Salvation as Transformation

In “The Naked Now: Learning to See Like the Mystics See”, I really like how the Franciscan friar Fr Richard Rohr puts an emphasis on salvation as inner transformation.

All too often Christianity gets reduced to formulas for the afterlife, rather than a sincere focus on the transformation of our inner life.

So too, I really like St Gregory of Nyssa’s focus on “theosis” in his classic mystical work “The Life of Moses”.

Here, the emphasis of the Christian life is not on avoiding hell or going to heaven, but rather on becoming a true partaker of the divine nature as we are “clothed” in humility, compassion, and love. (2 Pet 1:4, Col 3:9-15, Gal 3:27)

And thus speaking from Philippians 3, St Gregory exhorts his readers to press into that sanctifying and perfecting process of kenosis (of dying to the old narcissistic self), so that we might truly be “clothed in Christ” as our resurrection life.

“Suffering the loss of all things, so that we might gain Christ”.  (Phil 3:7-14)