Once Saved, Always Saved (Orthodox viewpoint)

I go to a Christian college and a lot of my friends discuss the “once saved, always saved” versus “salvation can be lost” controversy. What do Orthodox Christians think about this question?

To tell the truth, Orthodox Christians don’t think about this controversy at all - at least not in these terms. Discussions about “once saved, always saved” are based on a particular Protestant understanding of what it means to be “saved.” Orthodox Christians conceive of salvation quite differently than most Protestants do.

For an Orthodox Christian, to be saved means nothing less than to participate fully in the divine energies of God. For most Protestants, to be saved means to have one’s sins forgiven so that one can go to heaven when he dies. This Protestant understanding of salvation is often spoken of in the present perfect tense and passive voice - “I have been saved” - because in the Protestant understanding, salvation is something God does without our participation (passive voice) that we “accept” at a particular point in time (present perfect tense). The controversy among Protestants is whether or not one’s condition as “saved” can be lost once “truly” received.

In contrast, Orthodox Christians see salvation much more as a process that involves human participation, or synergy. That is, we cooperate with God in our salvation, much as a farmer cooperates with nature (and ultimately with God) in the growing of wheat. A farmer labors to prepare the soil and sow the seed in much the same way that an Orthodox Christian labors to control his body and mind (fasting), participate in the liturgical life of the Church (prayer), and love his neighbor (almsgiving). And in the same way that nothing the farmer does earns the rain nor makes the seed he has sown germinate, the prayer, fasting, and love of neighbor of an Orthodox Christian do not earn him salvation. They do, however, align him to receive the grace (divine energy) of God that comes to him.

If you take a look at Ezekiel 11:18-19, you can see an example of this synergistic or cooperative work of salvation. In verse 18, God’s people prepare themselves by removing vile images and detestable idols, and in verse 19 God gives them new hearts of flesh. God’s people do not earn new hearts by their actions, but their actions prepare them to receive new hearts. Their actions cooperate with the grace of God.

I must admit that words and concepts fail to explain these matters clearly, for our salvation is a mystery. Nonetheless, you can see that for Orthodox Christians, salvation is much more than just forgiveness of sins and going to heaven when we die. Salvation is the eternal (not merely lifelong) process of becoming more and more like our Savior. Consequently, “once saved” has no meaning in an Orthodox context.

To frame the question somewhat differently, an Orthodox Christian might ask, “Can you stop cooperating with God?” Here the answer is yes. You can deny, rebel against, betray, and reject the grace of God. Even one of the Twelve betrayed the Savior. However, we must be careful not to point fingers or go looking for “Judases” in our midst. Much of what appears to be denial, rejection, or even blasphemy is merely evidence of a deep valley a person is passing through in which he comes to terms with his own weaknesses or sheds inadequate concepts of God (and in the end, all concepts of God are inadequate). I refer you to the complaint of Job, the initial rejection of the father by the prodigal son, the denial of Peter, and the doubting of Thomas.

Salvation is not something that is merely on or off like a light switch; it is much more like the permeation of water into a sponge. Dryer, harder sponges need to soak longer (and perhaps in hotter water). The biblical exhortations not to harden our hearts (Hebrews 3:8 and many other places) are exhortations to cooperate with the grace of God. But “harden” and “soften” describe degrees, not absolute conditions. Salvation is not something that we gain in an instant and can lose just as quickly. Our salvation is a process, which we sometimes fully cooperate with and sometimes resist. May God help us always to cooperate.

Father Michael Gillis is pastor of Holy Nativity of Christ Orthodox Mission in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.

"And if you are 'un-saved', because you unfaithed yourself,..."

What I mean is this: a typical protestant wants to sense that he/she indeed is 'alive' in Christ. But many of them grow up learning that 'faith' doesn't exist without works, due to that NT Book James, which entirely ignores Christ, but for verse 1.

As a result, they get steeped in works ideas from day 1. Some end up thinking it leads to faith, but most don't; most simply hit the works road b/c they can't bear the thought of being lonely. I've seen the ultimate family weapon exercised to control thinking and behavior used over and over: rejection.

So, to pursue acceptance they get good at Pharisee type works. At minimum, they get regular, predictable, confirmation it leads to acceptance by family and peers at church. And then many of them, way too many, go on to lead secret lives. Instead of aynomously checking out religion threads on FR (which would be a fruitful expenditure of time), they instead enter the front door of the porn shop next door to browse. Sorry, I meant the porn shop in the bonus room, the one plugged into the router.

