I have been exploring in this article the difference in approaches to salvation between the Eastern and Western Churches. The differences have been due, in large part, to the various influences in the cultures that the two Churches have found themselves. As I shared, the Protestant Reformation greatly influenced the Western Church. The Eastern Church did not have this experience. In more recent issues, I have been addressing St. Augustine’s idea of Original Sin.

St. Augustine makes a twofold distinction: a hereditary moral disability (the inclination to sin) and an inherited legal liability (guilty before God for Adam’s sin). The Council of Trent, proceeded to anathematize all who refused to accept the doctrine of Original Sin: (i.e., that all had received Adam’s guilt for his personal sin). This Council, you will recall, was held only in the West and was a result of the Reformation.

In this system, if Christ paid the debt to the Father, and if the sacramental life placates the wrath of the Father, then isn’t it no surprise that Protestantism developed as it did, questioning the need for the Church? It might be said that Anselm’s doctrine makes the Protestant Reformation possible and even inevitable. Consequently we must ask: How then does Christ’s saving act become effective for each person? And how is one freed from the Augustinian notion of Original Sin? For the Reformers, it was justification by faith alone, sola fide, which trusted in Christ’s vicarious sacrifice apart from the Church.

For Roman Catholics, justification came through the Pope and the Church by the grace of holy baptism. Atonement theology effectively makes the Roman Catholic Church the means of a legal justification which pronounces ‘not guilty’ through the sacraments, rather than a process which restored the innate ‘goodness’ of man.

The loss of the patristic perspective meant the loss of the full experience of the Church. Without it, Roman Catholic theology often became a narrow juridical procedure overly focused on appeasing God’s justice. This truncating of salvation is further reinforced by St. Augustine’s non-patristic conception of grace.

In the next issue I shall share Augustine’s concept of grace. As you can tell, the events of history have often influenced the Church’s understanding.