Theological Studies

50 (1989)

NEW LIFE IN CHRIST: SALVATION IN

ORTHODOX THEOLOGY
JOHN MEYENDORFF
St Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary, Crestwood, N.Y.

RTHODOX THEOLOGY is, relatively speaking, a newcomer within the

O fabric of contemporary theology in the West. It is being rediscovered
today in the context of the ecumenical movement, but alsoperhaps
more importantly in the framework of the "return to the sources,"
which characterized post-World War II Roman Catholicism in France
and Germany. This "return" involved a revival of interest in the Eastern
Fathers of the Church and the liturgy, as a living witness to the unbroken
Tradition of early Christianity.
Orthodox Christians indeed understand themselves as heirs of the
Greek Fathers, and the liturgy has been for them the central and essential
expression of the "catholic" nature of the Church. During the long
centuries which followed the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Orthodox
communities of the Middle East and the Balkans had practically no
other means of learning about their faith and witnessing to their Chris-
tian commitment than the liturgy, but it proved to be powerful enough
to keep those communities spiritually alive. In Russia, meanwhile, his-
torical circumstances delayed for long centuries the organic development
of theological thought. It finally emerged into modernity within the
framework of a Western school system and methodology, introduced in
the 18th century by Peter the Great and adopted later in other Orthodox
countries as well.
I will begin this study by a brief overview of theological trends as they
developed in the modern period. Such an introduction is necessary, I
believe, to explain the picture of theological diversity and vitality char-
acteristic of Orthodoxy today and rarely noticed in the West, where
interest in Eastern Christianity is limited to a few specialists.
TRENDS IN SOTERIOLOGY
Coined by Georges Florovsky, the concept of a "Western captivity of
the Orthodox mind" is an inevitable and adequate characterization of
theological realities in the Orthodox world in the period which followed
the fall of Constantinople and which lasted practically until the 19th
century. The Church in the East continued to live through its sacramental
life, through its liturgy, through the spiritual tradition of a few monastic
481
482 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

centers, but books and bookmen, who pretended to represent theology,

were imprisoned in the categories determined by the problems and
conflicts of Western thought: scholasticism, Reformation, Counter Ref-
ormation, Enlightenment. Writing about the period, Florovsky aptly and
sarcastically notes: "The West theologizes, but the East remains silent;
worst of all, without thinking and belatedly, it repeats Western back-
logs."1 This was true of the various "Orthodox confessions" which ap-
peared in the 17th and 18th centuries, and much time elapsed before the
Orthodox learned how to use their own tradition creatively, without
surrendering to the fateful habit of embracing Protestant arguments
against the Roman Catholics and scholastic Latin ideas against the
thought of the Reformation. Indeed, the whole period was dominated by
defensive polemics, whichin the case of the Orthodox worldpro-
ceeded out of the real context of the Orthodox "mind."
The hopelessness of this de facto passivity of Orthodox theology was
first formally acknowledged by Russian lay theologians, the so-called
"older Slavophiles" in the 50s and 60s of the last century, who began to
discover that solutions to Western problems are to be found in the
Eastern tradition. "The older Slavophiles," Florovsky writes, "deduced
Russian tasks from Western needs, from the issues which the other half
of the Christian world would not or could not resolve." This is why,
Florovsky continues, "a creative renaissance of the Orthodox world is a
necessary condition for solving the ecumenical problem,"2 and most
Orthodox theologians would agree with him that such a renaissance
requires a recovery of basic patristic intuitions, which would then be
applied to the problems of today.
It was inevitable that a Latinizing, scholastic, basically "Anselmian"
view of redemption and salvation would be reproduced in such documents
as the Orthodox Confession of Peter Moghila (1640).3 The Confession
itself was actually a reaction against the Calvinist character of another
"confession"that of the patriarch Cyril Loukarisand represented a
good example of how arguments adopted from the Counter Reformation
1
Put russkago bogosloviya ("The Ways of Russian Theology") (2nd ed.; Paris: YMCA,
1981) 515.
2
Ibid. 514.
3
Published by Peter Moghila, metropolitan of Kiev, and later confirmed (with some
modifications) by Eastern patriarchs, the Confession, originally written in Latin, was
translated into Greek and Slavonic (cf. Eng. tr. by R. P. Popivchak, Ann Arbor: University
Microfilms, 1975). It was meant to be a reaction against the Calvinistic Confession of Cyril
Loukaris, patriarch of Constantinople (1629), but in substance and in form it is a document
of the Latin Counter Reformation ("le plan, la matire . . . les expressions mmes de la CO
lui sont venues de l'Occident": A. Malvy et M. Viller, La Confession orthodoxe de Pierre
Moghila [Rome: Oriental Institute, 1927] xciv).
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 483

could be adapted to combat Protestant thought in an Orthodox milieu.

