BEYOND JUSTIFICATION:

AN ORTHODOX PERSPECTIVE*
Valerie A. Karras

Introduction
A search on the ATLA Religion Index for articles on the Joint Declaration on the
Doctrine of Justification by Faith from an Orthodox perspective comes up empty.
This is not surprising, and it is not due primarily to the recent date of the declaration.
You see, while of course everyone rejoices to see two Western churches overcome
the mutual condemnations of several centuries, Orthodox in general have never quite
understood what all the fuss was about to begin with.
Orthodox religious formation is similar, strangely enough, to Pentecostalism in its
experiential and synergistic approach to salvation there isnt much talk about
justification. Moreover, this isnt something new to Orthodoxy. Eastern Christianity
from its origins shows a singular lack of interest in discussing its soteriology in terms
of justification. (I should note here that ressourcement retrieving early theology
and tradition is a constitutive part of an Orthodox theologians makeup.)
Robert Eno has pointed out the second generation of Christians, the Apostolic
Fathers, have been seen as presenting an almost total disappearance of the Pauline
point of view.[1] A search of Greek patristic literature on the Thesaurus Linguae
Graecae shows that, over a period of a couple of centuries that includes the
theologically-rich fourth century, most Greek Fathers dont talk much about
dikaiosuvnh (justification or righteousness) except when exegeting a passage
using that term. The striking exception is Gregory of Nyssa, the late fourth-century
bishop who was younger brother to Basil of Caesarea, but, interestingly, when
Gregory uses the term, it is almost always in the context of the true, Christian way of
life, in other words, works of righteousness; neither Nyssa nor any other Eastern
Father ever writes in terms of what Lutheranism calls forensic justification (some
* An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the North American
Academy of Ecumenists, St. Louis, Missouri, September 29 - October 1, 2000. I wish to thank my
graduate assistants, Michael Farley and Julia Schneider, for their research and editorial
assistance. I would also like to thank William Rusch, Tom Ryan and Steven Tsichlis for their
helpful comments on my earlier drafts. Of course, they are not responsible for any omissions or
errors on my part.
[1] Robert B. Eno, "Some Patristic Views on the Relationship of Faith and Works in Justification,"
in Justification by Faith, ed. H. George Anderson, T. Austin Murphy and Joseph A. Burgess
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Augburg Publishing House, 1985), 125. Of course, Eno here is assuming an
Augustinian and particularly, a Reformation-based Augustinian interpretation of Pauls
writings on sin and justification to be the correct one. This article challenges that interpretation in
light of Eastern Christian thought, although the focus here is more on the fourth through seventh
centuries as opposed to the second and third centuries.

would claim that the mid-fourth century Alexandrian bishop Athanasius did, but we
will return to this issue later).
The absence in Eastern Christianity of a soteriology in terms of forensic
justification is serious because Orthodoxy believes not only in ecumenism across
geographical space, but especially ecumenism in time, i.e., the need to be consistent
with the theological tradition of the Church from the earliest centuries.[2] Thus, the
traditional Orthodox mind is immediately suspicious of biblical interpretations that
have little or no root in the early life and theology of the Church; this is true in spades
of particularly the forensic notion of justification, and of its consequent bifurcation of
faith and works. Sola scriptura means little to the Orthodox, who as opposed to
placing Scripture over the Church, have a full sense of Scriptures crucial but
interrelated place within the Churchs continuing life: the apostolic church
communities which produced many of the books of the New Testament, the
communities of the catholic Church which over a period of centuries determined
which books circulating through various communities truly encapsulated the elements
of the apostolic faith; the dogmas and Creed declared by the whole Church in
response to the frequent controversies over the nature of the Trinity and of the
theanthropos Jesus Christ, controversies which frequently arose precisely from
dueling perspectives of which biblical texts were normative and of how those texts
should be interpreted.
This of course does not mean that the Orthodox do not believe that each
generation of Christians may receive new insights into Scripture, especially insights
relevant in a given cultural context. However, it does mean that the new insights
must remain consistent with earlier ones, and that one or two Pauline passages (and
one specific interpretation of those passages) are not considered theologically
normative particularly as a foundation for a soteriological dogma unless the early
and continuing tradition of the Church show them consistently to have been viewed
as such.[3]

[2] Actually, priority of tradition is probably true of all confessions, but less consciously, and is
often for traditions of more recent provenance. For example, Lutheran theologian Elisabeth
Grb-Schmidt, implicitly recognizing the novel character of Luthers hermeneutics of justification
and of individual interpretation of Scripture, applauds his opening Christianity to a certain
freedom from tradition. Tradition as such was no longer sacrosanct . It opened the
possibilities for expansion but also for critique of tradition. Elisabeth Grb-Schmidt, The
significance of justification in the modern intercultural context. The Papers of Christina Grenholm
and Susanne Heine, LWF Documentation, No. 45 (March 2000), 97. Nevertheless, the
contributors to that issue of the journal, as well as Lutheran theologians in bilateral and
ecumenical dialogues, appear to hold the theology of Martin Luther as normatively as Roman
Catholics might that of Augustine and Aquinas, and appear absolutely committed to retaining
intact the soteriological tradition begun by Luther and the fundamentally forensic understanding of
that soteriology which developed in the Lutheran communion.
[3] The Orthodox rejection of sola scriptura is even more pronounced when that scriptura has
been altered to fit a particular interpretation. More specifically, when the Eastern Church reads

History is important in a second way. Because of its less juridical exegesis of

Pauline soteriological statements, Eastern Christianity has never had anything
approaching the kind of faith v. works controversies that have enveloped and (for
both good and ill) theologically shaped the Christian West, whether one considers the
late fourth-/early fifth-century Pelagian controversy or the 16th-century Protestant
Reformation begun by Martin Luther.[4] Rather, the East has maintained a
somewhat distant and even puzzled attitude toward the theological polemics which
have raged over justification in terms of faith or works.
For example, in Jerusalem around the year 415, neither Jerome nor a Spanish
priest named Orosius was able to persuade the holy citys bishop, John, and his synod
to condemn Pelagius, who was also living in Jerusalem at the time.[5] John saw the
controversy as a concern of the Latin Church solely and, quite frankly, appeared not
to understand what the hullabaloo was all about. Equally revealing of the Easts
attitude toward the controversy is the fact that Caelestius, one of Pelagius chief
advocates (and perhaps more Pelagian than Pelagius himself), went to Ephesus to be
justification by faith in Romans, not only does it reject a legalistic or forensic interpretation of
justification, but it does not infer the word alone. It is not simply that neither Romans 3:28,
Rom. 5:1, nor Gal. 3:24 includes the word alone. More importantly, Orthodox exegesis, when
used as the biblical basis of a doctrine, tends to be done intertextually, and there is a strong
reliance on how the early Church interpreted a biblical text in context, It is for this reason that
Orthodoxy rejects Lutheran soteriology based on the doctrine of justification by faith alone:
neither the scriptural context nor patristic exegeses of the key passages support such an
interpretation. Chrysostom, for instance, in his Homilies on Romans clearly understands that
Paul is arguing against a Jewish notion of justification through formulaic obedience to the Mosaic
Law he is not referring to works of righteousness in the Spirit. See John Chrysostom, Homilies
on the Epistle to the Romans, Hom. 7, PG 60:441-454; in NPNF, First Series, vol. 11. For a
modern Orthodox theological critique, see, e.g., Georges Florovsky, The Ascetic Ideal and the
New Testament, pp. 56-8, in Georges Florovsky, "The Ascetic Ideal and the New Testament:
Reflections on the Critique of the Theology of the Reformation," translated by Raymond Miller
and et al., in Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, ed. Richard Haugh, S., vol. 10, Byzantine
Ascetic and Spiritual Fathers (Vaduz, Europa: Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987). Florovsky criticizes
Luther specifically but also, more broadly, he challenges Reform theologians definitions of
justification for their incongruity with Augustines actual thought.
[4] William Rusch, referring to both these Western Christian controversies over against Eastern
church history, remarks: The West also was more legalistic. As the penitential system of the
Western Church developed, justificare played a role in soteriological thinking that dikaioo did not
assume in the East. Also the influence of the Pelagian controversy marked the Western Church
in ways unknown in the East. [Eastern theologians were] developers of a theology of
salvation outside the framework of justification categories. William G. Rusch, "How the Eastern
Fathers Understood What the Western Church Meant by Justification," in Justification by Faith,
ed. H. George Anderson, T. Austin Murphy and Joseph A. Burgess (Minneapolis: Augburg
Publishing House, 1985), 132-3.{Rusch: 132-3} Of course, this is precisely because the Eastern
Christian understanding of justification was never forensic in nature.
[5] Jerome and Orosius might have had more success had they concentrated their criticism on
Pelagius and his followers rather minimalist and non-existential understanding of both sin and
salvation, but Pelagian anthropology regarding free will was far closer to the Christian Easts than
was Augustines.

ordained when his rejection of the doctrine of original guilt made his candidacy in
Carthage unacceptable.
A millennium later, in the exchange of theological correspondence between
Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II and the Lutheran theologians of the University of
Tbingen in the 1570s,[6] Jeremias agreed with certain Lutheran theological views
but disagreed on crucial issues concerning human free will and the place of works in
justification, seemingly mystified by the disjuncture between faith and works
expressed by the Augsburg Confession and the reformers letters. Modern bilateral
dialogues between Orthodox and Lutheran churches have often focused on these
same two issues.
To the Orthodox, the Western Churchs convulsions over the nature of
justification, and particularly the relationship between faith and works, are largely
incomprehensible because the presuppositions underlying the debates are often alien
to the Eastern Christian mind. The Christian East espouses a different theological
anthropology from most of Western Christianity both Catholic and Protestant
especially with respect to two elements of fallen human nature: original guilt and free
will. The differences in these two anthropological concepts, in turn, contribute to
differing soteriological understandings of, respectively, how Jesus Christ saves us
(that is, what salvation means) and how we appropriate the salvation offered in
Christ.
Therefore, we must examine these key concepts in Orthodox anthropology and
soteriology, and their nexus in Christology, vis--vis their counterparts in traditional
Western Christian theology. This will necessarily involve comparing different
traditions definitions and understandings of some key theological terms: sin, faith,
salvation. Two contrasts recur: 1) the juridical approach of much of the West
regarding sin and redemption, or restoration, versus the more existential and
ontological approach of the East; and 2) the Western tendency to define,
differentiate, and compartmentalize, as opposed to the Eastern tendency to
theologize apophatically and, when cataphatically, primarily in a holistic and organic
fashion. At the same time, some current trends are bringing the Catholic and
especially the Lutheran communions closer to an Eastern Christian approach in these
important areas.
Theological Anthropology: The Fall
1.

