What do you think?
Rate this book
Are You Saved? The Orthodox Christian Process of Salvation
This is the 5th revised and expanded edition of a book first published in 1984, now with a more attractive new cover. It has been widely hailed by both Eastern Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian reviewers as a clear, concise, and well-documented presentation of the biblical doctrine of salvation, as understood by the ancient church fathers and preserved to the present in the Orthodox Church. While the Orthodox understanding and experience of salvation has much in common with those of other Bible-believing Christians, it is significantly different from historic Roman Catholic and Protestant views, as well as popular contemporary views. The author deals with key Scripture texts, and quotes extensively from the writings of the ancient fathers on these texts. This book is aimed at the intelligent lay person, whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox, though clergy and scholars may find it helpful as a concise introduction to Orthodox thought on soteriology. Illustrated with Orthodox icons in monochrome. Back cover endorsements by several Greek Orthodox bishops and scholars. --- Randall Mark Trainer
- GenresChristian
61 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1997
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 6, 2026
Late last year I had serious health issues and every single day since then I have been uncomfortably aware of my own body, and by extension my own mortality. I thus have lost most interest in people and worldviews which fear or avoid the body. Since around that time, I've felt out of joint with my Lutheranism. Sure, what you grow up with is usually pretty comfortable if you haven't been traumatized, but something had been ringing hollow in it. I noticed that every single sermon was exactly the same: you're saved, you don't have to do anything, good works are evil, emotions are evil, don't worry about anything, don't do anything ever because you're already good and saved. I know I'm oversimplifying and I know my dad would harrumph at this, but those are the implicit messages told to us every single week (and sometimes explicitly told to us, as in the lines: "good works cannot avert our doom, / they help and save us never").
The more I reflected on my religion, which is often just another word for my retired Lutheran pastor of a father, the more glaring the shortcomings became. Since some drama cropped up in my family a few years ago, he has proven to be totally incompetent to ease any of the tension or help any of us through it. When my grandpa, my dad's dad, was getting old and restless, my dad had no advice for him other than repeating the same tired promises. Just hurry up and wait to die was the implicit message. Apparently, us Lutherans think that we have it all figured out, and you're stupid if you don't agree with us. If you ask a Lutheran what you're supposed to do with your life, they might furrow their eyebrows slightly confused, because other than arguing about why we're right, we don't do anything, especially good works. I never once have witnessed either of my parents do any of the things commanded of us by Christ in Matthew 25. My dad only once visited a prison when one of our congregants was in there. Otherwise he has never reached out to them or eased their pain or even listened to their stories. My parents have never volunteered in any capacity to ease the suffering of others. They have never donated any money to any cause, other than to our church (which always struck me as odd, given that the offerings paid my dad's salary). The closest we ever came to "clothing the naked" was donating old used clothes to Orphan Grain Train, whatever that is.
But the point I'm making here is that despite the Lutheran claim that "God did all the work, so you get to go show your faith by being Christlike in the world" is a blatant lie. Sure, some people I know go on a single week-long mission, or have once served at a homeless shelter when required to for a class. But by and large we are scared of Good Works. My mom would always scoff playfully at her Catholic friend Connie when she said "Hey Karen, I did my good work for the day!" Sure, that's a childish way of looking at it, but at least she did some good works! The problem with the LCMS isn't our explicit doctrine, but all the things which get implicitly left out. And in my case, what I've felt missing is any skin in the game, any Christlike action, any genuine love of neighbor.
There is direct correlation between our moral complacency and the overwhelming majority of LCMS members voting for the blatantly un-Christian Donald Trump. The reason why there is such a dramatic disconnect from what Christ teaches and what most American Protestants do is that we are sold a comfortable lie. Luther, understandingly, overreacted to the Catholic conscience-torture of memorizing sins and making up for every single one. But what resulted was a strange contradiction: we Lutherans make fun of people who decide their theology in part by the emotions they feel, yet we simultaneously brag that our theology is oh-so comforting. But it's only comforting if you've got a tortured Catholic conscience to start with. Those of us who were raised in Lutheranism don't quite get all the hubbub, and it's only natural for us to become complacent and to never do a single good work as a result. We genuinely believe you could never do a single good work and still make it to heaven, which is where the controversy comes in with deathbed conversions like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Which is why I appreciated this text so much. Sure, I agreed with literally everything in the first chapter, even as a Lutheran. But the second chapter described exactly what I needed to hear, though it was scary for me to hear: salvation isn't a one-and-done thing ("When were you saved?"), nor is it a passive thing ("saved by grace through faith" and "not by works lest any should boast"). As I mentioned above, I don't like apologists of any stripe, whether religious dogmatists or political pundits. But this text kept the right tone by simply describing instead of arguing. What it stated made sense out of the Old Testament, something I feel Lutherans are strangely uncomfortable with. I always remember hearing certain OT readings in church and squirming because they seemed to pretty clearly teach works righteousness. It was always explained away, but the lingering doubts never could be rooted out completely.
