What is the Eastern Orthodox view of the atonement?

I follow what it says in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Eastern view might be based on grace and theosis while Western view is about sacrifice and merits. The main idea is to follow what it says in Scripture; John 1.2 He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the whole world. I might not have a doctorate in theology but most theology is from the Scriptures of the NT. In a very short summary, the sacrificial atonement redeems the believing Christian from the curse of the Law.

We believe that Christ died for our sins, bringing forgiveness to the world through His sacrifice. However, we do not stop at "He forgives us and we are saved", as most in the West do. We believe that this forgiveness for sins opens the door for us to attain what we once had: the image of God. This is why we strive to grow in holiness, that we may attain theosis and be made anew in the image of the Lord.

it varies.

Christ died voluntarily on the Cross for us, not as a satisfaction for an angry, wrathful God, but because He so loved us and we could not conquer death, only He could do so for us. So God the Father accepted Christ's voluntarily dying on the Cross in also obedience to Him to reconcile us to God the Father and restore us and all creation to what we were before the Fall.

Anna Scott said:

Do you believe that God required a blood sacrifice for our salvation? IOW, was there no other way to accomplish salvation?

I appreciate your comments.

Anna

Click to expand...

God knew that man could not beat death, but was imprisoned in it since the fall, which was not natural. The consequence of the first sin brought about death, and death brought about more sin, from generation to generation. We could not get out of death. So, Christ voluntarily did so to reconcile us back to the Father.

IOW, was there no other way to accomplish salvation?

Click to expand...

right. the only one who could defeat death, would be One who is greater than death and can destroy its power. only God Himself could do that. but God, being the God who is Love, would also do it in a way that would identify with the human condition, even at its lowest: a Jew hung on a tree by Gentiles. so there is no way anyone of us can say that God does not understand us, because His suffering and His humanity is just a real as yours and mine.

God, like any good King, leads us from the front into His Kingdom.

But sin was also conquered, right?

But sin was also conquered, right?

Click to expand...

yes, sin, death, and the devil are all defeated foes, they know it, and they wanna drag as many of us down with them. sin is conquered because we are not bound by it, although we can still choose to follow it.

Anna Scott said:

Very interesting comments; and this is actually what my Anglican Rector is teaching. He does have some strong Orthodox leanings.

I grew up in the Baptist Church, believing in penal substitution. When I finally read the Bible cover to cover, I couldn't quite reconcile penal substitution with the many passages pointing to God's preference of mercy, rather than sacrifice.

I couldn't understand "mercy" in terms of sacrificing the innocent for the wicked. That is merciful to the wicked; but certainly not merciful to the innocent.

These passages really jumped off the pages of Scripture:

Micah 6: 6 "With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Proverbs 21: 2 Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart. 3 To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.

Jeremiah 7: 22 For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23But this command I gave them: 'Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.'

Even in the N.T. we find Jesus quoting Hosea 6:6:

Matthew 9: 12 But when he heard it, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

Hosea 6: 4 What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. 5 Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. 6 For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

One of the most intriguing passages in the NT reveals Jesus agreeing that loving God and your neighbor is more important than "all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."

Mark 12: 29 Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

32 And the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

This seems to be a very strange thing for Jesus to say, since he came as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins.

Also, throughout the NT, Jesus forgave sins. Not once did he tell those he forgave to go and make a sacrifice to complete the forgiveness.

In addition, John proclaimed Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Luke 3: 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Mark 1: 4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

There is also this question, "If God is God and He makes the rules, why does anyone have to die?" There are no laws higher than God.

Also, with the strict teachings against sacrificing one's children to the pagan gods, it seems strange that God would then sacrifice His own son. And---if the Holy Trinity is truly one ( as I believe), then wouldn't that mean God sacrificed Himself to Himself.

As you can see; I'm still working through this issue. Sometimes these things keep me up at night.

I welcome all comments.

Thanks,
Anna

Click to expand...

Well, as I read your verses you presented it does have to do with mercy given to us. God does not wish for the innocent to perish rather through the Beatitutes he is 'restoring" them. His sacrifice is the ultimate act of love for the humankind in the human history. Not to say that other "people" have not sacrificed for different causes. It is NOT the sacrifice that is important but HOW the sacrifice of Christ took place and WHY that is important. Not to try to diminish the value of the "human/historical event" of this sacrifice but nevertheless it was an event in human history that has soteriological dimensions for us. Christ is the sacrificial lamb and also the one who offers the sacrifice (as it says in the Liturgy : the one who is been sacrificed and the one who sacrifices-meaning the Father).

