Didaskalex writes reviews of theology titles on Amazon. He has very wide tastes and is a fast worker, born to blog. I have just been admiring his summary of Patristic Teaching on Salvation – not least because I wish I could produce such sound-bites. What do you make of this? –
Patristic Teaching on Salvation:
a. Church Fathers do not limit salvation to Justification.
b. Church Fathers include the Trinity in atonement, the salvific work of Christ.
c. Church Fathers do not limit salvation to Jesus sacrifice on the cross.
d. Church Fathers consider salvation as renewal of human and universe.
e. Church Fathers never exclude cooperation of the faithful: Synergy.
f. Church Fathers teach that salvation is a continuous dynamic process, starting at spiritual birth, progressing from kenosis to theosis.
Salvation: Augustine to Anselm:
Augustine view of predestination contrasted with Pelagius freedom of choice, got more entangled with the doctrine of original sin. Although Pelagius was condemned in Ephesus, synergism that man has to cooperate with God in his salvation, was the predominant position in the East, termed semi-pelagianism. Anselm pushed the legalistic nature of salvation, into a forensic dogma, while Aquinas maintained that God wills that some, not all men be saved!
Salvation from Anselm to Vatican II:
Catholic scholastics starting with Anselm and Aquinas applied dialectics to theology reducing patristic metaphors to abstract concepts, western theology ended in sterility and provoked derision from humanists. Vatican II recovered the traditional meaning of salvation as restoration of the entire universe. Liberation and feminist theologies pressed the Roman church to admit that salvation should include transforming oppressive social conditions.
Salvation in Evangelical theology:
Protestants and reformed inherited medieval dogmas of the Western Church, even after various revisions, the legal ransom payment on the cross stayed central. Evangelicals teach that individual’s legal status must be changed from guilty to not guilty through justification by adoption, to restore favor with God. The positive desire to live righteously is termed regeneration or new birth, while sanctification or making holy comes to completion in the life beyond death, echoing the inherited Roman purgatory.
See Didaskalex