There is this idea out there that Christ isn't real enough to defeat that secret life, that he doesn't have enough to offer, doesn't have what it takes, to overcome those temptations, now just a few keystrokes away. That he is not tangible enough to help us create an environment where those temptations largely and simply evaporate.

Why do these secret lives develop? Why? Because works doesn't banish loneliness after all. So all kinds of weird behaviors and habits grow, all designed to address that loneliness, that built in hunger of being on the 'inside'.

(btw, I'm not really arguing w/ you nsachen. I'm presenting a frame of reference, in the hopes I will have revealed to me why some of the orthodox don't seem to struggle w/ this works/faith idea.)

Anyway, there is this black and white reality in my experience: giving up works, and accepting by faith alone, that I am not going to hell, but going home (indeed, that I'm already there in a sense, but that goes down all kinds of time roads I won't go into) leads inevitably to those very works James so heartily encourages us to pursue.

Works are the intrinsic artifact of regeneration in other words....

The orthodox position seems to imply that regeneration is a myth.

"As I understand it, Eastern Orthodox theology has always refused to make a canonical decision on the faith/vs works controversy"

There is no controversy. The Orthodox position is that you are saved by Grace alone, not by works. They do differentiate between works of law and works of faith. In Judaism, works of law is what makes you acceptable to God. To an Orthodox Christian, only God's mercy saves. You can't earn it, you can't bargain for it. There is no controversy.

The answer which you feel the Orthodox don't give on salvation is that yes, once saved, always saved. The difference is that we get saved after we die physical death. Orthodoxy has always taught that upon death, soul undergoes immediate judgemnt (particular judgment), whose essence is the same as that of the Final Judgment (in other words there is no "Purgatory"). The soul immediately foretastes the bliss of heaven or the discomfort of hell. At the Final Judgment, the souls are reuinted with bodies.

We believe that as Christians we can only live in Christ and become more like Him (theosis), but that in itself does not guarantee salvation. Theosis is a willing and free way of life that is characterized by works of faith, fasting, worshiping God and living in God.

Indeed. I agree with your assessment. IT also raises another problem as well. What about backsliders? I have made a point to ask every backslider I have met if there was any point where you stopped believing in Jesus as Lord. To a person their answer was "no." So we must use some common sense in dealing with this issue for if we judge that person on there works, then we do a disservice to that person.

As Paul remarked, "if a brother is overtaken in a fault, LET HIM WHO IS SPIRITUAL go to him in a spirit of meekness (gentleness) considering himself, lest he also be tempted.

I would think that the Scriptures tell us to judge carefully and in the right spirit. The one thought that should always be on our minds is that we are fighting FOR folks, not against them. That does not mean that we overlook sin, but that we deal with it in the appropriate ways.

The pendulum seems to always swing to total rejection or total acceptance, neither of which do I think are biblical. There is a process that is opened to us in Matthew 18 to deal with these things. We cannot rush to judgment, rather we must be sufficiently acquainted with a person to know their situation. Is this a lamb that is lost and the Savior is leaving the 99 to seek them out? Or is this a person that has truly never made Christ a part of their life?

I like what you brought out about being accepted and that force being the motivation to do works. I think you are right on. James said that "faith without works is dead." I think we can also project from the scriptures that "works without faith is also dead."

The question and it's framing completely by pass the actual and real, literal new creation in Jesus Christ. They always avoid the actual new birth because when confronted with the necessity of actual and real new birth, they have no answer as to how and when. So 'salvation' is always and perpetually seperated from actual new birth in their rhetoric and 'salvation' becomes a rather purposeful nebulous term that they will fight over to define in the way that best suits their particular version of 'free will'. In keeping with that deception, they will continually hold forth the Bible as mere 'holy information' that the reader must grant permission to be powerful.

There is no free will and therefore their entire arguments (to include those 'amongst themselves') are invlaid. Here is why:

God directly says we must be born again and that we are born again by the hearing of the word of God. He also says God is His Word.

We must be born again:

John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God.

We are born again by directly by hearing the Word of God:

1 Peter 1:23 ...being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the living and abiding word of God.

James 1:18 According to his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we should be a certain first-fruits of *his* creatures.

That God is His Word:

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. *He* was in the beginning with God. All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being.

John 6:63 It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing: the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.

That is, God creates by Speaking. (everything on earth, Genesis, us as new creations in Jesus Christ, etc..)

