Eastern Orthodox view of Salvation vs. Western
The Orthodox view of salvation is one of inside to the
outside. We look to be transformed from within by the participation in Church,
Liturgy and The Holy mysteries (sacraments). Thus by the growth/preparation of
our “hearts” or nous we grow closer and become more like God or Christ-like. We
begin to commune with God Himself in His “Uncreated” energies. This is a life
transformed on the inside out. Such a person who has this experience of
communing with God naturally does good works out of the abundance of love,
peace, and joy that come directly from God. These are not merely outward acts
of obedience of the law, but a real transformation: selfless, humble, not of
worldly merits or awards, but truly without care of self at all. Such a heart
does works out of the over-flow of the heart.
The Western view of
salvation views man is saved by an external act of God. Sin is washed away
outside of him by an act of God who takes man’s sins and places them on Christ.
Christ takes the sins of man and now God sees the person of His Son instead of
sinful man. Christ has replaced sinful man. When God sees man now he sees His
Son instead, Holy and righteous. Basically this view is the view of an outside
act making man clean. And all man needs to do is accept this act by faith in
Christ. It’s very much steeped in Legalism of The Western Roman Empire.
This view has a
very juridical view or one attached to Roman Law. Man errors and then he is Imprisoned.
The Governor then pardons man for his offenses. Man accepts the pardon and is
released. The problem with this thinking is that though man has been pardoned
and released, he has not done anything in this example to change his heart. He
may absolutely not have changed one bit internally. He may be
pardoned/released, but he is the same man that went into prison. And therefore
the act of his release or salvation remains an external act and nothing more. There is no real spiritual change.
What does this idea
do for the heart of man? How does it truly transform him in the world that he
now lives-in?
We may accept that Christ is our savior but it does not
guarantee or predestine us to be saved. For in the Orthodox view: we have been
saved in 33 A>D>, we are being saved, and we yet will be saved. Our
salvation is not predestined, for as free-will beings, we can deny our
salvation at any time.
If we are predestined to be saved why should we do anything
at all to ensure our salvation? For if we are saved already our work is done
and we can go enjoy coffee. If we are not saved already, then why should we
bother to go to church for it will not do us any good at all. Any scholastic argument or hypothetical syllogisms,
in the end, lead to man’s philosophical wisdom and not always to right
understanding for God’s ways are higher than man’s.
Such Western ideas of salvation are tied to earthly laws of
pardons and connected to satisfaction theory, the idea that God needs
satisfaction for the sins of men and therefore puts Christ in the place of man
to unleash His wrath, which was reserved for us. This Satisfaction is tied to
the feudal idea that when a person did wrong to a king it was exponentially
more drastic of a crime than if he did it to a layperson. The crime therefore
took on different meaning or judgment/punishment based on whom it was done onto.
Hitting a knight was different that hitting a squire and so on…. So doing an
offense to God was an infinite crime that could not be paid and therefore only
God could pay it. So Christ became necessary to cleanse our infinite offense
and reconcile God’s wrath. It makes God look petty and angry like the anthropomorphic
gods of the pagan world. God is Love and God does not change from one state to
another. These expressions of God are humanistic or anthropomorphisms. These expressions
are how man saw God from his limited vantage point or fallen-human vantage
point (in the Old Testament) and not how God actually is. That is why when God
came to earth in the Person of His Son, we then begin to make sense of the Old
Testament manner of didactic and that words cannot contain the grand wonder of
God, but are only means of teaching the way to life and not death. When God
walked the earth in Christ, we see something more vividly that we once saw in
part.
In Eastern Orthodoxy
Christ came to heal man from within and restore human nature so it can participate
in God directly, which was lost at the fall. Christ defeats decay, death and
the devil and so these no longer have a hold on us. This is vastly different than
the western idea of God’s justice and wrath being expiated by and onto Christ.
As if God needed His Son’s death to feel better about things.
Works do not justify
us without those works being done by a heart that loves God. Therefore we,
basically, are walking on tarmac that God has built. For if we do good works,
we can still be atheists. But if we walk on the road that God already has built
for us, then our works are righteous because of Him and through Him we serve.
This is understood in humility and not works as an end in itself. But works as
an end in Christ.
Our Eastern Orthodox view of salvation is internal, a change
of heart that becomes Christ-like through theosis, participation in God through
His energies. It is not the view that we are saved from an angry God but saved
onto God through Christ. Not as something outside of us that we can imitate,
externally, by following moral laws, but one that we directly participate-in.
Not a Roman legalistic transaction. Not a satisfaction that has to be met as if
God is under some juridical law or process that is above Him and He is obliged
to follow as a servant to his master. God is under no idea, law, or other
being. He IS and always will be. Philosophical ideas are still man-made.
Salvation is a process and some are slow and some are faster but the end is the
same. Glory be to God.
Questions:
Can’t a person be saved by doing
external works? Or rather by doing the external works, can’t it create a larger
heart internally or an internal change in the person towards God?
Answer:
God can save anyone He wishes to have mercy and compassion
on. It is God who saves and not any human idea or man-made end in itself. It is
not that you can’t be saved by doing works that go from external to internal
realities. But the idea is that God’s salvation is internal and naturally leads
to the external. An inside transformation is the goal. The external life is a
test to that which is inside but it is expressed in a saintly humble life,
selfless, and carefree of the concerns of the culture; it is to put it simply
an Other-worldly way of life. Not necessarily an imitation of Christ but being
one with Him. The Saints can attest.
Question:
What is wrong with believing that
God punished Christ for our offenses and put Him in our place?
Answer:
The idea that God is angry and requires justification for
His wrath is a problematic concept when speaking of The Divine. Or the notion that
He punishes in this brutal manner, requiring a dreadful crucifixion for His own
Son. We get a murky picture of God when thinking in this manner and then that
is the core of the Western idea of salvation and its problems. God is
caricatured into something man-made and created, which is a great error. Why
would we love such a vengeful God? The Eastern Orthodox Church answers that we
love such a God because He is just and merciful, even enduring the cross for
us, humiliation, defeat, beatings and death. For us He does this and no greater
love exists than when someone gives his life for his friends! The Muslim god
does not do this, would not dream of it, unthinkable, and no other god has done
this in history be it myth or other.
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