The Gospel According to Chairs

Icon of Christ carrying His Cross in the Church of
Panagia Dexia, Thessaloniki, Greece




by Subdeacon Steve Robinson

"Subdeacon Steve Robinson uses chairs to illustrate the difference between penal-substitutionary atonement (PSA) and the Eastern Orthodox understanding of Christ's work on the cross.

PSA comes from a medieval thinker named Anselm of Canterbury (AD 1033-1109) and is the most widely accepted understanding among Catholics and Protestants of why Christ had to die. By contrast, in Eastern Orthodox Church thought, Christ's death is neither penal, nor is it substitutionary, nor is it even rightly called atonement.

That Christ's death is not penal is seen in Jn 3:16-17: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

That Christ's death is not substitutionary is seen in Ez 18:20: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." So much for vicarious atonement and the related heresy of positional righteousness!

That Christ's death is not rightly called atonement is a mere case of semantic sleight of hand. "Atonement" means reparation for a wrong or an injury. If Christ's death is an "atonement," then it follows by definition that Christ is dying to make reparation for some wrong. But why should we allow the Anselm's followers to put the label "atonement" on Christ's death when the far more ancient term for it was "redemption"? To "redeem" is to rescue something from a state of sinfulness or its consequences. Thus, if we call Christ's death a redemption instead of an atonement, then PSA follows not at all." from the YouTube website

Further Reading:

On Atonement by Fr John Peck

The Orthodox Way of Salvation

The River of Fire

The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation

Man's Insatiable Desire for Justice

Icon of Christ carrying His cross, Church of Panagia Dexia,
Thessaloniki, Greece

God is merciful! But human beings have an insatiable desire for
justice. Fr Stephen Freeman talks about the solution to this 
problem. Please click to listen below;

Justice Enough - Glory to God - Ancient Faith Radio

From the wonderful Orthodox blog, Discerning thoughts we read

a section from Alexander Kalomiros' The River of Fire that 

complements Fr Stephen's podcast.

The Prodigal Son’s brother?

 by Alexander Kalomiros, , The River of Fire,

Now if anyone is perplexed and does not understand how it

is possible for God’s love to render anyone pitifully 

wretched and miserable and even burning as it were in flames,

let him consider the elder brother of the prodigal son. Was he

not in his father’s estate? Did not everything in it belong to 

him? Did he not have his father’s love? Did his father 

not come himself to entreat and beseech him to come and take

part in the joyous banquet?

What rendered him miserable and burned him with inner 

bitterness and hate? Who refused him anything? Why was

he not joyous at his brother’s return? Why did he not have

love either toward his father or toward his brother? Was it

not because of his wicked, inner disposition? Did he not 

remain in hell because of that? And what was this hell?

Was it any separate place? Were there any instruments

of torture? Did he not continue to live in his father’s house?

What separated him from all the joyous people in the house

if not his own hate and his own bitterness? Did his father,

or even his brother, stop loving him? Was it not precisely 

this very love which hardened his heart more and more?

Was it not the joy that made him sad? Was not hatred 

burning in his heart, hatred for his father and his brother,

hatred for the love of his father toward his brother and 

for the love of his brother toward his father?

This is hell: the negation of love; the return of hate for love;

bitterness at seeing innocent joy; to be surrounded by love

and to have hate in one’s heart. This is the eternal condition

of all the damned. They are all dearly loved. They are all 

invited to the joyous banquet. They are all living in God’s 

Kingdom, in the New Earth and the New Heavens. No one 

expels them. Even if they wanted to go away they could 

not flee from God’s New Creation, nor hide from God’s 

tenderly loving omnipresence. Their only alternative 

would be, perhaps, to go away from their brothers and

search for a bitter isolation from them, but they could never

depart from God and His love.

