By V. Rev. Antony Hughes, M.Div., St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts
It is important to note that salvation as deification is not pantheism because the Orthodox Fathers insist on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo (Athanasius, 1981). Human beings, along with all created things, have come into being from nothing. Created beings will always remain created and God will always remain Uncreated. The Son of God in the Incarnation crossed the unbridgeable chasm between them. Orthodox hymnography frequently speaks of the paradox of the Uncreated and created uniting without mixture or confusion in the wondrous hypostatic union. The Nativity of Christ, for example, is interpreted as “a secret re-creation, by which human nature was assumed and restored to its original state” (Clement, 1993, p. 41). God and human nature, separated by the Fall, are reunited in the Person of the Incarnate Christ and redeemed through His victory on the Cross and in the Resurrection by which death is destroyed (I Corinthians 15:54-55). In this way the Second Adam fulfills the original vocation and reverses the tragedy of the fallen First Adam opening the way of salvation for all.
The Fall could not destroy the image of God; the great gift given to humanity remained intact, but damaged (Romanides, 2002). Origen speaks of the image buried as in a well choked with debris (Clement, 1993). While the work of salvation was accomplished by God through Jesus Christ the removal of the debris that hides the image in us calls for free and voluntary cooperation. St. Paul uses the word synergy, or “co-workers”, (I Corinthians 3:9) to describe the cooperation between Divine Grace and human freedom. For the Orthodox Fathers this means asceticism (prayer, fasting, charity and keeping vigil) relating to St. Paul’s image of the spiritual athlete (I Corinthians 9:24-27). This is the working out of salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). Salvation is a process involving faith, freedom and personal effort to fulfill the commandment of Christ to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
The great Orthodox hymn of Holy Pascha (Easter) captures in a few words the essence of the Orthodox understanding of the Atonement: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life” (The Liturgikon, Paschal services, 1989). Because of the victory of Christ on the Cross and in the Tomb humanity has been set free, the curse of the law has been broken, death is slain, life has dawned for all. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 662) writes that “Christ’s death on the Cross is the judgment of judgment” (Clement, 1993, p. 49) and because of this we can rejoice in the conclusion stated so beautifully by Olivier Clement: “In the crucified Christ forgiveness is offered and life is given. For humanity it is no longer a matter of fearing judgment or of meriting salvation, but of welcoming love in trust and humility” (Clement, 1993, p. 49).
Augustine’s Legacy
The piety and devotion of Augustine is largely unquestioned by Orthodox theologians, but his conclusions on the Atonement are (Romanides, 2002). Augustine, by his own admission, did not properly learn to read Greek and this was a liability for him. He seems to have relied mostly on Latin translations of Greek texts (Augustine, 1956a, p. 9). His misinterpretation of a key scriptural reference, Romans 5:12, is a case in point (Meyendorff, 1979). In Latin the Greek idiom eph ho which means because of was translated as in whom. Saying that all have sinned in Adam is quite different than saying that all sinned because of him. Augustine believed and taught that all humanity has sinned in Adam (Meyendorff, 1979, p. 144). The result is that guilt replaces death as the ancestral inheritance (Augustine, 1956b) Therefore the term original sin conveys the belief that Adam and Eve’s sin is the first and universal transgression in which all humanity participates.
Augustine famously debated Pelagius (c. 354-418) over the place the human will could play in salvation. Augustine took the position against him that only grace is able to save, sola gratis (Augustine, On the Predestination of the Saints, 7)[4]. From this a doctrine of predestination developed (God gives grace to whom He will) which hardened in the 16th and 17th centuries into the doctrine of two-fold predestination (God in His sovereignty saves some and condemns others). The position of the Church of the first two centuries concerning the image and human freedom was abandoned.
The Roman idea of justice found prominence in Augustinian and later Western theology. The idea that Adam and Eve offended God’s infinite justice and honor made of death God’s method of retribution (Romanides, 2002). But this idea of justice deviates from Biblical thought. Kalomiris (1980) explains the meaning of justice in the original Greek of the New Testament:
The Greek word diakosuni ‘justice’, is a translation of the Hebrew word tsedaka. The word means ‘the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation.’ It is parallel and almost synonymous with the word hesed which means ‘mercy’, ‘compassion’, ‘love’, and to the word emeth which means ‘fidelity’, ‘truth’. This is entirely different from the juridical understanding of ‘justice’. (p. 31)
The juridical view of justice generates two problems for Augustine. One: how can one say that the attitude of the immutable God’s toward His creation changes from love to wrath? Two: how can God, who is good, be the author of such an evil as death (Romanides, 1992)? The only way to answer this is to say, as Augustine did to the young Bishop, Julian of Eclanum (d. 454), that God’s justice is inscrutable (Cahill, 1995, p. 65). Logically, then, justice provides proof of inherited guilt for Augustine, because since all humanity suffers the punishment of death and since God who is just cannot punish the innocent, then all must be guilty in Adam. Also, by similar reasoning, justice appears as a standard to which even God must adhere (Kalomiris, 1980). Can God change or be subject to any kind of standard or necessity? By contrast the Orthodox father, Basil the Great, attributes the change in attitude to humanity rather than to God (Migne, 1857-1866b). Because of the theological foundation laid by Augustine and taken up by his heirs, the conclusion seems unavoidable that a significant change occurs in the West making the wrath of God and not death the problem facing humanity (Romanides, 1992, p. 155-156).
