I’d like to share with you an excerpt from John Zizioulas’s book, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics. His discussion of the nature(s) of Christ is set within the context of salvation. If you’re going to talk about salvation, it’s a good idea to specify what it is from which we need to be saved. A common misconception is that “salvation” means being saved from a fiery place of torment called Hell. This is not a biblically defensible position.
If this topic interests you, read the four paragraphs below, share any thoughts you may have, and consider purchasing your own copy so you can read more. I half-heartedly apologize for the book’s use of “man” instead of “humanity.” If you’re unfamiliar, John Zizioulas is a Metropolitan (archbishop) in the Greek Orthodox Church, “generally recognized as the most brilliant and creative theologian in the Orthodox Church today” (Met. Kallistos Ware). Another book of his, Being as Communion, is one such “brilliant and creative” work of theology, focusing on the nature of the Trinity and its implications for our relationships with God and our fellow humans.
Creation came from nothing, and since it is permeated with the forces of dissolution, it always faces the prospect of reverting back to nothing. But as long as they are in communion with what is not created, created beings are safe from all such forces. Man was created to provide this communion. He was to be the mediator between the material world and God, and so he was created at the end of creation, when everything else was ready for him. This privilege was given to man rather than to any other free and rational being [eg angels] because as a material being, man is able to unite created materiality with the uncreated, and so to secure the continued life of the material creation. If man is to endure, all creation must endure, for man cannot live without creation. If man is to survive death, all creation has to be transformed so that no part of it succumbs to death.
There are two possible misconceptions here. One is the belief that death entered the world as the punishment for disobedience and the fall, which is to say that God introduced it to creation and imposed it on man. We have seen that death has always been the natural condition of created beings, and since all that is finite has an end, death is inevitable for creation — unless man exercises his freedom positively, for creation and himself. If man does so, the life of creation is sustained endlessly through infinite communion with the infinite God. The fall is the term we give to man’s refusal to exercise his freedom in this positive way; the consequence of his refusal is that the death of creation, and of man, remains inevitable. Death is a corollary of finitude, and so is universal for all created things; when we concede the truth of this we are able to come into conversation with biology, which understands that death is a universal natural phenomenon.
A second misconception is that immortality relates chiefly to the soul. Accordingly, when death is abolished at the end of time, it is thought that people’s souls will live on, and though the bodies of these souls might live on too, the rest of the world would die. But this view is mistaken too. Death is a biological phenomenon, which if it is to be transcended at all, must be transcended by creation as a whole. The refusal of man to host the meeting of createdness with the uncreated God, makes the continuation and redemption of creation impossible.
The salvation of the world must be salvation from death. Let us start with some general observations. When we diagnose a sick person we identify their disease. The disease here is death, so a cure for death is what we are looking for. Salvation has often been set out in moral and judicial terms, in which death has been caused by man’s act of disobedience. But it was not our disobedience that caused this evil; it just made its cure impossible. The problem cannot be put right simply by our obedience. Athanasius pointed out that if the problem could be solved simply by forgiving Adam his sin, God could have done so. Adam could have repented, and indeed he did weep and regret what he had done. God could have forgiven him, and all would have been well. But Athanasius showed that the heart of the problem was not obedience or disobedience, because this was not a moral but an ontological problem. What was required was for the Logos to come to man, and indeed to become man, so that all that has been created can be united to the uncreated. For death to be overcome, the created has to come into relationship with the uncreated, and source its life from it.