III' Introduction to Greek Soteriology

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III. Introduction to Greek Soteriology

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III.A. Initial Thoughts on Soteriology

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• What do we think soteriology deals with?

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• What do we think soteriology deals with?
• The application of Christs work to the
  individual believer by the Holy Spirit
• The relation between justification and
  sanctification
• The relation between Gods action and human
  action in conversion and perseverance

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• Why are these issues important to us?

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• Why are these issues important to us?
• The application of Christs work to the
  individual believer by the Holy Spirit
• Direct vs. mediated actions of God
• God vs. the Church

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• Why are these issues important to us?
• The relation between justification and
  sanctification
• Roman Catholic confusion of these
• Salvation is completely from God, but it does not
  lead to passivity.

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• Why are these issues important to us?
• The relation between Gods action and human
  action in conversion and perseverance
• Protection of Gods sovereignty
• Insisting on the reality of human decisions

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• Why are these issues important to us?
• More generally
• Protestantism rejected the Roman Catholic concept
  of how salvation is mediated to people.
• Protestantism still defines itself in opposition
  to this Roman concept.

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• But notice what Protestantism does NOT reject
• Focus on what God does, not who he is
• Salvation as something we receive because of what
  Christ has done
• Emphasis on a persons state before God

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III.A.1. Legacy of the Reformation

• So what?
• The Reformation dispute is primarily over HOW
  salvation is accomplished.
• But the question How? is not the FIRST question
  related to salvation.
• Listening to the end of a conversation, without
  the beginning

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III.A.2. Rewinding the DVD

• An unspoken assumption
• God (or Christ, or HS) has to BE who he is, to DO
  what he did, to give us the KIND of salvation we
  have.

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III.A.2. Rewinding the DVD

• Thus, THREE major questions
• WHO is the God who saves us (or helps us achieve
  salvation)?
• WHAT is salvation?
• HOW does this kind of God give us (or enable us
  to achieve) this kind of salvation?

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III.A.2. Rewinding the DVD

• Historical Logic
• These three questions are ALWAYS intertwined.
• WHO we believe God is sets up the boundaries for
  WHAT kind of salvation we can have.
• WHAT kind of salvation we can have dictates HOW
  God (and man) act to accomplish that salvation.

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III.A.2. Rewinding the DVD

• Historical Logic
• One or another question tends to rise to the
  surface in any given period.
• There is a logic to the order in which the Church
  faces these questions.
• Who? in the 4th-5th centuries
• What? in the 5th-9th centuries
• How? in the 10th-16th centuries

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III.A.3. Implications

• All doctrine is implicitly soteriological.
• All doctrine should be explicitly tied to
  soteriology.
• Questions of how salvation is accom-plished can
  never be separated from questions of who God is,
  who man is, and what salvation consists of.

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III.A.3. Implications

• The Trinitarian and Christological controversies
  are just as soteriological as the Reformation
  controversies.
• The way the early Church overtly spoke of
  salvation was to answer the Who? question, just
  as the way we speak of salvation is to answer the
  How? question.
• The overt statements of Who? or How? cannot
  be understood apart from each other or from the
  What? question.

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III.A.4. What to Look For

• In General
• In this course, we are mainly focusing on WHAT
  salvation is understood to be.
• The writings will discuss this in the context of
  overt controversy about WHO God is.

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III.A.4. What to Look For

• More Specifically
• How does soteriology determine what one says
  about the Trinity?
• What does it mean to participate in God? In what
  aspects of Gods being do we participate?
• What is the relation between the created
  condition, the fall, and the saved condition?
• Is Gods action or human action primary in
  salvation?
• What is the decisive event in salvation? When
  does it occur?

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III.B. Modern Scholarly Views on

• Greek Patristic Soteriology

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III.B. A Starting Point

• A commonly-accepted dichotomy
• East West
• Greek language Latin language
• Platonic philosophy Roman law
• Oriental mysticism Hebrew focus on sin
• Deification Forgiveness

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• A passionate hatred for the Eastern Church
• A reverential attachment to Tertullian and
  Augustine

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• Tertullian and Augustine are the Fathers of the
  Latin Church in so eminent a sense that,
  mea-sured by them, the East possessed no Church
  Fathers at all. The only one to rival them,
  Origen, exerted his influence in a more limited
  sphere. We can exhibit the superiority of
  Western to Eastern Christianity at many points
  we can even state a whole series of causes for
  this superiority but one of the most outstanding
  is the fact that while the East was influenced by
  a commonplace succession of theologians and
  monks, the West was moulded by Tertullian and
  Augustine.
• History of Dogma, 5.14-15

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• Greek Patristics
• A philosophical orientation, rather than a
  biblical one
• Deification mystical theory of redemption
• Deification is completely opposed to Scripture.
• The biblical doctrine of sin, forgiveness, and
  moral living is almost completely lost in the
  doctrine of deification.

