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Orthodox Concept of Salvation: Understanding the Terms from a Chaplains Perspective

Abstract

The early twentieth century saw a “revival” of the Orthodox Church through
immigration, education of the hierarchy and rise of the middle class. With the Orthodox
population moving to the west, a rebirth had taken place on theological topics and
understandings of major teachings within the church. The role of the Bible in the life of the
believer, the role of the priesthood and the understanding of salvation all became radically
redefined during the 20th century. The interaction with different Christian denominations created
a paradigm shift in how we understood salvation and the questions asked around the
understanding of salvation. Orthodox teaching had moved from communal salvation to
defending, as we know it in the west, “personal salvation”. Comments like, “We are saved by
grace, works are not needed” and, “Why do you go through all those rituals, do you not know
that once you accept Christ you are saved?” These comments generated a conversation and a
shift took place in how we speak about salvation. The conversation shifted and today we have a
wide range of answers. In this paper, I will seek to journey with you on two parts. The first part
will seek to answer the question what is the Orthodox understanding of salvation? How was it
understood in the early church? What is Christ’s role in salvation? How do we understand sin?
The second part will seek to answer the question, why does any of this matter? I hope to
intertwine my own personal dealings within chaplaincy and how that has affected my own
understanding of salvation.

Introduction

The Orthodox tradition has never restricted the concept of salvation to a single plan or
single understanding. Rather, the questions surrounding salvation, and what it means to be saved,
rest in multiple paradigms. Salvation is understood as communion, as illumination, as theosis, as
freedom and all of these is achieved through Christ’s incarnation, his life, his sacrifice, his
teachings, the church and the work of the Spirit. The Orthodox tradition can define salvation and
understand it through many paradigms but the guiding principle, the conclusion is Jesus Christ.
Understanding who Christ is is crucial to understanding salvation. We have had councils that laid
a foundation about Christ and who he is. Scriptures speak of Christ and his life. The works of the
early Christian writers, the development of liturgy and icons all focus on Christ as they try to
explain to us in a dynamic way who he is and what it is that he did for us. As the centuries went
on and new developments in society and culture took place, understanding salvation and its role
within the public life drastically began to change and adapt.

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware in the Orthodox Church says:

Where Orthodoxy sees chiefly Christ the Victor, the late medieval and post-medieval
west sees chiefly Christ the Victim. While Orthodoxy interprets the crucifixion primarily
as act of triumphant victory over the powers of evil, the west - particularly since the time
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of Anselm of Canterbury - has tended rather to think of the Cross in penal and juridical
terms, as an act of satisfaction or substitution designed to propitiate the wrath of an angry
Father….In the west from the 1930s there has been a revival of the Patristic idea of
Christus Victor, alike in theology, in spirituality, and in art; and the Orthodox are
naturally happy that this should be so.1

These ideas that Metropolitan Kallistos Ware alludes to is part of the paradigm shift we
see develop in the 20th century. Questions that must ask are how did we get to this point? How do
we understand sin and role it has in our lives? Before we approach those questions let us
consider what exactly is salvation?

What is Salvation?

Salvation, on a pedestrian level, has been understood and viewed as the reconciliation
between God and creation, through the mediation of the central creation: the human being.
Salvation is a restoration of relationships that are shattered and lose from their true character.
The connection of forgiveness of sins, the loosening of the bonds of memory is connected to this
imagery. When you have done something wrong to another individual you ask for forgiveness. It
also entails enlightenment and illumination. In order to heal any relationship, people have to be
taught, shown how to live, how to connect and relate to each other, and relate and live with their
God. Salvation is also connected with union: much scriptural and liturgical imagery about
salvation is about integration and consistency in the face of division and brokenness. The work
of the devil, literally the divider, shows this imagery how dividing and creating division within
different scriptural stories (I.E. Job). Aside from the texts that speak of reconciliation in Christ,
Ephesians 1:9-10 sees the culmination of everything in terms of union of all things [to bring
unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ], and Colossians 1: 17-22 expresses Christ
as the principle of unity and reconciler of all things through the Church. Maximus the Confessor,
writing in the 6th century, understood salvation as the realization in Christ of the human vocation.
He drew this understanding in a five-fold structure of the union and integration of divisions
within the earthly plan but connected with the heavenly.

