There's more to it, of course, but sure, I would not disagree with what you wrote.
BTW, thank you for including the Chrysostom quote concerning 2 Corinthians 5:21. I went further than I have previously in describing all that is imputed to us from Christ once I realized the WSC used that particular verse as a descriptor.
So what is the official EO position on "justification"?
Thanks!
--David
The Eastern Orthodox position on justification ...
It is not an easy question to answer, because the context of the answer is completely different from the context that is assumed in a Protestant or Roman Catholic discussion. So please forgive the long-winded answer (which I might or might not end up editing down).
There is, I think it is correct to say, a completely different understanding of the nature of sin and salvation by Eastern Orthodox on one hand ("the East") and Roman Catholics and Protestants on the other ("the West"). Please feel free if you think I am misstating any Protestant doctrine.
Western Christianity teaches that the guilt of Adam's sin is imputed to his descendants, whereas the Eastern view is than it is not the Adam's
guilt that was transmitted, but rather the
consequences of his disobedience: "suffering, death, a corruption of human nature, and a loss of indwelling grace." Here I am quoting from a respected book on Orthodox dogmatic theology by that same title, written by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazanski (originally written in Russian, he oversaw its translation into English in 1983, when he was 95 years old). I will just reproduce some more of what he has written here:
Roman Catholic theologians consider that the consequence of the fall was the removal from men of a supernatural gift of God’s grace, after which man remained in his “natural” condition, his nature not harmed but only brought into disorder because the flesh, the bodily side, has come to dominate over the spiritual side; original sin in this view consists in the fact that the guilt before God of Adam and Eve has passed to all men.
The other tendency in the West sees in original sin the complete perversion of human nature and its corruption to its very depths, to its very foundations (the view accepted by Luther and Calvin). As for the newer sects of Protestantism, reacting in their turn against the extremes of Luther, they have gone as far as the complete denial of original, inherited sin.
The reason why I think this background is important is because it explains the basis by which each Christian confession understands Salvation and how Salvation was effected by Christ. "Justification" is one aspect of the dogma of Salvation.
Generally the debate surrounding Salvation between "the East" and "the West" centers on the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. I think it is correct to say that this doctrine is entirely logical, as long as one takes as one's premises the view of original sin above. Man's ancestor transgressed against God. Man has inherited the guilt for his ancestor's transgression and therefore must be punished. As Anselm of Canterbury maintained, because God is omnipotent, any transgression against God is infinitely offensive, and man, therefore, does not have the wherewithal to pay. I think an analogy would be a debtor's prison (which I imagine existed in Anselm's day). Because an inmate of a debtor's prison cannot pay what he owes, he will remain in debtor's prison until some benefactor takes mercy on him and "justifies him" (i.e. makes him "right" with the one to whom is owed). This doctrine makes perfect logical sense, I think, under the Western premises surrounding original sin (excepting, of course, who don't believe that original sin exists).
However, the Orthodox Christian view of original sin - called
ancestral sin in Orthodox theology - is much different:
After his first fall, man himself departed in soul from God and became unreceptive to the Grace of God which was opened to him; he ceased to listen to the Divine voice addressed to him, and this led to the further deepening of sin in him.
However, God has never deprived mankind of His mercy, help, Grace, and especially His chosen people; and from this people there came forth great righteous men such as Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and the later prophets ...
But the Old Testament righteous ones could not escape the general lot of fallen mankind after death, remaining in the darkness of hell, until the founding of the Heavenly Church — that is, until the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ destroyed the gates of hell and opened the way into the Kingdom of Heaven.
One must not see the essence of sin — including original sin — only in the dominance of the fleshly over the spiritual, as Roman Catholic theology teaches. Many sinful inclinations, even very serious ones, have to do with qualities of a spiritual order: such, for example, is pride, which, according to the words of the Apostle, is the source, together with lust, of the general sinfulness of the world (I John 2: 15– 16). Sin is also present in evil spirits who have no flesh at all. In Sacred Scripture the word “flesh” signifies a condition of not being reborn, a condition opposed to being reborn in Christ: That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3: 6). Of course, this is not to deny that a whole series of passions and sinful inclinations originate in bodily nature, which Sacred Scripture also shows (Romans, chap. 7).