So the event of the sacrifice is not a "motion" (Christ just died and ressurected himself) neither it is out of anger that God demands a bloody sacrifice. It is the ultimate expression of love to mankind: a Father who gives His son who volunteerly takes upon his cross to save Humanity. I think that act has many dimensions but it is ultimately expressed for EO in the Eucarist. the Eucharist is where we re-live the soteriological event of this sacrifice and we fortaste also the eschaton(last days and after life).

The Eucharist according to EO theologians and the Fathers is in itself the time and place is the core of our Christian ethos and life. We live that sacrifice and Christ's ultimate victory over evil by experiencing that in Liturgy.

Sorry for the long answer..

If you look at the Eastern Fathers of the 3rd Century who expounded the theories of those who wrote before them concerning the work of Christ toward Salvation. You find that they, like their predecessors did not reach a clear, concise and mutually agreed upon theory. Not only did they not agree among themselves, but they often seemed to contradict themselves at different times. Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Methodius all made contributions to the understanding of the work of Christ in this time period, but did not reach a consensus and even sharply disagreed with each other in the case of Origen and Methodius. Lack of consensus regarding the exact definition of how Christ redeemed the world in the 3rd Century should not be surprising because a universally accepted definition is hard to come by even today.

In order to understand the theories of how Christ might have redeemed mankind, one must first look at the foundation of these theories, which lay in the reason that mankind needed redemption in the first place. The fall of man and thus his need for redemption takes on various views in minds of the 3rd Century Eastern Fathers. Clement saw Adam as symbolizing mankind as a whole. He was created in a child like state and was expected to grow in virtue which required his effort. Clement saw the fall in terms of transgression of God’s ordinance, which resulted in a weakened will and rationality in man. Through this weakness, man became prey to passions and the Devil, and in this way fall under the curse of Adam, but in no way is man involved directly in Adam’s guilt. We are sinners because we are weak and therefore sin, not because we were born as sinners or are guilty of ‘original sin’. In a sense, Adam’s legacy to man is his poor example, which man chooses to imitate because we are weak and ignorant. The remedy for this situation is then logically, a new, perfect example of what man was supposed to be from the beginning. This new prototype is found in Christ. Christ is the teacher Who gives true knowledge and provides the perfect example of a love that is free from human passions. It is through His perfect teaching that mankind can be healed and bestowed with immortality. His Incarnation was necessary to give us the model to follow in order to resist the passions and stop sinning. In Clement’s theory, there is little or no redemptive aspect in His passion and resurrection. Our deification is achieved by learning from God who became man in order to show us how to become God. Christ’s work as a man on Earth was to show us the path, the straight way that leads back to God, to deification.
As a student of Clement, Origen expounds on his theory regarding redemption as illumination but also insists that the work of Christ has multiple facets that need to be considered. With regards to Genesis, Origen departs markedly from Clement by rejecting any historical facts contained in the narrative concerning the creation of man and his subsequent fall. For Origen, the Genesis narrative is seen as purely allegorical. The fall is moved from something that occurred in the created world to Adam and Eve to a transcendental event that directly involved all human souls, which pre-existed their incarnation into flesh. All of these souls, except the one of Jesus Christ, chose to turn away from God and neglect Him. In this way Origen makes all humans direct transgressors from the beginning, even a new born infant who has not yet sinned in this world is already guilt of turning away from God before he was born. Thus there is universal sinfulness in the world and being born as a human is essentially a punishment for the transgressions of the soul before birth. Life, for Origen is a continuation of the battle between good and evil, we have angels to assist us and demons to tempt us to sin. In Christ, Origen sees a progressive deification through His union with the Logos to the point where after the Resurrection, Christ’s body becomes immaterial and His soul is fused with the Logos. This is the perfect example of how each of us must be restored. Following the model shown us by Christ and through His teaching, we can be transformed into the likeness of God and become partakers of the divine nature. Redemption in this view is a process of illumination and transformation into the likeness of the Word, followed by exaltation so that we might truly see the Word.