What is more remarkable is that scholastic methodology would survive,
even as a theological revival was taking place in Orthodox textbooks of
systematic theology.4 The reasons for this survival might often have been
simply a matter of scholastic routine, a sense of security offered by an
orderly and rational presentation with an appearance of conservatism
and scientific approach. No real creative use of the intellectual power
contained in the medieval Latin systems was involved in such textbooks,
which remained rather a good example of "Western backlogs" mentioned
by Florovsky.
Parallel to and independent of established theological schools, a revival
of monastic spirituality was taking place in Orthodoxy, starting particu-
larly with the publication of the great patristic texts in the Philokalia of
St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite (1782), its Slavonic translation by St. Paisy
Velichkovsky (d. 1794), and its Russian edition by St. Theophanes the
Recluse (d. 1894).5 The tradition of Byzantine hesychasm and spirituality
represented by this trend placed a major emphasis on the notion of
spiritual progress of the individual and the community, implying synergy
between divine grace and human freedom and refusing any legalistic
understanding of redemption, sacramental grace, and therefore salvation.
The "philocalic" revival contributed greatly to modern developments in
Orthodox theology.
One other development, whose impact on theology was decisive and
which could not have occurred without the influence exercised on intel-
lectually oriented laity by the monastic revival, is the emergence, first in
Russia, but later also in the Balkans and the Middle East, of theological
thought independent of the ecclesiastical academic establishment. One
dominant feature represented by this "lay" theology and adopted from
the monastic tradition is a sharp critique of rationalism and legalism.
Men like I. Kireevsky (1806-56) were "born to philosophy" under the
influence of Schelling, but the same Kireevsky dedicated much of his
energy to the publication and study of the Greek Fathers, published in
4
Starting with Makary Bulgakov, Pravoslavnoe dogmaticheskoe bogoslovie ("Orthodox
Dogmatic Theology") (5 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1849-53; anonymous French tr., Paris, 1859-
60), and ending with the Greek textbooks of C. Androutsos, Domatik tes Orthodoxou
Anatoliks Ekklsias ("Dogmatics of the Orthodox Eastern Church") (Athens: Kratous,
1907), and P. Trembelas, Dogmatik ts Orthodoxou Katholiks Ekklsias ("Dogmatics of
the Orthodox Catholic Church") (Athens: Adelphots Theologn H Zoe, 1958; French tr.
by P. Dumont, 3 vols., Editions de Chvetogne: 1966).
5
There are several expanded, multivolume commented and annotated modern editions
of the Philokalia; a Romanian (by D. Staniloae, Bucharest, 1947 ff.), a French (Abbaye de
Bellefontaine, 1979 ff.), and an English (by G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and Kallistos
Ware, London: Faber and Faber, 1979 ff.) version are in process of publication.
484 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

co-operation with the famous startsy (monastic "elders") of Optino. This

led him to the discovery of the Church and, particularly, "tradition," not
so much as authority and criterion of truth, but rather and essentially as
a "milieu" of "wholesome knowledge," of communion with God and
fellowship within a redeemed humanity. Kireevsky's friend and contem-
porary A. S. Khomyakov (1804-60) is generally better known, particularly
for his concept of "conciliarity" (sobornost), which in fact appeals to the
same principle of communion between free persons, as the context and
the condition for authentic knowledge of God and the Truth. For Kho-
myakov this communion is to be found in the "One Church."6
The theology of those early Slavophiles was looked at initially with
great suspicion by the scholastic establishment, but by the end of the
19th century some of their most important ecclesiological and gnoseo-
logical intuitions won wide acceptance not only in Russia but also in
Orthodox theology at large. This acceptancewhich did not preclude
criticism of some of the more romantic aspects of their thoughtwas
based on the obvious fact that they were faithful to the notion of
"communion," inherited from the early Christian and Greek patristic
tradition, and that communion, rather than any other juridical and
rationalistic model, was adequate for the Orthodox view of "life in Christ"
and salvation.
In Russia polemics against legalism and rationalism dominate the
thought of such major and very established theologians as Anthony
Khrapovitsky7 and Sergy Stragorodsky.8 In his reaction against scholas-
ticism, Anthony, a great admirer of Dostoyevsky, went to some extremes
of moralism and psychologism, which would be congenial to pietistic
trends in liberal Protestantism: redemption, he thought, really took place
in Gethsemane, when Jesus manifested his ultimate "compassionate love"
in his prayer for sinful humanity before the passion. This moralizing
trend did find its most consistent, and definitely liberal, expression in
the works of M. M. Tareev (1866-1934), a well-known and influential
6
For a recent treatment of, and full bibliography on, these two authors, see P. K.
Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism: A Study in Ideas
1: A. S. Xomjakov (The Hague: Mouton, 1961); 2: /. V. Kireevsky (The Hague: Mouton,
1972).
7
His writings were first published in Kazan, 1909 (repr. Jordanville, N.Y., 1956-69);
particularly controversial is his Dogmat iskvpleniya ("The Dogma of Redemption," Bogo-
slovsky vestnik, 1917). Later metropolitan of Kiev, Anthony (d. 1936) became the head of
the "Russian synod abroad" in Yugoslavia.
8
Pravoslavnoe uchenie o spasemi ("The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation") (St. Peters-
burg, 1895). Sergy headed the Russian Church during the tragic years of persecution and
was elected patriarch in 1943.
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 485

professor of ethics at the Theological Academy of Moscow.9

Side by side with the "moralists," the antirationalistic trend was
represented by a different school of thought, inspired primarily by the
task of overcoming philosophical secularism and atheism. Initiated pri-
marily by V. S. Soloviev (d. 1900), this school, heavily dependent upon
German idealism, is known as sophiology. It conceived salvation not in
historical but in cosmic terms, positing an ontologically-divine nature of
creation, with the concept of Sophia, or Divine Wisdom, revealing both
the essence of God and the foundation of created beings. The system,
similar in its fundamental approaches to the thought of Paul Tillich or
Teilhard de Chardin, could not escape the danger of pantheism, although
the main disciples of Soloviev, S. N. Bulgakov (d. 1949)10 and particularly
P. Florensky (d. probably 1938),11 attempted to place sophiology in the
context of the patristic tradition.
All these tendencies and trends are manifestations of a searching,
trying to express the Christian message of salvation in the context of
modern needs and problems. It does appears, however, that a contem-
porary consensus is emerging on the basis of a more rigorous approach
to patristic thought and tradition, which is facilitated by the results of
revived patristic studies. This neo-patristic theology is dominant today
in most Orthodox countries, as well as in the West. Its better-known
representatives are authors like Georges Florovsky,12 as well as Justin
Popovich in Serbia13 and particularly Dumitru Staniloae in Romania,14
9
On Tareev there is a recent unpublished Columbia University dissertation by Paul
Vallire; cf. also P. Vallire, "The Liberal Tradition in Russian Orthodox Tradition," in
The Legacy of St Vladimir (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1989).
10
An apostate seminarian, a Marxist professor of economics, then a returnee to the
faith, a priest, and a seminary dean, S. N. Bulgakov is the author of a series of monumental
treatises which have been recently translated into French; cf., e.g., Du Verbe incarn (Paris:
Aubier, 1982); Philosophie de l'conomie (Paris: Aubier, 1987); in English see J. Pain and
N. Zernov, eds., A Bulgakov Anthology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976).
11
The author of a theological synthesis, Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny (Moscow, 1914; Fr.
tr., La colonne et le fondement de la vrit [Paris: Aubier, 1975]), and many writings which
are being gradually published today, Fr. Florenskysometimes referred to as a Russian
Teilharddied as a confessor of the faith in a concentration camp. He exercises a very
great posthumous influence upon intellectuals returning to the faith today.
12
Cf. G. Florovsky, Collected Works (several vols, published, Belmont, Mass.: Nordland,
1972 ff.)
13
Cf. Dogmatika Pravoskavne Cerkve ("Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church") (Beograd,
1978).
14
The author of a comprehensive work on dogmatics, Fr. Staniloae is able to relate
patristic theology to contemporary philosophical thought in a truly original way. A repre-
sentative collection of his articles appeared in English in D. Staniloae, Theology and the
Church (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1980).
486 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

