Confused About Eastern Orthodox Concept Regarding Jesus' Death

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I think that one reason Catholics focus on the Crucifixion is because Jesus made such a point of telling us that we are to literally eat His Body and drink His Blood. When He tells us to do something, we try to do it (I hope most of us do). Doesn’t this all tie in with the Crucifixion? I know it ties in with His Resurrection, too, but to me it points straight to the cross.

The Resurrection is the most joyous event that has occurred in the history of the world; the Crucifixion is the saddest, and together they are the most glorious. We celebrate both of them. Perhaps they should always be thought of together.

Or am I completely confused? 🤷
 
I don’t think anyone here is confused - this is a wonderful discussion.

My opinion is the ‘both / and’ approach as well - and I think it is necessary to view both the crucifixion and the resurrection as a kind of continous act, not seperate from each other, because of the manner in which we as Catholics/Orthodox view sin.

If original sin was the kind of ultimate wounding that changed our nature from one of being FULLY human to being one that is open to sin, then the sacrifice Our Lord made in the shedding of His Blood takes the idea of an ‘angry God’ out of the picture; rather, His Blood becomes a HEALING balm, so to speak, poured on that wound. It becomes the ULTMATE sacrifice - Jesus, Fully Human and Fully Divine, sheds the only blood that could heal such a wound - PERFECT BLOOD.

The Sacrament of Baptism would become the healing balm as well - that which changes us from children of darkness to children of light.
 
In the West, the focus often is on propitiation to effect change in God’s interaction with mankind–whether it be to avert God’s anger, secure His mercy, be seen as righteous in His sight. Christ died to secure the Father’s forgiveness for mankind and bridge the gap created by sin.

In the East, God is understood to be impassible; the Eucharistic offering does not change God’s attitude towards man. Instead, this offering is viewed as expiation which transforms the one who offers. Eastern Christians through participation in the mysteries partake truly in Christ’s death and ressurrection. Christ died so that we too might die and rise with Him.

Of course there is some crossover, but this is a general difference of emphasis I notice.
 
In the West, the focus often is on propitiation to effect change in God’s interaction with mankind–whether it be to avert God’s anger, secure His mercy, be seen as righteous in His sight.

In the East, God is understood to be impassible; the Eucharistic offering does not change God’s attitude towards man. Instead, this offering is viewed as expiation which transforms the one who offers.
Hospodi Pomiluj.
 
When is He ever not merciful? 🙂
Just underscores the pitfalls in talking about the focus of what others believe - even if the there are texts that seem to make it very clear. We pray for God to hear us and have mercy, we ask that He not turn away from us. We may have developed a more nuanced meaning over time, but we still use these metaphors.
 
IMO the Atonement can do two main things with the help of the grace that it won, with the grace that it is: 1) it convicts me of sin; it’s hard to go around presuming my own righteousness (which I prefer to do) when someone had to actually die for me because of my unrighteousness-my sin-and, simultaneously, 2) it convinces me of the sheer love and acceptance and forgiveness of God in* spite* of my unrighteousness.

He knew all along what we need-which is Himself, the cornerstone the builders rejected, the cornerstone our first parents mistrusted and spurned at the Fall, the One mankind “hated without reason”.

The Atonement proves God’s existence, His *trustworthiness, *His unconditional love. Our part is only to accept the package-to accept Him, reversing the decision, within ourselves, that A&E made, no longer lost but becoming found once again.
Hansen,

I am not picking on you…I honestly thought of something while reading what you wrote…I have always had a hard time hearing the Protestants “he died for my sins”…and well I understand that…and what you said…it is disobedience that He died for by being obedient…because here is what Paul says…
14For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. 15For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. 16But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. 17So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. 20But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
Code:
  21I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. 22For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 23but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
The struggle for obedience continues…although the Original disobedient act has been satisfied…those sins that Paul speaks of that are part of you and me are mediated by the grace that is available as the result of that Death and Resurrection…so that I live apart from the nature that is sin and align myself with the nature that serves the law of God…

Any discussion is welcome…
 
Hansen,

I am not picking on you…I honestly thought of something while reading what you wrote…I have always had a hard time hearing the Protestants “he died for my sins”…and well I understand that…and what you said…it is disobedience that He died for by being obedient…because here is what Paul says…

The struggle for obedience continues…although the Original disobedient act has been satisfied…those sins that Paul speaks of that are part of you and me are mediated by the grace that is available as the result of that Death and Resurrection…so that I live apart from the nature that is sin and align myself with the nature that serves the law of God…

Any discussion is welcome…
I don’t know-I’d think it’d be quite Catholic to say “He died for my sins” - and here I thought I’d distanced myself from Protestant theology long ago 🙂 -at least the parts that differed from Catholicism. Either way I’m sure it’s one think to say it, and another thing to understand it.

