Salvation is a very Christian
idea, which is the reason why Jesus Christ came down to earth. He came not to
give mankind knowledge by salvation. The ultimate objective of every Christian
is salvation and theosis. Therefore, we all need to aspire to this. However,
what is salvation. Below are two quotes, the first by Christos Yannaras and the
second one by Fr. George Florovsky. These two quotes explain this term, which
in many respects is alien towards the way of life we have today, in respect to
our modern, digital and capitalistic way of life.
“In our days, a mistaken
religious upbringing has led many people to consider the Church as a means or
instrument to ensure individual salvation for each of us – and when they talk
of “salvation” they mean an unlimited kind of survival after death in some
“other” world. But in reality the Church entrusts to everyone the enormous
honour to be responsible for the salvation of the whole world, of this world
whose flesh is our flesh and whose life is our life. And salvation for the
Church is the liberation of life from corruption and death, the transformation
of survival into existential fullness, the sharing of the created in the mode
of life of the uncreated”[1].
“Salvation is more than
forgiveness. It is a genuine renewal of man. And this renewal is effected not
by the discharge, or release, of certain natural energies implied in man’s own
creaturely being, but by the “energies” of God Himself, who thereby encounters
and encompasses man and admits him into communion with Himself”[2].
[1]
Yannaras, Christos, Elements of Faith, (Edinburgh,
T&T Clark, 1991), p.48
[2]
Florovksy, George, Bible, Church,
Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, (Belmont, Nordland Publishing Company,
1972), p. 117,118
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