Salvation & Redemption | The Early Christian Understanding

What I would like to speak about today is salvation and redemption. And I would like to focus on the early Christian understanding of salvation and redemption. And starting with Saint Paul, we find out that he speaks about salvation as freedom from bondage to the law. For Saint Paul, the chief enemies of humanity are sin, death, and the law, the law of Moses. They are linked together, holding humanity in bondage. Saint Paul considers the law as a kind of emergency measure provided by God to deal with the crisis of human sin. And you can look at Galatians chapter 3 and Romans chapter 10. The law of Moses was meant as a tour d'or to prepare the people for Christ. And we see this again in Galatians and Romans. Instead, however, the law was treated by the Jewish people as a goal unto itself and thus became a tyrant. People looked to the keeping of the law for their security. And so we may say that even the law of Moses became an idol, not leading to God anymore. The consequence of this unholy alliance, as we may call it, between sin and the law is the rule of death, according to Saint Paul. Death is the product of a life in which relationships have been broken and the relationship of man to God has been broken. And Saint Paul continues and cries out, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, in Romans 7 24. And since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself, likewise God himself, partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage, Hebrews 2 15. Having cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. God himself climbs on the cross. And you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. His resurrection is our salvation. Salvation is also seen as liberation from bondage to Satan, to sin, and to death. For the early Christians, humanity is not a static, timeless reality. Human beings are understood in terms of relationships. They are in the process of becoming persons, as they relate in love with God and with the world around them. Evil therefore is whatever ruptures our communion with God and interrupts the process of attaining the fullness of our humanity in union with God. The scriptures name three sources and forces of evil. First, Satan. Second, sin. And third, death. Sin enslaves humanity to Satan and also to death. And Christ's incarnation, his life, his miracles, his teaching, and ultimately his death on the cross and his resurrection liberate us from Satan, from sin, and from death. So salvation is also seen as freedom and triumph in Christ. And we have the understanding that in the early church that Christ has liberated us from the bondage of the law in Galatians chapter 5, 1 to 12. And he has liberated us from sin in Romans 6, 14, 23. And he also has liberated us from death in 1 Corinthians 15. For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery, St. Paul says in Galatians 5, 1. The gospels vividly represent the triumph of Christ over the destructive forces of evil and death. As we see in his temptation on the mountain of temptation, as we see in casting out the impure spirits, as we see in the healing of sicknesses and the raising of people from the dead, in his miracles over nature, and above all in his crucifixion and resurrection. On the cross, we see an intense combat waged between God's champion, which is life, life eternal, and the adversary of life, which is death. Death is defeated on its own ground and life triumphs. And the resurrection is the ultimate victory of Christ on behalf of humanity over sin and consequently the defeat of the devil. So how the church actually saw salvation and redemption in the early centuries is a good question going forward from St. Paul and moving forward. And the Greek word that is used by the Christian writers of the early centuries for salvation is sotiria. And the word that is used for redemption is litrosis. And I want to get into that a little bit more because those two words, those two terms are used interchangeably and sometimes together almost as synonyms. And Christ is spoken of as the Redeemer and Savior of our souls and bodies. And of course, the term salvation, which is litrosis in Greek, has two meanings. One is or release and redemption using ransom. And both of these concepts, so one is the delivery or release and the second is redemption using a ransom. Both of these concepts are found in the early Christian fathers as delivery from the bondage of death and redemption from our sins. In other words, redemption has nothing to do with paying the devil a ransom or trying to satisfy the anger and honor of an angry God, as we see in later developments of theories of salvation. The term sotiria, which translates into salvation in English, is derived from the noun sos, from the verb sozo, which means to be safe and sound, to be alive and well. Salvation has a sense of restoration as well as safety. The incarnation of God, the union of the human with the divine brings about the healing of the fallen human nature, the restoration of humanity to where God wants it to be. And God himself assumed human nature in the person of Christ in order to heal it, to