Original Guilt

[6] Bibliography on this is, unfortunately, limited. See George Mastrontonis, Augsburg and
Constantinople (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982). and Wayne James
Jorgenson, The Augustana Graeca and the Correspondence between the Tbingen Lutherans
and Patriarch Jeremias: Scripture and Tradition in Theological Methodology, Ph.D. dissertation,
Boston University, 1979.

The Western Church tended to be more pessimistic about humankinds plight

than was the Eastern Church; it taught a doctrine of original sin that included the
conception of humankinds physical solidarity with Adam and its participation in
Adams sinful act. This was largely absent in Eastern thinking.[7]
All men who are born according to the course of nature are conceived and born
in sin. That is, all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers
wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God.
Moreover, this inborn sickness and hereditary sin is truly sin .[8]
In order to discuss justification, one must first examine theological
anthropology, specifically postlapsarian[9] theological anthropology; i.e., one cannot
speak about how we are justified or saved in Christ without understanding what is
wrong with us in our current state. The Joint Declaration does this as well, at the
beginning of its explication of the common understanding (section 4). A comparison
between the Joint Declaration and traditional Orthodox theology reveals immediate
differences, in two distinct areas: 1) implicitly, the concept of inherited original guilt,
and 2) explicitly, the understanding of free will, or human freedom.
All three traditions Lutheran, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic share a
common general answer to the question of What is wrong with humanity?; all share
an instinctive and biblical recognition that humanity lives outside of communion with
God, that this lack of communion prevents us from being truly human, and that this
state of separation from God is called, in shorthand, sin. There are important
differences, however, in the three traditions understanding of how we have come to
exist in this state, and how seriously it has affected our human nature; in other words,
there are different theologies of original sin.
Interestingly, the Joint Declaration sidesteps the question of original sin, perhaps
because its meaning is hotly debated within confessions as well as between
confessions. For instance, Lutheran theologian Carl Volz, while noting that [s]ome
Lutherans have leaned toward the traducianism of Tertullian,[10] maintains that the
Lutheran Confessions do not develop a doctrine of the imputation of Adams sin to
his progeny. Rather, the fact of the universal relationship of all individuals in sin
results in a community of sin. [11] Fellow Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler has
[7] Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers," 132.
[8] Augsburg Confession, II, in Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord (Philadelphia:
Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 29; quoted in Carl A. Volz, "Human Participation in the Divine-Human
Dialogue," in Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert
Tobias (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 86-7.
[9] That is, after the Fall from paradise and grace, as opposed to prelapsarian, or before the Fall.
[10] Volz, "Human Participation," 86.
[11] Volz, "Human Participation," 88.

compared original sin to a kind of pail which weve drained of the old literal
statements and refilled with quite new interpretations. [W]e no longer buy the old
notion of biological transmission or try to have a system of inheritance. [12]
Similarly reworked interpretations of original sin have been posited by Roman
Catholic theologians as well. [13]
But Augustinian postlapsarian theological anthropology is built precisely on a
notion of biological transmission, and many Western Christian confessions, while not
articulating Augustines anthropology to its logical extreme, nevertheless base their
soteriology on its main outlines. Thus, original sin or, more precisely, original
guilt, is clearly a key element of theological anthropology and hence of soteriology.
It is important therefore to note that Eastern Christianity distinguishes itself from
Western Christianity, especially in its strictest Augustinian forms, in its rejection of
any notion of inherited original guilt, that is, the idea that all humans share the guilt
of Adams sin.
This concept of original guilt, already visible in the theology of the third-century
North African Latin Fathers Cyprian of Carthage and Tertullian, was developed in
the early fifth century primarily by Augustine, who reacted to Pelagius claim that
infants need not be baptized since they have committed no personal sins. Augustine
countered Pelagius by arguing from common Church practice and mixing it with
traducianism via Rom. 5:12: sin came into the world through one man and death
spread through sin, and so death spread to all men because [literally, in that or in
which] all men sinned.[14] To briefly summarize Augustines argument, which
originated in Cyprian: the Church universally baptized infants; therefore, since
baptism confers remission of sins, and since infants have committed no personal sins,
the Church baptizes infants obviously in order to remit the original sin which they
receive hereditarily from Adam because all of humanity was seminally present in
Adam.
While the Christian East consistently recognizes the effects of the ancestral sin
in terms of human mortality, corruption (phthora), and a difficulty in maintaining an
unwavering communion with God (the Eastern Fathers dont really speak in terms of
concupiscence), it has never accepted Augustines argument that all humanity
[12] Interview, Time, 21 March 1969, p. 62; quoted in Volz, "Human Participation," 89.{Volz: 89}.
[13] E.g., McBrien, Catholicism, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980), 165-167..
[14] It is important to note that the Latin translation Augustine used gave a very different meaning,
along the lines of: and so death spread to all men in whom all have sinned. Inaccurate
translations of key passages can have serious consequences; for instance, the translation used
by Carl Volz, above, of for Ps. 51:5 (50:5 LXX) Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my
mother conceived me is notably traducian, unlike the Greek Septuagint text, which uses the
plural sins and would more accurately be translated as, Indeed, I was born into transgressions,
and into sins did my mother conceive me, thus giving more the sense of a sinful human
environment rather than of an ontologically sinful, inherited human nature.

inherits the guilt of Adam. Gregory of Nazianzus, fellow Cappadocian and best
friend of Basil of Caesarea,[15] is one of the few Eastern Fathers to express any
notion of inherited original sin. However, it would be difficult to ascribe to him a
true theology of original sin since, as William Rusch remarks, Gregory teaches in
some passages in such a way as to rule out any doctrine of original sin and on other
occasions he speaks of the involvement of all human beings in Adams sin and fall
(Orations 40,23; 33,9). [16] John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople and a
contemporary of Augustine, in his Homilies on Romans, interprets Rom. 5:12 simply
to explain human mortality: having once fallen, even they that had not eaten of the
tree did from [Adam], all of them, become mortal.[17] In other words, the Greek
Fathers saw the relationship between Adam and his descendents as organic and
existential in nature without the notion of an inherited guilt. We inherit the same
mortal and corrupt nature which Adam possessed because of the Fall, but we do not
inherit the guilt of that original sin which changed our human nature. [18]
Actually, the East finds slightly repugnant the notion that God would consider
someone guilty of something which he or she did not do personally. Yet, the Eastern
Church, like the Western Church, baptizes infants. The Easts insistence on infant
baptism and simultaneous denial of original guilt is possible because Orthodoxy
rejects Augustines leap of logic regarding the purpose of infant baptism the
remission of sins. The Eastern Church of course recognizes the importance of
baptism in washing away ones personal sins. However, that is not the only effect of

[15] Cappadocia is a region in central Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). The phrase the
Cappadocians refers to three of the fourth-centurys (or any centurys) greatest theologians:
Basil of Caesarea, called Basil the Great; Gregory of Nazianzus, called Gregory the Theologian;
and Gregory of Nyssa, younger brother of Basil.
[16] Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers," 134.
[17] John Chrysostom, Homily 10, PG 60:474; in NPNF, First Series, no. 11, p. 401. Augustines
unique interpretation, most scholars believe, was probably due, at least in part, to an inaccurate
Latin translation of a key Greek phrase, Jeph h(i)/, which is translated by most modern
scholars, and traditionally by the Christian East, as in that [all have sinned], but which was
interpreted in Latin as in whom [all have sinned], the whom referring to Adam. Ross Aden,
"Justification and Sanctification: A Conversation Between Lutheranism and Orthodoxy," St.
Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1994): 94-6. See n. ____, 14, above, for another
example of how particular translations further particular theological views perhaps not intended in
the biblical text.
[18] John Meyendorff provides a short but excellent analysis of Greek patristic exegetical
approaches to this key passage from Romans, focusing on Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of
Cyr, in Anthropology and Original Sin, John XXIII Lectures, vol. 1 (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1966), pp. 52-58, esp. pp. 54-56. Meyendorffs recognition of the existential
nature of corruption (phthora) as a cosmic state in Cyril and of sin as a result of the need for
things by mortal beings, as understood by Theodoret, contrasts markedly to the legalistic
exegeses of Romans 5 common in the Christian West from Augustine on, particularly in
Reformation writers.

baptism. As Carl Volz has noted for the Lutheran practice of infant baptism,[19] it
grafts the baptized person, including infants, onto the Body of Christ and confers the
gift of the Holy Spirit. This existential, ecclesiological understanding of baptism is
clear in Chrysostoms Third Baptismal Instruction, where he states:
Although many men think that the only gift [baptism] confers is the
remission of sins, we have counted its honors to the number of ten. It is on this
account that we baptize even infants, although they are sinless, that they may be
given the further gifts of sanctification, justice, filial adoption, and inheritance,
that they may be brothers and members of Christ, and become dwelling places
of the Spirit.[20]