And what is more terrible is that in this eternal life, in this

New Creation, God is everything to His creatures. As Saint

Gregory of Nyssa says, “In the present life the things we 

have relations with are numerous, for instance: time, air,

locality, food and drink, clothing, sunlight, lamplight, and

other necessities of life, none of which, many though they

be, are God; that blessed state which we hope for is in 

need of none of these things, but the Divine Being will 

become all, and in the stead of all to us, distributing Himself

proportionately to every need of that existence. It is plain,

too, from the Holy Scriptures that God becomes to those

who deserve it, locality and home and clothing and food

and drink and light and riches and kingdom, and 

everything that can be thought of and named that goes to

make our life happy” (On the Soul and the Resurrection).

See note 46

In the new eternal life, God will be everything to His 

creatures, not only to the good but also to the wicked,

not only to those who love Him, but likewise to those who

hate Him. But how will those who hate Him endure to 

have everything from the hands of Him Whom they 

detest? Oh, what an eternal torment is this, what an 

eternal fire, what a gnashing of teeth!

Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the everlasting inner

fire of hatred,” (see note47) saith the Lord, because I was

thirsty for your love and you did not give it to Me, I was

hungry for your blessedness and you did not offer it to Me,

I was imprisoned in My human nature and you did not
come to visit Me in My church; you are free to go where
your wicked desire wishes, away from Me, in the torturing
hatred of your hearts which is foreign to My loving heart
which knows no hatred for anyone. Depart freely from love
to the everlasting torture of hate, unknown and foreign to
Me and to those who are with Me, but prepared by
freedom for the devil, from the days I created My free,
rational creatures. But wherever you go in the darkness
of your hating hearts, My love will follow you like a river
of fire, because no matter what your heart has chosen,
you are and you will eternally continue to be, My children.

Amen.

 —Dr. Alexandre Kalomiros (The River of Fire)

Notes:

 46 “‘I am father, I am brother, I am bridegroom, I am
dwelling place, I am food, I am raiment, I am root, I am
foundation, all whatsoever thou willest, I am.’ ‘Be thou
in need of nothing, I will be even a servant, for I came to
minister, not to be ministered unto; I am friend, and
member, and head, and brother, and sister, and mother;

I am all; only cling thou closely to me. I was poor for thee,
and a wanderer for thee, on the Cross for thee, in the 

tomb for thee, above I intercede for thee to the Father;

on earth I am come for thy sake an ambassador from 

my Father. Thou art all things to me, brother, and joint

heir, and friend, and member.’ What wouldest thou more?”

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 76 on the Gospel of Matthew 

(PG 58. 700).

47 “ ‘The end of the world’ signifies not the annihilation of
the world, but its transformation. Everything will be
transformed suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye…. And
the Lord will appear in glory on the clouds. Trumpets will
sound, and loud, with power! They will sound in the soul
and conscience! All will become clear to the human
conscience.

The Prophet Daniel, speaking of the Last Judgment,
relates how the Ancient of Days, the Judge, sits on His
throne, and before Him is a fiery stream 

(Dan. 7:9-10).

Fire is a purifying element; it burns sins. Woe to a man if
sin has become a part of his nature: then the fire will burn

the man himself. This fire will be kindled within a man; 

seeing the Cross, some will rejoice, but others will fall 

into confusion, terror, and despair. Thus will men be 

divided instantly. The very state of a man’s soul casts him

to one side or the other, to right or to left.

"For God so Loved the World, that He Gave" John 3:16

Judas Betrays Our Lord-Mural in the Church of Panagia Dexia, Thessaloniki, Greece

The Orthodox Christian Faith views all the work of Christ as an outpouring of Grace, and not in legalistic terms. Christ fulfills the law and dies on the cross, as an indictment against Satan and not because God needed to be appeased; "Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham" Hebrews 2:14-16. It was not God the Father, who was holding us captive, but the evil one (Death and sin were the instruments of his tyranny). All the manifestations of God in the Old Testament are manifestations of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. YHVH, Who revealed Himself to Moses as the I AM, is the very same Person as Yeshua, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Saviour exposes the deception of the accuser when He said; "He ( Satan) was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it". John 8:44. The so called doctrine of atonement is a western view of the cross, and it is not Orthodox. This western heretical view of the atonement is formulated by Anselm of Canterbury ( 1033-1109) in his Cur Deus Homo. 

Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in The Hands of An Angry God" is a most grievous slander against the love of the Father. He writes, 

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell."

But the tone in the Scriptures is much different,  "If God is for us, who can be against us?. He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Rom.8:31-32. Christ did not die on the cross to appease an angry God but to destroy the work of our enemy, the devil. Our Lord 'destroyed Death by death'(from the Paschal Canon). The cross is a most elocuent love letter from the One and only God "Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth" 1st Tim. 2:4.

Read also, "Once Delivered to The Saints" by Fr. Michael Azkoul, ISBN: 0-913026-84-0 p.128 and note 47 , on the bottom of the page. and in page 133,D "His lost honor must be recompensed or punishment must follow, lest he be unjust to Himself". How far removed is this from the Faith once delivered to the saints!

1)St Gregory the Theologian, in Oration 45:22 states; "Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth enquiring into. To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was It shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and High priest and Sacrifice. We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Is it not evident that the Father accepts Him, but neither asked for Him nor demanded Him; but on account of the Incarnation, and because Humanity must be sanctified by the Humanity of God, that He might deliver us Himself, and overcome the tyrant, and draw us to Himself by the mediation of His Son, Who also arranged this to the honour of the Father, Whom it is manifest that He obeys in all things? So much we have said of Christ; the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence. But that brazen serpent [Numbers 21:9] was hung up as a remedy for the biting serpents, not as a type of Him that suffered for us, but as a contrast; and it saved those that looked upon it, not because they believed it to live, but because it was killed, and killed with it the powers that were subject to it, being destroyed as it deserved. And what is the fitting epitaph for it from us? O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory? You are overthrown by the Cross; you are slain by Him who is the Giver of life; you are without breath, dead, without motion, even though you keep the form of a serpent lifted up on high on a pole". As quoted by Felix Culpa in ORA ET LABORA here

2) St Nikolai Velimirovich, from the Akathist To Jesus Conqueror of Death, Translated into English from the original Serbian by St Paisius Monastery, Safford Arizona, 2009, Ikos Three p.18 "Dulled by sin, the people supposed that Thou were fighting against them, so they rejoiced when they raised Thee on the cross, rejoicing as victors over their enemy. But Thy battle was not against man, O Lover of mankind, but against the prince of this world and his myriad of legions who hold mankind in their chains, who play a foolish game with every human body, immorally pouring poison into human souls...Thou didst Thyself descend onto the battlefield; to reveal the weakness of the evil spirits Thou didst choose death as a weapon in the battle against them. Having gained the victory over evil spirits Thou didst destroy sin, having destroyed sin Thou didst trample down death, having trampled down death Thou didst dispel fear, and that prison of slaves, the world, Thou has proclaimed to be the home of freedom, O Jesus my Freedom, Jesus my Courage, Jesus my Light, Jesus my Friend, Jesus my Saviour, Jesus my Conqueror, have mercy on me".

3) St. Ireneus, “Against the Heresies,” Book 3, Chp. 23 "For if man, who had been created by God that he might live, after losing life, through being injured by the serpent that had corrupted him, should not any more return to life, but should be utterly [and for ever] abandoned to death, God would [in that case] have been conquered, and the wickedness of the serpent would have prevailed over the will of God. But inasmuch as God is invincible and long-suffering, He did indeed show Himself to be long-suffering in the matter of the correction of man and the probation of all, as I have already observed; and by means of the second man did He bind the strong man, and spoiled his goods, and abolished death, vivifying that man who had been in a state of death. For at the first Adam became a vessel in his (Satan’s) possession, whom he did also hold under his power, that is, by bringing sin on him iniquitously, and under color of immortality entailing death upon him. For, while promising that they should be as gods, which was in no way possible for him to be, he wrought death in them: wherefore he who had led man captive, was justly captured in his turn by God; but man, who had been led captive, was loosed from the bonds of condemnation". 

