Take, for instance, the Reformed Protestant
doctrine of atonement as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
"Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all
those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real, and full
satisfaction of his Father's justice in their behalf" (Westminster Confession
of Faith, VIII.5). Here we see the usual Protestant reductionism applied to the
Cross of our Savior. The traditional Christian teaching expressed in the New
Testament and in the writings of the Fathers on the subject of the atonement of
our Savior is that the Cross saved us in three essential ways: on the Cross
Jesus conquered death; on the Cross Jesus triumphed over the principalities and
powers of this evil age; on the Cross Jesus made atonement for human sins by
His blood. Because the Protestants were working out of a soteriological framework
of a courtroom and declarative justification, they read the teaching about the
cross through these lenses and as a result articulated a reductionistic theology
of the atonement, which ignored the traditional emphases on the conquering of
death and the triumph over the demons. Everything for Protestantism becomes
satisfaction of God's justice, and by making one image the whole, even that
image became distorted in Protestant articulation.
Besides the reductionism found in Protestant
notions of salvation as forgiveness and the atonement, the greatest
reductionism is found in the immense neglect of emphasis upon the heart of the
New Testament teaching on salvation as union with Jesus Christ, or what orthodox
theology calls theosis or deification. The theology of the Church bears witness
to the fact that the mystery of salvation is accomplished not just on the
Cross, but from the very moment of Incarnation when the Only-begotten and
Co-Eternal Son united Himself forever with humanity in the womb of the Virgin
Mary, His Most Pure Mother. Salvation as union and communion between God and
Man drips from every page of the New Testament and in the writings of Holy
Fathers. This is why the phrase “in Christ” is St. Paul’s fundamental image of
salvation and Christian life.
Protestants do not understand the patristic
emphasis so beautifully expressed by St. Athanasius the Great, “God became man,
so that man might become God.” Or the patristic dictum: “All that God is by
nature man can become by grace.” For the traditional Christian this is no quest
to become the fourth person of the Holy Trinity. It is not an expectation to
cease being a creature or negate the Creator-creature distinction. This is a
quest to be united by grace to the living God in a mystical transformation
expressed by the Holy Transfiguration of our Savior on Mt. Tabor where, due to
the union of divinity and humanity, hypostatically bound in the One Person of
Jesus Christ, the uncreated divine light shone in and through human flesh. In
St. John’s words, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared
as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him,
because we shall see Him as He is” (1 Jn. 3:2). This coming transfiguration of
believers, this glorious resurrection and divinization of human nature in the
unspeakable bliss of union with God, this shining as the stars in the Kingdom
of His Father as our Savior puts it in his parabolic teachings, if the future
of believers. It is hardly just forgiveness.
The tragic reductionism of Protestant
concepts of salvation has produced a very serious neglect of theosis, and has
led to the serious error of objectifying fallen human life and its limitations
and projecting it into the future. It has kept Protestants from understanding
the potential of human transformation in this life . . . The tradition of the
Orthodox Church points out that life in the Spirit, deified life, transcends
the fallen boundaries that define our current existence. Such life was
manifested in the Prophets of old who transcended fallen human limitations as
types of redeemed men. The Holy Prophet Moses the God-Seer had his countenance
transfigured in uncreated light by communion with God (Exo. 34:29). The Prophet
Elisha was able to hear and see what the King of Aram in Syria was strategizing
in his war rooms, which were many miles away (2 Kings 6:12). (Josiah Trenham, Rock and Sand: An Orthodox Appraisal of the
Protestant Reformers and their Teachings [3d ed.; Columbia, Miss.: Newrome
Press, 2018], 178, 180-81)
Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness
Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation
Baptism, Salvation, and the New Testament: John 3:1-7
