A few posts ago I described progressive and evangelical visions of salvation as "moralized." Of course, they are moralized in different ways. For the progressives, we are saved through morality itself. We are saved by emulating Jesus' love. We are saved because Jesus showed us "how to be human." For evangelicals, we are saved through grace and mercy. The blood of Jesus washes away our sins. Salvation is forgiveness.
The patristic tradition, by contrast, tended to view salvation as more ontological. In this series I've focused upon how Christ's resurrection overcame death and the predicament of human finitude. But the patristic tradition also saw the Incarnation itself as salvific. In fact, the resurrection was really just a demonstration of the ontological consequences of the Incarnation. The effect of God joining His Life with mortal human flesh was made plain on Easter Sunday. What was ontologically true of the infant Jesus was manifested in the adult body Jesus: that death could have no dominion over his mortal flesh given its connection to God's own Life. This ontological truth about Christ's body is what flashes out at his transfiguration.
The ontological connection between human flesh and God's Life is Christ's offer of salvation to finite and mortal humanity. By uniting our flesh to Christ's body ontological contact is made with God's Life, and that Life changes us ontologically. As with Christ's flesh, our flesh becomes empowered to survive death.
So Christ gave his own body for the life of all, and makes it the channel through which life flows once more into us. How he does this I will explain to the best of my ability.
When the life-giving Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed it into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life; and by being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension, he gave it the life-giving power which he has by his very nature. Therefore, the body of Christ gives life to those who receive it. Its presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally abolishes corruption.
Again, this is a very ontological way to describe salvation, a vision not typically found in either progressive or evangelical spaces. Christ's body confers ontological power, literally transforming the "stuff we are made of" so that decay and corruption become abolished from our bodies. Salvation is more than morality. Salvation is more than forgiveness. Salvation is ontological transformation.