Unlike Clement, Origen maintains that in addition to the above view, Christ’s death was not just as a preeminent example of obedience, but also a continuation of the battle against the Devil. Origen sees Christ’s life as battle against the forces of darkness, which culminate in His crucifixion on the cross. The Devil thought that he had won the battle when God’s anointed one died on the cross, but he was deceived, because death could not hold Christ. Through the resurrection of Christ the Devil was defeated. Origen also uses the ransom metaphor when talking about the deal between Christ and the Devil. In exchange of the souls of men, Christ offered Himself. The Devil accepted, thinking that this would be a victory, but did not anticipate the Resurrection, which defeated death itself. The Devil was dubbed into accepting a deal that was too good to be true, and it was. The Devil’s power over death was defeated and His trophy escaped.
Origen’s third view of the work of Christ is close to that of substitutionary atonement. In Origen’s view, Christ as the head of the body of believers leads us and takes on our sinfulness and suffers in our place, taking the judgment due to us on Him. He becomes our perfect priest in that he makes the perfect offering to the Father for us and for our forgiveness. Like Isaiah’s suffering servant, Christ bears our transgression on Himself as the spotless and innocent sacrifice to God the Father. This third view has been suggested by scholars to be primary metaphorical because it cannot be easily reconciled with the rest of Origen’s system and was perhaps meant for those who Origen saw as ‘simpler Christian’, who could be contented with such basic explanations and not for the more mature Christian who’s understanding and knowledge of the truth can transcend the categories of history and sacrifice.
The sharpest critic of Origen’s theories among his contemporaries was Methodius of Olympus. In contrast to Origen and Clement, Methodius reverts to Irenaeus’s theory of recapitulation and wholeheartedly rejects the idea of a pre-cosmic fall. Methodius maintains the historical meaning of the Genesis narrative and believes that Adam, as the first man was created immortal by the breath of God and possessed a body. Like all men, Adam had free will and freely chose to transgress the law of God. From the day of the fall, man was deprived of the breath of God, and filled with carnal passion, which are then exploited by the Devil to draw us further from God. Just as sin entered the human nature by Adam’s transgression, human nature is redeemed by the second Adam, Jesus Christ. In Methodius’s view, this relationship between the first Adam and the second Adam is more than just typological. He asserts that in Christ, the pre-eternal Logos actually united Himself with the first born of men, which is Adam. The redemption of mankind is thus the result of a recreation of Adam, united with the Logos, who was without sin, allowing man to be united again to God and conformed to His likeness. The Resurrection for Methodius was a means of demonstrating our future resurrection. Through the death of Jesus Christ, the mortal flesh which He had assumed was transformed to immortal.

Kristos said:

it varies.

Click to expand...

It shouldn't vary, because I'm pretty sure it's a dogmatic teaching in our Church.

As I was able to understand it, the penal substitution view (at least in the Reformed/Calvinist sense) really turned on an understanding of a certain "divine dilemma" for God, in which his infinite mercy and infinite justice had to be reconciled.

Because he his perfectly just, he cannot forgive without punishing sin...or else, so the reasoning goes, he would be unjust. Verses like Exodus 34:6-7, "I am the LORD...a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation" are often cited to support this.

On the other hand, because he is perfectly loving, he cannot completely condemn the entire creation and so therefore must redeem it, and man with it as his own image-bearers.

Therefore, Jesus who is perfectly sinless voluntarily receives the punishment due to the whole human race (which in Calvin's own writings involved rejection from God and actual suffering in Hades, as a condemned person) so that God's justice is satisfied and his anger is taken away from us. They speak of the "double transaction" wherein our total sinfulness is imputed to him and punished on the cross, and his total obedience is imputed to us (well, to the elect, anyway). Jesus of course destroyed death and the power of the devil in his resurrection, and now all who are joined to him by faith are "saved" in the sense that all sins (past, present and future) all already punished...and that Christ's "infinite merit" is now ours, meaning that he's basically earned heaven for us.

I've always thought that penal substitution really only made logically consistent sense in the Calvinist model, where Christ paid the full penalty for those chosen for salvation and no others, lest he shed his blood for anyone who chooses otherwise and therefore "wastes the blood."

Of course this is all caught up in the medeival system of penance, which was bound up with "temporal punishments owed in purgatory," and various sorts of "merit" that could be given to a Christian for good works or acts of contrition, etc. The Reformers were working in basically the same framework but sought to remove the idea that "temporal punishment" always loomed over people...if Christ really took the punishment for us, then he took all of it, meaning there's no purgatory and no temporal debt.

Where that all broke down for me, was that the underlying assumption of what it meant for God to be "just" seemed rather restrictive and human. It treats God's Law as though it looms above him and cannot be transgressed, and therefore forgiveness really is conditional, given only when punishment is served, and therefore isn't actually forgiveness at all. Jesus taught us to pray that God would forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us...meaning freely and totally. We are supposed to forgive without exacting vengeance.

Since all the underlying assumptions are different in Orthodoxy...we aren't born condemned because of the sin of another (whether "real" or "imputed"), God does not have to punish in order to forgive, etc. then the whole model of atonement in the West doesn't even fit.

I'm still learning, and it isnt' nearly as precisely formulated in the East as it is in various Western confessions, which are scholastic and precise and excruciatingly detailed. It seems that Jesus did in fact suffer in our place, accepting the consequences of sin that we'd brought upon ourselves. His sacrifical death did fulfill the entire system of blood sacrifice in the Old Covenant, and what he voluntarily accepted were all the curses of the Law...death, abandonment, being carried outside the camp where the unclean things were (see Hebrews), and so forth. But, just as lepers became clean by touching him (the reverse of the Law, where a clean person became unclean), Christ through his sacrifice made humanity clean again. Death was destroyed in his resurrection. All those who approach God through Christ are clean and holy, forgiven and accepted. His body became the veil that separated the common from the holy, and through him we enter into true communion with God. In the Eucharist we unite ourselves to his sacrifice and through Him offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices. All is fulfilled.