But the beautiful question to ask is: What if instead of hiding from the bible, you could actually accept what it says? I have always said that, following Ecclesiastes 7:18, "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other." In other words, when you face an apparent contradiction, don't do the "rational" thing and jettison the one you don't like and keep the one you do. True wisdom demands you hold onto both and persist past the tension into the deeper, paradoxical truth. And the truth which Orthodoxy preaches but Lutheranism fears is that Salvation is a process, it's something continual, something living, something we might not even finish until long after death, as we become continually more unified to God. We are called to be Christlike, not just in creed but in action; not just by avoiding sex before marriage or insulting gay people, but by going out and doing good, like Christ did. We Lutherans are experts at being puritanical and mean in our certainty, but we're bad at learning, growing, deepening, theosis-ing.
I don't know how to tell my dad that I'm not a Lutheran anymore, but this book, like the first drop of rain which you feel on your skin, helped me to realize that the shower was only starting. Returning to earlier, back when I was enduring the worst of my health issues, I was unable to sleep. I experienced hypnic jerks whenever I was about to slip into sleep, and I regularly woke up with full blown panic attacks, something I had never experienced before. Each time I felt absolutely certain I was about to die, and my animal body was so horrified of the prospect. Nothing could console me, I felt almost like my mind would break at the prospect. My dad's response upon hearing this? Slight confusion, and a vague recommendation to read a couple of the psalms.
You want to know what actually did help? An icon helped. I know, heresy, praying to Mary, etc. etc. etc. I haven't even tried praying to her yet, but I did stare at this picture I found at a thrift store, sitting up in my bed one night I couldn't sleep. And as stupid as it sounds it helped. It helped so much it made me cry. I pondered the historical and spiritual fact that a woman gave birth to God, that she accepted this incomprehensible thing, and that I might be able to one day accept the incomprehensible certainty of my own personal death. In the icon Mary holds a young Christ who looks over his shoulder at the angel Gabriel, who holds an Orthodox Cross. Opposite him, Michael holds the other instruments of his crucifixion, a spear and a sponge. You can feel the somber pain of the Christ child learning the reality of death, not just in general but also in particular. As if the shock jolted him out of an amniotic trance, one of his sandals is falling off his foot. The whole scene is composed in a perspectiveless eternity, and the lack of primary colors forces the mind away from easy certainties (e.g. is Mary's cloak dark green? black? is her undershirt red? pink? is her headdress aqua? blue? green? bluegreen?) and toward gentle meditation instead.
Why do I mention all of this? Because I want to emphasize that my conversion was not one caused by any clickbait apologists or cyber bullying or even theological argumentation. It was partially spurred by disappointment at the deep moral failings of my childhood church, and partially a welcome physicality in this new-to-me but old-as-dirt Church called the Orthodox. But even their name is somewhat of a misnomer, because unlike the Lutherans, they simultaneously value Orthopraxy, that is, right-action.
I remember the twinge of pain and fear that struck me when I read in this little book that you have no guarantee of salvation, but I think that there's profound wisdom in that: salvation isn't found in some rote dogmatic repetition nor in toxic-masculine fear of emotions, but in the active, daily attentiveness to one's own soul, and to the world around us. This of course doesn't mean fixating on social media and news headlines, but it does mean giving alms to the poor. It means meditating on the incarnation. It means praying "Lord have mercy" more times than I thought possible. It means doing the sign of the cross every time you say the trinitarian formula; not to show off to others, but to align your body, mind, and soul. For I've come to realize I can't abide by modernist heresies which only value the mind; I need the body and the soul to be nourished as well. And despite, or perhaps because of, the often airtight theological arguments of the LCMS, I've been starving for oxygen. Thanks be to God that there are people out there who take seriously Christ's whole command, not just Paul's writings on justification. For that's all that Lutheranism is, at root: Pharisaical self-justification: "I thank God that I'm not like that tax collector over there." But from now on you'll mostly hear me repeating that publicans simple prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Amen.
