“If nothing compelled God to create, why then did he choose to do so? In so far as such a question admits of an answer, our reply must be: God's motive in creation is his love. Rather than say that he created the universe out of nothing, we should say that he created it out of his own self, which is love. We should think, not of God the Manufacturer or God the Craftsman, but of God the Lover. Creation is an act not so much of his free will as of his free love. To love means to share, as the doctrine of the Trinity has so clearly shown us: God is not just one but one-in-three, because he is a communion of persons who share in love with one another. The circle of divine love, however, has not remained closed. God's love is, in the literal sense of the word, "ecstatic" a love that causes God to go out from himself and to create things other than himself. By voluntary choice God created the world in "ecstatic" love, so that there might be besides himself other beings to participate in the life and the love that are his.”
~ Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way
I have a lot of time for Orthodox Christianity.
According to the Orthodox view, salvation is union with God. Through this union, our natures are changed. We no longer live for ourselves, but for God. The person who is in union with God is governed by the the Spirit of God, who directs us to obey Jesus and to pray. The Orthodox do not have an individualistic view of salvation. Salvation is found through communion with God and the Church (i.e. salvation is found through intimacy with God and intimacy with others).
When the Orthodox say, “Lord have mercy,” it does not have a judicial meaning. They are not asking God not to punish them. They are asking God to save them from their sins (i.e. make them like Christ). It is from sin we need saving. (A prayer which is often said by Orthodox Christians is, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”)
In the Orthodox view God’s justice is not like man’s justice. God does not require a payment in order to forgive. He is always willing and able to forgive, but neither can he condone sin, which destroys sinners whom he loves. When we see how much God loves us, and what lengths God was willing to go to to draw us to himself, his Spirit moves us to repent, and then he forgives us. We naturally respond to God’s forgiveness1 by doing the good works which he created us to do. Works are a result of faith. Without works, there is no faith.
Because of the symbolism in the Orthodox Church, many are quick to dismiss it. (See the video below.) That is a real shame because Protestants and Catholics can learn much from our Orthodox brothers and sisters.
I think the Orthodox view of salvation has more biblical support than the Protestant view.2
A lot of people have trouble accepting that Jesus was God because they imagine that God would appear as a Zeus like figure—if he appeared to us at all. But
“Christ shows us what it is to be God, in the way he dies as a human being.” - Fr John Behr
Which God do you believe in? - Lecture by Fr. John Behr ( part 1)
Orthodox Christians believe that all people will be in presence of Him who is the consuming fire after they die. For some this will be Heaven. For others it will be Hell.
“They are either prepared for it or they’re not.”3 - Jay Dyer
What about morality? As a whole, the Orthodox churches seem to be more principled than most Protestant and Catholic churches.
I hope for two things regarding the Orthodox and Protestants. I hope that Protestants acknowledge that a person can use icons in their services and ask the great saints of the past to pray for them and still be a true Christian. I hope that the Orthodox can acknowledge that a person may not use icons in their worship and not ask saints to pray for them and still be a part of the true Church. (The true Church consists of those who submit to Christ.) Perhaps the following chapter from volume two of George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons can help those who attend Orthodox, Protestant (and Catholic) churches see what makes a person a true follower of Christ. The Truth in Jesus
1. There are two kinds of forgiveness from God. One is unconditional (everyone has already been forgiven), and the other is conditional (upon repentance). When you realise that God has already forgiven you, and that he loves you unconditionally (as expressed in the creator becoming a man and dying for you while you were hostile or indifferent to him), you repent, and so become a different kind of person. Gratitude to God becomes your driving force (see What is the Gospel?).
2. For an in-depth look at what the Bible teaches about atonement, see Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus’s Death by Andrew Remington Rillera, Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel by Douglas Campbell, and Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church by Darrin W. Snyder Belousek.
3. “While men take part with their sins, while they feel as if, separated from their sins, they would be no longer themselves, how can they understand that the lightning word is a Saviour—that word which pierces to the dividing between the man and the evil, which will slay the sin and give life to the sinner? Can it be any comfort to them to be told that God loves them so that he will burn them clean. Can the cleansing of the fire appear to them anything beyond what it must always, more or less, be—a process of torture? They do not want to be clean, and they cannot bear to be tortured. Can they then do other, or can we desire that they should do other, than fear God, even with the fear of the wicked, until they learn to love him with the love of the holy. To them Mount Sinai is crowned with the signs of vengeance. And is not God ready to do unto them even as they fear, though with another feeling and a different end from any which they are capable of supposing? He is against sin: in so far as, and while, they and sin are one, he is against them—against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes; and thus he is altogether and always for them. That thunder and lightning and tempest, that blackness torn with the sound of a trumpet, that visible horror billowed with the voice of words, was all but a faint image to the senses of the slaves of what God thinks and feels against vileness and selfishness, of the unrest of unassuageable repulsion with which he regards such conditions; that so the stupid people, fearing somewhat to do as they would, might leave a little room for that grace to grow in them, which would at length make them see that evil, and not fire, is the fearful thing; yea, so transform them that they would gladly rush up into the trumpet-blast of Sinai to escape the flutes around the golden calf. Could they have understood this, they would have needed no Mount Sinai. It was a true, and of necessity a partial revelation—partial in order to be true.” ~ “The Consuming Fire,” Unspoken Sermons
Three Temptations in Marriage. Part 1: Egotism
The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware
The following is not an Orthodox video, but if you are a Protestant, it might make you take a closer look at the Orthodox view of atonement. See here.
Recommendations for Orthodox Christians
The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion by Rodney Stark
“Did the Fifth Ecumenical Council Condemn Universal Salvation?” in Alvin Kimel’s book Destined for Joy. Here is a review of the book.
"An extensive and considered collection of essays, written and reworked over many years, on the topic of universal salvation, touching upon all aspects from the proclamation of the gospel to the historical controversies it provoked (and provokes) as well as the pastoral compassion it entails. This is an excellent entry point into the ancient topic of 'apokatastais' and the claim that God will be 'all in all'."
—Fr. John Behr, Regius Professor of Humanity, University of Aberdeen, and author of books including John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel, The Way to Nicaea and The Mystery of Christ
The YouTube video by "The Michael Lofton Show" That All Shall Be Saved with Dr. David Bentley Hart
The Way: Three "Unspoken Sermons" by the man who inspired C S Lewis
Prayer : Three "Unspoken Sermons" by the man who inspired C S Lewis
Donal Grant by George MacDonald