St. Cyril of Alexandria

Hopefully, my readers will begin to see how all of the various topics that I cover in the Eastern Herald begin to merge into a fuller understanding of God’s actions with humankind. In the last issue of this article, I began to present the Eastern Church’s doctrine of salvation through deification. Indeed it presents an entirely different approach than that presented by Western Christianity. This is not to suggest that one approach is right and the other wrong but to suggest that various approaches are necessary if we are ever to come closer to what God intended when He became incarnate as a human.

I shared Cyril’s vision of salvation. He said: “The Son of God suffered in the flesh.” This implies that, far from being a metaphysical “merger,” salvation was and is a tragedy of love, including the assumption of the cross by God himself. But, at the same time, it is clear that Golgotha is not simply the price, which by itself repays an offended divine justice, but only the ultimate point of God’s identification with fallen humanity, which is followed by the resurrection and is a part of the entire economy or plan of salvation. Thus the Byzantine Synodikon – a solemn annual doctrinal proclamation – affirms (in connection with the same twelfth century Christological debates) that Christ “reconciled us to Himself by means of the whole mystery of the economy, and by Himself and in Himself, reconciled us also to His God and Father and, of course, to the most holy and life-giving Spirit.” Christ’s sacrifice – and the redemption brought by Him – is truly unique because it is not an isolated action but the culminating point of an ’economy’ that includes the Old Testament preparation, the incarnation, the death, the resurrection and presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church.”

Although offered freely to all, the new lift brought into the world by the New Adam must be freely received through personal conversion and appropriated through personal ascetical effort. The insistence upon this personal dimension of the Christian experience, which is general in Eastern monastic literature, has provoked accusation of “Pelagianism” or “semi– Pelagianism” on the part of representatives of Western spirituality, dominated by the Augustinian doctrine of grace.

Salvation is all about working with God’s grace to become more like Jesus.