Orthodoxy's View of Justification and Soteriology
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- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2020
- Craig Truglia presents what is meant to be a definitive summary of the Orthodox view of Justification. As one shall see, the Orthodox soteriological paradigm needs a lot of unpacking. In summary, because Orthodox have an "essence-energy distinction," they believe that they participate directly in God's grace in degrees proportionate to their faith in God. Good works are a direct participation in this grace and are the means that "faith is perfected." (James 2:22) For this reason, Orthodox assert the teaching that is summed up by Saint Maximus and the Council of Jerusalem (1672) that Christians are saved by faith through works. This does not mean "faith alone" nor "faith and works" as Protestants often mean it--though both terms are used by Orthodox to mean "faith through works."
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Awesome job guys. Im a confused protestant and I love learning new things please continue to do shows together on all subjects.
You will have to tell Sam that!
I was almost confused on this on this one too. Protestants think Orthodox Christians believe we can earn our way to Heaven. We can't, we'll never be good enough in The Eyes Of God. God Did It All For us.
Great stuff Craig. Gotta love Sam, what a soul.
Great video, Craig. Very helpful.
Phenomenal. A valuable resource. Thank you.
This was great. Thanks.
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P.S.: I've been praying for clarity about what happened to me when I believed. I was told I was born again and that was that. Now I understand it truly WAS God's energy and grace beginning my journey with Him. The born again experience truly can happen to anyone at any time but they truly do need to then follow Christ and obey His commands to continue in Him! Not a one time declaration from God, but an amazing life giving process of sanctification leading to our deification at the end of time! This is the video that made me want to be a catechumen. 🎉😂❤
@@jesus_is_kingforever5909 yes, New Martyr daniel sysoev speaks of this. We do not deny that there are real, substantive experiences of grace that draw us closer to God. In fact, they even exist outside of Christianity. The question is what we do with this grace? So we answer God's call? Do we draw closer to Him? The devil always looks for means to direct us off that path of sanctification.
The concept of grace seems like the most misunderstood thing about orthodoxy. That grace = energy = divine power = glory
When I was a charismatic Pentecostal we were all obsessed with the "shekinah glory." It was almost a type of Theosis. Not exactly, but on the right track.
So, because I'm still new to Orthodoxy, and I wanna be sure I'm hearing u right, Roman Catholics believe that one must do good works to atone for their own sin, because they don't Believe Christ's Death was Enough To Save them. Is that also the view of fellow Orthodox?
? Pretty sure that's not what roman Catholics believe, pretty sure they are really similar to Orthodoxy but the nuance is a bit different...
Works is bringing your faith to fruition.
@@KillerofGods , one of the reasons I asked that, I was listening to part of an interview w a Roman Catholic named Mitch Pacquaw. This Mitch Pacquaw believed people had to atone for their own sins by doing good works.
Everything you said about theosis/divinization is Catholic. That is the shared soteriological heritage of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The catechism quotes Athanasius' famous quote from On the Incarnation and another line his letter to Serapion about divinization in the "Grace and Justification" section. While I do think justification is more than a legal reality of salvation, the Scriptures use the dikaioo verb in a declarative/vindicatory sense as well (Luke 7:29, 16:15; Romans 3:4).
In James 2:24, it is especially about vindication.
You're soteriology is double predestination as per Augustine and Thomas aquinas, ours is single predestination and recapitulation same as all the fathers and especially the God inspired gregory palamas of the holy mountain. We are saved by God's foreknowledge not will
@@shiningdiamond5046 "1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance":
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen." (CCC). See also second Council of Orange.
@@shiningdiamond5046 Hello. St.Augustine did not teach the double predestination. Hieromonk Seraphim Rose has a book about St.Augustine ,,The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church'' (1983), first issued in the form of a series of articles in 1978 in ,,The Orthodox word'') where he clearly proves that St.Augustine did not reject the freedom of the will but only exaggerated the significance of God’s grace in the synergism between the two. That exaggeration of the role of God's grace derived from St.Augustine's refutation of Pelagianism.
