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What Does "Salvation" Mean?



Soma (body) is a human as a whole, as something indivisible (as the synonyms we can take atomos in Greek and individuum in Latin). Some is a-tomos (non-dividable), the denial of any tome (division)… However, in the reality of this world, a human being is divisible; we get sick, suffer and dissolve after death. It means humans do not have the true soma, the true body, wholeness. “Making whole”, the restoration of a whole body is called soteria. “Soteria means that I become sos – whole”. This word “soteria” is translated as “salvation”, but in fact, it means “healing” (getting wholeness, getting the true body). Consequently, Soter (Savior) means “Healer”. The miracles of healings that play such an important role in the Gospel stories, were supposed to be a symbolic prototype of the final “healing” of the human being. We reach the true wholeness, the indivisible body, only in the corporally Resurrected Christ, in the “body of resurrection”. In the Lord, a person is healed from the sickness of sin and death.

By Archimandrite Januarius (Ivlev)

CONVERSATION