Why did the Lord die on the Cross? Orthodox theology says that the Lord died to share His Divine life with man. He destroyed death by His Resurrection. And through the Resurrection, Christ transformed our corrupted and mortal nature and united us to the source of eternal life, God.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Corinthians 5:17
Christ is the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit, and the firstborn from the dead. When the dead in Christ will be risen, they will receive the same new and glorious form, immortal body of the last Adam. This is deification, theosis, partaking in the divine nature. In other words, salvation, that starts from our baptism and never ends.
In Orthodox Christianity, salvation is not a once-and-done event but a life-time process.
We are “being saved,” not “already saved.” This salvation is a process, worked out by participating in and cooperating with the grace of God. It is an ongoing, everlasting process of moving from glory to glory, becoming more and more holy and God-like.
Let me quote Fr. Stephen Freeman's post from his blog "Glory to God for All Things:
One of the best places to begin thinking about communion with God is to ask the question: “What is wrong with the human race?” What is it about us such that we need saving?
The answer to that question is perhaps the linchpin of Christian theology (at least what has been revealed to us). Among the most central of Orthodox Christian doctrines is that human beings have fallen out of communion with God – we have severed the bond of communion with which we were created and thus we are no longer in communion with the Lord and Giver of Life, we no longer have a share in His Divine Life, but instead have become partakers of death...
This lack of communion with God, this process of death at work in us, manifests itself in a myriad of ways, extending from moral failure, to death and disease itself. It corrupts everything around us – our relationships with other people and our families, our institutions and our best intentions.
Without intervention, the process of death results in the most final form of death – complete alienation and enmity with God (from our point of view). We come to hate all things righteous and good. We despise the Light and prefer darkness. Since this is the state of human beings who have cut themselves off from communion with God, we substitute many things and create a “false” life, mistaking wealth, fame, youth, sex, emotions, etc., for true life.
Seeing all of this as true of humanity – the Orthodox Christian faith does not generally view humanity as having a “legal” problem. It is not that we did something wrong and now owe a debt we cannot pay, or are being punished with death – though such a metaphor can be used and has its usefulness. Be we need more than a change in our legal status – we need a change in our ontological status – that is we must be filled with nothing less than the Life of God in order to be healed, forgiven and made new. Jesus did not come to make bad men good; He came to make dead men live.
Thus God came into our world, becoming one of us, so that by His sharing in our life, we might have a share in His life. In Holy Baptism we are united to Him, and everything else He gives us in the Life of His Church is for the purpose of strengthening, nurturing, and renewing this Life within us. All of the sacraments have this as their focus. It is the primary purpose of prayer.
Thus, stated simply, to have communion with God means to have a share in His Divine Life. He lives in me and I in Him. I come to know God even as I know myself. I come to love even as God loves because it is His love that dwells in me. I come to forgive as God forgives because it His mercy that dwells within me.
Without such an understanding of communion, many vitally important parts of the Christian life are reduced to mere moralism. We are told to love our enemies as though it were a simple moral obligation. Instead, we love our enemies because God loves our enemies, and we want to live in the Life of God. We’re not trying to be good, or to prove anything to God by loving our enemies. It is simply the case that if the Love of God dwells in us, then we will love as God loves.
Of course all of this is the free gift of God, though living daily in communion with God is difficult. The disease of broken communion that was so long at work in us is difficult to cure. It takes time and we must be patient with ourselves and our broken humanity – though never using this as an excuse not to seek the healing that God gives.
We were created for communion with God – it is our very life. Thinking about communion with God is not a substitute for communion with God. Theology as abstraction has no life within it. Theology is a life lived in Christ. Thus there is the common saying within Orthodoxy: “a theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have communion with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
This is our salvation.”
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Let’s get back to St Athanasius’ maxim. When an Orthodox Christian reads it, he doesn't rely on his personal understanding of a modern American/Asian/African/Australian/or European man or even a German theologian from 16th century. Orthodox Christians understand Christian faith through the lens of the Church Fathers who passed this Christian faith to us.
For the Fathers, "God became man to make men gods" would mean that the Lord came to earth, died for us and resurrected so that to share His Divine life with man. Our
salvation/deification/partaking in the divine nature/communion with God is the result of Resurrection. If the last Adam’s resurrected humanity is full of life and divinity, it also means that our resurrected humanity will be in the same glorious form of the eternal life of the Kingdom of God. Theosis/deification is still a mystery. We can neither understand it nor say much about it. But as the Eastern Fathers teach, theosis is the true purpose of our life.
Fr Thomas Hopko says, “We are all called to be saints, to be holy as God is holy, to be perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect. (Rom. 1:7, 1 Cor. 1:2, 2 Pet. 1:15, Mt. 5:48) We are all made to fulfill ourselves as creatures made in God’s image and likeness for eternal life. And we can do so because God not only creates us with this possibility, and indeed, this command; but because He also does everything in His power to guarantee its accomplishment by sending His Son and His Spirit to the world.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
I have a retired neighbor friend, also an engineer, who grew up in the Russian Orthodox church, but now attends the nearest Ukrainian Orthodox church... In all regards they are so "old."
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Brother Ohio, thank you. I take it as a compliment.
The word “old” doesn't only mean "old-fashioned" but also "original".
BTW, if someone is interested to know old/ancient Orthodox understanding of the Lord's death on the Cross, Resurrection and atonement theory, I highly recommend Fr Stephen Freeman’s posts. Please don't neglect the comments. They are worth reading.
The Death of Christ and the Life of Man
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory...rist-life-man/
Good News – Your Debt is Being Cancelled
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory...ebt-cancelled/
God bless.