Concerning the predestination taught by St.Augustine, Father Seraphim says on p.11:
,,…Never, however, did Augustine deny free will; indeed, when questioned he would always defend it and censure those who ,,are extolling grace to such an extent that they deny the freedom of the human will, and what is more serious, who assert that on the day of judgment God will not render to every man according to his deeds“ (Letter 214, to Abbot Valentinus of Hadrumetum). In some of his writings the defense of the free will is no less strong than that of St. Cassian. In his commentary on Psalm 102, for example (,,Who healeth all thy deseases“), Augustine writes:,,He will heal you, but you must wish to be healed. He heals entirely whoever is infirm, but not him who refuses healing.“ The very fact that Augustine himself was a monastic Father of the West, founded his own monastic communities for both men and women and wrote influential monastic Rules certainly indicates that in actual practice he understood the significance of ascetic struggle, which is unthinkable without free will…’’
Father Seraphim says on p.18:
,,…Augustine in this doctrine does not at all maintain that God determines or wills any man to do evil; the whole context of his thought makes it clear that he believed no such thing, and he often denied this specific accusation, sometimes with evident exasperation. Thus, when it was objected to him that ,,it is by his own fault that anyone deserts the faith, when he yields and consents to the temptation which is the cause of his desertion of faith,” (as against the teaching that God determines a man to desert the faith), Augustine found it necessary to make no reply except: ,,Who denies it?“ (On the Gift of Perseverence, ch. 46). Some decades later the disciple of Blessed Augustine, Fulgentius of Ruspe, in interpreting this teaching, states:,,In no other sense do I suppose this passage of St.Augustine should be taken, in which he affirms there are certain persons predestined to destruction, than in regard to their punishment, not their sin: not to the evil which they unrighteously commit, but to the punishment they shall most righteously suffer (Ad Monimum, I, 1)…“
Father Seraphim thoroughly explains that blessed Augustine taught the predestination according to God’s foreknowledge as it is taught in Scripture (Romans 8:28-30) but was later misunderstood by Calvinism to have taught double predestination.
Father Seraphim also mentions that St.Augustine taught about the synergism of human free will with the prevenient grace - the grace according to the calling of which man comes to believe.
In relation with the acceptance of the prevenient grace, it follows that, although it is not explicitly mentioned in the book, since St.Augustine did not deny the freedom of the will and taught the synergism of God's grace and human free will, he also did not teach the total depravity in the sense that man is unable to freely accept the calling of God’s grace, i.e. he did not teach the irresistable grace.
Was the man with a shriveled hand that was healed, was it effaciously healed when Christ made it so or when he went to the priest when he declared it so.
Protestants get so hung about this legal jargon because they've sadly taken human law conceptions into how they understand the reconciliation of willing humankind who become at-one with God.
at 42:28 -- "Those who do not have faith, do not receive the the Holy Spirit at baptism, because the sacrament is not magic." So what about infants?
the faith of their sponsors is a substitute until they acquire their own faith.
This is similar to the paralytic dropped through the roof by his friends and Jesus saw the faith of his friends and healed him.
25:00
What would any of you do if there is no orthodox church anywhere around. South louisiana is catholic country. We still have parishes not countys lol
There is no easy answer to this question. There may very well be a Greek parish down your way, but in the extreme that it is not practicable it is best to follow your spiritual father's advice (perhaps once a year go one pilgrimage to a monastery that is "fairly close" and pick one of the priestmonk's brains.)
He may recommend you do reader's services at home and attend liturgy as little as once a year. Who knows, other local people may join you for those services and you may become a mission parish.
Did you ever figure something out?
I’ll admit, as someone raised Baptist, I have no idea what you’re talking about 😅. I’d like to know…. But, definitely not clicking.
As I understand it, the righteousness that is given to us apart from the works of the Law, on account of our faith in Jesus Christ and His death for our sake on the Cross, this grace is given to men in Holy Baptism.
Having been preached the Gospel, and believing in Jesus, we prepare to be Baptized, heeding the Commandment to repent and do the same for the remission of sins(Acts 2:38, John 3:5). We purify ourselves from the filth of our previous life by, as far as it lies within our strength, aided by the prevenient grace of God, putting off our old way of life.
Having been Baptized into the Church, we live out the life of the Church, working righteousness in the fear of God, keeping the Commandment to love God and neighbor to the best of our ability. We continue this repentance, day by day, in faith, hope, and love for the sake of the exceedingly great and precious promise of eternal life in Jesus Christ.