And I don’t think the Atonement is so well understood in any case-and I really don’t think the love of God is well understood by many of us-or by any of us to a very high degree. And this overwhelming, ineffable, unconditional love of God is what the Atonement reeks of. So yes, all sin is disobedience of God, as the Catechism states, and Jesus was the one perfect man, obedient to the nth degree, and He did it out of a love we can only begin to understand-and be transformed into ourselves-via time and grace.
 
I don’t know-I’d think it’d be quite Catholic to say “He died for my sins” - and here I thought I’d distanced myself from Protestant theology long ago 🙂 -at least the parts that differed from Catholicism. Either way I’m sure it’s one think to say it, and another thing to understand it.

And I don’t think the Atonement is so well understood in any case-and I really don’t think the love of God is well understood by many of us-or by any of us to a very high degree. And this overwhelming, ineffable, unconditional love of God is what the Atonement reeks of. So yes, all sin is disobedience of God, as the Catechism states, and Jesus was the one perfect man, obedient to the nth degree, and He did it out of a love we can only begin to understand-and be transformed into ourselves-via time and grace.
But in Eastern Theology, the death of Jesus was meant to end death because Jesus is the undying, eternally living God. If Jesus died to atone for something, can’t God just write off the debt? There is a parable where Jesus talks about the king forgiving the debt. Why can’t God just forgive Original Sin? Why did Jesus have to suffer?
 
But in Eastern Theology, the death of Jesus was meant to end death because Jesus is the undying, eternally living God. If Jesus died to atone for something, can’t God just write off the debt? There is a parable where Jesus talks about the king forgiving the debt. Why can’t God just forgive Original Sin? Why did Jesus have to suffer?
Constantine,

The way I have heard Scott Hahn explain this is something like this…God is Just, God is Merciful…and in order for humanity to gain reward…Jesus presents himself to the Father and the Father in his Justice must reward the Son…and in that reward as fellow heirs in humanity share that reward…
 
But in Eastern Theology, the death of Jesus was meant to end death because Jesus is the undying, eternally living God. If Jesus died to atone for something, can’t God just write off the debt? There is a parable where Jesus talks about the king forgiving the debt. Why can’t God just forgive Original Sin? Why did Jesus have to suffer?
Well, in Western theology that’s where the concept of merit comes in to play. The merit of Jesus’ virtuous act of spotless martyrdom (in which He is not being punished in our place — the Protestant version) makes up for what we lack, and then through accepting it for ourselves and offering the Eucharist those merits are applied. The Resurrection sometimes gets lost in the mix within Western Christianity, but without it we would still be spiritually dead because we need to both be forgiven and renewed and empowered. At Baptism we are spiritually united with the risen Christ, and at Communion we are fed by His risen body and blood and brought into an even stronger union with that power. As Paul said “If Christ was not raised then you are still dead in your sins.” The West focuses on crucifying the flesh to make way for the power of the risen Christ, and the East focuses on using the power of the risen Christ to defeat the flesh.

About pre-Anselmian Western theology… I think I’ve heard it said that St. Augustine actually can be cited as supporting three different views at once. The first is the juridical view of making payment for Original Sin, the second is the Christus Victor view where Christ overthrows Satan and death, and the third is the “exemplary” view where we can take a moral lesson from His example. He seems to blend them all, but I can’t cite where because I don’t remember where I read this. Basically Satan oversteps his boundaries and kills Christ which causes Satan to lose certain rights over us humans that he tricked at the Fall and causes satisfaction to be made on top of that to the Father.
 
