The Parable of the Sower and the Process of Salvation in the Church

"The Sower Went Forth to Sow..."

"A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. 
And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. 
And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. 
And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. 
And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 
And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? 
And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand. 
Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 
Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 
They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. 
And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 
But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience."  
Luke 8:5-15 (KJV)

By Bishop Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West)

 There is no issue in Anglicanism that creates such a stir as the doctrinal divide between “High Church Arminians" and “Low Church Calvinists.” One believes the ministry of the Church to be absolutely necessary to the process of salvation in the Church, availing grace for sanctification by the constant application of Word and Sacrament; the other believes that personal faith, and ultimately, the Will of God, determines salvation and the structure of the Church and the administration of its sacraments are matters of obedience, but not of sanctification and transformation. Not to mention the prevalent Evangelical idea that you chose to follow Christ, and, if you say the prayer right and it "sticks", nothing can ever "un-save" you! These first two positions encapsulate two completely different understandings of the Gospel and the life of a Christian, and, ultimately, divide the Christian world into an unreconcilable dichotomy, the “Catholic” and the “Reformed.” The last position is so unlike historical Christianity that it can be hard to theologically place. Unfortunately, this is also a very Western problem, because the Greek and Syriac speaking East, as well as the pre-Scholastic West, as different as many of these local churches were from one another, all universally agreed that salvation is a process that occurs in the local Church, through the sacraments, synergistically, as the Holy Spirit continues to draw, transform, and sanctify the believer through a lifetime process of allegiance and loyalty to the New Covenant of Christ. This Covenant begins in the Waters of Baptism, as we “Put on Christ” (Gal 3:27), and is completed at death, as we are ushered into the New Kingdom, the Eighth Day, where Christ rules and reigns forever, and we are fully united to the Grace of God and made perfect through His divine will and power as a part of a restored and glorified New Creation.

 The ancient Church’s understanding of the doctrine of salvation was always a relationship with the Incarnate Christ, and this relationship was thought to  manifest as an eternal process, which we still see in the use of both words for “Justification” and for “Sanctification,” which both depict a process of transformation. There has been undue distinction between the two, due to a misunderstanding of the distinctions between the words “dikaiōsis” (δικαίωσις - to make righteous) and  “hagiasmos” (ἁγιασμός - to be set aside as holy), the former being equivocated in the West with the Latin Vulgate’s term, “justification” (iustificario - to declare guiltless in a legal context). This, among many other words that struggle with the same process of translation, is a confusion caused by St. Jerome’s unilateral translation of the organic, nuanced Greek into a concise Roman legalese. Roman Law did not have a philosophy of transformation, but depended upon the authority of declaration, and this difference in metaphysical understanding undergirds the chasm that still gapes between the Christian East and West’s understanding of doctrine and dogma. 

 With the original understanding of the Greek definition of “Justification,” a process of transformation into righteousness in fact, not just a declaration of righteousness by legal judgement, a harmony of the biblical references immediately emerges, which pushes past the Western categories of “Calvinist” versus “Arminian” and makes both irrelevant. As such, salvation can be understood to be a process in which we are saved in confession of faith (Rom 10:9), in reception of water baptism in the name of the Trinity (Matt 28:19, Acts 2:38), taking up our cross and following Christ (Luke 9:23), and upon our faithful death (Matt 24:13). It occurs at all points and continues through all points, as God works in us to actually be made holy, transforming us into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, and not just in legal transaction that allows us to get a one-way ticket to heaven by praying the sinner’s prayer. It also helps to explain all those verses that imply a loss of salvation through disloyalty within God’s Covenant Community, instead of just insisting that one was “never really saved.”

 Therefore, the Apostolic understanding on Calvinist doctrine is that John Calvin mistook the covenant and predestination of the "Elect" (which we understand to be the Church as a body, just as Israel was the "Elect" in the OT) for an "individual election" (Eph 1:3-5, Rom 8:28-30, I Cor. 2:7, etc). Since there was no Clavinist system historically, its complete absence in the writings of the Fathers leads us to believe that it is a innovative speculation, rather than an Apostolic Teaching. The Early Church Fathers also talked about the difference between the calling to become a Christian, which is a universal calling, and the election of the Bride, which is particular calling within the Church. Understood in this way, there is no contradiction between our view of individual salvation as process and the election and predestination of the Bride for Christ. When individuals mistake themselves for the Church, as John Calvin seems to have done in his theory of Double Predestination, not only does the responsibility for interpreting Scripture become an individual burden, in which there is no historical standard of truth, but the reason for Christ's establishment of the Church itself dissolves... Leading to the current situation in both Calvinism and Evangelicalism in which "Jesus Followers" are "Christian Despite the Church." 

 The reason why people historically do not agree on the definition of salvation within the Protestant Paradigm is that it is hard for human pride to accept that Christ makes the judgment about our eternal salvation (which is His embrace) and not some kind of "law" higher than God, which makes it possible to predict what God must do. It is also hard for those who have accepted the more Lutheran idea of salvation as God’s legal imputation of righteousness in name, but not in fact (Luther’s famous “snow covered dung”), to submit to the fact that salvation requires their complete submission and total transformation. It is also far easier to forget that Christ said "judge not" (Matt 7:1) and use our judgment about someone's eternal state to justify our own lack of love as somehow “spiritual discernment". We see this often in history in disputes between different Christian groups, who use their own definition of salvation to exclude another group from grace (i.e. Catholics condemning Protestants to Hell, vice versa, and all the different Protestant sects judging who is “truly Christian” and who will end up in Hell). The truth is, as we see in the doctrine of process salvation, these kinds of judgments, and the process that they describe so vast, that the issue of salvation is truly out of our hands. Our salvation is only found in Christ’s mercy. It is found in our affiliation, our “pistis” (faith) and loyalty within Him. There is no other definition. 

 We believe that Christ does not will any to perish (2 Peter 3:9), and as such, He grants mercy to all that ask Him... This is why the orthodox are not afraid of Christ rejecting them or "losing their salvation", but are also conscious that it IS possible through hardness of heart, unconfessed sins, and a rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit to not want Christ's mercy any more (the thorns that grow up and choke the planted word in Matthew 13 and Mark 4)… And we believe Christ loves us so much that He will not force Himself on us. We are aware of our sin in contrast to Christ's mercy, which is in no way a negative "judgment" on Christ's willingness to save us - it shows us what 1 John says so often about God, that He is Light, Love, and Salvation if we will just keep turning ourselves away from self and back to Him! And in this life-long process of remembering and being loyal to Christ, truly being made in His likeness, truly submitted to His as our Lord and Savior,  we are confident that "he that endures to the end shall be saved." (Matt 24:13)