22:14 "We believe a man to be not simply justified through faith alone, but by faith which works through love. That is to say, faith and works. But the idea that faith can fulfill the function of a hand that lays hold of the righteousness which is in Christ and then apply it onto us for salvation we know to be far from Orthodoxy."
I think most of what is said in this video would, to anyone who reads the Bible, be obviously correct, but the typical Protestant mind is so practiced in the inaccuracy of Reformation thinking that no matter how many passages are shared they either can't or refuse to see.
That said, the opposite error--denying/downplaying the righteousness of faith, defined in Ro 4:6-8 as "being forgiven", whereby God justifies the ungodly, who do not have good works (Galatians refers to this righteousness in comparing and contrasting the Gospel's "the righteous will live by faith" against the Law's "he who does them will live by them"--"life" is accorded only the "righteous", so he's comparing two methods of righteousness, and the Galatians received "the blessing of Abraham", life, and not "the curse of the Law", death, by the righteousness of keeping the Command to "believe in the Name of God's Son")--is just as inaccurate, incomplete, erroneous as Protestantism's illicit denial of the obvious truth that after having been justified by the righteousness of admitting our wrongness, and God's rightness, and humbly accepting that we are only right by being forgiven, that there must also be maintenance of a good conscience through good works (eg, "let every man be fully convinced in his own mind... anything that is not of faith is sin"), and that these works are not "automatic", or "proofs" that we have already been saved (eg, 1 Corinthians shows the "true" believers had plenty of sin problems, and they are warned, in 1 Co 6, they will not inherit God's Kingdom unless they straighten themselves out).
24:44 "Faith has to have works--this should not be controversial. The Scriptures teach, 1 Jn 3:24, 'Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us : by the Spirit Whom He has given us.'"
This goes back to the point previously made : actually, "commandments", plural, are formulated as "command", singular, in 1 Jn 3:23, "Believe in the Name of God's Son, and love one another." Being that the proof we keep His Commands is that we receive His Spirit, and that the Galatians had received the Spirit merely by hearing the Gospel and believing it (Gal 3:1-5), we may surmise, again, that believing in the Name of God's Son is a form of righteousness in itself, apart from any deed.
Your inaccurate (by reason of its incompleteness) explication of the matter essentially denies this portion of the reality of salvation. The proof they were keeping God's command was that He gave them His Spirit.
To your point, however, it is just as true that if we disregard the second portion of the single command, "love one another"--eg, by disregarding His prohibition against immorality (immorality is not of the love of the Father, but from the world 1 Jn 2)--He will withdraw His Holy Spirit ("Who gives you His Spirit" Paul warns 1 Th 4:8--"Take not your Holy Spirit from me" after David sinned Ps 51:11).
I think a lot of the problems people have with understanding this whole matter may be attributed to our lack of understanding of what "salvation" even is. Ephesians 2:8,9, indeed, as the Protestants say, teaches salvation already happened--but, to the Orthodox point, other verses say it is a process that is continuously ongoing in the present, and that there will come a final salvation.
1 Corinthians 10 shows that our salvation by the blood of the lamb was the antitype to the type of the Jews' salvation from their enslavement in House of Bondage. We are transferred from the kingdom of darkness, where had been Sin's slaves, over to the Kingdom of God's dear son, where we are God's free servants ("Let My people go" is followed by "that they may serve Me.").
We truly are "saved", but "saved" does not mean "definitely going to heaven". It means many other things, but, obviously, from reading 1 Co 10, what ever anyone wants to say it means, it is only step 1 in the process.
We are now accounted as passing through the test in the wilderness to see if we will keep His commands or not (as also the Israelites were tested to see if they would keep His Commands in the His Land, the Land He had promised them).
So, yes, we are "saved", as the Protestants insist, yet for different reasons than they say it, and in a different way than they mean it; and we truly must perform good works by faith which works through love, as the Orthodox insist, as that is the second part of the singular "command" (or else we have "denied the faith"--breaking the two-staged singular "Law of Faith" (each portion of it regards "faith") endangers even our confession)--but both seem to be majoring on only one aspect of the "two-staged" singular "command" or "Law of Faith". The Protestants forget that "God's righteousness is revealed from faith to faith", for which reason "what ever is not of faith is sin--even if you eat with doubts you are condemned", but the Orthodox don't regard the righteousness of faith (resulting in a "justification") which is defined as "being forgiven", by which the ungodly (who, by definition, does not have the good works) is justified (Ro 4).