This is borne out in the differing sacramental practices of the Western and
Eastern Churches. The West, both Catholic and Lutheran, traditionally has withheld
chrismation (or confirmation) and Holy Communion for some years after baptism,
and frequently separates confirmation and communion from each other by several
years as well. This sacramental practice is consistent with a soteriology which
distinguishes between justification (baptism) and sanctification (chrismation or
confirmation). [21] However, the Eastern Church has continued the early Churchs
practice of regarding baptism and chrismation as one rite of initiation remission of
sins and concurrently the beginning of sanctification, i.e., incorporation into both the
Body of Christ and the life of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, as Patriarch Jeremias
noted, [22] the Orthodox Church acts sacramentally in a manner consistent with this
theology: the baptized person, even if an infant, is incorporated into the full
sacramental and spiritual life of the Church, i.e., the Orthodox Church communes
baptized infants as full members of the Church.
[19] Lutherans have not followed Augustine to his unacceptable conclusion that unbaptized
infants are condemned. Rather, they emphasize the need for a child to enter the community of
grace as soon as possible in order to grow in faith toward God. Baptism was intended for those
who will physically and spiritually grow and mature; it was not intended as the last rites. Volz,
"Human Participation," 88.
[20] John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instruction 3:6, in Jean Chrysostome: Huit Catchses
Baptismales Indites, edited and translated by Antoine Wenger, Sources Chrtiennes, vol. 50
(Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1957), 153-4.; PG ______; English translation in John Chrysostom,
Baptismal Instructions, trans. Paul W. Harkins, vol. 31 of Ancient Christian Writers (Westminster,
MD: Newman Press, 1963), p. 57.
[21] The roots of this separation of the twofold rites of initiation are practical in nature, that is, the
unavailability of the bishop who always performed baptism and chrismation together in the early
Church on a regular basis in each local parish by the medieval period. The Christian East
responded to this by allowing presbyters (priests) to celebrate the rites of initiation; the West
allowed presbyters (and, later, deacons) to perform baptism but kept the bishop involved as the
only celebrant of chrismation. However, the Western Churchs ability to conceive of a bifurcation
of the rite of initiation, with the result that young children were baptized but not yet fully members
of the Church, was predicated on Augustinian theology, I believe.
[22] The First Answer of Patriarch Jeremiah [II] of Constantinople Concerning the Augsburg
Confession, in Mastrontonis, Augsburg, 54.{Mastrontonis: 54}.

This existential understanding of the purpose of baptism as the beginning of ones

life in Christ through the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit differs substantially from
the juridically-rooted emphasis on sin characteristic of the West. It is true that
Pelagius spoke of infant baptism in terms of entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven,
yet apparently he did not see its primary importance. As for Augustine, the contrast
with Chrysostom is sharp: they are writing only a few years apart, and yet their
understandings of the purpose of infant baptism are light-years apart. This is why,
from the Orthodox point of view, Augustines and Pelagius arguments are simply flip
sides of the same coin. Both operate under the assumption that the primary purpose
of baptism in fact, virtually the sole purpose as far as their debate is concerned is
the remission of sins. The Orthodox approach sees the death of the old man (the
work of the Cross) only through the lens of the rebirth of the new man (the life of
the Resurrection), an organic view which shall be seen again later.
2. Free Will and the Imago Dei
The question of original sin, or what humanity lost in the Fall, is related to the
question of what God gave humanity in the act of creation and what humanity retains
even in its fallen state. For the Greek Fathers, this spiritual capacity of human nature
is encapsulated in the language of Gen. 1:26-7: God created humanity according to
Gods own image. Furthermore, both the Eastern Church and the medieval Latin
Church distinguished between the image of God (Latin imago Dei) and the
likeness or similitude of God, based on the differences between Gen. 1:26 and
1:27. The image designated the potential or capabilities inherent in all human beings,
i.e., qualities such as reason; the likeness meant true likeness (at the level of human
existence, of course) to God, the realization of human potential as the perpetual
fulfillment of a dynamic process between the human person and God. The Greek
Fathers in particular developed a generous anthropology around the concept of the
imago Dei, even for postlapsarian human nature; as Gregory of Nyssa states in his
Sixth Homily on the Beatitudes, the divine imprint may be obscured but it is still
intact.[23] The anthropology of the Roman Church, influenced by Augustine, was
less generous than that of the East, but still accented human capacity.
By contrast, classical Lutheran thought presented a sharp break with the general
tenor of biblical interpretation of Gen. 1:26-7 in both the Eastern and Western forms
of early and medieval Christianity. As Robert Wilken has shown,[24] Luther,
Melanchthon and others rejected the distinction drawn by most early and medieval
[23] Gregory of Nyssa, Sixth Homily on the Beatitudes, Werner Jaeger, ed, Gregorii Nysseni
Opera, vol. 7 (Leiden, 1960- ) GNO VII,, 2: 141-144. English translation; in Anthony Meredith,
trans., Gregory of Nyssa, in The Early Christian Fathers, ed. Carol Harrison (London: Routledge,
1999), 95-97.
[24] Robert L. Wilken, "The Image of God in Classical Lutheran Theology," in Salvation in Christ:
A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1992), 127-32.

theologians, Latin and Greek alike, between image and likeness. [25] As we shall see
later, this rejection has consequences for (or, perhaps is itself a consequence of) the
reformers soteriology. Moreover, Lutherans from Martin Luther himself to later
writers such as the eighteenth-century theologian John Gerhard have interpreted the
imago Dei largely in a negative sense: it encapsulates what humanity lost in the
Fall.[26] Wilken argues that Luther did not abandon the image entirely and was
willing to say that it remained after the fall, [27] and that the Lutheran tradition
stands within the broad stream of patristic and medieval tradition that saw freedom
of the will, reason, human responsibility, as marks of the divine image. This image
was not lost, but only tarnished in the fall. [28] Nevertheless, he admits that Luther
describes the marks of the image (memory, will and mind) as most depraved and
most seriously weakened, yes, to put it more clearly, they are utterly leprous and
unclean, [29] and quotes Gerhard as asserting that to deny that the image of God
has been lost is to deny original sin itself.[30]
The question of the imago Dei is significant because it is here that East and West
disagree on a second important element of theological anthropology: free will. While
Orthodoxy maintains that free will is a constitutive element of the imago Dei, both
Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism sharing an Augustinian heritage assert that
one of the aspects of original sin is the loss of free will with respect to humanitys
orientation toward God. Human freedom was one of the issues at the heart of the
fifth-century Western Christian debate over faith and works, i.e., over the relative
[25] Even someone like Gregory of Nyssa, who uses the terms interchangeably, nevertheless
clearly articulates a qualitative difference between traits like reason (normally considered part of
the image) and virtue (likeness).
[26] This interpretation is sometimes positively described as christological since it catalogs what
Christ restores to human nature, but it is based on his restoring that which was lost.
[27] Wilken, "The Image of God," 126.
[28] Wilken, "The Image of God," 131.
[29] Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) 42, 41-9, in Jaroslav Pelikan
and Helmut T. Lehman, ed., Luther's Works, by Martin Luther (Philadelphia; St. Louis: Fortress
Press; Concordia Publishing House, 1955-1987), 55-65; quoted in Wilken, "The Image of God,"
124.
[30] Proinde negare, quod amissa sit imago Dei, est ipsum peccatum originale negare. Wilken,
"The Image of God," 131. In the modern context of ecumenical dialogue, at least some Lutheran
theologians have questioned their traditions approach while recognizing its inherent pessimism.
For example, Carl Volz opines that it is incorrect to speak of humanitys total depravity or as
human nature being sinful in its essence in the Augustinian sense. Therefore it seems that
Luthers idea of losing the image of God entirely cannot be upheld. Nevertheless it can be said
that Lutherans espouse a basically pessimistic view of humanity in the sight of God, more so, it
appears, than the Orthodox churches, the Roman church, or many Protestant communions.
Volz, "Human Participation," 90.{Volz: 90} It may be that the classical Lutheran rejection of the
historical Christian distinction between image and likeness, and of a positive interpretation of the
image as qualities retained in part by postlapsarian human nature, was necessary in order to be
consistent with a soteriological emphasis on forensic justification.

divine and human contributions to salvation. The Western Christian historical

context has caused many theologians, particularly evangelical Protestant theologians,
to experience great difficulty thinking outside the box of the Western either/or
approach to this topic. For instance, at a 1999 conference sponsored by the Society
for the Study of Evangelicalism and Eastern Orthodoxy, J. I. Packer distributed a
copy of some course materials. I noted that under the topic of faith and works he
listed the Orthodox as semi-Pelagian. He was semi-right. As Bishop Kallistos
(Ware) of Diokleia proclaimed at the beginning of his address for the 1998
Bellarmine Lecture at Saint Louis University, I suppose I should tell you
straightaway that I am an Arminian. Wares comment was amusing but also truthful
because, in Eastern Christian soteriology, human freedom plays an important role,
but not as Pelagian foil to Augustinian determinism.
At the heart of the Orthodox understanding of what constitutes the imago Dei in
the human person, even after the Fall, lies the concept of free will. This is perhaps
best seen in the theology of Gregory of Nyssa. In his seminal work, On the Making
of the Human Person, Nyssa lists a variety of traits which characterize the divine
image in humanity, but asserts that
pre-eminent among all is the fact that we are free from necessity, and not in
bondage to any natural power, but have decision in our own power as we please; for
virtue is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion: that which is the result of
compulsion and force cannot be virtue.[31]

