Grace (Christianity) - Grace in Eastern Christianity

Grace in Eastern Christianity

In Eastern Christianity, Grace is the Uncreated Energies of God. The Sacred Mysteries (sacraments) are seen as a means of partaking of divine grace because God works through his Church, not just because specific legalistic rules are followed; and Grace is the working of God himself, not a created substance of any kind that can be treated like a commodity. There is no distinction made between mortal and venial sins, no doctrine of Purgatory - although there is a strong tradition of a period of "purification after death" and prayers for the dead,(this was a recurring controversy leading to the Great Schism between the West and the East), and no Treasure House of Merit. Instead, the Eastern Church has emphasized the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian's life and has maintained ascetic disciplines such as fasting and prayer (the minimum fast obligatory on Orthodox faithful is two days weekly), not as a way to make satisfaction for past sins or to build up merit, but as a means of spiritual discipline to help reduce one's susceptibility to temptation in the future to exercise self-control, and to avoid being enslaved to one's passions and desires.

Orthodox theology rejects Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin and actively opposes any implementation or implication of John Calvin's concepts of total depravity or irresistible grace and of Thomist or scholastic philosophical theology, viewing philosophy and discursive theology as corruptions of the true theology of the Cappadocian and early Desert Fathers which lead the Western Church astray into heresy. It teaches that it is possible and necessary for the human will to cooperate with divine grace for the individual to be saved, or healed from the disease of sin. This cooperation is called synergism (see also monergism and semipelagianism), so that humans may become divine—a process called theosis—through merging with the uncreated energies of God (the "Tabor light"), especially through a form of prayer called hesychasm.