How does the Orthodox Church understand “salvation”?
Eastern Orthodox theologians contend that Western Christian doctrines of sin and salvation have been overly dominated by legal, juridical and forensic language and categories. By this they mean the West’s almost exclusive use of terms of divine law and justice to describe salvation; ideas that are perhaps taken from the context of Roman civil law. While we affirm the use of legal metaphors by Saint Paul, the eastern church fathers contend legal concepts should not dominate (as they have in the West), but should be balanced among the many other biblical metaphors used to describe the redemptive work of Christ. An example of how far removed the Christian East and West are in this area is the fact that the doctrine of justification by faith (how guilty people can stand before a just God or Judge), which is so prevalent in the West, is almost entirely absent in the East! Eastern theology does not focus so much on guilt, as on mortality (i.e. death!) as the main problem of humanity. We tend