Over a thousand years later, Jeremias II, Patriarch of Constantinople, would take
up this refrain in his response to the Lutheran theologians of Tbingen regarding the
Augsburg Confession. First, Jeremias quotes at length from Chrysostoms Twelfth
Homily on the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the Antiochene Father asserts that All
indeed depends on God, but not so that our free-will is hindered . . . For we must
first choose the good; and then He leads us to His own. He does not anticipate our
choice, lest our free-will should be outraged. But when we have chosen, then great is
the assistance he brings to us.[32] Linking the concepts of sin and virtue to free will
in a manner similar to Nyssa, Jeremias sets the stage for his discussion of faith and
works by averring:
I declare that everyone is capable of virtue. For whatever a person is not
able to do, he is not able to do even if forced. But if a person is able when

[31] Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opificio, PG 44:184B; On the Making of Man, XVI, 11, in
NPNF, Second Series, vol. 5, p. 405.
[32] John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hom. 12, 5, PG 63:99; in NPNF,
First Series, vol. 14, p. 425.

forced to do what he is not doing, then it is by his own choice that he is not
doing it.[33]

Certainly, Eastern Christianity recognizes that humanity has lost an element of its
freedom in its subjection to the passions (understood as spiritual as well as physical
needs and desires). This is particularly emphasized in ascetic writings. However,
despite recognition of the difficulty in consistently exercising ones freedom properly,
Eastern Christian thought is virtually unanimous from the earliest centuries in
affirming humanitys fundamental freedom to do good or ill, to turn toward God or
away from him. By contrast, the Christian West, both Roman Catholic and
Protestant, has been strongly influenced by Augustines peculiarly negative concept of
free will. Luther is a prime example: After the fall of Adam, free-will is a mere
expression; whenever it acts in character, it commits mortal sin. [34] The classical
Western view is summed up in the very title of section 4.1 of the Joint Declaration
Human Powerlessness and Sin in Relation to Justification. According to the
Lutheran signers, human beings are incapable of cooperating in their salvation,
because as sinners they actively oppose God and his saving action [emphasis
added].[35] In the previous paragraph of the Joint Declaration, the Roman Catholic
position presents a more positive assessment of the human response to God, yet it
too undercuts the human will by interpreting this human response as essentially
divine, not human: When Catholics say that persons cooperate in preparing for an
accepting justification by consenting to Gods justifying action, they see such personal
consent as itself an effect of grace, not as an action arising from innate human
abilities [emphasis added].[36] Catholics and Lutherans together assert in the Joint
Declaration that humans are incapable of turning by themselves to God to seek
deliverance.[37] So, although certain bilateral dialogues with the Orthodox have
tried to present a stronger sense of free human responsiveness, both positive and
negative, [38] the understanding of faith for Lutherans especially is not based on
human freedom:

[33] Mastrontonis, Augsburg, 83.

[34] Martin Luther, Ground and Reason of Articles Unjustly Condemned, WA 7:445; quoted in
Volz, "Human Participation," 90.Volz notes that, as opposed to Erasmus, who followed Aquinas,
Luther (somewhat) followed Peter Lombard. While humanity has free will in the exercise of
matters at the created level, [f]or Luther, our will is in bondage to all matters pertaining to
salvation. Volz, "Human Participation," 91.{Volz: 91}.
[35] Para. 21.
[36] Para. 20.
[37] Para. 19.
[38] It appears that the Joint Declaration, while incorporating some of the agreements reached in
bilateral dialogues, does not include others. For instance, among the joint work products of the
Finnish Lutheran-Russian Orthodox bilateral dialogues is a document drafted in Kiev in 1977 and
entitled Salvation as Justification and Deification; it includes the following statement Grace

 [F]aith is the awareness worked by the Spirit that salvation is not from us, but
for us. Faith is not the response of a persons free will to choose the grace of God.
The [Lutheran] Confessions slam the door on free will to keep out every possible
synergistic intrusion. They reject the statement used by some of the ancient Fathers
that God draws, but draws the person who is willing. Instead, God makes unwilling
persons willing to do the will of Christ.[39]
Thus, neither the Lutheran nor the Roman Catholic understanding of
justification includes a truly human component. The negative anthropology of both
negates human freedom because it excludes an inherent desire for and ability to turn
toward God in humanitys fallen condition. Consequently, the Christian West,
following Augustine, developed the idea of prevenient grace: a human being can only
turn toward God after God has first imparted to him or her a special grace which
allows the person to recognize and respond to God.[40] If one also hypothesizes
that God may not choose to bestow this prevenient grace on all human beings, then
one comes naturally to the theory of election or predestination present in Augustines
later anti-Pelagian works and resurrected full force in the Reformed Protestantism of
Calvin as well as in such branches of Lutheranism as the Missouri Synod.[41]
never does violence to a mans personal will, but exerts its influence through it and with it. Every
one has the opportunity to refuse consent to Gods will or, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to
consent to it. (Hannu Kamppuri, ed., Dialogue between Neighbours (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola
Gesellschaft, 1986), 76; quoted in Risto Saarinen, "Salvation in the Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue:
A Comparative Perspective," in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, ed.
Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
1998), 169.) Risto Saarinen notes that the Finnish theologian Tuomo Mannermaa defended the
language as a refutation of the quietest view, answering charges by Finnish theologians Fredric
Cleve and Karl Christian Felmy, among others, that it was semi-Pelagian. Mannermaa claimed
that the Orthodox are in constant doubt that we conceive the human person as a stone or plant
or animal which does not possess any freedom whatsoever. For them, freedom belongs to the
constitution of human beings. Saarinen, "Salvation in Dialogue," 170. One understands the
validity of Mannermaas concern given the following quote from Carl Braaten.
[39] Carl E. Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 113;
quoted in Michael C. D. McDaniel, "Salvation as Justification and theosis," in Salvation in Christ:
A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1992), 77.{McDaniel: 77}.
[40] This, coupled with the Latin belief in inherited original guilt, led to the development in the
Roman Church of the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary. Eastern
Christianity, by contrast, has always venerated her because of her free response to God, an
acquiescence to Gods will as part of the common human race issued of the first man (Adam),
[who] automatically participates in the fallen status and in the spiritual death introduced by the
sin of the first man. Maximos Aghiorgoussis, Bishop, "Orthodox Soteriology," in Salvation in
Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1992), 39.{Aghiorgoussis: 39}.
[41] The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, not a member of the Lutheran World Federation, was
not a signatory to the Joint Declaration. For several brief discussions of the biblical basis for and
Protestant theological disputes over predestination, an Orthodox response, and the Greek and
Latin patristic background, see Frederick R. Harm, "Election: A Lutheran-Biblical View," in
Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias

Happily, the Joint Declaration affirms that [a]ll people are called by God to salvation
in Christ.[42]
Eastern Christianity counters this negative view of postlapsarian human nature
with the positive theological anthropology enshrined in the christology of the Sixth
Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 680-681. The council was convoked
to deal with an attempt to underscore the unity of the person of Jesus Christ by
declaring that he had only one will, his divine will; hence, the heresy was named
monotheletism. In rejecting monotheletism, the council articulated a christology
based on the theological anthropology of the brilliant seventh-century Greek
theologian Maximos the Confessor. Maximos distinguished between 1) the natural
human will, which is a characteristic of human nature; it is oriented toward God and
continues to exist and operate even after the Fall, and 2) the gnomic will, a
personal property, or personal mode of expressing the natural will which is peculiar
to fallen human beings and is characterized by opinion and deliberation because the
fallen human person lacks true knowledge of where the Good lies.[43]
Maximos asserted that self-determination (literally, self-determined movement
aujtexouvsio~ kivnhsi~) is a constitutive element of human nature, but is not aimless;
our natural free will is oriented toward God precisely because humanity is created by
God, in His image. A special act of Gods grace (i.e., prevenient grace) is not
required for us to orient ourselves toward Him; orientation toward God is at the
heart of our human nature. Thus, Maximos theological anthropology, based on the
conviction that the imago Dei is retained in postlapsarian human nature, assumes that
human beings retain a natural orientation toward God.[44] In part, this is why
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 133-50. John Breck, "The New Testament Concept of Election,"
in Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 151-8; and James Jorgenson, "Predestination According to
Divine Foreknowledge in Patristic Tradition," in Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox
Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 159-69. The
Roman Church ultimately rejected the full implications of Augustinianism at the Second Council of
Orange in 529 (We do not believe that some are predestined to evil by the divine power), but
maintained prevenient grace ( faith was not a gift of nature but a gift of Gods generosity.)
Jorgenson, "Predestination," 164.
[42] Section 3, para. 16.
[43] An excellent overview of Maximos theology is provided in Andrew Louth, Maximos the
Confessor (London; New York: Routledge, 1996); see especially pp. 59-62. Theological views of
evil as parasitic are essentially based on the combination of natural and gnomic will; i.e., the
person desires to feel good and complete, but does things which may hurt himself and/or others
in a misbegotten effort to fulfill this innate desire.
[44] Maximos then applied this theological anthropology to the unique situation of the
theanthropos the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Christ has a natural human will, oriented toward
God, but not a gnomic will. This is because the gnomic will is a personal attribute. The
asymmetric christology of the Third and Fifth Ecumenical Councils, applied to the question of
personal will, leads inevitably to the recognition that the personal will of Christ is the divine will.
Therefore, in the person of Jesus Christ, his natural human will fulfills its inclination toward God

human freedom plays such a central role in Eastern Christian theology without the
problematic character that it ha[s] in Western writers.[45] Interestingly, Western
Christianity claims to affirm the christology of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
However, it is impossible to accept Maximos christology without accepting equally
the anthropology on which it is based, namely his concept of the natural human will
which Christ assumes as part of his fallen human nature.
With respect, then, to the soteriological question of What is wrong with
humanity in its fallen state?, the problem of the human condition is not, as it is
conceived in Western Christianity, that human beings have no natural orientation
toward God. The problem of our fallen condition is that, because we have broken
communion with God, our spiritual vision has become clouded so that we fail to
recognize clearly in what direction our natural orientation lies and therefore fail to
move consistently in that direction, i.e., to restore communion with God.
Thus, Orthodoxy understands human sin primarily not as deliberate and willful
opposition to God, but rather as an inability to know ourselves and God clearly. It is
as though God were calling out to us and coming after us in a storm, but we thought
we heard his voice in another direction and kept moving away from him, either
directly or obliquely. It is illuminating that the Greek word for sin, hamartia, means
to miss the mark. Despite our orientation toward God, we miss the mark
because, not only does the clouded spiritual vision of our fallen condition make it
difficult for us to see God clearly, but we fail to understand even ourselves truly; thus,
we constantly do things which make us feel only incompletely and unsatisfactorily
good or happy because we dont recognize that God is himself the fulfillment of our
innate desire and natural movement. Explaining Maximos theology, Andrew Louth
offers, with fallen creatures, their own nature has become opaque to them, they
no longer know what they want, and experience coercion in trying to love what
cannot give fulfilment. [46] Ultimately, it is not our natural human will that is
deficient, but rather how we perceive it and the way, or mode, by which we express it;
as Louth sourly opines, it is a frustrating and confusing business. [47]

