethren and gave them his final instructions, commending them to the Mother of God. The brethren wept at the thought of being separated from their beloved Father. When they asked where he wished to be buried he said, “Bind my sinful body by the legs and drop it into a the marsh then, after covering it with moss, trample on it with your feet.”
‘The brethren replied, “No, Father, we cannot do this.”
‘Then the holy ascetic said that if they would not do as he asked, then they should bury him near the church of the Transfiguration.’
Luther’s pride, however, has been transmitted to the West, in which everyone – due to his or her infallibility, personal view of truth, etc. – now has the ‘right’ to rebel against authority:
‘Luther then was called to appear at Leipzig for another disputation, this time with the master theologian of Rome, Martin Eck, on the issue of indulgences and authority and infallibility of the Pope. Luther directly looks in his eye and says this:
‘“Popes and counsels can err, Scripture can’t. Therefore, a single layman armed with infallible Scripture can reject what a fallible Pope says.”’
Five hundred years of life under the Protestant dispensation in the West have now gone by. As it was in 1517, so it is again now. People have grown weary of a system that denigrates their free will and makes them subjects of a capricious ‘God’ who demonstrates his ‘unconditional love’ by condemning millions of men and women to hell long before they have even been born. The exodus to cults, psychedelic drugs, atheism, etc., has reached alarming proportions in the West in the desire to escape the ‘good news’ that Protestants preach.
The authentic good news is that Westerners are beginning to enter in increasing numbers into the Orthodox Church, the same Church of their forefathers, the same Church established among many of their peoples by the Apostles themselves, the same holy, wonderworking Church as exemplified in the life of St Alexander of Svir, the foil of Martin Luther.
‘Where can we find the Church seen in the Acts of the Apostles?’ many people ask today. It is closer to them than they realize.
For further discussion of Protestantism, we invite folks to view a talk between two members of Dixie’s Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship, Dr Clark Carlton, a founding member of the Fellowship, and Buck Johnson, the host of the Counterflow podcast.
Sources:
Fr Andrew Stephen Damick, Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/biography-on-martin-luther
https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/scottish-history/how-martin-luther-sparked-the-reformation/
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2026/08/30/102423-venerable-alexander-abbot-of-svir