and Vladimir Lossky in France.15 In Greece the patristic revival is

expressed in a number of publications, and several younger theologians
C. Yannaras,16 P. Nellas,17 and othersare relating patristic thought on
salvation to modern issues in a creative way.
In the context of the patristic revival, another trend, with direct
relevance to the issue of Christology and salvation, is represented by
what is frequently referred to as "Eucharistie ecclesiology." The term
itself was coined by N. Afanasiev, whose major intuition is the identifi-
cation of each local "catholic" Eucharistie community with the Church
as such, and deducing from that original ecclesiology (represented best
by St. Ignatius of Antioch around 100 A.D.) a permanent criterion for
understanding not only ecclesiology but all aspects of soteriology.18 The
eschatological implications of Eucharistie ecclesiology, and its impor-
tance not only in terms of church order but also in Christology and
pneumatology, are developed by John Zizioulas.19 Other dimensions of
Eucharistie ecclesiology, particularly important in defining Christian
ethos, Christian witness in the contemporary world, and the mission of
the Church, are best formulated by Alexander Schmemann.20
In spite of their variety, these various trends of contemporary Orthodox
theology show agreement on the point that salvation is to be understood
in terms of communion, sanctification, or deification (the thesis of the
Greek Fathers), that it is based on a synergy of divine grace and human
freedom. This general approach to the theology of redemption and
salvation has obvious implications for understanding the function of
church institutions. Does it run the dangeras often noted by its
Western criticsof indulging in a sort of Gnostic Monophysitism? The
answer to this question can only come from one's understanding (or
misunderstanding) of the basic content of the Chalcedonian formula,
stating that Christ was both God and man.
15
Lossky's writings (with the exception of his monumental dissertation on Eckhart,
Paris: Aubier, 1960) are translated into English and published by St. Vladimir Seminary
Press, Crestwood, N.Y.: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 1976; In the Image
and Likeness of God, 1974; Orthodox Theology, 1978.
16
Cf., e.g., The Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1984).
17
Deification in Christ: The Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir,
1987).
18
The legacy of Afanasiev is summarized in his book L'Eglise du Saint-Esprit (Paris:
Cerf, 1983).
19
Cf. an easily accessible collection of his articles in Being as Communion (Crestwood,
N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1985).
20
Cf. particularly For the Life of the World (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1973) and
The Eucharist (ibid. 1987).
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 487
CHRIST, THE SAVIOR
A most prevailing fear among many is that the recognition of Christ's
divinity implies a diminution of his humanity. The high Christology or
the descending Christology of the Gospel of John and, later, of the entire
patristic tradition is often viewed today as a major danger not only for
sound exegesis but also for spirituality. Exegetically, it gives primacy to
supernatural and miraculous events, such as the resurrection, and makes
any demythologizing difficult. On the level of spirituality, it calls Chris-
tians to forget the humanuni, to look for mystical escapes away from
social and historical responsibilities. Indeed, if the goal of the faith is to
seek Jesus pre-existing as God, his human life is of no real interest: "He
looks like a man, speaks like a man, suffers and dies like a man. But
underneath he is divine, and his genuine humanity is suspect."21
How can a real humanity in Christ be expressed? Some modern
Christologies had recourse to schemes known as kenotic. Using, rather
arbitrarily, the Pauline expression of Phil 2:7 ("he emptied himself
ekensen heauton) and giving it a specific philosophical interpretation,
these Christologies imagine Christ emptying himself of his divinity as he
was becoming more human. In his human death the "emptying" reached
its ultimate point: the man Jesus died, while God, immortal by nature,
remained free of death.22 His person is then imagined as containing
constantly-shifting levels of divinity and humanity, depending upon his
acting either as God or as man. "The pre-existent One," writes John
Knox, "emptied himself of such attributes of deity as omnipotence and
omniscience but retained the more important qualities, and in so doing
exemplified not only the very heart of divinity, but also what humanity
truly is."23 Those who share a similar concern for preserving an authentic
and full humanity in Jesus try to rehabilitate the Antiochian school of
Christology represented by Theodore of Mopsuestia and, eventually,
Nestorius. In that tradition the human attributes of Christ are predicated
of him as "Son of Mary," distinct from the Son of God. Although the
historical Nestorianism of the fifth century stopped short of affirming
clearly the existence of "two Sons" in the prospon, or "person," of Christ,
there is no doubt that such a conclusion comes out logically from their
21
G. O'Collins, What Are They Saying about Jesus? (New York: Paulist, 1977) 2.
22
The kenotic scheme is also used in the sophiology of S. Bulgakov, who considers the
kenotic theories as "the most important current of Christological thought since the
ecumenical councils." Bulgakov writes: "The eternal God makes Himself a God-in-becoming
in God-man. He empties Himself of His eternal divinity, lowers Himself to the level of
human life and in it and through it makes man capable of receiving God" (Du Verbe incarn
146-47).
23
The Humanity and Divinity of Christ (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1967) 104.
One wonders who can define what are the "more important" qualities of God.
488 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