In the Orthodox tradition, the sacramental life of the church plays an important role in the
way of salvation. Not only are we to participate in the sacrament but we are called to live it out.
The word sacrament or mystery as it is used more within the Orthodox circles is understood as
referring to the union of the uncreated and created, thus making Christ himself the ultimate
sacrament, as is the divine and human church. The sacraments unite the things of the earth-bread,
water, oil, wine-to the things of heaven. The church, as the place where the sacraments are taught
and lived out, is the space which humanity-by the work established by Christ-work out, elaborate
and experience the foretaste of salvation2.

1
Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993, p.229.
2
Peter Bouteneff. “Christ and Salvation,” in Mary Cunningham Corran and Elizabeth Theokritoff, eds., The
Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 93-106.
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When we speak of salvation, as being a union nowhere is more thoroughly fulfilled than
in the term theosis of the human being. The early Christian writers taught that the divine likeness
is something that we strive towards. The divine likeness is the realization of the gift and vocation
placed in us with the divine image. The classic dictum associated with this understanding was
echoed by St. Irenaeus and made famous by St. Athanasius in his classic work On the
Incarnation chapter 53, “He [God] became human so that we [humanity] could become God”.
What must be made clear with this understanding, as it has become a contentious term, is that
theosis, nor life itself, is ours by right. It is the gift of God’s grace. The life that bears a likeness
to the divine is completely in accord with human nature. We seek to move and become more like
God in how we live, in how we communicate and interact with each other. The perfect example
for theosis is Christ himself, who unites the human and the divine, on every level. Theosis is
understood then by becoming ever more Christ-like. This is what is implied when we say imitate
Christ, especially in the language of “taking up his cross, to become co-crucified with him, living
for and ministering to others, especially to the poor and outcast”. The first letter of John
summarizes this when he writes, “When he appears we shall be like him” (1 Jn 3:2).

To conclude what is salvation we can say that humanity’s vocation is to become by grace
everything that Christ is by nature. Putting it another way, our work is to participate in God’s
work and in his will, to the point where, while remaining human (having the ability to fall), we
become partakers of the characteristics of divinity itself. In that regard, through the ups and
downs of life that come with it, we join the One who descended for us, who, while remaining
divine, became a partaker of the characteristics of humanity, giving us permission to partake in
all that is divine.

The Nature of the Human Being

The misconception within the modern Orthodox tradition has focused on “humanity
before the fall” and “humanity after the fall”. Before the fall humanity was a perfect being after
which, humans fell into sin and ceased to be perfect. When we evaluate the scriptures and
teachings of the early Christian writers there seems to be a movement from this modern
understanding to a more holistic approach. Father John Behr, dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary,
illustrates in his book, Becoming Human that when God created humanity the sub-clause, “and it
was good” never followed3. Following every act of creation, God looked at his creation and saw
that it was good. However, the creation of humanity was a constant work which concluded with
Christ when he completed the phrase “It is finished” in the gospel of John. What is finished?
God’s creation which he began in Genesis 1!

Understanding the human being is vital to our modern understanding of “who we are”
and what our role in understanding salvation is. Peter Abdelmalak illustrates a beautiful
imaginary in his work, The Condition of Man, when he tries to show his readers that man is
3
John Behr. Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image. (Crestwood: New York,
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013), 33-35.
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mortal by the definition of his own existence and that we overcome this mortality by sharing in
the Word, sharing in the very life of God4. By embracing our humanity as human creatures it is
then that we begin to see and live out salvation in how we live our lives. With this definition laid
out its time to see how the chaplain sees salvation in our modern world.

Salvation from the Chaplain Perspective

When a Chaplain speaks of salvation what does that entail? As a Chaplain I find myself
wearing many hats. I can be a counselor, I can be a psychotherapist, I can be a priest, I can be a
bereavement worker at time of crisis, and I can be a mediator between patients and families
when dynamics arise. I can be a support system for staff. I can almost be anything I need to be in
order to be present with anyone or any situation as it presents itself. Why is that? Because many
families and patients view chaplains in a particular way and see them for one thing and one thing
only; the person who will restore them from illness to health. There is a narrow focus on the one-
to-one relationship between the spiritual care therapist and the patient. However, strong voices in
the last 15 years have pushed to a communal approach in providing spiritual care support.
According to these voices, neither the category of Martyria (to be a witness) as emphasized by
the old school teachings of chaplaincy, nor the category of Diakonia (service or ministry) that is
at the heart of therapeutic care, but rather the category of Koinonia (community) is the proper
dimension for spiritual care5. I hope to show that the communal approach and community is the
essence of salvation within the understanding of a spiritual care provider. My case study who I
will be referring to is Victor Frankl; a holocaust survivor who went on to develop his own school
of Psychotherapy which he called Logotherapy. Logotherapy’s main point is founded upon the
belief that it is the striving to find meaning in one’s life. The most powerful motivating and
driving force is the life of the human being which I will unpack as we move along.

