by mitchellmckain » August 8th, 2007, 7:07 pm
In my reading of Carlton's book "The Truth: What Every Roman Catholic Should Know about the Orthodox Church", I finally found much of what I was looking for in the chapter on Salvation. The following is a paraphrase of Carelton's explanation of the Orthodox view of salvation that I agree with whole-heartedly.
God's desire for mankind is for us to share in wonders of His existence, but the actions of Adam and Eve has made this very difficult. We do not bear a guilt for their mistake, but what they did resulted in consequences which have effected all of mankind. Sin is not a matter of a crime against God which we must pay for, but a disease that leads to spiritual death. And the work of God in Christ was not to pay a price but to cure a disease that prevents us from experiencing God's orignial desire for mankind. Christ had to bear all the consequences of Adam and Eve's mistakes as an important part of that cure.
All men will experience an eternal existence, but not all will enjoy it. God has no need of reparations or need to punish the wicked, but pours down His love on all human beings equally. The difference between heaven and hell - that is the difference between those who are blessed and those who are damned is not in how God treats them or any difference in their objective reality but in their subjective apprehension of it. The love of God is a consuming fire to those with wicked hearts. Therefore salvation must consist in a change of our spirit/soul to heal the damage of sin and to train ourselves to avoid further infection. Prayers for the dead are efficatious because the the dead will face trials which will effect their eternal happiness.
By this agreement I suppose that in this respect at least I have an understanding of salvation that is more like the Eastern Orthodox than the vast majority of Protestants. But there are other aspects of the Orthodox view of salvation (according to Carlton's description) which I am not whole-heartedly in agreement with.
I would not identify salvation with deification, but instead as a restoration of what Adam and Eve rejected which made a personal relationship with God possible. It is in man's original purpose and in the relationship with God that we can find something like "deification" as a part of what it means to be the children of God. But even in this, man's path to "deification" is an eternal one, for it is a part of eternal life to be receiving the gifts of God eternally as the neverending manifestation of His love, and consequently being raised as a child into His likeness as our parent.
Nor would I say that God became man so that man might become God, for although I agree that Christ united human and divine nature (demonstrating that the categories of man and God are not mutually exclusive), I do not believe that this represents a change in human nature any more than Adam and Eve's fall. Both fall and incarnation were but a change in circumstance. Furthermore I would not look for any mystical experience of a union with God any more that I have any interest in the mind altering experiences one can find in narcotics. I love God and want to be more like Him, but I expect this to happen in a relationship of teacher/parent and pupil/child, not in some unexplainable magical experience.
I would not dream of making any denial of the reality of the experience by the Orthodox of being transfigured by the deifying energies (or light) of God, any more that I would make a denial of the Pentacostal experiences such as speaking in tongues. However, I would consider any effort to make such experiences the exclusive indicators of a saving relationship with God, to be a very dangerous error. Nevertheless, I do not see any cause to understand Grace as some sort of supernatural entity in order to validate that experience, grace is simply a word refering to the work of God. So salvation by Grace simply means salvation by a work of God. And so the discussion of whether grace is a created thing or the uncreated energies of God makes no sense to me.
I would reject the Gnostic like sentiment which equates matter and this world with something evil or alien to God such that our spirit must be purged of any concern for the things of this world in order to have an effective relationship with God (or to become a dwelling place of God as Carlton has put it). Even sin does not do this. Sin is destructive of our potentiality but God is not a Pharisee requiring purity. God comes down in the midst of our reality of evil and sin to pull us out. God cleanses us of sin because of the harm that it does to us (not to Him).
I very much hope EO members can contribute to this thread from their greater knowledge of Eastern Orthodoxy and the insight of their first hand experience in order that I might understand the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox better than before. I sincerely hope that on this topic at least we will not find any cause for heated argument, but only a means to learn from one another.