Not for the first time in the last few days have I been brought up short by a challenge to my traditional thinking. This time is respect of salvation; and in particular the place of the resurrection. The challenge came from the blog of Fr. Gregory Hallam - Antiochabouna.blogspot.com and I got the length of his blog after researching about St. Theodore of Tarsus and Canterbury, because we are hoping to establish a daughter congregation in a place that was formerly Ayios Theodoros; the obvious name choice being St. Theodore's for our congregation - but who was he? Fr. Gregory's church website told all that and more - and it was all new information to me, but then came the challenge. He wrote in April last about the difference between the traditional 'protestant' understanding of salvation, and that of the Orthodox. Of my position as he perceives he wrote as follows:-
In Eden humans disobeyed God and broke their relationship with Him. For this they were cast out of Paradise as a punishment and suffered death as a consequence of their sin. This fall corrupted (more - Calvin or less - the Scholastics) human nature thereafter and made reparation with God a human impossibility on account of the gravity of sin (which includes the transmissible guilt of Adam and Eve), its disabling power and God's judgement upon man's transgression. Only God Himself could put humanity back into a right relationship with Him (justification) and impart holiness (sanctification). This He did by suffering the punishment for our transgressions - death - in the sacrifice of His Son for the salvation of the world in our place, propitiating God in respect of the offence of original and subsequent actual sin. By this means Man was restored to a right relationship with Him and was accounted worthy of eternal life made available to him in and by Christ's resurrection.
Notice here that death is both a consequence and a punishment for sin; that someone must bear the punishment justly due for our transgression and that only when Christ has appeased the Father is eternal life possible. The resurrection has no saving significance beyond that which has already been achieved on the cross.

He then compared his understanding of the Orthodox Church position as follows:-

In Eden humans chose a demonically inspired autonomy from God and by that choice death entered the natural order and human life specifically. God in his mercy and love removed them from Paradise into this world lest this physical death be compounded by an eternal spiritual death. Now subject to suffering and death, human alienation from the divine life becomes the raw material for Satan's attempt to subvert humanity finally from God. This corrupting influence of the fear of and flight from death makes of sin an ever present reality for the children of Adam and Eve. However they remain free to choose between God and Satan and this outworking of salvation in history eventually enables a Virgin to conceive by the Holy Spirit the Saviour who is both God and Man. This incarnation which includes the whole dispensation of Christ from his birth to his resurrection unites our human nature to God and redeems it. As we repent and live ascetically for God in the power of the Holy Spirit the resurrection victory of God over the opposing powers (which led to the death of Christ), we partake of the divine life of the Trinity, the energies of God, and are transformed in an ontological union with God from one degree of glory to the next, (the ascension of our humanity). This salvation process starts in this life and is consummated in the next.

Notice how death is not a punishment from an outraged God in Eden, nor is our banishment. Everything is done out of love. There is no divine anger to placate, no debility of our will, no meaning in the death of Christ without the resurrection (but every meaning with it!). All of the life of Christ saves us and this is by the incarnation gathering everything that is ours into God where it is transformed into the divine image and likeness. Moreover the Holy Spirit is the divine personal agent of our transformation and everything is a coordinated work of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. The Ever-Virgin Mary becomes the model of what it is to be a Christian. She broke down the wall of opposition to God in her own life and womb and by her own gracious response to God. This is what it is to be saved in the Orthodox Church, to be an Easter people.

I have to say that I found this totally revolutionary. I am still mulling it over. Scripture seems to me to attest in many places to the wrath of God against sin; thus the need for the cross and Christ's death in my traditional thinking and preaching.

The irony is that the populace often seem to have it all back to front in that Good Friday services are usually poorly attended; full to bursting for Easter Day. Truly you can't have one without the other; it's all of a piece - along with the incarnation - the remembrance of which we are once again approaching.

Another irony is that a Syrian Orthodox priest said that the one day of the year that the Syrian Churches are always full to bursting is Good Friday...

I'm still thinking...