Soteriology Justification and Sanctification, or Sharing and Deification

and therefore can only be distinguished in theory from his divine will, and from the fact that the
human process of deliberation is occasionally evident (e.g., in the Garden of Gethsemane) in the
form of conscious conformation to the divine will, but not in the sense of an inability to discern the
divine will or, even worse, a willing rejection of it.
[45] Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers," 141.
[46] Louth, Maximos, 61.
[47] Louth, Maximos, 61.

1.

Restoration of Fallen Humanity Justification as Sharing

Having examined the problem of Whats wrong with humanity?, it is

appropriate now to consider the soteriological solution which dominates the Joint
Declaration, i.e., What will make humanity right?, or, more specifically, How does
Jesus Christ make humanity right? The first thing to note is that the ecumenical
councils made no dogmatic definitions explicitly on soteriology alone. However, in
the medieval Latin Church, the satisfaction theory of atonement gained currency, and
the penitential system (temporal punishment is still required of human beings even
for forgiven sins) arising from it, which is still part of the theology and practice of the
Roman Church, led to an opposite reaction in the justification soteriology of
Martin Luther. And, by insisting on justification by grace alone, received through
faith alone, by enshrining it in such creeds as the Augsburg Confession, and by
proclaim[ing] this as the doctrine by which the church stands or falls (articulis
stantis et cadentis ecclesiae),[48] the partisans of the Reformation, as thoroughly as
the medieval Latin theologians, dogmatized a particular soteriology.
Meanwhile, as noted in the introduction, Eastern Christianity never developed
either a doctrine of forensic justification or a real atonement soteriology (and
certainly nothing akin to the theory of satisfaction proposed by Anselm in the
twelfth century). In other words, Orthodox soteriology stands outside the juridical
approach of Western Christianity, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. [49] Rather,
it is based deeply and consistently on the theology of the ecumenical councils, in
particular, on the christology articulated in the ecumenical councils. For, while no
doctrinal statements of what effects (or causes) salvation are articulated in the
ecumenical councils, one cannot truly grasp the logic and significance of the
christological definitions except insofar as one understands the soteriological issues
(and, hence anthropological issues) which lie behind them. [50]
Thus, Eastern Christian soteriology constitutes a challenge to Bernhard Lohses
claim that Luthers doctrine of justification expresses the Christology of the ancient
church:
In Luther, Christology and soteriology are intimately connected with each other,
as they are in Athanasius, or Cyril of Alexandria, except that Luther makes the
[48] Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its
Confessional Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 36; quoted in McDaniel, "Salvation,"
69.
[49] See the quote from William Rusch, n. 34, above.
[50] As the Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten has asserted: The whole of theology is inherently
developed from a soteriological point of view. Salvation is not one of the main topics, along with
the doctrine of God, Christ, church . It is rather the perspective from which all these subjects
are interpreted. Carl E. Braaten, Principles of Lutheran Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1963), 63; quoted in McDaniel, "Salvation," 67.

connection much more explicit. Christology is realized in the doctrine of

justification, and the doctrine of justification, and the doctrine of justification is
nothing else but a summary of Christology in soteriological perspective.[51]
The insight that christology and soteriology are integrally linked is important.
After all, the ecumenical councils were not interested in producing esoteric
christological texts for speculative theologians with an arcane interest in the nature of
Jesus Christ. The bishops of these councils recognized the soteriological significance
of the christological issues raised in the fourth through ninth centuries. And, there is
no doubt that christology is integrally linked to Luthers soteriology.
The question is whether Luthers soteriology and, for that matter, other forms
of Western atonement soteriology are truly based on the christology of the early
Fathers, especially those behind the dogmatic formulations of the ecumenical
councils. Both the dogmatic definitions and the supplementary patristic writings
surrounding the christological controversies seem to indicate a negative answer to the
question. Far from emphasizing atonement as satisfaction or a forensic notion of
justification, these writings express an understanding of human salvation rooted not
simply in a particular activity of Jesus Christ[52], but in the very person of Jesus
Christ. Gregory of Nyssa, writing more than a millennium before the development
of the Lutheran doctrine of imputed righteousness, in the context of the
controversy over the extreme form of Arianism known as Eunomianism, rejects the
notion that one could be totally righteous in a legal but not existential sense.
Human beings are not restored to communion with God through an act of spiritual
prestidigitation where God looks and thinks he sees humanity, but in fact is really
seeing his Son.[53] Justification must be as organic and existential as sin is:
Humanitys justification through forgiveness of sins is not a mere covering over
mans sins, but a real destruction of them. It is not a mere external decision but a
[51] Bernhard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, trans. F. Ernest Stoeffler
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 169; quoted in McDaniel, "Salvation," 69.
[52] This fact, plus the lack of a soteriology based on atonement or justification, explains why in
the Christian East the Cross while extremely important soteriologically has never had the
segregated, unique soteriological role it plays in Western Christianity.
[53] Lutheran theologians would likely disagree with this description. For instance, in the
appendix to the Joint Declaration, one of the entries for section 4.2 asserts: By justification we
are both declared and made righteous. Justification, therefore, is not a legal fiction. God, in
justifying, effects what he promises; he forgives sin and makes us truly righteous (USA, no.
156,5). However, the notion repeatedly stated in Lutheran writings that the justified person is
simul justus et peccator (simultaneously righteous and a sinner) can only be understood in a
juridical sense since it is ontologically incomprehensible. As one puzzled Orthodox theologian
has remarked, People in communion with Christs humanity, conformed to the image of Christ,
cannot be sinful and righteous at the same time, with a mere imputed righteousness . Once
justified, people are also sanctified by the life of Christ in the Holy Spirit. Aghiorgoussis,
"Orthodox Soteriology," 49.

reality. Sins are forgiven truly and really. God does not declare someone to be
justified if he [or she] is not really free. We understand this teaching better if we
remember the relation between Adam and Christ.
As we became not only apparently but really sinful because of Adam, so
through Christ the Second Adam we become really justified.[54]
This emphasis on the personal christological nature of soteriology is particularly
evident in the Second, Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Ecumenical Councils.[55] These
four councils insisted on the full humanity of Christ not because it was simply
fitting for God to become fully human in order to pay the price for other
humans, but because it was ontologically necessary for God to become human.
Thus, Gregory of Nazianzus, the presider and theological leader of the Second
Ecumenical Council, described what the Joint Declaration calls justification in
terms of the healing of our fallen human nature through Christs sharing of that same
fallen human nature: For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but
that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.[56] It is this same soteriological
consideration which informs both the anthropology and the christology of Maximos
the Confessor three hundred years later, and which causes iconophile authors such as
John of Damascus and Theodore of Stoudios in the eighth and ninth century,
respectively, to recognize that an unwillingness to depict Jesus Christ in the flesh
amounted to a denial of the reality of the incarnation and hence threatened the entire
framework of salvation.
In other words, the christological definitions of the ecumenical councils are
grounded in a relational-ontological soteriology based on humanitys being
homoousios (one in essence, substance, or nature) in our humanity with Jesus Christ,
who is in turn homoousios with God the Father. Thus, the soteriology of the
ecumenical councils (and hence of Eastern Christianity) is based not on putting us
juridically right with God, but on the existential healing of human nature through
the person of Jesus Christ. As Bishop Kallistos Ware notes in his introduction to

[54] Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 2,91; quoted in Aghiorgoussis, "Orthodox Soteriology,"
49.
[55] The Second Ecumenical Council, Constantinople I, held in 381, dealt with Arianism and also
with Apollinarianism, which denied that Christ possessed a rational soul; the Fourth Ecumenical
Council, held in Chalcedon in 451, rejected monophysitism (one nature in Christ), affirming
that Jesus Christ exists in two natures and is completely human, i.e., he assumed a human
nature exactly like ours in everything except sin; the Sixth Ecumenical Council was discussed
earlier; the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II, convoked in 787, declared that Jesus Christ
can and must be depicted in images (icons) because of his truly human incarnation.
[56] Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101 (To Cledonius),32, PG 37: 181C-184A; in NPNF, Second
Series, vol. 7, p. 440.