presuppositions. This is recognized by those who even today interpret

the Chalcedonian definition in 451 as a welcome posthumous rehabili-
tation of Theodore after the victory of St, Cyril of Alexandria at Ephesus
(431)24 and consider that the reaffirmation of Cyrillian Christology by
the Fifth Council (553) was in fact a victory of Monophysitism in the
East, under the cover of an artificial theory called today neo-Chalcedo-
nianism.
The common feature of all such attitudes is the belief that divinity
and humanity are ontologically incompatible, and that such concepts as
communion or deification, if taken literally and seriously, are inappro-
priate borrowings from Neoplatonism, leading to a denial of true human-
ity in Jesus, with all the implicit theological, ethical, and historical
consequences of such a denial.
Clearly, the problem here lies on two levels: the level of anthropology
and the dimension of divine (and human) personhood as expressed in
the concept of hypostasis,25 On both levels the tradition expressed in
post-Chalcedonian developments meets several concerns of modern
thought.
1) It has been often noted that the Eastern patristic tradition under-
stood humanity in terms of participation in God as, in a sense, its natural
characteristic. The normal human existence as created by God presup-
poses "grace." In describing Adam before the Fall, St. Gregory of Nyssa
speaks of his "beatitude of immortality," "justice," and "purity."26 Jean
Danilou, in his well-known book on Gregory, notes: "Gregory identifies
realities which Western theology considers distinct Man, created
'according to the image/ is for Gregory what man is by nature (physin).
And the image includes what we call intellectual life, the nous, and the
supernatural life, the pneuma"27 W. J. Burghardt showed a similar
24
Cf., e.g., F. J. van Beeck: "To reduce the humanity of Christ to a mere anhypostatic
nature goes against the intention of Chalcedon, which never meant to indulge in an effort
to 'salvage* Christ's divinity by reducing his humanity to a 'pure nature'" (Christ Pro-
claimed: Christology in Rhetoric [New York: Paulist, 1979] 51); also Ch. Moeller: "How can
the human nature of Jesus be perfectly consubstantial with ours if it is devoid of a human
hypostasis?" ("Le Chalcdonisme et le No-Chakdonisme en orient de 451 la fin du Vie
sicle," in Grillmeier-Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalhedon I [Wrzburg: Echter, 1951] 697); for
a recent critical review, see G. Havrilak, "Chalcedon and Orthodox Christology Today," St.
Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 33 (1989) 127-45.
25
These points are made by J. Breck in his brief "Reflections on the 'Problem' of
Chalcedonian Christology," St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 33 (1989) 147-57, and are
developed in my book Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir,
1975).
26
De opif horn. 16 (PG 44, 177-85).
27
Platonisme et thologie mystique: Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de saint Grgoire de
Nysse (Paris: Aubier, 1944) 54.
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 489
dimension in the thought of Cyril of Alexandria,28 and there is no doubt
that the thought of the Greek Fathers on this point is consistent with
the theocentric anthropology expressed already in the second century by
St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Today a theocentric anthropology is not only
maintained by Orthodox theologians29 but constitutes a hopeful and
widespread development among Roman Catholics, particularly charac-
teristic of Karl Rahner.
The concept of communion with God or deification (thesis)9 which in
Greek patristic thought was used to define the authentic human destiny
and also the purpose of man's creation by God, can be misunderstood in
pantheistic terms. The Neoplatonic formulae and other philosophical
expressions used by the patristic authors can contribute to such misin-
terpretations. In fact, however, the concept of thesis is to be understood
in a Christological context of redemption, which excludes pantheism.
It is significant that St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who coined the
famous formula "The Logos assumed humanity, that we might become
God,"30 also defended (against the Neoplatonic tradition of Origen) the
absolute transcendence of the divine nature: creatures exist by the will
of God, as distinct from the divine Logos, who is Son of God by nature.
"The nature of creatures," he writes, " . . . is fluid, impotent, mortal, and
composite,"31 and "they can even cease to exist if the Creator so wishes."32
Athanasius' thought implies a radical rejection of Origen's vision of God
as the eternal Creator by nature, and of his view of the original (as well
as eschatological) state of created beings as participants of God's very
essence.33 For Athanasius, therefore, deification can only be based upon
the historical fact of the Incarnation: the assumption by the Logos,
consubstantial with the Father (and not with the creation), of the mortal,
limited, and perishing human nature. This does not exclude a theology
of "logoi of creatures" and the idea that the incarnate Logos is also the
Logos "through whom all things were made," but even the pre-existing
plan of God about creation lies on the level of God's will (or His pre-

28
The Image of God in Man according to Cyril of Alexandria (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America, 1957) 38.
29
Cf., for instance, P. Nellas, Deification in Christ: The Nature of the Human Person
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1987) ibid. 21-42; Meyendorff, Catholicity and the Church
(ibid., 1983) 21-26.
30
On the Incarnation 54 (PG 25,192 B).
31
Against the Heathen 41 (PG 25, 81 CD).
32
Against the Arians 1:20 (PG 26, 55 A).
33
On this see G. Florovsky, "The Concept of Creation in St. Athanasius," Studia
Patristica 6, part 4 (TU 81; Berlin, 1962) 36-67; cf. also J. Meyendorff, "Creation in the
History of Orthodox Theology," St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 27 (1983) 27-37.
490 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

