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'''Salvation''' is the goal of [[Christianity]], and the purpose of the [[Ecclesiology|Church]]. The theology of salvation is called '''''soteriology'''''. Orthodox Christianity strongly believes that [[God]] became man, so that man may become like God. This concept of [[theosis]], rejects that salvation is a positive result to a legalistic dilemma, but is instead a healing process. Orthodoxy views our inclination to [[sin]] as a symptom of a malady that needs treatment, not just a transgression that requires retribution. One of the distinctive characteristics of Orthodox Christian thinking is that it sees the [[Gospel]] message not as law, but as relationship. It speaks of the mystery of the [[Holy Trinity]] in terms of the relationship of love that exists among them. To join in that love is the work that will lead to salvation.
==Salvation history==
To be like God, through the gift of God, is the essence of man's being and life. In the scriptures it says that God breathed into man, the "breath (or spirit) of life" (Gen 2:7). This teaching has given rise to the understanding in the Orthodox Church that man cannot be truly human, truly himself, without the Spirit of God.
The image of God signifies man's free will, his reason, his sense of moral responsibility, everything, which marks man out from the animal creation and makes him a person. But the image means more than that. It means that we are God's 'offspring' (Acts 2717:28), his kin; it means that between us and him there is a point of contact, an essential similarity. The gulf between creature and Creator is not impassable, for because we are in God's image we can know God and have communion with him.
===Fall of man===
The story of creation, and specifically of [[Adam and Eve]], tells of the goodness of all things that exist, and the superiority of man over other beings. It shows how the origin of evil does not lie in God but in his most perfect creature whose free act of sin brought wickedness and death to the world, how man lost the "likeness" of God, his response to God's love.
Christ will judge all people exclusively on the basis of how they have served him by serving each other, the least of the brethren. This will show how each person loved God and each other. The love for God and the love for man, becoming one and the same love. It is accomplished in Christ and is Christ. To love with this love is to love with the love of Christ and to fulfill his "new commandment" to "love one another even as I have loved you." (John 13:34-35, 15:12) In this is the whole of spiritual life. In this, and this alone, man will be finally judged. It is the crown of all virtue and prayer, the ultimate and most perfect fruit of God's Spirit in man.
The final coming of Christ will be the judgment of all men. his His very presence will be the judgment. For those who love the Lord, his presence will be infinite joy, paradise and eternal life. For those who hate the Lord, the same presence will be infinite torture, hell and eternal death.
==May they all be one==
==Outside the Church there is no salvation==
Saint [[Cyprianof Carthage]] wrote, 'A man cannot have God as his Father if he does not have the Church as his Mother'. God is salvation, and God's saving power is mediated to man in His Body, the Church. This stated the other way around by [[Georges Florovsky]]: 'Outside the Church there is no salvation, because salvation is the Church'.
The Church is the unity of those united with the Trinity. The One Church united as the three persons of Trinity are united. If one in the Church makes proper use of this Church, for communion with God, then he will become 'like' God, he will acquire the divine likeness; in the words of [[John of Damascus|John Damascene]], he will be 'assimilated to God through [[virtues|virtue]].' To acquire the likeness is to be deified, it is to become a 'second god,' a 'god by [[grace]],' [not by natureor essence].
==See also==
*[[What_is_Orthodoxy#Is_to_experience_the_events_of_salvation...|Is to experience the events of salvation...]] ''What is Orthodoxy'' by Rev. Dr. Theodore Pulcini *[[Gospel]]*[[Missiology]]*[[Missionary]]*[[Evangelization]]
==Sources==
*[http://www.scoba.us/resources/documents/letter-millenium.pdf A Pastoral Letter on the Occasion of the Third Christian Millennium (PDF)] The Hierarchs of the Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas ([[SCOBA]])