Orthodox theology and spirituality, The Orthodox Way, Orthodox soteriology is

inescapably linked to Christology and may be described salvation as sharing.[57]
Lucian Turcescu[58] has rightly criticized Orthodoxy for focusing so strongly on
theosis that it has tended to ignore the justification side of the coin. However, I
disagree with him that, simply because Jewish notions of justification had forensic
significance, therefore Paul, or the early church, understood the term in the same
legalistic way (in fact, Pauls point in Romans is precisely to rid Jewish Christians of
their forensic understanding of justification rooted in the Levitical law). Orthodoxy
may emphasize theosis (correlated to sanctification in the Lutheran model) and see
one continuous relational process between the human person and God, [59] but it
does not ignore the distinction between justification and sanctification. Rather, the
Eastern Church recognizes two purposes to the incarnation, which may be identified
with justification and sanctification: restoring human nature to its prelapsarian state
of justification and providing the possibility for true union with God through
participation, respectively. The former purpose was necessitated by the Fall and has
been the focus of Western soteriology. For the East the restoration of human nature
to its prelapsarian potential (justification) explains why the Son of God took on
humanitys fallen human nature, i.e., why it was necessary for Christ to die and be
resurrected. Hence, Orthodoxy agrees in affirming the free nature of that restoration
through grace (in fact, Orthodoxy proclaims the gratuitous nature of our justification
even more strongly than most of Western Christianity since it is given to all
humanity, not just the elect or those receiving prevenient grace).[60] However, the
Fall is not the primary reason for the incarnation itself since, as Maximos and others
point out, the incarnation was always part of Gods plan since it was the means by
which humanity could truly achieve salvation, understood as theosis or union with
God, an approach which will be discussed in more detail in the following section.
The Cross thus acquires ontological rather than forensic significance.[61] This is
why juridical notions of atonement and justification cannot truly be reconciled with
[57] Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, Revised Ed. (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary
Press, 1995), 73-6.
[58] Lucian Turcescu, "Soteriological Issues in the Joint Declaration: An Orthodox Perspective,"
paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists,
September 28-30 Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Fla., 2001.
[59] See, e.g., Aden, "Justification and Sanctification."
[60] See, e.g., John Chrysostom, Homily 10 on Romans, PG 60: 473-80; English translation in
NPNF, First Series, vol. 11, pp. 401-5. Chrysostom is adamant that, just as Adams sin led to
death to all humanity, so Christs death and resurrection have led to the justification of all
humanity.
[61] Lutheran theologian Susanne Heine has advocated a clearer recognition of the ontological
significance of the doctrine of justification by faith, and finds [Western] Christianity at a
disadvantage to Eastern religions whose theologies are based on an ontological interrelationality
of all things. See Susanne Heine, Being precedes doing. The ontological approach to

the soteriology underlying the christology of the ecumenical councils. John Breck
identified this as the primary reason why Eastern soteriology never developed along
Western lines: none of the traditional Western theories of justification,
atonement, etc., really necessitates personal divine involvement in the death that
accomplishes our redemption.[62] In other words, the soteriology implicit in the
christological definitions of the ecumenical councils is based on the assumption that
Christ saves us primarily by who he is as opposed to what he does, although the
importance of the latter is affirmed as well, e.g., in the Nicene Creed, without
however defining the exact manner in which his actions were salvific.
Thus, as many theologians have noted, the Orthodox understanding of Christs
crucifixion, derived from soteriological christology, is diametrically opposed to the
Anselmian theory of satisfaction which underpins both Catholic and Lutheran
notions of justification. God is not a judge in a courtroom, and Christ did not pay
the legal penalty or fine for our sins. His redemptive work was not completed on
the Cross, with the Resurrection as a nice afterword. The eternal Son of God took
on our fallen human nature, including our mortality, in order to restore it to the
possibility of immortality. Jesus Christ died so that he might be resurrected. Just as
Christ is homoousios with the Father in his divinity, we are homoousios with him in
his humanity; it is through our sharing of his crucified and resurrected human nature
that our own human nature is transformed from mortality to immortality. John
Meyendorff summarizes the significance of the Cross for the Christian East as
follows:
In the East, the Cross is envisaged not so much as the punishment of the just
one, which satisfies a transcendent Justice requiring a retribution for ones sins. As
George Florovsky rightly puts it: the death on the Cross was effective, not as a
death of an Innocent One, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord. The point was
not to satisfy a legal requirement, but to vanquish the frightful cosmic reality of death,
which held humanity under its usurped control and pushed it into the vicious circle of
sin and corruption.[63]
The limited atonement, satisfaction, or justification language in certain Greek
Fathers, such as Athanasius,[64] read within these Fathers broader theological
justification with reference to interreligious dialogue, LWF Documentation, No. 45 (March 2000),
81-93.
[62] John Breck, "Divine Initiative: Salvation in Orthodox Theology," in Salvation in Christ: A
Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1992), 116.
[63] John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), 160-1;
reprinted in Aghiorgoussis, "Orthodox Soteriology," 46.{Aghiorgoussis: 46}.
[64] There are relatively few Greek patristic references to a juridical soteriology; perhaps the most
notable is Athanasius in De incarnatione 20:2: But since the debt owed by all men had still to be
paid, since all had to die, therefore after the proof of his divinity given by his works, he now on

framework, are thus recognized not as reified doctrinal statements supporting

Western atonement soteriologies that would not fully develop for close to or even
more than a millennium yet, but as metaphors for an existentialist soteriology of
sharing. The dramatically different nature of this ontological soteriology, grounded in
the christology of the ecumenical councils, explains why, as the Common
Statement from the American Lutheran-Orthodox dialogues notes, the Orthodox
have been uneasy with medieval Western formulations that conceive of Christs
atonement as a satisfaction for sins.[65]
2.

Beyond Justification Salvation as Deification

This ontological approach to our redemption in Christ has at least two important
implications with respect to the Joint Declaration. First, justification, as has been
seen, is understood not in a juridical sense but in an existential sense; hence, as
mentioned above, Gods initiative and action in the creation of humanity according
to his image, and in the incarnation, Cross, and resurrection are of universal
significance to humanity and cosmic significance to creation as a whole.[66]
Orthodoxy understands justification in Christ as restoring to all humanity the
potential for immortality and communion with God lost in the Fall. This is because
all human beings share the human nature of Jesus Christ, which was restored in the
behalf of all men offered the sacrifice and surrendered his own temple to death on behalf of all, in
order to make them all guiltless and free from the first transgression, and to reveal himself
superior to death, showing own incorruptible body as first-fruits of the universal resurrection. in
Athanasius, Contra gentes and De incarnatione, ed. Robert W. Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971), p. 183; reprinted in "Common Statement: Christ "in Us" and Christ "for Us" in
Lutheran and Orthodox Theology," in Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed.
John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 24. However, for
Athanasius, as for other Eastern Christian writers, the focus is on overcoming death through
Christs consubstantial unity with humanity, which heals human nature, and restores its capacity
for deification. E.g., earlier in De incarnatione, Athanasius moves seamlessly from debt
language to union and nature language: For being over all, the Word of God naturally by
offering His own temple and corporeal instrument for the life of all satisfied the debt by His death.
And thus He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally
clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection. On the Incarnation, 9, 2, in
NPNF, Second Series 2, vol. 4, p. 41.
[65] "Common Statement," 25.
[66] The broader consequences are evident from Paul on, e.g., in Romans 8, in Irenaeus
theology of recapitulation, and in Maximos the Confessors theology of humanitys overcoming
the divisions within all parts of creation. Even John Chrysostom, the Greek Father perhaps most
beloved by Western, especially evangelical, Christians, describes Christs death and resurrection
as having universal and even cosmic signifance contrast, e.g., Chrysostoms exegesis of
Romans 5 (PG 60: 474-480) with that of Augustine or Luther. As John Meyendorff declares, The
Christ-event is a cosmic event both because Christ is the Logos and, therefore, in God the
agent of creation and because He is man, since man is a microcosm. Mans sin plunges
creation into death and decay, but mans restoration in Christ is a restoration of the cosmos to its
original beauty. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press,
1974), 152; quoted in Aghiorgoussis, "Orthodox Soteriology," 43.

resurrection. Christs incarnation, passion, and resurrection thus serve as a

restoration of the potential of prelapsarian human nature.
However, whether or not human beings avail themselves of the redemption and
restoration offered in Christ is dependent on how they exercise their human freedom
by responding positively to union with Christ. As Maximos the Confessor
demonstrated and the Fathers of the Sixth Ecumenical Council implicitly affirmed,
orientation toward God and the freedom to act on it are inherent in human nature.
John Breck observes that, while God is the one who initiates, the objects of that
initiative humanity and the cosmos are neither passive nor static. By virtue of
created nature, humanity possesses an inner, dynamic capacity for response, one that
engages the entire cosmos of which humanity is the microcosm.[67]
But, secondly, Eastern Christianitys sharing soteriology, because of its
relational nature, does not equate salvation with justification alone, particularly
justification conceived in a juridical fashion (imputed righteousness). The first
section of the Joint Declaration acknowledges the numerous biblical facets of the
term justification or righteousness, including its spiritual, ethical, and sacramental
significance but does not integrate this broad spectrum fully into the third and fourth
sections (The Common Understanding of Justification and Explicating the
Common Understanding of Justification, respectively).
Orthodoxy conceives of justification broadly, and of salvation more broadly still
as a relationship and an organic process, not as an event or static state of being. This
is, in part, because it was clear that the Eastern Fathers regarded salvation as more
than simply a restoration of what had been lost in the first Adam. For whatever the
final consummation brought, it had to incorporate what had been won in the second
Adam.[68] In other words, salvation in Christ means more than a return to the
prelapsarian human existence of Paradise. From the perspective of Irenaeus of
Lyons, for example, Adam and Eve were spiritual infants. Salvation must encompass
not only healing but also spiritual development and maturity.
To approach this idea from another angle, Gen. 1:26-27, because it forms the
basis for Eastern Christian anthropology, consequently is normative for its
soteriology as well. Summarizing an earlier section, humanity, according to Gen.
1:27, is created in the image of God but, based on Gen. 1:26, it is created to become
the image and likeness of God. The likeness of God, however, is not understood in
an ethical sense, i.e., as simply acquiring virtues. Eastern Christianity is not
Pelagian in the sense it is typically understood in the West; that is, human beings
cannot acquire the divine likeness through human-initiated and -dominated activity.
Rather, growing into the divine likeness living an ever more authentic human
[67] Breck, "Divine Initiative," 108-9.
[68] Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers," 134.