How then could God’s anger be assuaged? The position of the ancient Church had no answer because its proponents did not see wrath as the problem. The Satisfaction Theory proposed by Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) in his work Why the God-Man? provides the most predominant answer in the West[5]. The sin of Adam offended and angered God making the punishment of death upon all guilty humanity justified. The antidote to this situation is the crucifixion of the Incarnate Son of God because only the suffering and death of an equally eternal being could ever satisfy the infinite offense of the infinitely dishonored God and assuage His wrath (Williams, 2002; Yannaras, 1984, p. 152). God sacrifices His Son to restore His honor and pronounces the sacrifice sufficient. The idea of imputed righteousness rises from this. The Orthodox understanding that “the resurrection…through Christ, opens for humanity the way of love that is stronger than death” (Clement, 1993, p. 87) is replaced by a juridical theory of courtrooms and verdicts.
~Fr Antony Hughes, St. Mary Orthodox Church, Central Square, Cambridge, MA, https://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/ancestral_versus_original_sin
4 Pelagius is regarded as a heretic in the East (as is the case in the West). He elevated the human will and the expense of divine grace. In fairness, however, the Orthodox position is expressed best by John Cassian-who is often regarded as “semi-Pelagian” in the West. The problem-to the Orthodox perspective-is that both Pelagius and Augustine set the categories in the extreme-freedom of the will with nothing left for God versus complete sovereignty of God, with nothing left to human will. The Fathers argued instead for “synergy,” a mystery of God’s grace being given with the cooperation of the human heart.
5 It would perhaps be more precise to say the Latin West. The most prominent Reformed view seems to be a modification of Anselm’s emphasis on vicarious satisfaction, in which more emphasis is placed on penal substitution.
References
Athanasius (1981). On the incarnation: The treatise de incarnatione verbi dei. (P. Lawson, Trans.). Crestwood: NY: St. Validimir’s Seminary Press.
Augustine (1956a). Nicene and post nicene fathers: Four anti-pelagian writings, vol. 1, Grand Rapids , Michigan: Eerdmans.
Augustine (1956b). Nicene and post nicene fathers: Four anti-pelagian writings, vol. 5,Grand Rapids , Michigan: Eerdmans.
Cahill, T. (1995). How the irish saved civilization. New York: Doubleday.
Clement, O. (1993). The roots of Christian mysticism. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press.
Clement, O. (2000). On human being. New York: New City Press.
Kalomiris, A. (1980). The river of fire. Retrieved April, 20, 2004, www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm.
Migne, J. P. (Ed.). (1857-1866a). The patrologiae curus completes, seris graeca. (Vols. 1-161), 74, 788-789. Paris: Parisorium.
Migne, J. P. (Ed.). (1857-1866b). The patrologiae curus completes, seris graeca. (Vols. 1-161), 31, 345. Paris: Parisorium.
Meyendorff, J. (1979). Byzantine theology. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Nomura, Yushi, trans. (2001). Desert wisdom: Sayings from the desert fathers, Marynoll, New York: Orbis Books.
Oden, T. C. (2003). The rebirth of orthodoxy: Signs of new life in Christianity. New York: Harper Collins.
Packer, J. I. & Oden, T. C. (2004). One faith: The evangelical consensus. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press.
Romanides, J. (1992). The ancestral sin. Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr Publishing.
The liturgikon: The book of divine services for the priest and deacon (1989). New York: Athens Printing Co.
Williams, T. “Saint Anselm”, Retrieved April 21, 2004. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2002 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL= http://plato.Stanford.edu/archives/spr.2002/entires/anselm/.
Yannaras, C. (1984). The freedom of morality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Author Bio:
Antony Hughes, M.Div., is the rector of St. Mary’s Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA, which is associated with the Autonomous Antiochian Orthodox Church of North America. He has served as the Orthodox Chaplain at Harvard University.
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