I have dealt with Eastern Orthodoxy in the last months a little bit. I wanted to know, how at all they got to the idea, as you put in an previous answer, to mix up justification and sanctification.

The answer is that they have a totally different view of what being saved means. They (as I understood this) do not--primarily--see God as a judge but as a healer. It starts with a different understanding of original sin--men are not guilty of Adam’s sin but have to bear the consequences--and (even more important) death, that is not seen as a punishment from God. According to them, it is rather the consequence of man's estrangement from God that leads to death of the soul and then to death of the body as well.

Consequently mankind was captured by death due to the free decision of Adam and Eve, but could not free itself from this lost state. After death, all(!) men went down to Scheol and had to be rescued. That was exactly what God did. He prepared(!) the world by giving His commandments and later His son was incarnated, died on the cross and resurrected.

This he did not--at least not primarily--as a necessary sacrifice to the Father and not primarily in order to achieve forgiveness of the sins. It is rather seen as a “mysterious act” in order to save the world. Thus mankind regained the possibility to become divinized (as the “result” of the incarnation where God became man), sins and the transgressions of men were also forgiven by Christ's death (but The Father did not demand the sacrifice, not in a juridical way) and--first--by someone dying who has not sinned the whole principle of death was destroyed from within so that death was abolished for everyone who wants to live.

They stress that death was overcome and that death was the former threat to mankind, not God’s judgement. Men had to be freed from sin and not to be saved from God’s wrath. On Judgement Day there will be indeed heaven and hell, yet not according to the Lutheran notion, but God’s love will spread over everyone like a river of fire. This fire is joy for those who have love in their hearts and hell for the others.

They say that “Western theology” is being saved by God from the hands of God, which would be a schizoid notion. So, God acts as a healer and called all men to reunite with him. That was impossible before Christ and is now made possible, but still not due to men own merits, but rather achieved in constant contact with Christ, the Mysteries/Sacraments etc. Everyone is free to accept this invitation. It is only necessary to struggle for it, to cooperate.

My question now does NOT focus primarily on the last.htmlect and on the contradicting Lutheran stance on justification by Faith and grace alone (which I know) but rather on the completely different basic assumptions of Eastern Orthodoxy that death is not a punishment from God, that God will not directly send someone to hell, that The Father did not demand a sacrifice, that the juridical doctrine of salvation is thoroughly wrong or only a small.htmlect of salvation and…and…