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.
The South was born and came of age in the difficult spiritual environment of Protestantism and the Enlightenment. Both poured forth a great deal of scorn on the miraculous work of God in the world. Martin Luther, the Reformer himself, for example, once wrote,
In the papacy there is a book containing the legends or accounts of the saints. I hate it intensely, solely for the reason that it tells of revolting forms of worship and silly miracles performed by idle people. These legends and accounts actually accomplish only one thing: they increase contempt of the government and of the household, yes, even almost of the church itself. Therefore such tales should be shunned and utterly rejected, for the chief thing of Christian doctrine is faith. About this the entire book does not mention a single word anywhere. It is occupied solely with praising monasticism and monkish works, which are altogether at variance with the customary ways of people.
John Calvin likewise taught,
The gift of healing, like the rest of the miracles, which the Lord willed to be brought forth for a time, has vanished away in order to make the preaching of the Gospel marvellous for ever.
The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume said in a similar spirit,
A miracle is a violation of a law of nature
Firm and unalterable experience has established the laws of nature
Anything that has been experienced conforms to the laws of nature
Nothing has been experienced which does not conform to the laws of nature
All experience, since it is uniform, unites as a proof against a miracle
Southern religion for a long time partook of this skepticism toward miracle-working. Dixie’s theologians did accept the possibility of God working miracles in the world, but it was attenuated by their unfortunate tendency to view them mechanistically, and detached from any human agency or cooperation.
We answer again, that we are able to regulate and employ our mechanisms, in strict accordance with their structure, to execute our special purposes. Shall we deny to the great God a similar power? What more regular and exact than a railroad? . . . The rigid rules of the road could not be infringed without the risk of a terrific crash. Yet this railroad train can be easily made to hear prayer. Its every motion is as completely under the hand of the engineer as the horse under the rein of the rider; and at the cry of a sick child, the conductor may stop the whole. Now, is God less able to manage his machine? Are his resources less than those of his creature, man? (Revered Robert Lewis Dabney, Discussions, Volume I, pgs. 674-5)
There is, strictly speaking, in any miracle no agency but that of the Divine Being Himself. Even to speak of the messenger as His instrument is not correct. All that the messenger does is to declare his message, to appeal to God for its truth, and if, at his word, intimating a miracle as about to be performed in proof of it, the miracle actually takes place, there is, on his part, in regard to the performance, neither agency nor instrumentality, unless the mere utterance of words, in intimation of what is about to be done, or an appeal to Heaven and petition for its being done, may be so called. God Himself is the agent, the sole and immediate agent’ (Dr. Wardlaw, quoted in Rev. James Henley Thornwell, Collected Writings, Vol. III, pgs. 236-7).
But this obscures an important truth – that men and women are fellow-workers with God in the working out of their salvation, that they were created for union with God, that they really can be filled with God’s Grace:
Everyone and all are set on their mystical path toward God, toward the God-Man. Inasmuch as it was created by God, the Logos, matter possesses this same theocentricity. Moreover, by His advent into our earthly world, by His all-embracing condescension as God and Man for the redemption of the world, the Lord Christ clearly demonstrated that not only the soul, but matter also was created by God and for God, and that He is God and Man; and for it, matter, He is all and everything in the same manner as for the soul. Being created by God, the Logos, matter is, in its innermost core, God-longing and Christ-longing.
The most obvious proof of this is the fact that God the Word has become Incarnate, has become man (St. John 1:14). By His Incarnation, matter has been magnified with Divine glory and has entered into the grace- and virtue-bestowing, ascetic aim of deification, or union with Christ. God has become flesh, has become human, so that the entire man, the entire body, might be filled with God and with His miracle-working forces and powers. In the God-Man, the Lord Christ, and His Body, all matter has been set on a path toward Christ —the path of deification, transfiguration, sanctification, resurrection, and ascent to an eternal glory surpassing that of the Cherubim. And all of this takes place and will continue to take place through the Divine and human Body of the Church, which is truly the God-Man Christ in the total fullness of His Divine and Human Person, the fullness “that fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23). Through its Divine and human existence in the Church, the human body, as matter, as substance, is sanctified by the Holy Spirit and in this way participates in the life of the Trinity. Matter thus attains its transcendent, divine meaning and goal, its eternal blessedness and its immortal joy in the God-Man (St. Justin Popovich).
Southrons, being starved of this truth, began to reject it in the 20th century through Pentecostalism, which roared across the South like a wildfire sweeping through dry tree tops and still holds powerful sway in many a place, with faith healings, tongue-speaking, and other manifestations.
