PAGES ON GRACE & SALVATION
ON THE ORLAPUBS WEBSITE

© 2003-2004 by Orchid Land Publications

[20030605, 200060604]

R134   R102   R107   R143    R187

DO NOT FAIL TO CLICK HERE
FOR A SHORT SUMMARY OF 
THE AUTHENTIC ESSENCE 
OF THE ORTHODOX 
UNDERSTANDING
OF SALVATION!

[SEE ALSO R264 AND R265 as well as R298]

FOR A DIALOGUE WITH A SEEKER (INQUIRER) CLICK ON ONE OF THESE OPTIONS:   

DIALOGUE WITH JOE STUDENT.doc

DIALOGUE WITH JOE STUDENT.pdf

Meeting converts

    In general, it should be pointed out that the Christian view of the róles of materiality and time has historically been  positive --whether in Mysteries [sacraments], on the one hand, or in the evolution of creation, in development over time (revelation), or in the life-long process of Salvation.  The Orthodox Fathers teach such.  It was pagan Gnosticism that thought that matter and time had no good or valid rôle in religion.   CLICK HERE.

     If someone wishes to argue with you about the Bible, say no more than to point out that, if the Orthodox Church had the power to decide which books were to be included or not in the Bible—which power she exercised in the second quarter of the fourth century to decide which books were to be included in the Bible—it follows that she has at least the power to inter- pret over time what the books mean.  Remind others that St. Paul (in Col. 2:23) spoke against individualist, self-invented religion/piety (in Greek:  ethelothreskeía) or interpretation!  

   For the all-holy Theotokos, CLICK HERE.

THE FIRST HUMANS

HUMAN ESSENCE
ICON OF GOD 
PLUS BODY

         

HUMAN NATURE 
ASSIMILATION TO GOD
'omoíosis Theõ

REASON

FREE
CHOICE

BODY

[Gen. 1:26] says that humanity was created according to the Icon of God and according to the Assimilation* 

THE UNCREATED ENERGIES OF GRACE
that energize human reason and will to act
to please GOD

* I.e., to "the Divine" through the uncreated Energies of God's Life.

THE FALL according to St. Maximos* and other Orthodox Fathers:  
LOSS OF THE ASSIMILATION TO GOD

Rom. 4:25 describes Jesus Christ as the One "Who
was handed over for our transgressions
and was raised for the sake of our
being made righteous." 
 

SALVATION according to St. Maximos and other Fathers: 
RECOVERY OF THE ASSIMILATION TO GOD
CULMINATING IN THEOSIS (1 Peter 1:4)
THAT IS, BEING REBORN AS A NEW CREATING
SHARING IN CHRIST'S UNCREATED LIFE
AS HIS MEMBER

   

In the East, the Fall is about mortality;
in the West, the Fall is about morality.

      If you espouse the Western juridical view of the Cross--based on the idea that God won't forgive till he has exacted satisfaction (punishment)--the Orthodox understanding of Salvation won't strike you as very appealing.  The Theotókos (Mother of God) won't have the importance she does for us as an essential link in the chain of events realizing or actualizing the Salvation of those who worship Christ and the all-holy Trinity.  If Christ's Resurrection and belief in the Trinity have no essential roles in your understanding of Salvation, how can it be called Apostolic or Christian?  If you don't put Worship ahead of Salvation, why not examine your priorities?  If you think it's enough to say "Jesus died for EGO" without specifying Who and What Jesus was and is; how His dying can help; how it is possible for that deed to accrue to EGO's benefit; etc.; then your simplicity lacks the conviction and adequacy of the simplicity stated above and believed by the holy Apostles and ever since in Orthodox Christianity--over a millennium before Anselm was born and a dozen centuries before Mediæval Papalism and Renaissance Protestantism were invented.  We may all read (more or less) the same Bible, but the translations depend on our world views;  when the Orthodox and others read a given passage like Philippians 2:12-13, it means different things!  Chances are that your non-Orthodox Bible doesn't even mention the energizations so clearly stated in those verses in the original Greek text.

On EXPIATION, see R298

The following was recently sent to an online forum:

     Diadochos, St. Maximos the Confessor, and others were very clear that the Fall was the ontological loss of the Assimilation to God ('omoiwsis in Gen. 1:25), and that Salvation is the recovery of the same--which makes us new creations, members of Christ sharing His Life (uncreated Energy--Grace), something hich culminates in Théosis ("Divinization," not apothéosis "deification") or unity with God's uncreated Energies (not the imparticipable Essence).
     Where do you find this simply stated?  Name one book--including those I was given to read many years ago!  I  have five or six books on St. Maximos, and they don't get it right. There is a very simple reason.
     They mis-translate 'omoíwsis as "Likeness" (which is the English translation of Latin imago "image" which translates eikón Theoü "image of God"). Note that 'omoíwsis in Greek is a feminine energization deverbative noun. Like masculine causative deverbative nouns in -ismós and -asmós, these was often a neuter paired with the sort of feminine formation  just mentioned.  It referred to the result of the energization.  Cf. 'omoíwsis "assimilation" with 'omoíwma "resemblance." (There was an abstract fem. in Greek: 'omoiótes "similarity.") 
     Once you get the translation right, everything falls into place. 
     The mis-translation common to these commentators makes Orthodox soteriology gobbledygook.
     When you get it right, the ontological nature of the Fall and Salvation in Orthodoxy is seen in its clear contrast with the juridical views of the same (God imposes death as a punishment on a soul immortal by nature--neither of which ideas has been held in the Eastern Orthodox consensus) and a view of Salvation based on the idea that God doesn't forgive till punishment (satisfaction) has been exacted . . . and all of the apparatus of satisfaction, atonement, propitiation, redemption (ransoming), legal adoption, sanctification, virtual unity with God's ESSENCE, etc. follows in its train.
     The scholastics (one meaning of the word in Greek is "lawyer," as in Emperor John the Scholastic) were legalists; almost every pope from 1100 to 1300 was a lawyer, according to Papadakis.
     The relativists say we are all saying the same thing. Honest people recognize that we are not!  We think in different thought worlds. 

-------------------------------------

     *St. Maximos had lived in the West (almost two decades of the time having been spent in North Africa) and knew the difference between Orthodoxy and Augustine's innovations and deviations of a century and a half earlier there.  He suffered greatly for the validity of materiality (e.g. icons) in Christianity, having had his right hand cut off on the orders of the Gnostic emperor and then living with one companion in a very isolated exile until his death.  His outlook was very different from those modern Gnostics who exclude materiality (Incarnation, resurrection of the body, Mysteries [i.e. sacrament(al)s]) and time (tradition) from the Christian religion. 

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