I am surprised these things are not discussed in the Orthodox treatises on these matters--at least not in the ones shared here--but to ask any literate person to ignore these realities for the sake of a "tradition" would be an injustice (both against the Apostles, who taught these things, and against the disciples, who are to hold the things they taught).
If I've misunderstood, please make it clear to me.
Hmm, the problem in Protestant soteriology which is a branch of Augustinian Catholic soteriology, is surmised in that sin is an or deed that offends God, thus it is written in a record book for it is a legal trespass against God's holy law; therefore, all the sins of all human beings were legal transferred from us upon Christ and meted out in punitive action to declare the law not to be void against trespasses made against the law itself. Therefore, as Christ is taking upon himself our legal standing on the cross for we deservedly should be there, we are take undeservedly upon ourselves the righteousness of him imputed or legal transcribed upon our record. Well, since Christ had never committed a sin and was a perfect law-keeper, we are declared [legally] righteous even though we are not righteous.
Protestant soteriology is so disjointed and confusing to me become they suggest sin is a legal trespass against God's holy law. However the case, it is the condition of man which leads unto the acts or transgressions against God's holy law in the first place and I don't suggest that in the traditional completely spiritually dead Augustinian sense of the term. O would say that most parents can end up ministering out of their children the propensity to be self-seeking and fear-based in principle. I think the better term would be ‘out of harmony’ with His design laws as the former suggests a ‘legal’ problem.
Augustinian anthropological misconceptions of man's broken condition have led to this imputed or “legally declared to be righteous even though you are not” idea within Protestant soteriological study. However the case, even *IF* they were true and if the Protestant world wanted to be intellectually honest the term imputed in the Greek ‘logizomai’ or to ‘reckon’ as righteous in the Strong's Concordance actually says that this reckoning is an assessment of reality and not presumption. So even if we were to stipulate this idea of imputed vs. imparted; the imputed righteousness would be understood as the believer actually receiving the imparted righteousness of Christ.
So much of Protestant Christianity is confused on this topic because the ministers who have explored this topic are not applying sound biblical exegesis into their studying of these terms to understand the realities unto which they point in the first place.
I think you have a point, in that, in these polarizing debates, each side tends to emphasize that which is seen as more important;
The Protestants, because their Soteriology(as broken as their doctrine is) is their main selling point, they hammer again and again on their doctrine of Justification, because they realize(rightly) that the forgiveness of sins and righteousness before God is very important.
For the Orthodox, with our understanding of Theosis, we stress the absolute necessity of keeping the Commandments of God, because the continuous practice of virtue is necessary for a healthy Spiritual life.
The very Orthodox synthesis of these two positions stresses neither the beginning nor the process till the end, but takes the whole and lays it put properly from beginning to end.
so, these people who come into Orthodoxy and teach there's no atonement, why aren't they excommunicated?
Because there is no atonement... There is THEOSIS.
I'm going to disagree!! I Have A Copy Of Saint Ignatius's Letters, and Yes, if you Read his Writings, he Did Believe The Atonement. Saint Peter Wrote About The Atonement In his First Epistle, Saint Philaret of Moscow Wrote About The Atonement, so Yes, there is An Atonement. No, there's no separation between The Father And The Son. No, no debt was ever paid to the devil.
Because excommunication is serious business that is a response to continued unrepentant sin, not holding wrong beliefs in your head. To excommunicate someone means to cut them off from God and thereby life itself, which is an extremely dangerous state to be in. Most Orthodox Christians (or human beings in general) don't have 100% correct beliefs because human beings fundamentally are not brains encased in bodies. What comes first and foremost is the embodied life of the Church through participation in the mysteries and thereby growing closer in union with Christ, NOT making sure you have the right intellectual understanding and assenting to abstract propositions. The Orthodox Church is not Protestant, we do not simply kick people out or go into schism over simply wrong thinking. You can have all the right beliefs and still be far away from God.