Eastern Fathers And Mysticism

When describing the work of Christ towards salvation, the Eastern Fathers introduce an aspect of mysticism in their theories of salvation. While the West focused on explaining salvation through original sin, the East focused on the fallen nature of man and how it is reconciled through Christ. The Eastern Fathers speak on the work of Christ’s historical events as having an impact on man’s salvation, but they also introduce mysticism into their theories. Their main focus tends to focus on the redemption of man as a whole and his deification. This overarching theme is apparent in the theories provided by the Eastern Fathers such as Clement, Origen and Methodius. The aspect of Christ that most fascinated Clement is Christ as the teacher of all true knowledge (Kelly 184). While acknowledging all of Christ’s salvific achievements, this is where Clement focused his attention. To him Christ was the teacher who taught men about true love and he would guide men to all righteousness by his instruction. This instruction leads to the leads to knowledge, which leads to transformation and ultimately the …show more content…
Origen envisioned a final salvation for all of fallen beings. He believed that in order for this to occur, they had to obtain a soul that was worthy of this salvation. Through the work of Christ the souls that were once corrupted by evil would be deified by Him. Origen seemed to give prominence to the salvation theory that resulted in the transformation of men rather that of Christ as the sacrifice. Kelly states, that while he couldn’t completely avoid the explanation of Christ as the sacrifice because of its extensive use in scripture, he believed that the more “mature” Christian would view the actual historical events of Christ as minor and the transformation aspect as the essential purpose of