existence means communion and union with God. As Meyendorff observes,

natural human life presupposes communion with God.[69] Again, Irenaeus of
Lyons, a disciple once removed from John the Evangelist, is instructive. Meyendorff
explains the double significance of the incarnation for Irenaeus, viewed through his
dynamic anthropology of spiritual maturation and his soteriology of recapitulation in
Christ, in the following way:
This approach implies that in Christ there was a restoration of the true human
nature, not an external addition of grace to an otherwise autonomous human
existence. Salvation does not consist in an extrinsic justification although this
legal dimension is fully legitimate whenever one approaches salvation within the
Old Testament category of the fulfillment of the law (as Paul does in Romans and
Galatians) but in a renewed communion with God, making human life fully human
again.[70]
This Eastern Christian understanding of communion or union with God
connotes a true union which, like the appearance of Christ on Mt. Tabor, transfigures
and deifies our human nature. In one of the most succinct and explicit articulations
of this doctrine, known as theosis (deification),[71] Athanasius declared, He [the
Logos] became man that we might be deified.[72] Similarly, in his Defense of the
Nicene Definition, the Alexandrian bishop asserted:
. . . the Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and that
we[,] partaking of His Spirit, might be deified[,] a gift which we could not
otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body, for
hence we derive our name of [people] of God and [people] in Christ.[73]

As William Rusch has demonstrated,[74] this concept of salvation as theosis is

consistently evident in the early writings of the Christian East: implicitly in the letters
of Ignatius of Antioch, and explicitly in the writings of second- and early thirdcentury theologians such as Irenaeus of Lyons, [75] Clement of Alexandria,[76] and
[69] John Meyendorff, "Humanity: "Old" and "New" -- Anthropological Considerations," in
Salvation in Christ: A Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue, ed. John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias
(Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1992), 63.
[70] Meyendorff, "Humanity," 62.
[71] The biblical locus classicus for the doctrine of deification is 2 Pet. 1:4, which promises that,
through Gods power, we may escape from corruption and may become participants of the divine
nature.
[72] Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54; PG 25:192B; in NPNF, Second Series, vol. 4, p. 65.
[73] Athanasius, Defense of the Nicene Definition, 3, 14, PG 25:448C-448D; in NPNF, Second
Series, vol. 4, p. 159.
[74] Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers," 136-40.{Rusch: 136-40}.
[75] See, e.g., Against the Heresies, 5, 1, 1.
[76] The Teacher (Paedagogus), 1,5,26; Miscellanies (Stromata), 5,10,63, etc.

Origen,[77] as well as later in the fourth-century Athanasius and the Cappadocians,

and later still in Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximos the Confessor.
The doctrine of deification is a direct consequence of an incarnational, hence
ontological, soteriology. Theosis is not just the goal of salvation; it is salvation in
its essence and fulfillment. Orthodox theologian John Breck argues:
If the telos of human existence were less than a total sharing in triune life if
people were called, for example, to mere fellowship with God through justification
or even to eternal enjoyment of the beatific vision then it would have been
theoretically possible for God to work out salvation without restoring to a true
incarnation that required the eternal divine Logos to accept death in his assumed
humanity. Full ontological participation of God in our human life is necessary if we
are to know the same quality and degree of participation in his divine life.[78]
So, if understanding the soteriological significance of the incarnation as
justification classically refers to the restoration of fallen human nature through
Christs death and resurrection, then the flip side of the incarnation is the fulfillment
of humanitys authentic existence in communion with God. Hence, Rusch identifies
in Irenaeus theology two images of the soteriological effect of Christs incarnation:
one of salvation by sharing in Christs human conquest of sin, the other salvation by
participation in the nature of the divine Logos.[79]
Because the incarnation has a double significance restoring humanitys
prelapsarian human nature and making possible a deified human existence it is not
dependent on humanitys Fall. This is why Orthodoxy eschews the notion of felix
culpa, the happy fault of Adam. Maximos the Confessor, for instance, articulates
the concept of humanity as mediator or priest to all creation because its unique
microcosmic makeup allows it to overcome and unite the various divisions existing in
creation (e.g., between physical and spiritual). However, Maximos insists, only God
Himself is able to overcome the ultimate division that between the Uncreated and
the created, and He can do so only in His own Person.
God becomes a human being, in order to save lost humanity. Through
himself he has, in accordance with nature, united the fragments of the universal
nature of the all, ... by which the union of the divided naturally comes about, and
thus he fulfils the great purpose of God the Father, to recapitulate everything
both in heaven and earth in himself (Eph. 1:10), in whom everything has been
created (Col. 1:16).[80]
[77] On Prayer (De oratione), 27,13; Commentary on John 29,27,29.
[78] Breck, "Divine Initiative," 116.
[79] Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers," 136.
[80] Maximos the Confessor, De ambigua 41, PG 91:1308D, in Louth, Maximos, 159.

3.

Grace, Faith, Theosis, and the Finns

To sum up the previous sections: Orthodoxy sees human nature as fallen and
mortal, but as retaining its fundamental orientation toward God and not as inheriting
some type of juridical guilt; we are redeemed from this fallen human nature by the
incarnation of the Son of God, who assumes and shares this fallen, mortal nature in
every aspect except sin, even unto death, restoring it to its former potentiality (i.e.,
justifying us) through his resurrection, in which we share. But restoration to the
potentiality of Adam and Eve is just a starting point in Orthodox theology; we are
called to communion with God, to grow and mature into the likeness of God, to
become deified by participation in Gods own life through the Holy Spirit.
Communion with God is of course a vital part of the spirituality of Western
Christianity. Its soteriological significance, however, has been weaker in the West
than in the East. Roman Catholic theology historically has been much closer than
Lutheran theology to Orthodoxy in this regard with its doctrine of the beatific
vision. Its spirituality has been closer yet. That is, while much medieval Western
spirituality is articulated in terms of true union with God,[81] medieval scholastic
theology describes communion with God in terms that create a barrier between the
human and the divine. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, develops through his
epistemology a theology of participation in God which might be related to
theosis. [82] However, as William Cavanaugh explains Aquinas understanding of
participation, it excludes true union because Aquinas defines divine grace as
created: the participation of the Holy Spirit in us is created charity.[83] Not
surprisingly, it is the return to the Fathers at the heart of much of Catholicisms
nouvelle thologie which helped to produce in the modern era theologians such as
Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, who provide an integralism between
God and humanity found, in a slightly different way, in Karl Rahner as well. [84]
[81] A number of women mystics from various Western European cultures use particularly strong
imagery for this union, e.g., Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila and Julian of Norwich.
[82] In Aquinass realist epistemology, knowledge is a form of participation, since to know
something is to become conformed to it, to possess its form without actually being it. To
understand a nature is to receive the form of that nature in the mind immaterially. William T.
Cavanaugh, "A Joint Declaration?: Justification as Theosis in Aquinas and Luther," The Heythrop
Journal 41, no. 3 (third quarter 2000): 272-3.
[83] Cavanaugh, "A Joint Declaration?" 279., n. 19}. In fact, for Aquinas, the only grace which is
truly uncreated is the grace of the inner life of the Trinity (i.e., the immanent Trinity), in which
created beings cannot participate.
[84] E.g., Karl Rahner, Nature and Grace: Dilemmas in the Modern Church, trans. Dinah Wharton
(London; New York: Burns and Oates; Sheed and Ward, 1964). For an overall analysis of nature
and grace in such theologians as de Lubac, Rahner, and von Balthasar, see Stephen J. Duffy,

By contrast, the East never experienced scholasticism. The continuous witness of

the Eastern Church Fathers, from Origen and the Cappadocians to the 14th-century
Byzantine monk and archbishop Gregory Palamas,[85] is that grace is not created
by God. It is Gods own Being: not the divine essence, which remains utterly
unknowable, but the divine energies, which are Gods own self as immanent in
creation. Palamas observes that there are three unions with or within the Divine: 1)
essential union or union of essence, i.e., the Trinity; 2) personal union, i.e., the
hypostatic union of the theanthropos Jesus Christ; and 3) participatory union, or
union by participation, i.e., with Gods energies. It is this third union which makes
possible theosis the deification of the human person. Thus, while the union
between human and divine in Christ is qualitatively different (hypostatic as opposed
to participatory) from that possible to us, Christs transfigured human nature,
revealed to the disciples on Mt. Tabor, serves as the model for realizing our full
potential as human beings created for communion with God and who, while
remaining always creatures, may be transformed into divine creatures [86] through
grace, that is, through union with Gods own energies.
If Roman Catholic theology differs markedly from Orthodoxy in respect to the
created versus uncreated nature of grace and hence participation as presence versus
participation as union, traditionally Lutheranisms doctrine of justification by grace
alone, through faith alone has seemed even more removed from the Orthodox
doctrine of salvation as deification. However, the work of several Finnish Lutheran
scholars over the past two decades is doing much to revise that assessment.[87]
Under the informal leadership of Tuomo Mannermaa, these theologians have
reexamined the meaning of the word faith in the writings of Martin Luther,
particularly in his earlier works. What they have uncovered has sparked controversy
and shaken the foundations of Luther scholarship and of Lutheran thought. Faith,
for Luther, is not primarily intellectual or emotional, nor is it something which God
simply gives to us. Mannermaa and his disciples have latched onto the significance of
Luthers expression, in ipsa fide Christus adest (in faith itself Christ is present).
Faith, these Finnish scholars say, is for Luther nothing less than union with Christ.

