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St. Paisios comes immediately to mind. I can't remember others from Mt. Athos who basically said the same thing.
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Can you provide a specific example of the Orthodox saint(s) you referenced?
The difference, Father (sorry for the poor wording) is that once you receive the free gift through baptism, you are in. Example: a child is baptized and through a tragic accident, dies and never enters into theosis. So the child had no chance to enter into "the struggle of salvation" or do anything but be baptized into salvation.
Yet for an adult, the way the wording of RC and Orthodoxy is put (or at least, the way I read it) is that once you get past a certain age, if you don't do Rosaries every day, or say the First Fridays, or practice fasting and ascetical practices, you don't get salvation. You can be, in fact, in danger of losing it all.
That doesn't sound much like free salvation to me. It sounds more like God-the-Indian-giver.
Now, as far as the rewards that await in the next age, yes, there is very good reason to struggle here and now.
1. To cooperate with the Holy Spirit in breaking the bonds of sin over our lives.
2. To become like Christ (theosis) which is the goal of our lives.
3. To receive rewards in the next life. There are various crowns of rewards which await those who are faithful.
But the way that I read the RC and Orthodox wording, it doesn't sound like working to achieve these things, but rather working to be saved.
Does that make sense?
This is so because salvation is the end of those things. Except to become like Christ. No one can become like Christ, he is too spiritual. Maximum human can become is saint, but as you can see the canonized saints are few and no one can become even such.
So no specific writing I can read? It helps me when I have more context to the quote.St. Paisios comes immediately to mind. I can't remember others from Mt. Athos who basically said the same thing.
Just as Christ is 100% God and 100% man, so our salvation is 100% God and 100% man.
The issue is that there can be reasons for obeying God other than trying to earn our salvation. To use an analogy, if a professional musician were to teach me how to play an instrument as a gift, then their lessons themselves would be the content of their gift, and participating in that training would be doing nothing to earn their gift, but rather that would be the way to receive it. Our salvation is the same sort of gift, where being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly is itself the content of the gift (Titus 2:11-14).When I read certain posts from Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, I find myself wondering "How is this not working to obtain salvation" rather than salvation being a free gift which we then work with to strive towards Christlikeness?
When I see the RC church saying "Do the first five Fridays and you are assured of making heaven," or an Orthodox saint saying "Do not believe in Universal Salvation ** because it will keep you from working for your salvation" I can't help but think that this contradicts the idea of a free and gratuitous salvation.
It seems to me (and I most certainly don't understand this fully) that all have been saved. As Fr. Matt has said, all will be with Christ, but not all will find it enjoyable. This means to me that Christ's redemption has saved everyone, but we are called upon to enter into that union of salvation with Christ and then cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our theosis. Those that don't lose out - big time.
But the wording of certain people in the RC and Orthodox church makes it sound like one is striving to get salvation rather than striving to take the free gift which is already given to all and make the most of it.
Thoughts?
** This is not an attempt to discuss Universal Salvation. Please don't even go there.
To use an analogy, if someone goes on a diet and exercises, then having a healthier body is an intrinsic result, not an extrinsic reward. Refraining from living in sin is the content of the gift of being saved from living in sin.To become saved one must stop sinning. After God sees your not sinning he will reward your struggles with salvation.
aren't theosis, being saved, cooperating with the Spirit, receiving rewards all the same according to our understanding?
So no specific writing I can read? It helps me when I have more context to the quote.
Ah, I was sure you were going to go to the very next verse there in Ephesians 2, verse 10. :=)Salvation is indeed a free gift, offered by God to all, without works. But what do we mean by that? Protestants oftentimes based their entire soteriology (if we can use a two dollar word) on Ephesians 2:8-9:
Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
But in doing so, they skip over Ephesians 2:1-7. If you begin at Ephesians 2:1 and read through, you'll see that the writer means that they have entered into salvation without prior works. He even points out all the immoralities the Ephesians had been wrapped up in, but God saved them anyway. Obviously it was not a reward for anything they had done. It was the gift of God. It was not of themselves. Protestant soteriology then ends on the erroneous idea that salvation itself ends at that point. But in believing that salvation is some one time event that occurs in a single moment, we need to overlook the words of Jesus when he said:
Mat 24:13 “But he who endures to the end shall be saved.
But endures in what? The writer of Hebrews says:
Heb 10:36 Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God's will. Then you will receive all that he has promised.
It says the we are to "continue to do God's will". "Do". It is active, as in do good works. All those things Jesus commanded us to do, just as the writer of 1 John and the Revelation tell us:
1Jo 5:3 Loving God means keeping his commandments...
Rev 12:17 And the dragon was angry at the woman and declared war against the rest of her children—all who keep God's commandments and maintain their testimony for Jesus.
We can continue this discussion as long as we need to.
It sounds very much like the parable of the talents, does it not?Here is the full quote:
Struggle with all your power to gain Paradise. And do not listen to those who say that everyone will be saved. This is trap of Satan so that we won’t struggle.
– St. Paisios of Mt. Athos
Struggle to gain Paradise? So Christ has not restored Paradise for all mankind? It sounds like Holy Father Saint Paisios is saying that unless we struggle, we do not get saved.
I hope I am understanding you correctly. Salvation is being saved from the corruption of sin, the destruction of the image of God in us, and our separation from God. I don't see this having anything to do with rewards.
Put another way, do you honestly think that I, sinful as I am, will recieve the same reward in heaven as a saint from Athos? If I did, then God would be unjust. Those who have fought and struggled with the passions in this life, have overcome them, and have not given up, deserve a far better reward in the next life than us lazy Christians who have trouble keeping a prayer rule because of our slothfulness.
Christ harrowed hell, saved all mankind (Romans 5: 12-19) and destroyed death. That is salvation. Rewards are what we choose to do with that information once we are informed of Christ's salvation. That would be how I see it.
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