I have a guest post on Eclectic Orthodoxy on Nicene theology. Here is an excerpt from the article dealing with soteriology:
The homoousion leads to what could be called a soteriological realism in Nicene theology. Because of the union of God and humanity in the incarnation, salvation is in principle realized already in Christ. This seems to be the conclusion, when in the soteriology developed in the years after Nicaea, it became clear that the homoousion is necessary in order to understand salvation in a sufficiently radical way. Only by being God can Jesus save humans. Salvation is ontological in the sense that it concerns the innermost being of humans in their relationship with God.
It may be going too far to say that so-called “Arian” theology understood salvation purely in covenantal and moral terms, as is sometimes claimed, but for Nicene theology the divine nature of the Son was absolutely necessary for human salvation. 27 The formulations in the Nicene Creed about the Son being “true God of true God,” “light of light,” having “the same being as the Father” and so on, must be read in light of the subsequent formulation that the Son of God became human “for us humans and for our salvation.”
Creation cannot save itself, argued Athanasius, since “no creature can ever be saved by a creature.” 28 Human beings can only participate in God if God has first taken part in our bodily reality. 29 Christ, in other words, shares in the human condition in order to make humanity share in God. 30 This was, of course, also the point when Athanasius famously concluded his book On the Incarnation by saying that the Word of God was made human in order that we might be deified. 31 With Paul (2 Cor 5:14), Athanasius could confirm that our death has in a sense already taken place with Christ, because of the union of all humanity with God in Christ. 32
This so-called “Greek” doctrine of the atonement has been described as “physical” (Harnack), “mystical” (Ritschl), or “ontological,” and recently again in works by Ellen Scully as a “physicalist soteriology.” 33 Salvation does not in the first place depend on conversion, faith or the participation in the sacraments, but is in principle already realized by the union of God with humanity in Christ. It is, to use a phrase from Gregory of Nazianzus, the “humanity of God” (τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ τοῦ Θεοῦ) that sanctifies and saves humanity in the human body of Christ. 34 As explained by T.F. Torrance, in Nicene theology the atonement was not an external transaction, but what took place in the union of divine and human natures in Christ. 35 In Jesus the whole creation is in a profound sense already redeemed, resurrected, and consecrated for the glory and worship of God. 36
While such soteriology is typically associated with Greek theology, it was also developed by theologians in Latin polemics against Arianism. Hilary of Poitiers, for example, explained that we are in Christ through the union of the flesh assumed by the Word, and that we are as such reconciled in “the body of his flesh.” 37 This does not mean that salvation in the eschatological sense happens automatically, but human activity can only be a response to what has already occurred in the union of God and humanity in Christ. The reconciliation that has occurred in Christ is, of course, also what restores human relations and makes peace possible—as Athanasius explains, on the cross Jesus died with open arms in order to draw all people to himself. 38
All this may not be a necessary implication of Nicene theology, but we could perhaps say that the logic of the homoousion allows or even suggests what may call an “evangelical realism” – and that such realism is made possible by the notion that God in the incarnation is united to humanity in Christ without any intermediary. It is the very difference between God and creation, together with the homoousion, that makes it possible to conceive of the incarnation as itself an act of salvation in which humanity is brought to participate in the God who has become human “for us,” as the creed puts it.
Read the full article here: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/the-nicene-imperative-the-enduring-relevance-of-the-homoousion/