Constantine,

The way I have heard Scott Hahn explain this is something like this…God is Just, God is Merciful…and in order for humanity to gain reward…Jesus presents himself to the Father and the Father in his Justice must reward the Son…and in that reward as fellow heirs in humanity share that reward…
Reward? It is like a prize? Can’t God just give the reward out of his own generosity?
 
But in Eastern Theology, the death of Jesus was meant to end death because Jesus is the undying, eternally living God. If Jesus died to atone for something, can’t God just write off the debt? There is a parable where Jesus talks about the king forgiving the debt. Why can’t God just forgive Original Sin? Why did Jesus have to suffer?
I wasn’t speaking of debt specifically. I was speaking about Gods’ offer of atonement, at-one-ment, reconciliation, in spite of any debt-or the sins of the world-in spite of a debt that can’t be paid anyway. If OS involves no injustice in man, if the only enemy is death rather than man being his own worst enemy as well, then I suppose no reconciliation should be necessary; only triumph over death would be required. But, as it is, death isn’t the only enemy, it isn’t the sole reason man sins; man sins in spite of death, he rebels against God and the natural good order in spite of his “creaturely status”, in disregard or denial of his limitations. He’s not merely a passive victim of Adam’s act that led to death-he’s a participant in the rebellion- hating God without reason, as scripture put it, consciously or not, and to one degree or another. But I don’t know about the satisfaction theory or the debt-being-paid theory or the ransom theory; I only know that Jesus came to convict man of sin and forgive him of sin at the same time- if we’re willing to take the offer-with eternal life being the end result of justice restored for those who’re impressed enough to turn and follow Him instead of the world.
 
Saint Anselm of Canterbury lived and wrote in the 11th century, actually after the great unfortunate tragedy of the schism … I see that he was declared a Doctor of the Latin church in 1720AD.

One would think that that Latin Catholic church had some theory before this, but I am at a loss to know what it may have been.

Unless it was in agreement with the east.
It was. There weren’t any substantive differences, although the West arguably always tended to focus more on issues of guilt and legal satisfaction, which many (especially Orthodox polemicists!) would say paved the way.

I understand that David Hart (an Orthodox theologian, though a very Western-friendly one) has argued that Anselm’s theory really fits within “Christus Victor” and has been misunderstood.

Certainly Anselm did not teach “penal satisfaction.” Indeed he omitted the penal themes found in the early Church’s doctrine of atonement.

Edwin
 
Reward? It is like a prize? Can’t God just give the reward out of his own generosity?
Constantine,

Yes. Of Course. God can do as He wills. If you invoke this then why the God/man and why the death and resurrection. This delegates the entire plan to God coulda, shouda and whouda but why not?
 
But in Eastern Theology, the death of Jesus was meant to end death because Jesus is the undying, eternally living God.
If that’s really all Orthodox theologians teach is going on, then they are only representing a fragment of patristic theology on this point.

Athanasius, *On the Incarnation, *is perhaps the most important patristic treatment of this issue. Athanasius certainly presents the view you described above, but he presents it alongside other considerations, including legal ones. Athanasius says that death had a legal claim on us by God’s just decree, and that God could not simply forgive us because then He would have been lying when he said that death would be the consequence of sin. Here’s a couple of relevant sections in full (but these don’t give the full richness of Athanasius’ view–like most of the Fathers, his approach is rhetorical and rather repetitive, saying basically the same thing in slightly different ways over and and over):

*De Incarnatione *2.7-8 (trans. Sister Penelope):
Yet, true though this is [God’s unwillingness to allow the human race to perish], it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What—or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/images/indent.gif(8) For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.
What often passes for “Christus Victor” is a much more simplistic view than the view actually taught by Athanasius.
 
I was always of the belief that atonement came from St. Augustine.
Atonement is a universal Christian teaching. Surely you mean the “satisfaction theory”?

I am unaware of this theory being found in Augustine. In what I’ve read (admittedly Augustine is vast and usually manages to uphold several different theories on anything), he seems to hold to a pretty standard version of the “ransom” theory.

This often gets ignored, by the way, in all the talk about “Christus Victor”: for most of the Fathers “ransom” was the way the need for Jesus’ death was explained. (After all, why can’t God just take us back from Satan by sheer power?)

Gregory Nazianzen, I believe, had problems with the ransom theory, and Athanasius doesn’t mention it explicitly. But many of the other Fathers–most notably perhaps Gregory of Nyssa–put great weight on it.

