In Front | Justification Goes East and West

The theme of justification in Paul represents a powerful articulation of his theology, but it brings us to a fundamental point of departure for Western and Eastern Christian tradition. In Paul, the development of the theme or concept of justification into a doctrine that is central to understanding salvation in Christ is typical of Western Christianity, but not Eastern Christianity.

For a number of reasons, both historical and theological, Eastern Christianity has different points of emphasis in the way it thinks about salvation. Rather than justification, it focuses on doctrines of “deification,” or “theosis.” It uses the concept of justification to describe the way believers become divine, in a limited and dependent way, through participating in God’s life. 

With these two different concepts, “justification” and “deification,” driving the development of Western and Eastern views of salvation, two distinctive traditions developed. We might map the focus of each of these traditions roughly like this:

Table adapted from: Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 1998, p. 5.

Both East and West would agree that people are sinners, but in the East this problem is subsumed under what they view to be the more fundamental problem of mortality, or “corruption.” Justification is still an important concept for them, but it is not the primary way of explaining salvation. It is one more way of talking about the reconciliation that they describe between God and humanity.

So while we’re reading and processing this important theme in Paul, it’s important to know that we have options in the way we read it, as either a primary or supplementary theme of salvation. There are many related themes and assumptions for both of these views, but it’s enough for us at the moment to acknowledge the options and the two main ways that Christians have processed Paul’s concept of “justification” in history.