We then struggle against sin, against our own passions, and those things that still try to hold us back (what Paul calls the "old man") in a process of deepening our union with Christ, of becoming what we already are. We are saved, but yet being saved. Holy, yet being sanctified. Justified, yet being made right before God.

"Already, but not yet" and all that.

So far that's the best I can understand of where I am now. The beauty is that all the trappings of merit, punishment, and all the medieval ideas that led to the Reformation and the splintering of Western Christianity, aren't there. I don't need to lay out a billion bullet points of everything Christ fulfilled or did..."he is all, and in all." And I don't need to divide myself from the person next to me because I see the atonement a little more this way, and he sees it a little more that way...we're both sinners, saved by grace, coming to Christ in repentence to receive forgiveness and approach him and truly unite with him, body and spirit, in the Eucharist. It kind of makes your jaw drop and the details kind of fade.

Talk about a "personal relationship" with Christ!

Ignatios, good thoughts all around!
Atonement was a puzzle for me when I came on CF ! I have started to understand it slowly..
Your explanation makes lots of sense.

Philothei said:

Your explanation makes lots of sense.

Click to expand...

That's good to know, because I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about

My explanation carries no warranty, express or implied!

One comfort (to me, anyway) is I feel quite relieved of having to know everything...as though everything even could be known. I will admit, there are aspects of "penal substituion" that are reasonable, and I see how people can find those ideas in the Bible, interpreted certain ways...again, the presuppositions really determine the trajectory.

Still, even if there is some element of "punishment" or whatever in the bigger picture of atonement...Christ took care of it. He did it all. Whatever there was to do, he did it. I don't understand it or see it all, and I don't have to.

All, and in all. Simple, beautiful and comforting.

Ignatius21 said:

That's good to know, because I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about

My explanation carries no warranty, express or implied!

One comfort (to me, anyway) is I feel quite relieved of having to know everything...as though everything even could be known. I will admit, there are aspects of "penal substituion" that are reasonable, and I see how people can find those ideas in the Bible, interpreted certain ways...again, the presuppositions really determine the trajectory.

Still, even if there is some element of "punishment" or whatever in the bigger picture of atonement...Christ took care of it. He did it all. Whatever there was to do, he did it. I don't understand it or see it all, and I don't have to.

All, and in all. Simple, beautiful and comforting.

Click to expand...

I agree God wants us to know we are saved through his Divine economy. He indeed had a plan in motion and it is through his conducending that He agreed to save us. God became man so we can become god. Not by nature (as that would be impossible) but through grace. What is left is indeed the realization of that Grace for man and his voluntary 'turning to God". Adam 'turned away" because he was given that choice we are also called to be saved through Grace and Mercy. The time of "punishment" is over indeed as Christ has "opened" the gates of Hades.
I think that we can see everything about the soteriological theme in the ressurectional hymns of the church. Yeah indeed Christ did it all.

There is an interesting essay "Salvation By Christ: A Response to Credenda / Agenda on Orthodoxy's Teaching of Theosis and the Doctrine of Salvation,"
by Carmen Fragapane.

Search for it on orthodoxinfo. I cannot post links here, I'm only a newbie.


Carmen Fragapane writes:

"...In EH Jones writes that in Orthodoxy "discussions of substitutionary
atonement and propitiation are virtually absent from their published
explanations of salvation.

[It is absent from Bishop Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Church]

"... the notion that redemption should be rigidly interpreted in one
particular way is itself foreign to early Christian thought: "The seven
ecumenical councils avoided defining salvation through any [one model]
alone. No universal Christian consensus demands that one view of salvation includes or excludes all others" .

J.N.D. Kelly further explains:

"Scholars have often despaired of discovering any single unifying
thought in the Patristic teaching about the redemption. These various theories, however, despite appearances, should not be regarded as in fact mutually incompatible. They were all of them attempts to elucidate the same great truth from different angles; their superficial divergences are often due to the different Biblical images from which they started, and there is no logical reason why, carefully stated, they should not be regarded as complimentary". And this is precisely what we find in Orthodoxy: "While insisting in this way upon the unity of Christ's saving economy, the Orthodox Church has never formally endorsed any particular theory of atonement. The Greek Fathers, following the New Testament, employ a rich variety of images to describe what the Savior has done for us. These models are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, each needs to be balanced by the others. Five models stand out in particular: teacher, sacrifice, ransom, victory and participation" ..."