https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=t1iVd3nt5kE
All right, so Stephen Wong says, what is the difference between Protestants and Orthodox Christians’ views on salvation? I mean, that would be a very long post and a very long answer. I’m not sure I could get through it, but an easy way for people to understand, let’s say, a little bit of the difference is that, let’s say, many Protestants, not all Protestants, but many Protestants really focus on the idea of a substitution, and an atonement by substitution, which is the idea that when Adam sinned, he kind of infected humanity with sin and that we deserve to die. And so the sacrificial system in the Old Testament was a way to compensate for that, was the way to offer things instead of yourself because you’re supposed to die, because God’s anger was kind of directed towards you to kill you. And so the idea is that God put all his anger on Christ, and he is the substitution, the substitutional whatever sacrifice, and that’s how we are saved. So if we believe in that, then we are saved because we can enter into that sacrifice. And so that’s like, like I said, not all Protestants believe that, but it’s definitely a basic idea and that you’re saved by faith. So if you believe that, if you believe that this sacrifice is true, then you are saved by it. And so Orthodox really don’t see salvation like that at all. They see salvation as a form of healing, a form of that through the sin of Adam, death entered into the world. And so we live in these bodies of death, which are pulling us in different directions, because your body is in danger, then you have a propensity to sin because you can be convinced that your desire to eat or your desire for sex or your desire to protect yourself is all encompassing. And so you feel comfortable taking things from others because you’re doing it to protect yourself or to bolster your dead life, let’s say, and that Christ came to assume human nature, fill it up with his presence. And that participating in that through the sacraments, through communion, through love of each other is a healing process for our life of death, let’s say. So that’s what salvation is. Salvation is actually healing from these passions, from these desires, from the slavery that we have with the things of the world. And that the ultimate version of that is not just to be declared holy or declared saved or going to heaven when you die, but is really to become God through participation, to be united fully to God, to participate in his life to the extent that that’s possible. And so that’s the ultimate goal of salvation is theosis. It’s to become, to be united with God.