Christianity Today October 6, 2026 8 min signal 2026-10-06

This Orthodox ascetic made me more evangelical

Archived text mirror, captured for personal reading when the Signal ran. Formatting is approximate — read the original at the source.

Christianity Today

October 6, 2026

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Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Image: WikiMedia Commons

“Why aren’t you Catholic?” my friend from divinity school asks.

It’s a valid question. As a kid, I had my feet planted on both sides of the Tiber. I’d go to Mass with my dad on Saturdays and attend a Baptist church with my whole family on Sundays.

Eventually, I settled into Protestantism. I found the theology more convincing, and even given how much I like Pope Leo XIV, I don’t buy into papal primacy. In college I attended an Anglican church. Now I’m a member at Otter Creek Church in Nashville.

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My friend continues, asking me about apostolic succession, the Virgin Mary, and his favorite tenets of Catholic social teaching. Born and raised evangelical himself, he is debating conversion, one of several Protestants I know (and have read about) who are considering Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.

Some of these friends and acquaintances want a more “rigorous” faith to take them beyond the cultural Christianity of their childhoods. One converted to Catholicism because she found its historical tradition comforting amid America’s political polarization—after all, the church is older and bigger than the United States in 2026. Another friend attends Greek Orthodox vesper services unbeknownst to his Presbyterian parents.

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These recent conversations have me revisiting why exactly I’m Protestant and wanting to articulate that commitment more clearly. Help has come, surprisingly, via an Orthodox monk named Mark.

I first discovered Mark the Monk in a monastic text called The Philokalia (“The Love of the Beautiful”), a major collection of Eastern Orthodox works written between the fourth and fifteenth centuries that I read in divinity school. Mark was an ascetic who roamed the Palestinian and Egyptian deserts. He’s a mysterious figure: Little is known about him outside his writings, including those against a heretical sect called Messalianism, which rejected the sacraments and taught that all of humanity was possessed by an inner demon. The demon, went the heresy, could only be defeated by ascetic practices, particularly continual prayer.

This is important context for “On Those who Think that They are Made Righteous by Works,” Mark’s argument for unmerited grace in salvation. Martin Luther, anyone? Indeed, Robert Bellarmine, a major figure in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, censored this text, believing it embodied a proto-Protestant perspective.

Mark, addressing “the beliefs of those in error,” makes concise claims soaked in Scripture:

Wishing to show that to fulfill every commandment is a duty, whereas sonship is a gift given to men through His own Blood, the Lord said: ‘When you have done all that is commanded you, say: “we are useless servants: we have only done what was our duty”’ (Luke 17:10). Thus the kingdom of heaven is not a reward for works, but a gift of grace prepared by the Master for his faithful servants. …

When Scripture says ‘He will reward every man according to his works’ (Matt. 16:27), do not imagine that works in themselves merit either hell or the kingdom. On the contrary, Christ rewards each man according to whether his works are done with faith or without faith in Himself; and He is not a dealer bound by contract, but God our Creator and Redeemer.

God is not a businessman, trading treasure in heaven for ascetic prayer on earth. Mark argues that salvation is a gift. That isn’t to say that works are meaningless. Evoking James 2, he offers a fiery adage that positions good works as the necessary fruit of grace:

Some without fulfilling the commandments think that they possess true faith. Others fulfill the commandments and then expect the kingdom as a reward due to them. Both are mistaken.

Mark explains that grace has been given to those baptized in Christ, and that

grace never ceases to help us secretly: but to do good—as far as lies in our power—depends on us. … That is how even sinners have come to repent and so to conform to God’s will. Again, grace may be hidden in advice given by a neighbor.

This precept alludes to the Orthodox concept of synergeia, the cooperation between divine grace and human will on a person’s journey to salvation. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and other Reformers reject this principle, instead citing monergism—only God wills salvation. But many other Protestants, particularly Anabaptists and Methodists, hold to a similar synergism, though they differ from Orthodoxy by framing salvation through justification and sanctification, not theosis (achieving true union with God).

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Despite some Protestant qualms with his claim, there’s something lovely about Mark’s understanding of God’s secret grace never ceasing to help, nudging us when we are lost to our sin, and being mediated through the words of family, friends, foes, or strangers. And Mark remains adamant that, no matter how much we refrain from sin, “Christ gives the grace of sonship through the Cross.” Only Christ’s shed blood can bestow salvation.

Ultimately, the goal of Mark’s writing is to inspire imitation of Christ through humility. Citing Philippians 2, he affirms in a letter to a young novice monk struggling with lust and anger that “no one can become a true Christian unless he gives himself up completely to the cross in a spirit of humility and self-denial, and makes himself lower than all.”

At the same time, Mark puts self-denying ascetic practice in its place. “Of all the commandments, therefore, the most comprehensive is to love God and our neighbor,” he advises. “This love is made firm through abstaining from material things, and through stillness of thoughts.”

But asceticism, whether achieving hesychia—the “stillness of thoughts” where all passions are controlled—or fasting or solitude, is a means and not an end. Regarding Mark’s texts, theologian Bradley Nassif writes, “The aim of the ascetic life is not to merit the Kingdom of God or to engage in great ascetical feats as if they were ends in themselves, but to love as God loves.”

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Mark has not converted me to Orthodoxy. At the same time, his writings have made me more ecumenical, more understanding of my Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters. Personal conviction and appreciation for the universal church do not have to conflict. In fact, taking Mark seriously on his own terms made my Protestant beliefs about sola gratia more concrete! Going back to primary sources with a heart for church unity made me a more convinced, literate, and curious Protestant.

What Mark did challenge was certain boxes I’d put around different Christian traditions.

For instance, Mark’s theses against works-righteousness helped me reframe Luther’s sola gratia as less of a discovery, more a recovery of an argument both biblical and grounded in global church history. The Reformation didn’t invent unmerited grace.

Art historian Matthew Milliner, an evangelical, writes regarding the example of Mark that the priority of grace is not “a jealous possession of Protestantism.” “Wherever I see renewal in the Catholic or Orthodox traditions,” Milliner observes, “it is often because of the recovery of those elements of unmerited grace, and for this I rejoice.”

I think about Mark whenever I hear of another evangelical making the move to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. For my friends and acquaintances who’ve done so, I don’t doubt their sincere motivations. I wish them the best.

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But broader shifts toward Catholicism and Orthodoxy—particularly the “Orthobro” movement that seems more fixated on online trends, right-wing politics, and en vogue aesthetics than any doctrinal matter—leave me wanting to offer a challenge. Are you leaving Protestantism because of a distinct lack in the tradition, an absence of coherent doctrine or ecclesial structure? Or are you leaving a shallow version of Protestantism for a vibey caricature of Catholicism or Orthodoxy? Before making the decision, go back to the church universal’s theologians on their own terms, and let them surprise you.

And to evangelical Protestants steadfast in their convictions but wary of exploring Catholic and Orthodox thought, I’d invite you to do the same. Read widely and curiously. Get some Kallistos Ware on your shelf! More likely than not, you’ll find more that you like than dislike, and you’ll get a better sense of the rich plurality of Christianity. As Mark says in “On the Spiritual Law,” “May He who inaugurates every good thing inaugurate all that you undertake, so that it may be done with His blessing.”

Grant Dutro is editorial project coordinator at CT.

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