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Since the righteousness is offered and imparted to the Christian in love, the Orthodox Christian believes that man is, likewise, free to reject Christ’s righteousness and offer of salvation. For there is no love apart from freedom – coercion and slavery are characteristics that are incompatible with a perfect love. There are assurances in scripture that God will hold close to himself those who are of his fold, and the Christian can rest confidently in this fact. But, we are just as free to reject God and his love as we are to embrace him.

It would serve the western Christian well to bear in mind that the juridical concepts of salvation, substitutionary atonement, et. al. were foreign to not only the eastern Church but also the western Church (Catholic and Protestant) until the time of Augustine. Even then these concepts were vague and undefined; they were not universal doctrines in the Church anywhere! Anselm further developed these ideas some 600 years later, and Luther built on the work of Anselm about 500 years after that. Is it any wonder that these concepts which seem to the Protestant an integral part of historical Christian theology (which are, in actuality, rather new) baffle the eastern Christian mind? These categories and concepts are somewhat unique and have existed in their present form for a relatively short period of time. To the eastern Christian, Theology is not something that improves with age – it is something to be internalized, and it can best be understood by journeying as close to the roots of our faith as possible. Reason and logic [read: the enlightenment] cannot guarantee a better understanding of God, his Son or our faith.

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