Moving our attention back to the community I would like to unpack that imagery some
more. A chaplain receives his or her training mostly from the social sciences making them a
student of history, the arts and different psychological school of thoughts. But above all else, the
spiritual care provider is a help for living in times of crisis. The spiritual care provider
concentrates on how an individual acts to him or herself and on the relationship between a
person’s self and the world. In a “helping relationship of true understanding” healing tendencies
of self-actualization-spoken in the language of human sciences-can become effective in the
individual. In theological terms, we can speak of God’s creative and sustaining activity being
present in this process. In relation to this, the dimension of salvation is present throughout the
process. How does that look like?

Sometimes we can lose sight of what is important and that is the salvation of humanity.
Victor Frankl reminds us that it is important to assert that in theological anthropology being

4
Peter Abdelmalak. The Condition of Man, (Guelph: Self-Publication, 2016), 11.
5
Holger Eschmann. “Towards a Pastoral Care in a Trinitarian Perspective”. The Journal of Pastoral Care, vol. 54, no.
4, 2000, pp. 422.
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human is always being something above and beyond oneself. Human existence finds its
realization not only in dealing with oneself in a moving and respectful manner but also in the
dedication of oneself to another human being or to a significant cause6. Spiritual care takes place
not only in the church but in all aspects of life. The paradigm to which a spiritual care provider
uses can be taken from any context. The context that I work out of is Christ. The church and
understanding the role of the church in the life of the believer is important for a spiritual care
therapist to operate out of. Christology and Soteriology can play a vital role for spiritual care
therapist on the notion of the living care of God in Jesus Christ. There is a focus on illuminating
the human situation under the judgment and the grace of God, with the proclamation of the
Gospel, with human guilt and with unconditional acceptance of God. Here, expressed in the
classical terminology of spiritual care, is the “office of the keys” of the church, where binding
and loosing take place7. Help with faith becomes a help for the living. Drawing on the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ consolation and comfort can be offered in the face of unavoidable
suffering in the face of death. This idea can be less well methodized and is thus less easily
learned, taught and evaluable. Competence in Spiritual Care in the area of the Salvation of Christ
grows above all out of faith, from one’s own spirituality allows the spiritual care provider to see
the potential of salvation in the person he or she is providing care for. Victor Frankl speaks about
experience and suffering when he says:

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way he takes
up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under most difficult circumstances-to add
a deeper meaning in his life…of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and
obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is
sufficient proof that man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate8.

Switching gears now, I will use my case study example, Victor Frankl, and look at how
his experience in the holocaust afforded him to see and realize his own salvation. Even though it
might seem that Frankl’s work, Man’s Search for Meaning is about suffering, it is also about
coping spirituality during the darkest of times. It shows how the spirit can affect one’s fate, and
how it can preserve one’s dignity. The spirit resides in the body; it gives it life. I have
experienced with many people who think spirituality is thought of as being an intellectual
exercise or belonging to the realm of religious etiquette, and that it is something they do not
have. Frankl challenged this, when he, had no access to a place of worship, no access to scripture
or liturgy, came to realize his own spirituality through his imagination in the concentration camp.
Spirituality then is something present in the human being as being part of his or her DNA9. Both
spirit and DNA are invisible without awareness and technology. Awareness of spirituality arises

6
Ibid., 424.
7
Ibid, 425.
8
Victor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. (New York, NY: Bantam, 1984), 76.
9
Georgia Gojmerac-Leiner. “Revisiting Victor Frankl: His Contributions to the Contemporary Interest in Spirituality
and Health Care”. The Journal of Pastoral Care, vol. 59, no. 4, 2005, pp, 376.
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out of the need for it, like a tree with its roots can keep the soil from eroding thereby maintaining
the bank on which it is growing as well as itself10.