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• The salvation presented in Christianity
  consists in the redemption of the human race from
  the state of mortality and the sin involved in
  it, that men might attain divine life, i.e., the
  everlasting contemplation of God, this redemption
  having already been consummated in the
  incarnation of the Son of God and being conferred
  on men by their close union with him
  Christianity is the religion which delivers from
  death and leads to the contemplation of God.
• History of Dogma, 3.164

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• West is more Biblical, ecclesiastical, and
  practical
• To this is attributed the fact that the West
  did not fix its attention above all on
  deification nor, in consequence, on asceticism,
  but kept real life more distinctly in view.
• History of Dogma, 5.22

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• Deification in more detail
• Based on the incarnation
• Consists primarily of immortality
• Has little need for atonement
• If developed consistently, results in barbarism
• Is usually held in tension with more biblical
  ideas

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III.B.1. Adolf von Harnack

• Problems with Harnacks Approach
• Salvation is depersonalized.
• Eastern thought is depicted as being closer to
  Platonic philosophy than it actually was.
• It gives Westerners an excuse to write off
  Eastern soteriology altogether.

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III.B.2. Harnacks Heirs

• Hans von Campenhausen --
• It is most striking that the new theological
  life that came into being in the West in the
  fourth and fifth centuries had no influence in
  the East, whereas the West was always open to the
  influence of Greek theology The latter had long
  since thought of themselves as having attained
  their final goal. Imprisoned in their own
  territorial and cultural confines, their Church
  rested upon its own perfection. It trusted in an
  unchanging and indestructible continuity with the
  apostles and Fathers of the past whose
  achievements it admired so much that it failed to
  observe the changing nature of the problems which
  faced theology. It preserved their intellectual
  inheritance without doing anything to renew it.
• Fathers of the Greek Church, p. 176

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III.B.2. Harnacks Heirs

• J. Patout Burns
• Western Church (Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine)
• Focus on work of Christ and on Church
• Salvation limited to those in the Church
• Eastern Church (Justin Martyr, Origen, Gregory of
  Nyssa)
• Development of potential inherent in creation
• Salvation available to all who seek union with God

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III.B.3. Harnacks Critics Gross

• Sees basically the same East-West dichotomy as
  Harnack.
• Sees deification primarily in terms of
  incorruption, as does Harnack.
• But sees Eastern and Western influences as
  largely complementary, unlike Harnack.
• Sees deification as a biblical idea in Greek
  dress, not as a philosophical import.

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III.B.3. Harnacks Critics Gross

• Saint Paul mainly considers the conversion,
  the healing of the sinner, while Saint John is
  absorbed by the contemplation of the divine life
  imparted to people by Christ, and of the
  elevation and adoption of humankind by God.
  The Pauline conception has been developed
  especially by Saint Augustine an the Latins,
  whereas the Johannine conception has been
  exploited with an enthusiastic partiality by the
  Greek fathers.
• The Divinization of the Christian, p. 2

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III.B.4. Grosss Heirs Russell

• Deification is a biblical concept expressed in
  the language of Hellenism.
• Much more attention to terminology than Gross
  has.
• More attention to the questions to which
  deification is the answer.
• Attention to all aspects of deification, not just
  incorruption/immortality.

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III.B.5. Problems with Gross/Russell

• Their conclusions are less specific than their
  evidence warrants.
• They correctly see the Greek fathers as
  understanding deification in a variety of ways.
• They DONT see how vast the differences in
  emphasis are from one father to another.

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III.B.6. A Suggested Approach

• Deification participation in God
• This would MUCH LATER be defined as participation
  in Gods energies.
• But it is a mistake to assume that in the Greek
  fathers, participation is to be understood in
  terms of energies/qualities of God.

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III.B.6. A Suggested Approach

• Instead, participation can be primarily personal
  or impersonal.
• Impersonal Participation in Gods qualities, and
  in extreme cases, loss of the believers
  individuality and personality.
• Personal Participation in the Sons relationship
  to the Father

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III.B.6. A Suggested Approach

• Points to notice
• Participation can be primarily impersonal or
  primarily personal.
• Adoption can be primarily impersonal, personal,
  or juridical.
• It is crucial to look at concepts, not just at
  terminology.

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III.B.6. A Suggested Approach

• If this is right, then not just Eastern and
  Western paradigms, as Harnack alleges.
• Rather, three major approaches to salvation
• Mystical (sharing in Gods qualities, esp.
  immortality)
• Personal (sharing in Sons relationship to
  Father)
• Juridical (status before God)

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III.B.6. A Suggested Approach

• Mystical Personal Juridical
• union communion status
• absorption relationship position
• loss of identity maintenance maintenance
• of individuality of individuality
• rapture fellowship forgiveness

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III.B.6. A Suggested Approach

• So what?
• We should not allow the worst of Eastern
  soteriology to blind us to the best of Eastern
  soteriology, just because the same terms are
  used.
• We should not allow an exclusively juridical
  understanding to blind us to the other ways
  Scripture describes salvation.

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III.C. What to Look For (Revisited)

• Who? Is God primarily
• The highest Good, in whose goodness we
  participate?
• The judge before whom we stand saved or
  condemned?
• The fellowship of three Persons, in whose
  relationships we share?

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III.C. What to Look For (Revisited)

• What? Is participation in God primarily
• Sharing in his immortality?
• Sharing in his fellowship?
• Sharing in his righteousness?
• Sharing in a certain status before him?

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III.C. What to Look For (Revisited)

• How? Is salvation primarily
• Gods action to restore us to the pre-fallen
  condition?
• Our action to aspire to a greater condition?
• Accomplished through the incarnation?
• Accomplished through the death of Christ?
• Accomplished through the believers effort and/or
  the Church?