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The desire for a more dynamic, synergistic form of Christian faith and practice is understandable, but there are dangers to embracing the Charismatic system. Fr. Seraphim Rose points out some of the chief dangers:
But it is in Dr. Koch’s final conclusion that we find what is perhaps the clue to the whole movement. He concludes that the “tongues” movement is not at all a “revival,” for there is in it little repentance or conviction of sin, but chiefly the search for power and experience; the phenomenon of tongues is not the gift described in the Acts, nor is it (in most cases) actual demonic possession; rather, “it becomes more and more clear that perhaps over 95% of the whole tongues movement is mediumistic in character” (Koch, p. 35).
What is a “medium”? A medium is a person with a certain psychic sensitivity which enables him to be the vehicle or means for the manifestation of unseen forces or beings (where actual beings are involved, as Starets Ambrose of Optina has clearly stated [5], these are always the fallen spirits whose realm this is, and not the “spirits of the dead” imagined by spiritists). Almost all non-Christian religions make large use of mediumistic gifts, such as clairvoyance, hypnosis, “miraculous” healing, the appearance and disappearance of objects as well as their movement from place to place, etc.
. . . Indeed, if the “charismatic revival” is actually a mediumistic movement, much that is unclear about it if it is viewed as a Christian movement, becomes clear. The movement arises in America, which fifty years before had given birth to spiritism in a similar psychological climate: a dead, rationalized Protestant faith is suddenly overwhelmed by actual experience of an invisible “power” that cannot be rationally or scientifically explained. The movement is most successful in those countries which have a substantial history of spiritism or mediumism: America and England, first of all, then Brazil, Japan, the Philippines, black Africa. . . . Doctrine is subordinated to practice: the motto of both movements might be, as “charismatic” enthusiasts say over and over again, “it works” the very trap into which, as we have seen, Hinduism leads its victims. There can scarcely be any doubt that the “charismatic revival,” as far as its phenomena are concerned, bears a much closer resemblance to spiritism and in general to non-Christian religion, than it does to Orthodox Christianity.
There is no need for the South to accept false teachings or harmful practices for the sake of experiencing miracles. The Orthodox Church, the keeper of authentic Apostolic Christianity, is in her midst. From first to last, she has been a source of miracles and miracle workers in the world – from the Incarnation of the Word of God to the descent of the Holy Ghost; from Sts. Peter and Paul to St. John of Kronstadt and St. Sofian of Antim.
Our Southern ancestors of western Europe and Africa partook directly of this stream of holiness. The deserts of Africa were full of such men. Compilations of wonder tokens of western Europeans also abound: St. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, St. Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, St. Gregory of Tours’s many books of miracles of St. Martin, St. Julian, and others, and more works besides.
The Celtic lands were especially teeming with miracles. Let’s look at one of the doers of them briefly, St. Cuan or Mochua:
[A]fter being educated by St. Comgall of Bangor (10th May) at Bangor Abbey in Co. Down, Ulster, St. Cuan founded a monastery at Gael. He then travelled to Fore, then Hy-Many, in Connaught. St. Cuan went on to found the Diocese and Abbey of Balla, Co. Mayo, Ireland in 616, serving as its first Abbot-Bishop. A tireless wonderworker, and confessor of the faith, St. Cuan lived to be nearly 100, founding many other churches and monasteries throughout Ireland.
Of his miracles, here are a few:
At Balla, or near it, our saint wrought many miracles. One of these was in favour of a woman, who complained that she was childless. Soon afterwards, she conceived and bore two sons: one was called Lukencaria and the other was named Scanlan. Another of his miracles caused four salmon, chased by sea-calves, to approach the nets of fishermen, who laboured in vain at their calling, before the arrival of our saint. . . .
There was an island, called Inis Amalgaidh, Latinized, Insula Amalga, in the principality of Mogia, and this the holy man desired to enter, yet no boat was at hand. Praying to God, the land swelled to such a degree, that he was able to pass over with dry feet. He healed many persons, and among the rest, in the name of the Holy Trinity, he expelled a demon from a man long possessed. From Lathlech, son of Kennfaela, he removed a great and disagreeable tumour, which was transferred to his bell, and the man was healed.
In an age of spiritual confusion, Southerners will be sorely tempted to seek the miraculous from all sorts of places, most of them harmful. But as we have said, that is unnecessary. Our forefathers and mothers before the various catastrophic schisms knew where to look for the authentic source of miracles – in the Orthodox Church. They are waiting for us there, praying that the Lord would perform another mighty miracle in history: the baptism of all the South into the Orthodox Church.