4) St John Chrysostom, 6th Homily on Colossians. '…he means that the devil held possession of it, the bond which God made for Adam, saying, "In the day thou eatest of the tree, thou shalt die.” (Genesis 2:17.) This bond then the devil held in his possession. And Christ did not give it to us, but Himself tore it in two, the action of one who remits joyfully'. Source

5) St. Nicholas Cabasilas. Tr. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. The Life in Christ (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.) pp.162-4. Against the Western Concept of Atonement: Turning Man who Believed Himself the Object of Hate“Just as human affection, when it abounds, overpowers those who love and causes them to be beside themselves, so God's love for men emptied God (Phil 2:7).... He seeks love in return and does not withdraw when He is treated with disdain. He is not angry over ill treatment, but even when He has been repulsed He sits by the door (cf. Rev 3:20) and does everything to show us that He loves, even enduring suffering and death to prove it....It was necessary, then, that the greatness of His love should not remain hidden, but that He should give the proof of the greatest love and by loving display the utmost measure of love. So He devised this self-emptying and carried it out, and made the instrument [i.e., Christ's human nature] by which He might be able to endure terrible things and to suffer pain. When he had thus proved by the things which He endured that He indeed loves exceedingly, He turned man, who had fled from the Good One because he had believed himself to be the object of hate, towards Himself....What could be equal to that affection? What has a man ever loved so greatly? What mother ever loved so tenderly (Is. 49:15), what father so loved his children? Who has ever been seized by such a mania of love for anything beautiful whatever, so that because of it he not only willingly allows himself to be wounded by the object of his love without swerving from his affection towards the ungrateful one, but even prizes the very wounds above everything?” Source

6) And St Silouan,( He entitles his poem Ádam’s Lament) at the realization of such a wondrous love, weeps with great sadness! :“The desert cannot pleasure me; nor the high mountains, nor meadow nor forest,nor the singing of birds.I have no pleasure in anything.My soul sorrows with great sorrow:I have grieved God.And were the Lord to set me down in Paradise again, there too, I would sorrow and weep-Oh why did I grieve my beloved God?” From St Silouan, The Athonite by Archimandrite Sophrony, p.450

7) St Symeon The New Theologian, Hymns of Divine Love, Trans. by George A. Maloney,p 45-46“And being in the middle of my cell, I see Him who is outside of the world as here present,I see Him and I converse with Him and, dare I then to say it!I love Him and He loves me.I eat, I nourish myself with only this contemplation.And being made one with Him, I am transported above the heavens.That this is true and certain I know. I know that He who remains immovable descends.I know that He who is invisible appears to me.I know that He who is separated from all creation takes me within Himself and hides me in His arms.….And I know that I will not die because I am inside of Life,and that I have the entire Life that completely flows out from within me.He is in my heart.."

"Christ's victory over the grave is now, today as the Feast of Pascha ecstatically proclaims. He is already the 'firstfruits' of the Age to Come, the first man of the new creation. The last enemy, death, is already destroyed( 1 Cor.15:26). The creation is already offered and accepted by God the Father as a 'sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor' Eph.5:2, meaning that 'the remission of sins' has been achieved, the regenerated creation has been offered to the Father, and the risen Lord, re-presenting mankind, ascends to the Right Hand of Majesty. Finally, the Holy Spirit is sent by Christ to His people. "The Church is the Age to Come,"St. John Chrysostom said. Nothing any longer impedes the koinonia (communion) between the Creator and the creature, save disbelief". From Once Delivered to The Saints" by Michael Azkoul, St Nectarios Press 2000, p.130

And St. John the Apostle , joins the choir of the redeemed saying;

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain [Rev.5:12]
and has redeemed us to God by His blood [Rev.5:9]
To receive power and riches and wisdom
And strength and honor and glory and blessing. [Rev.5:12]

Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto Him,
Who sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb
forever, and ever [Rev.5:13]

..Amen! [Rev.5:14]