eternal, uncreated "energies")not His nature or essence. God, as Cre-

ator and as Savior, is a personal God, exercising the power of His love in
absolute freedom.
The Christology of Cyril of Alexandria is also based on the notion of
a se//-giving God. His is a theology of the Emmanuel"God with us"
(Mt 1:23)affirming the personal assumption by the divine Logos of all
the aspects of humanity in its fallen state, including death. Theopasch-
ism, i.e. confession of the fact that the Logos was the only subject of
death on Golgotha,34 is an essential point of his polemics against Nestor-
ius.35 It did not imply that God could suffer or die in His very nature or
essence: the incarned Logos suffered death, not the divine nature. The
point of Cyril was to affirm that God alone is the Savior, entirely upon
His personal action and initiative (although it does imply a free human
response). Actually, an interesting parallelism can be established between
the Christology of Cyril and the neo-orthodox thought of Karl Barth.36
But if such is indeed the context of the doctrine of deification, how are
we to understand theological anthropology and the idea, referred to
above, that participation in God is, in a sense, a "natural" human
characteristic? Was not affinity and participation an element of human-
ity on the level of creation, independently of the historical incarnation
of the Logos?
The answer to this question was sometimes foundunsatisfactorily, I
believein the notion of an impersonal, ontological affinity or continuity
between the Creator and the creatures. Speaking of the Incarnation, S.
Bulgakov asks: "Do people sufficiently realize that this dogma is not
primary, but derivative? In itself it demands the prior existence of
absolutely necessary dogmatic formulations concerning a primordial God-
man-hood."37 This approach seemed attractive also for many in the
modern West who were concerned with transcending the secular percep-
tion of the created universefor instance, Paul Tillich or Teilhard de
Chardin.
Whatever partial truth there might be in their fully legitimate concern
for establishing an authentically theocentric conception of creation, they
34
"If anyone does not confess that the Logos of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified
in the flesh and tasted death in the flesh . . . let him be anathema." Third Letter to
Nestorius, in J. Alberigo et al., eds., Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta (3rd ed.; Basel:
Herder, 1962) 61.
35
Cf. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought 13-28, 68-89,
36
At least the "early" Barththe author of the Rmerbrief and of the earlier parts of
the Dogmatik.
37
A Bulgakov Anthology 152. For Bulgakov, and other disciples of Vladimir Soloviev,
like P. Florensky, the "primordial God-man-hood" is, of course, the Sophia, or Wisdom of
God in its uncreated and created aspects.
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 491
miss the personal or hypostatic dimension both in God and in humanity.
Indeed, it is this hypostatic dimension which appears in the Incarnation
as a unique manifestation of divinity and humanity united in one con-
crete, historical person.
2) Human freedom, which belongs to each human person, appears in
the Greek patristic tradition as the real expression of the image of God.
"Adam," writes St. Basil, "received from the Creator a free life, because
his soul had been created after the image of God."38 The same idea is
developed even further by Gregory of Nyssa39 and by Cyril of Alexandria.
"Man," writes Cyril, "from the origin of creation, received control over
his desires and could freely follow the inclinations of his choice, for the
Deity, whose image he is, is free."40 Therefore freedom of the human
person points to the divine freedom, which is the origin of creation itself.
The Incarnation clearly implies a dimension of the hypostatic or
personal existence of God, distinct from the natural or essential dimen-
sion. By nature or essence, God is changeless. In His essence, therefore,
there is no becoming. Nevertheless, "the Word became (egeneto) flesh"
(Jn 1:14), i.e. He undertook change by becoming something He was not
before. Furthermore, since the human nature is necessarily changeable
and exists in history, the changes in the human life of Jesus had to be
appropriated not essentially but personally by the Logos, including death
itself: otherwise He would not have been fully human. It was, therefore,
the very divine hypostasis of the Son which came out of divine transcend-
ence and became visible and accessible in the humanity of Jesus, restoring
human nature in accordance with its divine prototype.
If Christology is, indeed, to imply the inaccessibility and absolute
transcendence of divine nature, as well as the openness and existential
changeability of the hypostasis, the formula adopted by the Council of
ChalcedonJesus Christ as "one hypostasis in two natures"acquires a
clarity and relevance which was probably not fully perceived by its
authors themselves. The full implications of the formula would be devel-
oped gradually in what is (perhaps inadequately) termed Byzantine neo-
Chalcedonianism. Indeed, the basic soteriological intuition of Cyrilthe
personal unity of the incarned Logosand the need to distinguish
between the divine and the human natures had to be fully acknowledged
together. It became gradually clear how, on the one hand, the hypostatic
life in God expresses a mutual openness of the three hypostases to one
another, and how, on the other hand, the hypostasis of the Son opened
itself to creation and appropriated humanity, making it to be the "hu-
38
Horn. 6 (PG 31, 344B).
39
J. Gaith, La conception de la libert chez Grgoire de Nysse (Paris: Vrin, 1953) 40-66.
40
Glaphyra on Gen. 1 (PG 69, 24C).
492 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
41
manity of God."
Thus the openness of the divine hypostases is a mutual openness
within the Holy Trinity, but it is also an openness downwardstoward
creation. It reveals the meaning of the definition of God as love, because
love implies personal mutuality and relationshipseternal and tran-
scendent in the Trinity, but also expanding beyond the being of God into
the temporal being of creatures willed by God.
On the other hand, human beings also are, hypostatically, open up-
wards. As Lars Thunberg noted in the case of St. Maximus the Confessor,
"Maximus is able to express his conviction that there is a personal aspect
in man's life, which goes, as it were, beyond his nature, and represents
his inner unity, as well as his relationship to God."42
Thus the hypostatic dimension of divine Trinitarian life, as well as its
image in humanity, excludes the idea that redemption, salvation, and
deification are automatic or magical processes of absorption of the human
by the divine. On the side of God, as well as on the side of humanity,
they imply personal, free relations. In Christ one meets the hypostasis
of the divine Logos, who assumed the fulness of humanity. Christ was
not a human hypostasis. If that were the case, the man Jesus would be
individualized on a created level, making "life in Christ" impossible.
Indeed, one created hypostasis cannot exist in another. Human persons
are irreducible to each other and always preserve their uniqueness. The
decisive factor in salvation is that the hypostasis of the Logos is the
prototype of which each human being is the image. His humanity is not
only the humanity of a human individual, but it is also our common
humanity which he assumed in its fallen state and glorified through his
death and resurrection. The incarned Logos calls us to share in his saved
and glorified humanity, through a free personal decision, through bap-
tism, through Eucharistie communion, and to be transformed from the
"first man . . . made of dust" into "the second Man, the Lord from
heaven" (1 Cor 15:47).

