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The language of salvation
I say, 'You are gods' (Ps 82:6). This phrase from the Old Testament, quoted by our Lord Himself (Jn 10:34), has deeply marked the spiritual imagination of Orthodoxy. In the Orthodox understanding Christianity signifies not merely an adherence to certain dogmas, not merely an exterior imitation of Christ through moral effort, but direct union with the living God, the total transformation of the human person by divine grace and glory - what the Greek Fathers termed 'deification' or 'divinisation' ( theosis, theopoiesis). In the words of St Basil the Great, man is nothing less than a creature that has received the order to become God.1
These words by the Orthodox Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia summarise the distinctive focus of Eastern Orthodoxy's soteriology on theosis, an emphasis which can be traced to the writings of the Christian Fathers of the age immediately succeeding the New Testament period. The understanding of salvation as the deification of man may sound alien to Western Christians, particularly of the Protestant variety, who are more accustomed to a soteriology centred on the concept of justification by faith. Several factors have contributed to the different approaches and emphases of Eastern and Western soteriologies, even though Christians from both traditions read the same scriptures and share a common spiritual and theological heritage. As John Meyendorff and Robert Tobias have pointed out, 'The language of the Scriptures is . . . not univocal, and in the course of time biblical terms took on new connotations or overtones (sometimes assuming a life of their own), as they were filtered through Christian experience and thought.' 2 The Protestant tradition has its roots primarily in the Western Catholic tradition, which developed independently of the East for a thousand years before the Reformation. After the seventh century and the rise of Islam, Eastern Christianity was isolated from the West. In addition, Orthodoxy had no first-hand experience of the spiritual and theological concerns of the Reformation, which took place only in Western Christendom.
Without a doubt, the concept of justification 'is central to Pauline and Augustinian theology and virtually dominates the Western theological tradition'.3 When Augustine was developing his soteriology, 'the East experienced...