Yet according to the speech which says you have free will, speech itself MUST be powerless else it violates the free will of the hearer. According to that speech which validates the free will lie, there is only one speech in total reality--itself as non-creating speech. It has to be non-creating or it violates the will of the hearer---the ultimate no no in the free will lie. Yet God says directly that we must be born again, that we are born again by hearing His Word (in keeping with His both being the Speech which formed the world and re-creating us as new creation in that very Word/Jesus Christ: 2 Corinthians 5:17 So if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new:)

God further says that the natural man, the non-regenerate(non-new creation in Jesus Christ) cannot know anything of the things of God:

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned;

So the author of the article on 'orthodox' Christianity's supposed 'view' of salvation is commenting/'persuading' on a purposeful definition of 'salvation' as in every way separated from actual and real new birth in Jesus Christ but is only some supposed emotional state God will have concerning you IF you supposedly use your 'free will' properly and is a direct lie. Thus they always say you can lose it if you make God mad enough, etc..

Heaven and hell will not be full of identical creatures in two different places (much less identical creatures who 'earned their placement' by their supposed use of 'free will'...) as is implied by the free will lie and in the article. Heaven is and will be full of real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ. Hell will be full of everything else.

Those who espouse free will always and perpetually hold forth the Bible is mere 'holy information'--it stems from their own self-validating lie of what speech is order to seem to have all the angles covered. But it is not their strength--it is their ultimate admission they have not been born again. How is it they have not known the Word of God(that births, real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ) as distinct from the speech that speaks through them--a speech that makes a virtue out of NOT being able to create anything? God says that is evidence they have not heard Him while they say it is proof that speech itself is something they manipulate in 'free will', that God is not His Word and that they are the most religious and pious for merely speaking non-creating speech.

John 8:42 Jesus said to them, If God were your father ye would have loved me, for I came forth from God and am come from him ; for neither am I come of myself, but *he* has sent me.
John 8:43 Why do ye not know my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word.

1John 4:5,6 *They* are of the world; for this reason they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. *We* are of God; he that knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

So: the gospel in truth is God Speaking and birthing real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ as a creating act of His will reflected in Word. Their false gospel is basic non-creating speech as rodeo gear to ride the other person's mere incredulity and never actually birth anything. If they 'win' they only ensnare the poor soul in ceremony and make them twice a son of hell as themselves.

(ancillary: ask your self why, on the eve of a huge political victory by Christians, would an immediate article appear on differences between some in that broad category...)

1John 5:1 Every one that believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God; and every one that loves him that has begotten loves also him that is begotten of him.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Basically, you can't be 'un-born again' once you've been born again in Jesus Christ as genuine new creation. The question and answer session of the article implies no actual new birth has occurred at all but emotional states (yours as a supposed non-new creation and God's) determine 'salvation'. Thus the article is not in any way 'orthodox'.

....come now, Macarius[1] (worthy of that name), and
true lover of Christ, let us follow up the faith of our religion[2], and set
forth also what relates to the Word's becoming Man, and to His divine
Appearing amongst us, which Jews traduce and Greeks laugh to scorn, but we
worship; in order that, all the more for the seeming low estate of the Word,
your piety toward Him may be increased and multiplied. 2. For the more He is
mocked among the unbelieving, the more witness does He give of His own
Godhead; inasmuch as He not only Himself demonstrates as possible what then
mistake, thinking impossible, but what men deride as unseemly, this by His own
goodness He clothes with seemliness, and what men, in their conceit of wisdom,
laugh at as merely human, He by His own power demonstrates to be divine,
subduing the pretensions of idols by His supposed humiliation--by the
Cross--and those who mock and disbelieve invisibly winning over to recognise
His divinity and power. 3. But to treat this subject it is necessary to recall
what has been previously said; in order that you may neither fail to know the
cause of the bodily appearing of the Word of the Father, so high and so great,
nor think it a consequence of His own nature that the Saviour has worn a body;
but that being incorporeal by nature, and Word from the beginning, He has yet
of the loving-kindness and goodness of His own Father been manifested to us in
a human body for our salvation. 4. It is, then, proper for us to begin the
treatment of this subject by speaking of the creation of the universe, and of
God its Artificer, that so it may be duly perceived that the renewal of
creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the
beginning. For it will appear not inconsonant for the Father to have wrought
its salvation in Him by Whose means He made it.

whole article: Athanasius
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm

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