"Deification Through the Cross" - Khaled Anatolios on Salvation
“Deification Through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation”
by Khaled Anatolios
The basic Christian Creeds—the Apostles, Nicene, and Chalcedonian—focus respectively on the basic facts of the Christian narrative, the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, and defining the way in which Christ is both human and divine. The Eastern and Western churches alike subscribe to these Creeds, but the Creeds don't have much to say about salvation. The doctrine of salvation has just not been set forth in any ecumenical statements the same way that the doctrine of the Trinity has been.
Perhaps partly as a result of this, it’s been a persistent idea that the Eastern and Western churches differ in the way they understand what salvation is really about, or at least in what they emphasize. The stereotype has been that the Western churches (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) think of salvation primarily in legal terms, that it's about forgiveness of sin and restoration to a right standing before God ("justification"), while the Eastern Orthodox churches think of salvation in more ontological terms, that it concerns the transformation of human nature into something closer to the divine nature (often labeled as "deification"). Another way to think about this is that in speaking of salvation Western churches supposedly tend to highlight the cross and atonement more, while Eastern churches rather highlight the incarnation of Christ and the gift of the Spirit. This is obviously enormously simplistic and a caricature of both sides, but as a general schematic to frame how the East and West differ, it's not an uncommon characterization.
So, in large part, what this book attempts is to set forth an account of what salvation is about at its most fundamental and ultimate in a way that is 1) Faithful to Scripture; 2) In line with, underlying the logic of, and implicit in the ecumenical Creeds; and 3) In constructive conversation with various "models" of salvation (like penal substitutionary atonement and liberation theology) that can absorb the good in them and incorporate it into something more comprehensive.
What Anatolios ends up with is a profoundly God-centered account, arguing that what salvation ultimately is is incorporation, in Christ and by the Spirit, into God's own Trinitarian glorification of himself. He says that "what humanity is saved for is the worshipful adoration of God, through which humanity itself is glorified, and that what we are saved from is the desecration and misrepresentation of divine glory." He never mentions John Piper (I don't think even in the footnotes), but it struck me throughout that anyone familiar with Piper and his favorite theme of God's glory as man's chief good (one of his books is called "God is the Gospel") would find much of what Anatolios says to be very much on the same lines.
In his own words, Anatolios' two main theses are these:
(1) Christ saves us by fulfilling humanity’s original vocation to participate, from the position of the Son, in the mutual glorification of the persons of the divine Trinity; (2) Christ saves us by vicariously repenting for humanity’s sinful rejection of humanity’s doxological vocation and its violation and distortion of divine glory.
That second point will be the more controversial. I actually recently read Christ Crucified by Donald MacLeod, and he has a section in it refuting the idea of vicarious repentance. Suffice it to say that Anatolios seeks to ground himself thoroughly in Scripture, with a lot of genuinely profound reflection on the Suffering Servant of Isaiah and the ministry of prophets in general, as well as the meaning of Jesus’ baptism, and how Christ taking the place of sinners on the cross and suffering the penalty due to sin (which Anatolios does affirm, but qualified by how he understands the biblical relationship of repentance and punishment) relates to all this. I will need to think more about whether “vicarious repentance” is really a fitting descriptor of the work of Christ. MacLeod has some pointed criticisms of it, though I’m not sure they all really land. In particular, what gives me pause in favor of recognizing some sort of vicarious repentance on the part of Christ (and a point which I don’t think Anatolios mentions) is that the New Testament seems pretty clearly to understand Christ as the primary speaker of the Psalms. He surely sang them in his earthly life along with his fellow Jews, and of course he sang them in complete and genuine sincerity not only as a true Jew born under the Law, but as the model Israelite. And despite having no personal sin to repent of, many of the Psalms are Psalms of repentance.
Anyway, like I said, I need to think about this question more.
There is much more in this book (it's pretty long), and there were a couple parts that I skimmed or lightly skipped over, and a lot of it gets into the obscure weeds of Trinitarian metaphysics which I have to confess has never done a lot for me, and those parts were definitely not the parts I found most helpful or engaging. I think theologians have often had more interest in speculating into the nature of Trinitarian being than is really edifying. Of course, maybe the problem is my own and I just haven’t grown to sufficient spiritual maturity to be edified by it. But in any case, besides the Trinitarian metaphysics caveat above, there was a lot of great and lucid stuff, and plenty of good quotes to be drawn.
As a final note, one of Anatolios’ interests in writing this book is to connect the doctrine of salvation to actual Christian experience in today’s world. He says in the conclusion:
“A central premise of the approach proposed in this book is that salvation is a reality that is accessible to lived experience and that this access is to be found, in its primary and normative form, in Christian worship… The most fundamental practical recommendation of this book is that Christians learn to recognize the “joy of salvation” as precisely the joy of worship… In worship, Christians are included in the Son’s human extension of his divine glorification of the Father in the Spirit. To the extent that Christians are consciously aware of this reality, they can attain a real and concrete experience of their own salvation and deification.”
Anatolios actually begins his exposition of salvation by exploring what is taught and communicated in the Byzantine liturgy, which is the liturgy of the church to which he belongs. It isn’t one that I’m familiar with. But it did reaffirm the growing desire I have had in recent years, and the appreciation that I have, for higher, more formal, and more intentional liturgy over against the more casual, low church, and thin “Four songs, a sermon, and closing prayer” that I have grown up with. If our actual worship here on earth is what Hebrews 12:22-24 says it is, which is this:
”[Y]ou have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel”
—Then surely our worship in evangelical churches ought to intentionally work toward creating a more intentional manifestation and communication of that in how the gathered assembly presents itself before God week by week. Lots of non-evangelical churches do have rich liturgical models that we would do well to learn from.