Frankl’s paradigm is focused around the human being having something to live for,
something that awaits them in the future when they get there. The sick person loses faith, belief,
in the future when they get there. The sick person loses faith, belief, in the future when faced
with a poor prognosis. It is important to have gratitude for the life already lived and to live for
the present, to partner the mind to the body and to the soul. A human being is wired to thrive
with a promise of tomorrow regardless of the promise that we will rise to live again. If there is no
possibility of tomorrow, despair sets in. Frankl wrote:

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future-his future-was doomed. With his loss of
belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became
subject to mental and physical decay11.

Neither the sick person nor the spiritual care provider can accept the reality of sickness
and death, and they decide to pray for recovery. The sick person prays, “I want to get back to the
way I was before this happened”. The honest question becomes, “Are we ever the same again?”
Every time we resort to wishful thinking rather than rational thinking, we close the gates to the
possibility of enlightenment because of fear and attachment to the life we know. Frankl, as
previously stated, convinces us that even if one person can succeed at meeting suffering with an
inner freedom, it is enough to serve as an example that it can be done. Frankl boldly states, “…
everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of human freedoms-to choose one’s
attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way12”. So a sick person has a choice in
how he or she deal with illness, their fears, and ultimately, with their death. Jesus accepted his
cross his own way, through inner freedom and utter trust in God. But sometimes we just are not
conscious of God’s availability to us. Sometimes we become a lot like a cow seeking greener
pasture without realizing that our salvation has already been laid out for us by our master already
anticipating the new grazing place for us. The spiritual care provider realizes they minister to the
body of Christ when we minister to each other. When we realize that we are ministering to Christ
in all aspects of life that is when the path to salvation is revealed to us.

How do we realize we are ministering to Christ? Through love! Sometimes we just don’t
know our resources. Sometimes we just don’t know our sacred text and the promise of God made
to us. Sometimes people are under the impression that the sacred texts are irrelevant because they
are written in an old language, meaning they only know of one translation of the bible, the
Quran, and the Gita. They have never read the sacred texts in natural language. Speaking as a
Christian Chaplain, we are trained to know and understanding scripture from a modern
perspective in order to potentially make a difference when we interact with other humans. The

10
Ibid.
11
Victor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning, 82.
12
Ibid., 75.
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learning is constant for me. Theology is a way of life and the experiences I have with people,
their pain, their lack of Scriptural resources and their disconnection from God, or a meaningful
existential entity, such as love. Frankl, while in the concentration camps was transformed by the
power of love. This love showed him the essence of salvation when he said:

A thought transformed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song
by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that
love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the
meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to
impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who
has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the
contemplation of his beloved13.

Chaplains are part of the medical team. Chaplains are doctors for the soul as Frankl and
his prisoners were for each other. And just as medical doctors have to be honest with their
opinion about a prognosis, so must the chaplain be truthful about spiritual concerns. It takes
courage to suffer as Georgia Leiner says, “…tears bear witness that a man had courage to
suffer14”. It is difficult to do theology by the bedside but a theological question deserves a
theological answer. If a sick person asks, “How will I be saved with this body?” it is worth
risking a truthful response. It is a part of the Hebrew tradition that a person, as they continue to
grow, that they learn new things no matter how old. Within the Buddhist tradition, it is not
possible to stop learning if one practices awareness of what is, if one is mindful. Christ’s
teachings are not devoid of mindfulness. He asks us to always be prepared, to be watchful. He
tells us that there are no guarantees, and yet asks us to trust. Jesus encourages us to stay close to
our basic existence, to not yearn for the material things of the world but yearn for spiritual
wealth.

When we are well we have an easy time in believing in Buddhism, Jesus, or whatever we
believe in, such as love. When we are sick our life situation becomes abnormal. What we took
for granted seems unobtainable now. Yet it is through sickness and loss, through suffering, as
Frankl illustrates, we have an opportunity to get to know, and feel close to, our God, our
existence, our love and our salvation. But because of that attachment to people, possessions, old
self and way of life, we cannot accept the change the illness brings, and illness changes
everything. When facing death, we panic at the thoughts of imagining the world without us in it.
Yet if we can imagine that, we gain a freedom, an inner freedom, to enjoy the world while we are
in it in whatever state we are in, however long of a time we have and it is at that particular point
that we come to see our salvation in the inner freedom we attain. To imagine the world without
one’s self in it is to live in peace. To see and realize this salvation a change in attitude was
needed for Frankl as he said:
13
Ibid, 48-49.
14
Georgia Gojmerac-Leiner. “Revisiting Victor Frankl: His Contributions to the Contemporary Interest in Spirituality
and Health Care”, 378.
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What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to
learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not
really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us…life
ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to
fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual…these tasks, and therefore the
meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment15.