THE "NEW ADAM"

The New Testament applies to Jesus the image of the suffering servant
described by the Second Isaiah (Isa 52-53; cf. Mt 8:17; Rom 15:21, etc.):
"He was wounded for our transgressions He took our infirmities and
bore our diseases They made his grave with the wicked." The image
41
The implications are brilliantly developed by the Romanian theologian Dumitru
Staniloae, "Trinitarian Relations and the Life of the Church," in Theology and the Church
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1980) 11-44.
42
Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor
(Lund: Gleerup, 1968) 119.
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 493
is that of a Messiah who suffers and dies, voluntarily accepting the
consequences of humanity's sins. That suffering and death are the
consequences, on a cosmic level, of Adam's sin, which qualifies the biblical
perception of created reality after the Fall.
It has been often recognized that Eastern patristic thought ignores the
notion of a transmission o guilt from Adam to his descendants. However,
it does not ignore the very fact of cosmic fallenness. This fallenness is
not expressed in terms of divine punishment inflicted upon all humans
(the Augustinian massa damnata) from parents to children, but rather
in terms of a usurpation or illegitimate tyranny exercised by Satan upon
God's creation. Humans are rather seen as victims of the universal reign
of death (indeed Satan is "a murderer from the beginning": Jn 8:44).
"Through fear of death, they are subject to lifelong bondage" (Heb 2:15).
What is being transmitted from parents to children is not sin but
mortality and slavery, creating a condition where sin in inevitable:
"Having become mortal," writes Theodoret of Cyrus, "[Adam and Eve]
conceived mortal children, and mortal beings are necessarily subject to
passions and fears, to pleasures and sorrows, to anger and hatred."43 The
model here is Darwinian: fear of death generates struggle for survival,
and survival is attainable only at the expense of othersa survival of
the fittest, winning over the weak. "By becoming mortal, we acquired
greater urge to sin," writes Theodore of Mopsuestia, "because we depend
on food, drink, and other needs, and the desire to acquire those leads
inevitably to sinful 'passions.' "u Patristic references can be easily mul-
tiplied, and their context is understandable if one remembers that the
Greek Fathers read the Greek original of the famous passage of Rom
5:12 ("As sin came into the world through one man and death through
sin, and so death spread to all men, because [or "and because of death"]
all have sinned") and were not conditioned by the Latin mistranslation,
which implied that all sinned "in Adam."45
43
Commentary on Rom. (PG 80, 1245A).
44
Commentary on Rom. (PG 66, 801B).
45
The Latin version of eph' ho pontes hmarton in Rom 5:12 is in quo omnes pecca-
verunt. The masculine quo must refer to "one man," mentioned earlier in the sentence: "all
have sinned in Adam.n The Greek does not allow for such a meaning, and admits two
grammatical possibilities: (a) if eph' ho is a neuter and means "because," the sentence
defines death as the punishment for individual sins of any human (not "original" sin); (b)
if it is a masculine, it refers to "death" (thanatos), so that deathas a cosmic, personalized
realitybecomes the cause of individual human sins. It is in that sense that the text was
read by Theodoret and Theodore, as well as many other Greek authors, including Chrysos-
tom, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and later Byzantine theologians; on this
problem see J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
(3rd ed.; New York: Fordham University, 1987) 143-46. The clear divergence between the
494 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