save it, to restore it, to perfect it, to make it whole. And that is salvation. And then if we want to look specifically at some of the Greek fathers of the early centuries, we can go to Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, where he talks about the word of God that was made flesh in order that he might destroy death and bring man to life. For we were tight and bound to sin. We were born in sin and we live under the dominion of death. So the word of God was made flesh in order to free us from all of that. And then he continues on and he says, the same hand of God that formed us in the beginning and formed us in our mother's womb in these latter days, saw us when we were lost. He came after us when we were lost, gaining his lost sheep and laying it on his shoulders and bringing it back with joy to the flock of life. So that's salvation through the son of God who became man. Christ redeemed us by his blood. Saint Irenaeus continues, he gave his soul for our soul. He gave his flesh for our flesh. By pouring upon us the Holy Spirit, he restored the union between man and God. The broken relationship has been restored in him. He made God to come down to man by the spirit and made man to come up to God by his incarnation. By his coming, he gave us true and permanent immortality, uniting us to him. These great truths are the reputation of all heresies. For Saint Irenaeus, life means primarily fellowship with God, the partaking of the life of God, and therefore also deliver us from sin. So when you connect to God, when you partake in God, you have fellowship with God, you're free from sin. And then if we go on to Saint Athanasius the Great in the 4th century, for example, he speaks of this in the same way. The son of God became man that we might be deified, that we would be raised up to a new state, to become perfected in the likeness of God, to be deified not in our essence but in our nature as created human beings. Seeing that all men were perishing as a result of Adam's transgression, his flesh was saved and delivered before all the others because it had become the body of the world himself. That's through the resurrection. And henceforth, we were also saved, being of one body with him in virtue of it. And then he says, Christ came that he might set all free from sin and from the curse of sin, and that all human beings might evermore live in truth, free from death, and be clothed in incorruption and immortality. By partaking in him, in Christ, we partake of the Father, because the Word is the Father's own, and that is salvation. Then from the 4th century, we can look also at Saint Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian fathers, who speaks of this salvation that we received, of the coming of Christ and the lifting us up. And he says, the lofty stoops to the lowly without losing of its loftiness, that is God stooping down to us. Without losing of its loftiness, the divine nature unites itself with the human nature in Christ and becomes human without ceasing to be divine. And so in so doing, the nature of light, which is the divine nature, drives out darkness, and the life of Christ as God, which is eternal life, overcomes death. And Saint Gregory of Nyssa moves on and says, purity has stooped down to those that were defiled with sin. Life has come to those that were dead. The guide, who is Christ, has come to them that have gone astray, to those who have gone astray, so that the defiled might be made clean, so that the dead might be raised, and the wanderers might be led back to the right way. So Christ conjoined himself with our nature in order that by its conjunction with the Godhead, we might become divine, being exempted from death and rescued from adverse tyranny. And Saint Gregory of Nyssa explains, for his triumphal return from death, inaugurated the triumphal return of the human race to life immortal. And then, in conclusion, I wanted to just sum this up and say that we see in all of this God's love for his people, for his creation, his philanthropia is the Greek word, his love for humanity. And we see Christ as both liberator and redeemer from death and sin, and savior and healer of our fallen condition. He accomplishes all of this through his incarnation, through his death, and through his resurrection. He assumes our fallen humanity, preserves it free of sin, allows it to die on the cross, and then raises it up again to a new, renewed, regenerated, transformed, and healed, immortal, deified, and glorified human state that is joined to God for eternity. He therefore defeats sin by his sinlessness. He defeats death by his resurrection. He defeats the devil by freeing us from his grip as sinners, by offering us the opportunity to be free from sin as we unite to him to remain sinless. By so doing, he is both redeemer, liturgist, and savior, so dear. Salvation, therefore, comes to us as we unite ourselves with Christ, both spiritually, in prayer, by surrendering to his love and his mercy, as well as physically in the Holy Eucharist, by receiving his body and blood in the sacrament of the Eucharist. And salvation is fully accomplished through that, and of course, the joining to him is eternal life.