Conclusion: The Need for Salvation

By way of conclusion, I would like to make a few final points about the need for
salvation. To many this point might be an obvious one. However, we do not need to look far into
the world to realize that we human beings first and foremost are not well. To conclude that this
worldly life is the best possible solution for humanity, to say the least, is to have no imagination
and no insight into eternity. Further, we cannot lay blame for the world’s ills entirely elsewhere.
There is a connection between the brokenness of humanity and evil in the world, and we human
beings are consistently complicit in it.

When we open the first chapters of Genesis we see an ordered process of creation
culminating in the creation of the human person in the image and likeness of God. In the
Orthodox tradition, we never focus on the ideal “perfect” state of humanity “before” the fall as
mentioned previously. In fact, many of the early Christian writers like Maximus, Gregory,
Irenaeus and Ephrem say that we were a work in progress, like children who acted too early on
something that was meant for us at a later stage. When these same authors describe salvation as a
restoration, the meaning does not lie in some historic perfect state but rather the restoration of the
will of God for humanity united to him in perfect freedom and love16. The transgression and
eviction from Paradise narrated in Genesis was never understood in the east as “Original Sin”.
The Orthodox traditions strong emphasis on human freedom entails that people are guilty of their
own sins. The Genesis account, specifically the first 11 chapters lay witness to the state of exile
humanity found itself in which was at odds with God, with each other and with the created
universe and therefore was in need of saving.

The early Christian writers not only speak about the fall but simultaneously connect the
fall with the salvation of the world. Taking from the early philosopher’s, the early Christian
writers elaborated on the human person being a microcosm of the created world. If the human
person is a microcosm, the conclusion was reached by Athanasius, Cyril, and many others that
the human being is a unique creature in both spiritual and physical, thus allowing the human to
partake of the bodiless powers as well as of the material creation. If microcosm, then the human
person is also a mediator between the material and the spiritual, between heaven and earth. The
human vocation rests in offering up all of creation to God. All that humans interact with and deal
with is constantly offered up to God. If we fall, then we fail this vocation. But as CS Lewis
15
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 85.
16
Peter Bouteneff. “Christ and Salvation,” 104-106.
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beautiful said that God does not look at the fall of humanity but rather at its getting back up by
the hands of the community around them. Insofar as we fulfill our vocation, we fulfill our calling
allowing us to see beauty and see our salvation in all acts of life. Being a microcosm and a
mediator is no small calling but with the help of each other and calling upon God as Lord,
together we can make all acts an act of salvation.

Lastly I will leave you with this quote from Carl Rogers, a 20th century Psychologist who
influences my spiritual care practice and how I provide support as he says:

Before every session, I take a moment to remember my humanity, there is no experience

that this man or women has that I cannot share with them, no fear that I cannot
understand, no suffering that I cannot care about, because I too am human. No matter
how deep there wound, they do not need to be ashamed in front of me. I too am
vulnerable. And because of this, I am enough. Whatever their story, they no longer need
to be alone with it. This is what will allow there healing to begin17.

References

Bud Harris. Sacred Selfishness: A Guide to Living a Life of Substance. Makawao: Hawaii, Inner
Ocean Publishing, 2002.

Georgia Gojmerac-Leiner. “Revisiting Victor Frankl: His Contributions to the Contemporary

Interest in Spirituality and Health Care”. The Journal of Pastoral Care, vol. 59, no. 4, 2005, pp.
375-379.

Holger Eschmann. “Towards a Pastoral Care in a Trinitarian Perspective”. The Journal of

Pastoral Care, vol. 54, no. 4, 2000, pp. 419-427.

17
Bud Harris. Sacred Selfishness: A Guide to Living a Life of Substance. (Makawao: Hawaii, Inner Ocean Publishing,
2002), 266.
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John Behr. Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and Image.
Crestwood: New York, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013.

Peter Abdelmalak. The Condition of Man, Guelph: Self-Publication, 2016.

Peter Bouteneff. “Christ and Salvation,” in Mary Cunningham Corran and Elizabeth Theokritoff,
eds., The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 93-
106.

Timothy Ware. The Orthodox Church, New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Victor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. New York, NY: Bantam, 1984.