Salvation in Christ: The Orthodox Approach Ware, Kallistos It has become commonplace for all sorts of people in our post modern culture to refer to their religious quest as being on a journey. But long, long, long before that phrase was a trendy way of speaking about one’s spiritual experience, our speaker for this evening was quoting a fourth century reclusive saint who once remarked that she was not simply sitting still in her small room but rather was on a journey. As our speaker points out, to be a traveler of this sort is not the aimless rambling characteristic of much of contemporary spirituality. But instead is a clearly directed path as he says through the inward space of the heart out of time into eternity. A way of life a living experience of the Holy Spirit in the present. Our 2008 palmer lecturer is the most revered Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia. One of the world’s foremost Orthodox theologians in the world, Bishop Ware is an author and a teacher and a scholar known best for his books The Orthodox Church and The orthodox Way which are read by all Seattle Pacific undergraduates in their core curriculum. As was evident to all who heard him this morning, his eminence is a gifted speaker who frequently lectures on Eastern Christianity to Western audiences. Bishop Ware spoke to us earlier today in chapel on how prayer for the Christian believer can be viewed as a continuous relationship with the living God. One of my colleagues from the school of Theology remarked after his eminences chapel talk that she could tell from his warm, intelligent, well-spoken and engaging presence that he is a person who embodies that about which he speaks. A faithful and humble witness to the testimony of the saints and a personal experience with Christ. We look forward this evening to learning from him on the topic of salvation in Christ, the orthodox approach. After his eminence speaks with us, we will have the opportunity for short time of question and answer. And so this evening, let us give him a warm Seattle welcome. Thank you very much. Let me begin with a question that was put to me sometime ago in the railway train. A person sitting opposite fixed me with a piercing gaze and said “Are you saved?” Now, how did I answer? How would you answer? I’ll tell you my answer, but not now. You will have to wait til the end of the lecture. Are you saved? In order to reply to that, we have to ask ourselves what do we mean by salvation. From an Orthodox standpoint, there are at once four points to be made. Great is the mystery of our religion. It is said in the pastoral epistles. 1 timothy 3:16, God was revealed in the flesh, justified by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the gentiles, believed in throughout the world. Take him up in glory. Equally, we may say “great is the mystery of our salvation.” Salvation is not to be easily explained it is a mystery. Reaching out into the dazzling darkness of God. There is so much that we cannot express in Seattle Pacific University Trascriptions words. Here I recall a hymn that we Orthodox use each year on holy Saturday; Let all mortal flesh keep silence and stand with fear and trembling. Off this mystery of salvation, this is my second preliminary point. This at least may be said. In the words once more of the pastoral Epistles, this time 1 Timothy 2:4, “God desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” That was a text greatly emphasized by John Wesley. But it’s a text emphasized equally in Orthodoxy. The author of salvation is extended to every human being without an exception. But this is the third point. That at the same time, we human beings can refuse that offer. God is free. And so, each human person fashioned in God’s image is likewise free. From the words of Soren Kierkegard, the most tremendous thing granted to humans is choice. Freedom. And Saint Augustine says “God made you without your agreeing to that, but he will not save you without your consent” We cannot be saved without God but God will not save us without our voluntary consent.” As it says in the homilies of Micarious, an important influence on John Wesley, the will of man is an essential precondition for without it, God does nothing. Our salvation results from the convergence. The Greek word is synergia. Of two factors or unequal importance, yet both essential, divine grace and a human freedom. The fourth point that I want to mention at the beginning is this. For the Orthodox tradition, salvation is personal but it is not isolated. We are not saved alone but as members of the body of Christ. The church. Through sharing in the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion. Now exploring a little further the meaning of salvation, what we find in scripture and tradition is this: Not a single systematic theory of salvation, but many images, metaphors, and models. Not by one path only do we approach to understanding so great a mystery. So we find in the bible many symbols of great meaning and power. Yet for the most part, these are not explained. They are left to speak for themselves. And we must be careful not to turn these images and symbols into a rational syllogistic argument. Nor should we isolate any one image or symbol, placing exclusive emphasis upon it, ignoring the others. We need to balance one image by another image. We need to say not either or, but both and. And if the images are not alternatives, we need all of them. This reminds me of my experience when I first came to the United States as a student in 1959. In those days, if you wished to travel by air you had to be extremely rich. So I came by boat on the Cuinard liner the Queen Elizabeth. Five or six days journey. In the price of your ticket was included all meals. And I was delighted to find, coming to the restaurant, that you were allowed to choose as much food as you wanted. You weren’t limited just to three courses. At breakfast, if you wanted, you could have both porridge and cereal and fruit juice and grapefruit and then afterwards you could have both bacon and eggs and kippers. If you felt like that in the heaving waters of the mid Atlantic. At dinner, my companions at the table were very unimaginative. They just had soup and then a main course and then dessert. I worked out each evening a seven course meal. Now, we should do just the same with the different models for the saving work of Christ. Choose every course! Follow the pattern of the Cuinard menu. There is safety in numbers. Here, let me quote some words of the Romanian Orthodox Theologian Seattle Pacific University Trascriptions Dimitri Stanilawi, and he’s speaking about the apophatic theology of the Orthodox church. The kind of theology that uses negations that says not primarily what God is but what he is not. The kind of thelogy that emphasizes God’s transcendence. The mystery of salvation, says Father Stanelawi, cannot be expressed except in the form of paradox. And orthodoxy has therefore sought to safeguard the element of paradox against any attempt to unravel the mystery. In a series of ones I did, rational propositions, the paradoxical and apophatic fullness of the mystery of salvation is more genuinely suggested by symbols than by intellectual definitions. To consider the cross of the resurrection in images, to express them through symbolical and liturgical acts is to hint at this mystery of salvation in a way more real and more existential than is possible through Anselm’s theory of satisfaction or the penal theory of the protestants, which cannot express more than one aspect of the incomprehensible mystery of salvation. Such theories are acceptable only on condition that they do not claim to replace the mystery itself in its incomprehensible fullness, but merely to expound some particular point and that in a relative and provisional way. Now tonight, I would like to look with you at five models of Christ’s work of salvation. And with regard to each model, I would like you to ask yourselves four questions. They questions are these: First of all, we should ask does the model in question envisit a change in God or in us? If it presupposes that God is being changed, then something has surely gone wrong. We should reject the image of God the father as an angry despot who has somehow to be appeased. Some theories of the atonement seem to suggest that we need to be rescued from God rather than from sin and evil. But in the key text that I’ve put at the top of our sheet, Paul says God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reconciling himself to the world. It is we who need reconciling and healing, not God. We who need changing, not God. Then my second question is does the theory in question separate Christ from the Father? If Christ is separated from father, then again something has surely gone wrong. Paul says God was in Christ. Salvation is God’s work in Christ. We are to see Christ in his ministry as God’s representative, not his victim.