It is the mortal, corruptible, and fallen humanity which was assumed

by the Logos. This was well understood particularly by the Alexandrian
Fathers, promoters of a high Christology: Athanasius and Cyril. And this
is precisely the reason why their Christological position made theopasch-
ism inevitable: the divine Logos himself voluntarily assumed mortal
humanity and therefore had to die in the flesh. The implication was not
"anthropological minimalism," as Florovsky once wrote,46 but, on the
contrary, the affirmation that humanity and its fallen condition were
such a real and crucial fact that they brought about a se//-emptying of
God Himself as condition for salvation and true restoration.
That the high Alexandrian Christology does not imply a diminution of
humanity in Jesus is also shown in the sixth-century debate around the
Aphthartodocetism of Julian of Halicarnassus. The point of Julian was
simple: since death and corruption (phthora) are consequences of human
sin, they could not have been present in Jesus, who did not sin. Thus,
according to Julian, Jesus possessed an "incorruptible" (aphthartos)
humanity. Julian's critics were right in saying that he was in fact a
Dodetist: the death of Jesus on the cross was only an "appearance," not
a real experience of what death is for other human beings.47 But if one
conceives of Christ as sharing the determinism of corruptible and fallen
humanity, what happens to divine freedom? Did not the Logos suffer
voluntarily? The rejection of Aphthartodocetism by the Church was not
intended at all, however, as a denial of divine freedom. Indeed, the
Incarnation in all its aspects was an expression of the free will of God.
But God willed precisely that, as man, Jesus, since his conception in the
womb of Mary, would be fully conditioned by what our human, fallen
existence is: he lived in time, "grew in wisdom," did not know, suffered,
and died. On the other hand, the hypostatic unioni.e., the conception
and the birth of the God-man Jesusis not yet by itself a deification of
Greek and the Augustinian traditions on "original sin" is widely acknowledged by historians;
cf., e.g., J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: A. & C. Black, 1958) 348-52.
46
Vizantiiskie ottsy (Paris: YMCA, 1933) 7.
47
See the concise definition of Aphthartodocetism by St. John of Damascus: "They
consider that the Lord's body was incorruptible from the time of its formation; they also
confess that the Lord suffered the passionshunger, thirst, tirednessbut that he suffered
them in a way different from our own: while we suffer them as a natural necessity. Christ,
they say, suffered them freely (hekousis) and he was not subjected to the laws of nature"
(On the Heresies 84 [PG 94, 156A]); on Aphthartodocetism see R. Draguet, Julien d'Hali-
carnasse et sa controverse avec Svre d'Antioche sur l'incorruptibilit du corps du Christ
(Louvain, 1924); cf. also Meyendorff, Christ 87-88, 165-66. Of course, one cannot deny
divine freedom if one believes in the divinity of Christ, but within the Orthodox tradition
(as distinct from Aphthartodocetism) divine freedom is exercised in the Incarnation as a
whole: mortality and corruptibility were assumed by the Son of God from the beginning of
his human life.
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 495
Jesus' human nature. Deification would have been a somewhat automatic
happening if, as some have supposed, the Incarnation was simply the
manifestation of a pre-existing God-manhood of the Logos, fulfilled when
he became a human being. In fact, the Incarnation implied tragedy and
struggle. The Creator, by assuming the created and fallen flesh, met evil
and death face to face. He met and overcame these realities of the fallen
world, which he did not create but only tolerated. This tolerance reached
its ultimate point when the incarned Son of God accepted a human death
on the cross: this ultimate point was also his ultimate victory.
Modern New Testament criticism has often been concerned with the
psychology of Jesus, and with such questions as his messianic conscious-
ness. One wonders sometimes whether such concerns are not a blind
alley, since, as a learned Anglican divine once wrote, "It is indeed both
ridiculous and irreverent to ask what it feels like to be God incarnate."48
However, what cannot be deniedand what a high Christology, affirming
the full pre-existing divinity of the unique person of Jesus Christ, does
not denyis that "being human" necessarily implies change and growth
from infancy to adulthood; that the humanity assumed by the Son of
God was our "corruptible" humanity which needed salvation and which
he led in a passage (the Christian Passover) from death to life; that
"Jesus the Son of God . . . has been tempted in every respect as we are,
yet without sin" (Heb 4:15; cf. 1 Pet 2:22).49
This last point"without sin"also makes high Christology inevita-
ble, because God and no creature can be said to be totally above sin,
which is a conscious, personal act of rebellion against divine will. It is
because he was God, not as "mere man," that Jesus was able to overcome
the temptations inherent in fallen humanity: "You shall not tempt the
Lord your God," said Jesus to the tempter (Mt 4:7; Lk 4:12). Although
no philosophical, rational, or psychological explanation can be found for
it, here is the very content of the "good news" revealed in Christ: that
God Himself has placed Himself on our level, within our very existence;
that He is not any longer a distantly heavenly being but the One who is
personally, hypostatically "with us"even in teinptations and in death
the Emmanuel.
It is furthermore important to recognize that the Chalcedonian patris-
tic tradition upholding a high Christology stands firmly against the
Monophysitic or the Monotheletic or any other unilaterally theocentric
views of salvation. The Christology of Maximus the Confessor, which
defends the existence of a human will in Christ distinct from the divine,
48
Christ, the Christian and the Church (London: Longmans, Green, 1946) 37.
49
Cf. my article "Christ's Humanity: The Paschal Mystery," Si. Vladimir's Theological
Quarterly 31 (1987) 5-40.
496 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