Edwin
 
Why did Jesus have to suffer?
He could’ve done it any way He wanted but I believe He chose the way He did because of our stubborn wills.

For myself, when I look upon what was done to Jesus at his passion and death-what ignorant, unreasonable, human sinfulness was cavalierly capable of doing to perfect truth, innocence, beauty, and love personified, then I’m challenged to acknowledge that sin is real, that the distinction between good and evil is no mere fabrication, that mankind is lost way more than we might imagine, without knowing it-and denying it, not even caring about it.

And to know that the One who we were lost from, who we were turned against, was willing to undergo a particularly humiliating and painful death in order to convict me of sin, of my unrighteousness-if His death is what it takes to do so-in order to give me a choice, rather than forcing me, which He could do, but a free choice instead between His way and mine, between humility and pride, between selfless love and selfishness, between acceptance by the creator and lover of my soul verses acceptance by a fickle world where man’s will, rather than His, reigns, with all the evil that this results in, then I understand that He won’t merely write off the “debt”-justice wouldn’t be served by that, because nothing would be changed-He simply wants me to admit that I owe the debt to begin with- that I’m, in some fundamental way, basically wrong, so He can begin a new work in me as I allow Him to do it. IOW, He wants our wills to be involved in finally becoming aligned with* His *will.

Jesus’ death is grace, and that grace enables me to believe in it, in Him and what He’s done and what He promises to us, and words and concepts such as propitiation, ransom, satisfaction, etc, are just human ways of trying to conceive of this, however imperfectly understood. The Atonement is about Gods’ love-and His unwillingness to violate our wills in order to prompt us to love as well. The death of Jesus is about His willingness to sacrifice Himself in order to prove that love- and prompt those wills by drawing us unto Himself.

The Incarnation and the Cross stand out as a message, a message about Gods’ existence first of all, and about His power, about His boundless trustworthiness despite mans mistrust (mistrust being one consequence of OS the Catechism speaks of; and mistrust of God is inherently linked to denial of His existence, which is essentially what lack of faith consists of), a message about, amazingly, His humility, and most importantly of His all-embracing, unconditional love. And He confirms all He said and did with the resurrection, the capstone which proves and promises the gift of eternal life.

The cause of death is sin; it’s wages are death. Jesus conquers sin not by force, which He could’ve done at the Fall, but by continuing to allow mans’ free will to reign until man is jaded of his own way and recognizes his need for God, a God who begins beckoning him from the cross at the right time in human history, who was willing to turn the other cheek even unto death rather than resisting it, taking down man’s rebellion, the worst evil that sin could throw at Him, taking it with Him to the grave only to prove His power over sin and death-proving the stupidity and futility of sin-by triumphing over both at the resurrection. If we follow suit it’s only because justice demands it-but now we have an obvious choice anyway between how things are in this world-and of the violence sin harbors and is capable of leading to-and how things should be according to He who created all things.

Just some thoughts to lay on the table FWIW-probably nothing new.
 
I don’t know-I’d think it’d be quite Catholic to say “He died for my sins” - and here I thought I’d distanced myself from Protestant theology long ago 🙂 -at least the parts that differed from Catholicism. Either way I’m sure it’s one think to say it, and another thing to understand it.

And I don’t think the Atonement is so well understood in any case-and I really don’t think the love of God is well understood by many of us-or by any of us to a very high degree. And this overwhelming, ineffable, unconditional love of God is what the Atonement reeks of. So yes, all sin is disobedience of God, as the Catechism states, and Jesus was the one perfect man, obedient to the nth degree, and He did it out of a love we can only begin to understand-and be transformed into ourselves-via time and grace.
👍 It always seems to go back to love. I know that we can’t fully understand God as He is divine and we are mere human beings. I’m still not quite sure why He created us in the first place (I know what is stated in the Baltimore Catechism but it doesn’t really explain the “why” to my satisfaction).

But, as God is God: Omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent…well, I have to say that if He does something there is a very good reason for it. And it always seems to be based on love.

I don’t understand *why *He loves us but maybe just *knowing *of His love and accepting the sacrifice He made is sufficient. Even children can understand that the love exists even if they don’t understand why.
 
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