The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought, Theology and Life Series,
vol. 37 (Collegeville, Minn.: A Michael Glazier Book published by The Liturgical Press, 1992).
[85] See, e.g., Gregory Palamas, The Triads, ed. John Meyendorff, trans. Nicholas Gendle (New
York: Paulist Press, 1983).
[86] The English title of Orthodox theologian Panayiotis Nellas book, Deification in Christ, trans.
Norman Russell, foreword Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimirs
Seminary Press, 1987), does not capture the full sense of its original Greek title, Zwovon
QTheouvmenon, which might more literally be translated as Ddeified aAnimal or Deified
Creature.
[87] Examples of the research and findings of these Finnish theologians have been brought
together in Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish
Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998).

Mannermaa argues that Luther teaches justification or righteousness as inseparable

from communion with God, theosis, in his Lectures on Galatians:
Christ who is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart is the Christian
righteousness, on account of which God counts us righteous and gives us eternal life
as gift. At least on the level of terminology, the distinction, drawn in later
Lutheranism, between justification as forgiveness and sanctification as divine
indwelling, is alien to the Reformer. Forgiveness and indwelling of God are
inseparable in the person of Christ . In that sense, in Luthers theology,
justification and theosis as participation in God are also inseparable.[88]
Moreover, fellow Finn Simo Peura notes that Luther abandoned the concept of
created grace because the scholastic notion of habitual grace as an accident did not
go far enough to stress the ontological points that Luther wished to maintain. [89]
Furthermore, Mannermaa discerns in the Formula of Concord (FC) divine indwelling
inhabitatio Dei not simply as gift, but as reality.[90] Nevertheless, the FC
distinguishes divine indwelling from justification and places it subsequent to it. In
addition, Peura contends that the FC excludes from gift everything else that
according to Luther is included in it, [91] and argues that the Formula of Concord
falsely and contrary to Luthers theology divorces forensic justification (Gods
favor) from effective justification or sanctification (Gods gift). [92]
[88] Tuomo Mannermaa, "Justification and theosis in Lutheran-Orthodox Perspective," in Union
with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 38; the nested quote is from
Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1535, Luther, LW, vol. 26, 100-30.
[89] Simo Peura, "Christ as Favor and Gift: The Challenge of Luther's Understanding of
Justification," in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, ed. Carl E. Braaten
and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 48.
[90] Mannermaa, "Justification and itheosis," 27-8.
[91] Peura, "Christ as Favor and Gift," 45.{Peura: 45}.
[92] Of course, it seems puzzling that Lutheran theology could have developed so differently from
the theology of Luther himself, particularly since Lutheran theologians claim to adhere closely to
Luthers own views. Carl Braaten, in his response to Peuras article, notes that Melanchthons
forensic view of justification prevailed over Osianders view of the essential indwelling of the
righteousness of Christ in the believer. Carl E. Braaten, "Response to Simo Peura, "Christ as
Favor and Gift"," in Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther, ed. Carl E.
Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998),
73.{Braaten: 73} Equally (if not perhaps more) importantly, Mannermaa summarizes the results
of Risto Saarinens 1989 dissertation, The Transcendental Interpretation of the Presence-ofChrist Motif in Luther Research, which examines the interpretations by modern scholars of
Luthers emphasis on the ontological presence(Being)-of-Christ in faith, and details how the
philosophical assumptions of traditional Luther research made it impossible to view Luthers
doctrine of justification as a doctrine of real participation or divinization. Tuomo Mannermaa,
"Why is Luther So Fascinating? Modern Finnish Luther Research," in Union with Christ: The New
Finnish Interpretation of Luther, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 3.

Conclusion
Unfortunately, while the stimulating research by Mannermaa and company has
found its way into the Common Statement of the American Lutheran-Orthodox
dialogue, it is marginalized in the Joint Declaration.[93] It is true that the Joint
Declaration was intended to treat the historical misconceptions of battling
confessions regarding the understanding of justification and to underscore the
inefficacy of human works to achieve salvation. Perhaps, then, the Finnish research
on Luther can help point the way to the next stage of bilateral and multilateral
theological dialogue. From an Orthodox perspective, one of the most valuable
contributions of the Finns is that, by spotlighting the non-existential and nonrelational view of faith in forensic justification and by rediscovering within their own
tradition an ontological relationship between soteriology and christology through
broadening justification to include theosis, they have moved Western Christian
theology outside the differentiating, delineating, defining, compartmentalizing
box.[94] From an Orthodox perspective, continued movement away from a
compartmentalized methodology and a juridical and passive anthropology and
soteriology and toward a holistic methodology explicating a more generous
anthropology and an existential, relational, synergistic soteriology would be welcome.
Most of the pieces are there, but soteriology needs to be integrated not only more
ontologically with christology, but also with spirituality and sacramental theology. It
is not coincidental that Eastern Christian theology is not articulated in philosophical
syllogisms or biblical proof-texting; nor does it rely primarily on one or two figures
(e.g., Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin). Orthodox theology, equally based with
Catholicism and Lutheranism in Scripture and the ecumenical councils, is articulated
through the personal and communal spiritual experiences of a number of significant
figures in the life of the Church, from the Apostle John to Gregory the Theologian to
Maximos the Confessor to Gregory Palamas.
Integrating dogmatic theology more closely with spirituality and sacramental
theology, in turn, would also help to make Western Christian soteriology more
explicitly pneumatological. Unfortunately, the pneumatology of the Joint Declaration

[93] Section 4.3 (Justification by Faith and through Grace), para. 26, appears to be influenced
by the new wave of Finnish Lutheran theology. It relates faith to living in communion with God,
and sounds a more organic note. Because Gods act is a new creation, it affects all dimensions
of the person and leads to a life in hope and love. In the doctrine of justification by faith alone, a
distinction but not a separation is made between justification itself and the renewal of ones way
of life that necessarily follows from justification and without which faith does not exist.
Justification and renewal are joined in Christ, who is present in faith.
[94] This is not to say that everyone else has moved with the Finnish theologians. For example,
Michael McDaniel complains: To confuse works with faith, law with gospel, or sanctification with
justification is to make all the promises of God concerning the forgiveness of sin and everlasting
life unintelligible and uncertain. McDaniel, "Salvation," 78.Naturally, the Christian East would
disagree.

is relatively weak.[95] Spirituality and sacramental theology are only occasionally

referenced, with apparently more stress on these areas from the Roman Catholic
participants than from the Lutheran.[96] By contrast, the Holy Spirit is crucial to
Orthodoxys ontologically incarnational soteriology, conceived as both restoration
and deification. Its dynamic and relational nature, and the emphasis on free human
responsiveness to Gods initiative, seen especially in the Easts consistent integration
of its soteriology into its sacramental theology, make it inherently pneumatological. It
was through the Holy Spirit that the Son of God became incarnate; it was through
the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead; it is through the Holy
Spirit that we are doubly initiated into the twofold salvific effects of the incarnation
restoration of our fallen nature through baptism, and the beginning of our growth
toward theosis through the reception of the Holy Spirit in chrismation; and it is
through the Holy Spirit (the epiclesis or calling upon) that communally we are
united to Christ, present in the Eucharist.
The criticisms and suggestions in this article should not be interpreted to mean
that the Joint Declaration is a failure, or, worse yet, useless. The lifting of
condemnations over four centuries old, and the recognition of a like theology in two
important churches not in communion, is a cause for rejoicing. And, of course,
Orthodoxy agrees with both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism in the
fundamental theme of the Joint Declaration: works do not save us, Christ does.
And yet, salvation is an ongoing process of existential faith: as St. Paul says,
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), which the Joint
Declaration cites in paragraph 12. And so, we do indeed work out our own
salvation. Orthodoxy soteriology is synergistic, but not in the perceived Pelagian
sense which has resulted in such a pejorative connotation to the word synergy in
Protestant thought.[97] We do cooperate, or participate, in our salvation precisely
because salvation is relational it is union with God and relationships are not a
one-way street. As human beings created in the image of God, we respond freely to
Gods love and to his restoration of our fallen human nature. As Kallistos Ware
asserts,
As a Trinity of love, God desired to share his life with created persons made
in his image, who would be capable of responding to him freely and willingly in
a relationship of love. Where there is no freedom, there can be no love.[98]
[95] Paragraphs 15 and 16 of section 3, The Common Understanding of Justification, recognize
the role of the Holy Spirit, but, curiously, the Spirit is almost entirely absent from the explication
which follows in section 4.
[96] E.g., paragraphs 24 and 28 in sections 4.2 and 4.4, respectively.
[97] The fear of appearing to allow a role to humanity in justification/salvation is particularly strong
in section 4.1, paragraphs 19-21, of the Joint Declaration.
[98] Ware, The Orthodox Way, 58.

ADDITIONAL READING

Anderson, H. George, T. Austin Murphy, and Joseph A. Burgess, eds.

Justification by Faith. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publ. House, 1985.

Braaten, Carl E. and Robert W. Jenson, eds. Union with Christ: The New
Finnish Interpretation of Luther. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ.
Co., 1998.

Bray, G. L. Justification and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, in David Field,

ed., Here We Stand: Justification by Faith Today (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1986), 103-19.

Cavanaugh, William T. A Joint Declaration?: Justification as Theosis in Aquinas

and Luther, The Heythrop Journal 41:3 (July 2000), 265-280.

Edwards, Henry. Justification, Sanctification and the Eastern Orthodox

Concept of Theosis, Consensus: A Canadian Lutheran Journal of Theology 14:1
(1988), 65-80.

Florovsky, Georges. The Ascetic Ideal and the New Testament: Reflections on
the Critique of the Theology of the Reformation, in Richard S. Haugh, gen. ed., The
Byzantine Ascetic and Spiritual Fathers, vol. 10 in the Collected Works of Georges
Florovsky, trans. Raymond Miller et al. Vaduz, Europa : Bchervertriebsanstalt, 1987

Meyendorff, John and Robert Tobias, eds. and intro. Salvation in Christ: A
Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue. Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1992.

Williams, Anna. The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).