is very explicit in affirming that Christ's humanity was not a passive

instrument of divinity, but that it exercised within time and space a true
human freedom. Maximus illustrates this in his commentary on two
episodes of Christ's life: the baptism in the Jordan and the agony in
Gethsemane.
As Jesus was coming out of the Jordanwhere he deliberately identi-
fied himself with the condition of the others, being baptized by John
he "saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a
dove... " (Mk 1:11). For Maximus this was a "second birth" of Jesus,
modeling our own baptismal regeneration.
The Incarnation tookfirstthe form of a bodily birth because of my condemnation,
but it was later followed by a birth in the Spirit through baptism which had been
neglected [by a fallen humanity]; [this occurred] for the sake of my salvation, so
that I may be recalled by grace, or, more clearly, so that I may be created anew.50
In Jesus, therefore, the synergy of divine and human will, a condition for
the reconciling mystery of communion between divinity and humanity,
included his human experience of a "new birth" at the conclusion of his
human maturing and at the beginning of his messianic ministry.
What occurred at Gethsemane, according to Maximus, is another and
ultimate human acceptance by Jesus of the will of the Father for the
salvation of the world. Indeed, Gethsemane did not mean resistance or
rebellion, but the agonizing exercise of Christ's human will. In the divine
nature and Trinitarian will, the Logos willed our salvation at all times
(physei theletikos hai energetikos tes hmn sterias).
This salvation he willed with the Father and the Spirit; but [for this same
salvation] he also [as a human being] became obedient to the Father unto death,
even death on a cross (Phil 2:8), realizing in himself (in his divine hypostasis)
the great mystery of hi coming to us in the flesh.61
This Christology illustrates again the distinction, always characteristic
of the Greek Fathers, between the notions of hypostasis (or person) and
nature. As we noted earlier, the hypostasis of the Son is not the same as
divine "nature," because the hypostasis "becomes," whereas "nature" is
absolutely unchangeable. The hypostasis, by assuming humanity and
M
Amb. (PG 91, 1348 D). Scholarly literature on St. Maximus is abundant. On this
particular point of his Christology, see F. Heinzer, "L'Explication trinitaire de Pconomie
chez Maxime le Confesseur," in Maximus Confessor: Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le
Confesseur, Fribourg, 1-5 Septembre, 1980, ed. F. Heinzer and Ch. von Schnborn (Fribourg,
1982) 159-72.
51
Opuse. 6 (PO 91, 68D); on this point see the commentary by F. M. Lthel, Thologie
de l'agonie du Christ (Paris: Beauchesne, 1979) 87-90, with French translation of the
crucially important Opusculum 6 of Maximus.
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 497
making it "its own," becomes a "composite hypostasis" (hypostasis
synthetos52). A person, divine or human, is not, therefore, a simple
manifestation of "nature" (an individual), but a subject, capable of saying
"I," and able to transcend, or go beyond, the limits of the nature it
possesses. The humanity assumed by the Logos was fully human, and
even more perfectly human than our humanity, because the Logos was
the very model according to which we were created: the fact that there
was no human hypostasisor a distinct human " (the Nestorian
solution)in Jesus did not make him less perfectly human. Rather his
hypostasis, because it was divine, enhanced humanity, which is, in Christ,
the humanity of God. The same philosophy of hypostasis applied to
created humanity makes deification understandable as always a personal,
or hypostatic, possibility for each human being when he or she transcends
natural limitations and communes in divine life.
Moving away from legalism and emphasizing personal communion as
the content of salvation is, as we have seen, the main trend in contem
porary Orthodox theology. In this approach there may be a certain danger
of subjectivism, unless one remains fully consistent with patristic Chris
tology and also a sound theology of baptism.53
If death is the ultimate, cosmic enemy, Christ is the Savior because he
conquers death. His death on the cross is a historical fact, sealed by the
resurrection. Having identified himself with fallen humanity down to
death on the cross, he rose again and manifested the risen, transfigured,
and deified humanity which was from the beginning in the plan of God.
That new humanity becomes also ours when we are baptized and share
in the Eucharist, which is a communion with the risen Lord: "You have
died," writes the Apostle, "and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col
3:3). Baptism and Eucharist are, therefore, the true foundations not only
of spirituality but also of Christian ethics. Through them each human
person can share in therisenhumanity of Christ and achieve a communal
unity, which is the Church, Body of Christ. And since Christ's humanity
is hypostatically united with the divine Logos, "life in Christ" can also
52
Maximus, Ep. 12 (PG 91,489 BC) etc.; John of Damascus, De natura composita contra
acephalos (PG 95,113D).
53
The heresy of "Messalianism" has been a permanent temptation with Eastern Chris
tian monasticism since the fourth century and until the late Middle Ages. One of its most
distinctive traits was to conceive deification as a purely subjective result of prayer,
independent of baptism. This criterion allowed the recent tendency to rehabilitate the
author known as Ps.-Macarius from the accusation of being a "Messalian"; cf. H. Drries,
Die Theologie des Makarios/Symeon (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, 1978). This
rehabilitation is important in view of the great (and fully justified) popularity of the
Macaran writings in the Orthodox spiritual tradition.
498 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

be termed deification.54
Although the Christological dimension of "new humanity" is the nec-
essary starting point of soteriology, the role of the Holy Spirit is central
precisely to the personalistic and freedom-oriented Orthodox understand-
ing of salvation.55
The Fathersparticularly Stf Gregory of Nazianzus and Ps.-Macar-
aisoften define theocentric anthropology in terms of an efflux of the
Spirit in the human being, making him different from other creatures.56
This affinity with God through the Spirit is what explains man's openness
upwards, and also his freedom. Hence the Spirit is active wherever
humanity exercises this God-given freedom, e.g. as Mary pronounces her
yes to the divine will (Lk 1:38), as Jesus through his human will accepts
the messianic ministry at the river Jordan, and as any human being is
baptized "in water and the Spirit." Christian revelation and Christian
theology are somewhat apophatic in their references to the Spirit. Indeed,
the Spirit was not incarned, and his person, or hypostasis, remains
hidden, except in its role of manifesting Christ, in perfecting his work in
opening divine life in Christ to the free choice of each human person.
CONCLUSION: ETHICS OF THE RESURRECTION
If it is true to say, as we pointed out earlier, that human existence in
the fallen world is dominated by mortality (and therefore by a struggle
for survival, creating both a dependence upon means of sustenance and
conflicts for possession of such means), the resurrection and the possi-
bility of sharing in Christ's glorification and immortality change condi-
tions radically. The awareness that this is indeed the case explains why,
for early Christians, the resurrection was the contents of the "good news."
"If Christ has not been raised," writes St. Paul, "your faith is futile and
you are still in your sins" (1 Cor 15:17), because a mortal human being
cannot give up his struggle for survival and is therefore necessarily a
sinner. Through immortality, however, he can be truly free.
Here lies, it seems, the right approach to ethics, as it is found in the
New Testament, which can easily be explained away as unrealistic
paraphrases unless one takes seriously the idea that the teachings of
54
In the Christology shaped by Maximus the Confessor and later by Gregory Palamas,
the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ implies a communicatio idiomatum: the divine
"energies" penetrate and "deify" the risen humanity of Christ (without a mixture of
"essences" or "natures"), as well as the humanity of those who are "in Christ"; cf.
Meyendorff, Christ 170-71,188-89; A Study of Gregory Palamas (2nd ed.; Crestwood, N.Y.:
St. Vladimir, 1974) 157-84.
55 T h e Theology of t h e H o l y Spirit," in J. Meyendorff, Catholicity and the Church
(Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir, 1983) 15-29.
56
Cf. Gregory of Naz., Poems (PG 37, 452).
 SALVATION IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 499

Jesus are addressed to those who are free from death and from struggle
for survival. Indeed, such precepts as "Do not be anxious about your life,
what you shall eat, or what you shall drink... Look at the birds of the
air: they neither sow nor reap... Consider the lilies of the field . . . "
(Mt 7:25-30) sound like sentimental or emotional exhortations only,
unless they reflect a real experience of victory over death, which liberates
Christians from the most common dependence upon food (or money) and
enables them to "give," rather than being concerned about "receiving"
(cf. Acts 20:35). Redemption is not only a negative remission of sins but
also and primarily a new freedom for children of God in the communion
of the new Adam.