I suggested in the last issue of this   article, that perhaps a better word to convey the meaning of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, might be the word AT-ONE-MENT since it conveys the Pauline idea of reconciliation. Paul says, that on man’s part (not God’s) there stood an enmity God Himself abolished by what He accomplished in Christ. This one of the meanings of atonement: “the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

There is also a second understanding of this word: ATONEMENT. It conveys our experience of being in Christ and with Christ. These statements of place have long served to truly designate the deep, living union we have with Christ by His gracious love. The word atonement expresses this union perfectly: We are at one with Christ. The Father, gazing upon us, sees and loves the Son He perceives within us.

There is also a third understanding of this word. Atonement expresses the goal of redemption, which is the transfiguring union of man with God. The Eastern Church’s understanding of redemption does not start with fallen man. It commences, rather, with man completely restored and transformed in Christ. The word ATONEMENT signifies the goal of all God’s activity in this world: man’s participation in the divine life. Hopefully my readers can see the difference between the Eastern Church’s understanding of redemption form that of the Western Church. Total transformation in Christ is a very early and traditional idea in the Church. Already in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons, a direct and immediate heir to the Pauline and Johannine traditions in Asia, wrote of “our Lord Jesus Christ, who by his supreme love became what we are, in order to bring us to what he Himself is”.

More boldly, Athanasius of Alexandria, two centuries later, wrote of God’s Son, “he became man that we might become God”. The tradition represented by Athanasius regarded the divinizing of man as the purpose of the Incarnation. Variations of this idea, whether as a noun or a verb, appear repeatedly, especially among the Alexandrians.

You will remember that Alexandria was one of the five major Christian Centers in the early Church. It is one of the five Patriarchates, working in union, that provided the foundation for all the basic dogma of the Church.

So the Eastern Church has a truly different starting point with regard to the redemption of humankind. God became incarnate in the Person of Jesus so that He might give man the ability to become what God intended.