Jonathan Pageau recently on X (I'm not over there, but this was sent to me).
Following a bit of the Protestant polemics against Orthodoxy recently, and I realize just how difficult it is to communicate the mind of the Church across these lines.
A simple example is seeing people confused about whether someone who is not baptised and participating in Orthodox communion can be "saved". Protestant are noticing that there are different answers in their estimation, and so are confused about them. The confusion comes from the belief that being "saved" or not is about "where you go after you die", when for the Orthodox "saved" means being made whole, being healed, being restored to the original purpose God had for us.
For this reason, when Protestants see declarations of how communion in the body of Christ is the only way to salvation, they immediately think this is a declaration that all the non-Orthodox are going to hell after they die. When Protestants then hear the very same person who just told them that salvation is in full participation to the body of Christ go on to intimate we have nothing to say about the eschatological finality of any specific soul, it is like a short circuit that many Protestants cannot compute. This is what I could see when
@OrthodoxEthos
and
@Acts17David
were discussing and it is what I have seen in
@gavinortlund
's videos.
In a similar vein, when a Protestant says he has the "assurance of his own personal salvation", this is confusing to the Orthodox. Orthodox also obviously have assurance of salvation, that assurance is Christ. He shows us what it means to be made whole and makes us participate in that wholeness. But how can I say that I am "saved" if I see that I am still a wretch, still prideful and arrogant and sinful? So the Orthodox, knowing they are are still sinning, though also knowing Christ has made them grow in the virtues will say something like: "I know that I am being saved." That is I can see that I am being healed, being made whole, being reformed to the resemblence of God. But again, this completely confuses the Protestant who just wants to know what will happen when you die. What side of the fence will you end up on?
I am not sure how to get accross these lines, and I feel that unless we can, we will perpetually be talking past each other.