Thus, original sin is understood by Orthodox theology as a sinful inclination which has entered into mankind and become its spiritual disease.
The Orthodox doctrine of Salvation is, if I may say, a doctrine of
restoration and
not castigation. You will probably find the same Scriptures quoted in an Orthodox catechism that you might find in an Protestant one, but they are interpreted in an entirely different light. The passage from 2 Corinthians you pointed out I think expresses the notion of what happens completely:
He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). Salvation enables us, as it were, to be partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4), which is what we were created for but made ourselves incapable of receiving through the pride that led through our fall. Since it is viewed as more than an undergoing of a death penalty, all aspects of Christ's work of Salvation - not just His death, but also His very Incarnation and His Resurrection - are important.
In order to answer your question, "what is the official EO position on 'justification'", I would like to lengthen my already tremendously long answer still further by quoting from the writings of the late Archbishop Dmitri Royster (of blessed memory, as we say).
[Archbishop Dmitri had a very interesting life. He was raised by a strict Baptist mother, but he and his sister as teenagers decided that they wanted to find "the true church". Since they knew that Greek was spoken in the early Church, when they were 14 and 15 they started attending services at the Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas. Because this was in the 30's - decades before any Evangelicals would even consider Orthodoxy - the people in the parish stared at them as if they had come from another planet. Eventually, though, they became catecumens and were chrismated. As a layman, Archbishop Dmitri served as a Japanese translator on Douglas MacArthur's staff and ended up being posted right next door by chance (maybe) to the St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral in Tokyo, across from the imperial palace. He was also fluent in Spanish and was a Spanish literature professor at SMU in Dallas.]
I think the salient points on what "justification" means to Orthodox are stated in Archbishop Dmitri's
Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, particularly on Romans 2:13:
The terms "just" (Greek dikaios) and "justified" (dikaioo) are obviously related terms, the first usually being translated as "righteous" and sometimes as "just," and the second as "justify"; a third related word dikaiosyne is most often translated as "righteousness". There exists a problem among interpreters, especially our contemporaries, concerning the relationship among these three: most reject the possibility of translating the verb dikaioo as "to make righteous," using rather "to justify," and doing so in a juridical sense, that is, as of being acquitted of guilt before God's tribunal.
It is a fundamental tenet of the faith that any righteousness or justification of a man is the fruit of God's grace poured out on him by the work of Jesus Christ, which culminates in the sacrifice of the Cross and Resurrection (2 Corinthians 1:9-10; Philippians 3:9-10). This granting of grace is the work of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:9). Misunderstanding seems to arise from opposing God's act of justifying or "rendering a man righteous" to the attainment of righteousness (1 John 3:7) by the man of faith. A man is not a passive recipient of God's grace; his or her response to God's gift is the "doing" of good works. As the Apostle points out to the Ephesians (2:8) we have been saved (His part) by faith (our part); we have become a new creation (2:10) specifically for good works.
He further comments on justification in the Orthodox sense when discussing Romans 3:24 (
Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ):
While "justified" [viz. dikaioumenoi, "being justified"], "acquitted," or any other more or less legal term may be used to describe the state resulting from God's saving act, it seems proper to insist that man's restoration consists of his being given back a "right" [same word in Greek as "just", dikaios] relationship with God. God, always being "right" in His dealings with men, bestows upon men the possibility of having a right relationship to Him.
At this point when I usually have these discussions with knowledgable people, the vers-o-graphs come out with the requisite counter-proof texts. I'd rather not go down that route if possible, but certainly would be interested in what you agree and disagree with in all this.
(take special note of the WSC's* use of 2 Corinthians 5:21 to define their meaning here). God not only sees us as "righteous" (as if 'we' were the ones who lived a perfect, sinless life like our Lord did), rather, we become the very "righteousness of God" in His eyes, which is something far more. His seeing us this way (as v21 describes) is based therefore not only upon the meritorious 'work' that His Son did on our behalf, but on Christ Himself. Here's an illustration that speaks to part of this:
