Monday, April 27, 2020

Josiah Trenham (Eastern Orthodox) on Some of the Problems with the Reformed View of Soteriology




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)

 Further Reading

An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology

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

Full Refutation of the Protestant Interpretation of John 19:30