The more I reflected on my religion, which is often just another word for my retired Lutheran pastor of a father, the more glaring the shortcomings became. Since some drama cropped up in my family a few years ago, he has proven to be totally incompetent to ease any of the tension or help any of us through it. When my grandpa, my dad's dad, was getting old and restless, my dad had no advice for him other than repeating the same tired promises. Just hurry up and wait to die was the implicit message. Apparently, us Lutherans think that we have it all figured out, and you're stupid if you don't agree with us. If you ask a Lutheran what you're supposed to do with your life, they might furrow their eyebrows slightly confused, because other than arguing about why we're right, we don't do anything, especially good works. I never once have witnessed either of my parents do any of the things commanded of us by Christ in Matthew 25. My dad only once visited a prison when one of our congregants was in there. Otherwise he has never reached out to them or eased their pain or even listened to their stories. My parents have never volunteered in any capacity to ease the suffering of others. They have never donated any money to any cause, other than to our church (which always struck me as odd, given that the offerings paid my dad's salary). The closest we ever came to "clothing the naked" was donating old used clothes to Orphan Grain Train, whatever that is.
But the point I'm making here is that despite the Lutheran claim that "God did all the work, so you get to go show your faith by being Christlike in the world" is a blatant lie. Sure, some people I know go on a single week-long mission, or have once served at a homeless shelter when required to for a class. But by and large we are scared of Good Works. My mom would always scoff playfully at her Catholic friend Connie when she said "Hey Karen, I did my good work for the day!" Sure, that's a childish way of looking at it, but at least she did some good works! The problem with the LCMS isn't our explicit doctrine, but all the things which get implicitly left out. And in my case, what I've felt missing is any skin in the game, any Christlike action, any genuine love of neighbor.
There is direct correlation between our moral complacency and the overwhelming majority of LCMS members voting for the blatantly un-Christian Donald Trump. The reason why there is such a dramatic disconnect from what Christ teaches and what most American Protestants do is that we are sold a comfortable lie. Luther, understandingly, overreacted to the Catholic conscience-torture of memorizing sins and making up for every single one. But what resulted was a strange contradiction: we Lutherans make fun of people who decide their theology in part by the emotions they feel, yet we simultaneously brag that our theology is oh-so comforting. But it's only comforting if you've got a tortured Catholic conscience to start with. Those of us who were raised in Lutheranism don't quite get all the hubbub, and it's only natural for us to become complacent and to never do a single good work as a result. We genuinely believe you could never do a single good work and still make it to heaven, which is where the controversy comes in with deathbed conversions like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Which is why I appreciated this text so much. Sure, I agreed with literally everything in the first chapter, even as a Lutheran. But the second chapter described exactly what I needed to hear, though it was scary for me to hear: salvation isn't a one-and-done thing ("When were you saved?"), nor is it a passive thing ("saved by grace through faith" and "not by works lest any should boast"). As I mentioned above, I don't like apologists of any stripe, whether religious dogmatists or political pundits. But this text kept the right tone by simply describing instead of arguing. What it stated made sense out of the Old Testament, something I feel Lutherans are strangely uncomfortable with. I always remember hearing certain OT readings in church and squirming because they seemed to pretty clearly teach works righteousness. It was always explained away, but the lingering doubts never could be rooted out completely.
But the beautiful question to ask is: What if instead of hiding from the bible, you could actually accept what it says? I have always said that, following Ecclesiastes 7:18, "It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other." In other words, when you face an apparent contradiction, don't do the "rational" thing and jettison the one you don't like and keep the one you do. True wisdom demands you hold onto both and persist past the tension into the deeper, paradoxical truth. And the truth which Orthodoxy preaches but Lutheranism fears is that Salvation is a process, it's something continual, something living, something we might not even finish until long after death, as we become continually more unified to God. We are called to be Christlike, not just in creed but in action; not just by avoiding sex before marriage or insulting gay people, but by going out and doing good, like Christ did. We Lutherans are experts at being puritanical and mean in our certainty, but we're bad at learning, growing, deepening, theosis-ing.
I don't know how to tell my dad that I'm not a Lutheran anymore, but this book, like the first drop of rain which you feel on your skin, helped me to realize that the shower was only starting. Returning to earlier, back when I was enduring the worst of my health issues, I was unable to sleep. I experienced hypnic jerks whenever I was about to slip into sleep, and I regularly woke up with full blown panic attacks, something I had never experienced before. Each time I felt absolutely certain I was about to die, and my animal body was so horrified of the prospect. Nothing could console me, I felt almost like my mind would break at the prospect. My dad's response upon hearing this? Slight confusion, and a vague recommendation to read a couple of the psalms.
You want to know what actually did help? An icon helped. I know, heresy, praying to Mary, etc. etc. etc. I haven't even tried praying to her yet, but I did stare at this picture I found at a thrift store, sitting up in my bed one night I couldn't sleep. And as stupid as it sounds it helped. It helped so much it made me cry. I pondered the historical and spiritual fact that a woman gave birth to God, that she accepted this incomprehensible thing, and that I might be able to one day accept the incomprehensible certainty of my own personal death. In the icon Mary holds a young Christ who looks over his shoulder at the angel Gabriel, who holds an Orthodox Cross. Opposite him, Michael holds the other instruments of his crucifixion, a spear and a sponge. You can feel the somber pain of the Christ child learning the reality of death, not just in general but also in particular. As if the shock jolted him out of an amniotic trance, one of his sandals is falling off his foot. The whole scene is composed in a perspectiveless eternity, and the lack of primary colors forces the mind away from easy certainties (e.g. is Mary's cloak dark green? black? is her undershirt red? pink? is her headdress aqua? blue? green? bluegreen?) and toward gentle meditation instead.
Why do I mention all of this? Because I want to emphasize that my conversion was not one caused by any clickbait apologists or cyber bullying or even theological argumentation. It was partially spurred by disappointment at the deep moral failings of my childhood church, and partially a welcome physicality in this new-to-me but old-as-dirt Church called the Orthodox. But even their name is somewhat of a misnomer, because unlike the Lutherans, they simultaneously value Orthopraxy, that is, right-action.
I remember the twinge of pain and fear that struck me when I read in this little book that you have no guarantee of salvation, but I think that there's profound wisdom in that: salvation isn't found in some rote dogmatic repetition nor in toxic-masculine fear of emotions, but in the active, daily attentiveness to one's own soul, and to the world around us. This of course doesn't mean fixating on social media and news headlines, but it does mean giving alms to the poor. It means meditating on the incarnation. It means praying "Lord have mercy" more times than I thought possible. It means doing the sign of the cross every time you say the trinitarian formula; not to show off to others, but to align your body, mind, and soul. For I've come to realize I can't abide by modernist heresies which only value the mind; I need the body and the soul to be nourished as well. And despite, or perhaps because of, the often airtight theological arguments of the LCMS, I've been starving for oxygen. Thanks be to God that there are people out there who take seriously Christ's whole command, not just Paul's writings on justification. For that's all that Lutheranism is, at root: Pharisaical self-justification: "I thank God that I'm not like that tax collector over there." But from now on you'll mostly hear me repeating that publicans simple prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Amen.
March 20, 2024
Worth reading if you are interested in the perspective of orthodoxy. Recommended to Protestant readers inquiring EO.
Only 50 pages so I’ll keep it very brief. Salvation is a lifelong process in EO. Not a one time confession of faith, but belief in being saved means “growing in sanctification by trying to live in obedience to Christ to prove my faith and love which also prepares me for life in Heaven.” (p.32)
I was saved
I am saved
I am being saved
I will be saved
May the Holy Spirit guide you to the truth ☦️
Only 50 pages so I’ll keep it very brief. Salvation is a lifelong process in EO. Not a one time confession of faith, but belief in being saved means “growing in sanctification by trying to live in obedience to Christ to prove my faith and love which also prepares me for life in Heaven.” (p.32)
I was saved
I am saved
I am being saved
I will be saved
May the Holy Spirit guide you to the truth ☦️
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews