The Church Fathers and Lordship Salvation

The debate between “Lordship Salvation” and “Easy Believism” was quite the “tempest in the teapot” for a certain segment of evangelicalism — it just so happened to have been in the segment of which I was a part, as a student of the particular Bible college I attended in the mid-70s. The names, “Lordship Salvation” and “Easy Believism,” were the designations each group used for the other, and were generally applied pejoratively. The latter represented what has come to be known as the “Free Grace” movement; the former was a new name for how the Church has understood the nature of faith and salvation all along, even among the Reformers. 

In a recent conversation, someone who attended the same Bible college I did — which vigorously promoted the “Easy Believism” view — wondered what the early Church might think of this modern debate. I thought that was a good question, so I put it to ChatGPT. Below is my question and the answer I got back:

Q. What might the early Church Fathers say about the late 20th century debate between “Lordship Salvation” and “Easy Believism”?

A. Great question. The debates in the late 20th century between “Lordship Salvation” (John MacArthur, et al.) and “Easy Believism” (Charles Ryrie, Zane Hodges, et al.) were framed in very modern, Protestant terms — but if we ask how the early Church Fathers might have looked at this dispute, their testimony points clearly in certain directions.

1. Faith as Obedience and Fidelity

For the Fathers, faith (pistis) was not a mere mental assent or one-time decision, but a lived trust expressed in obedience.

• St. Irenaeus speaks of faith as obedience to God’s word (Against Heresies 4.16.2).
• Clement of Rome (1 Clem. 35) exhorts believers to show faith by “hospitality, humility, and perseverance in good works.”
• Origen: “To believe in Christ is not merely to say ‘I believe,’ but to live in accordance with his words” (Commentary on John 19.6).

They would not separate confessing Jesus as Lord from actually living under his lordship.

2. Cheap Grace vs. Transformation

The Fathers consistently reject the idea of a bare, inactive faith.

• St. James (canonical text): “Faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:26), repeatedly cited by Fathers.
• St. John Chrysostom: “Faith without works of love is not faith at all” (Homilies on Romans 18).
• St. Basil: warns against thinking that baptism or confession alone saves apart from a transformed life (On Baptism 1.3). This lines up more with the Lordship Salvation insistence that true faith brings forth fruit than with Easy Believism’s worry that demanding fruit compromises grace.

3. Salvation as Ongoing, Synergistic

The Fathers saw salvation as a dynamic process of cooperation with grace (synergeia), not a punctiliar event.

• St. Athanasius: “The Word was made man in order that we might be made God” (On the Incarnation 54). This implies transformation, not mere status change.
• St. Maximus the Confessor: salvation requires our free cooperation with divine grace in obedience.

Thus, they would likely object to the “one-time decision, forever settled” framework of Easy Believism.

4. Assurance and Perseverance

The Fathers rarely speak of assurance the way modern Protestant debates do. Instead, they emphasize watchfulness, repentance, perseverance.

• The Didache: “If you are able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you are not able, do what you can” (6.2).
• Hermas, Shepherd: stresses repeated repentance and obedience, warning that faith without moral transformation is worthless.
• Augustine: genuine grace transforms the will, and perseverance to the end is God’s gift (On the Gift of Perseverance).

5. Likely Patristic Evaluation of the Debate

• They would reject Easy Believism outright as a distortion: reducing faith to a mental act apart from obedience would sound to them like the gnostics who claimed salvation by secret knowledge without transformation.
• They would agree with the Lordship Salvation concern — that to confess Christ is to submit to him as Lord, and that genuine faith shows itself in obedience and holiness.
• At the same time, they would be uneasy with any suggestion (sometimes found in Lordship Salvation rhetoric) that salvation is reducible to moral performance — for them, it is always grace working in us, not human effort alone.

In Summary:

The Fathers would not recognize a dichotomy between “faith” and “obedience.” To them, faith is entrusting oneself to Christ as Lord, which necessarily issues in obedience and transformation. They would strongly criticize Easy Believism as antinomian, and would support the Lordship position—though always with the caveat that obedience is not a human achievement but the fruit of grace.

The Revelation of Divinity and Humanity

What does it mean to be God — and how would we even know? We might think we have a pretty good idea by picking up hints from creation or gleaning shadows from the Mosaic Law, but do we really? And do  we even really know what it means to be human? Looking at the goings on in the world around us, it would seem that we do not. 

When we come to the Incarnation, the Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14), the temptation is for us to take what we think it means to be God, mix it with what we think it means to be human, and suppose that gives us a pretty good idea of what it means for God to become human. But again, not really.

Jesus Christ is the full and final unveiling of what God is like, “the radiance of his glory and the express image of his being” (Hebrews 1:3). He is “the image of the invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:15, 19). He said of himself, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

The Incarnation is the full revelation of what it means to be God. And it is also the full revelation of what it means to be human, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness” (Colossians 2:9-10). Our completeness as humans is found only in Christ, in whom all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form. And in him we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

This is what we were made for: to participate in the divine nature, to bear the image of God — to be like God (Genesis 1:26-27). When God said, “Let Us make Humankind in Our image, to be like Us,” Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that. For he is the Image of the Living God, and God predestined us to be “conformed” (symmorphos) to the image of the Son — which is to say, formed together with him (Romans 8:29).

This understanding is echoed in the early Church, among such Fathers as St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, and St. Maximus the Confessor.

It was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and he who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.19.1) 

He was made man so that we might be made God. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54). 

In Christ, God is made man and man is made God, so that the Giver and the receiver might be one and the same, wholly God and wholly man, and known in both. (St. Maximus, Ambigua 5)

Yet, what does it mean to be God? And how is it revealed in Jesus Christ? St. Paul shows us in Philippians 2, where he enjoins us:

You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8) 

Our Lord Jesus, in his very form and nature, is God — eternally so. Yet, he did not consider it something to be plundered and used to his own advantage. Rather, he emptied himself, humbled himself, sharing in our humanity — and by so doing redefined it — giving himself over for our sake in cross-shaped love. He did not come to be served, but to serve and to hand his life over for ours (Mark 10:45). This is precisely what it means to be God.

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

If we would know what it means to be God, however, we must understand this: Christ’s humility on the Cross was not a means to divine glory but was the very expression of it. When we see the humility of Christ in his deep descent, we are not seeing the divine glory in recess but as it is most fully revealed. 

We see that this is also what it means to be human. It is to empty ourselves, humbling ourselves, giving ourselves in cross-shaped love for one another. For Paul entreats us to have the very same mindset toward one another that is in our Lord Jesus Christ. Then we will see what it is to be truly human, and that it is to be like God.

Were it not for the Incarnation, we would not know what God is like — or what it means to be human. These are revealed only in Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

The Mystery of Incarnation and Being

The mystery of the Incarnation, the union of Divinity and Humanity, of God and Humankind is not by halves. That is, our Lord Jesus Christ is not half-God, half-human. He fully shares our humanity so He may fully heal it. This union is not partial, but complete in both natures. He was truly made man, and is said to be of the same nature with us according to the flesh. He is consubstantial — of one substance, of one being — with the Father, and he is also consubstantial with humankind. His consubstantiality with us is as real and complete as His consubstantiality with the Father, and it is for this reason that his Cross and Resurrection are of saving benefit for us.

This mystery is central to the understanding of the Church Fathers, and indeed, to the Christian message. It is enunciated in the Nicene Creed that our Lord Jesus Christ is of one being with the Father, and that for us humans, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became Human. It is affirmed by the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon, in AD 451) in its Definition of Faith: that our Lord Jesus Christ is at once complete in divinity and complete in humanity, truly God and truly man, of one substance with the Father regarding his divinity, and at the same time of one substance with us regarding his humanity. 

Here are a couple of brief quotes from St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) and St. Athanasius, and an extended one from St. Cyril of Alexandria, whose writings on this are foundational to the theological understanding of the Christian faith.

That which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. (St. Gregory Nazianzus, Epistle 101.5)

He became what we are, that He might make us what He is. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54)

Following in all points the confessions of the Holy Fathers which they made (the Holy Ghost speaking in them), and following the scope of their opinions, and going, as it were, in the royal way, we confess that the Only begotten Word of God, begotten of the same substance of the Father, True God from True God, Light from Light, through Whom all things were made, the things in heaven and the things in the earth, coming down for our salvation, making himself of no reputation, was incarnate and made man; that is, taking flesh of the Holy Virgin, and having made it his own from the womb, he subjected himself to birth for us, and came forth man from a woman, without casting off that which he was; but although he assumed flesh and blood, he remained what he was, God in essence and in truth. Neither do we say that his flesh was changed into the nature of divinity, nor that the ineffable nature of the Word of God was laid aside for the nature of flesh; for he is unchanged and absolutely unchangeable, being the same always, according to the Scriptures. For although visible and a child in swaddling clothes, and even in the bosom of his Virgin Mother, he filled all creation as God, and was a fellow-ruler with him who begot him, for the Godhead is without quantity and dimension, and cannot have limits.
     Confessing the Word to be made one with the flesh according to substance, we adore one Son and Lord Jesus Christ: we do not divide the God from the man, nor separate him into parts, as though the two natures were mutually united in him only through a sharing of dignity and authority (for that is a novelty and nothing else), neither do we give separately to the Word of God the name Christ and the same name separately to a different one born of a woman; but we know only one Christ, the Word from God the Father with his own Flesh. For as man he was anointed with us, although it is he himself who gives the Spirit to those who are worthy and not in measure, according to the saying of the blessed Evangelist John. (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Third Letter to Nestorius)

The Incarnation means that our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who is of one being with the Father, 
is also of one being with us. 

Christ and the Cross of Our Deliverance

The Gospel is not about sinners in the hands of an angry God, but about sinners in the hands of a loving God, God in the hands of angry sinners, and how God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us. For the Word did not become human to satisfy divine anger or settle divine accounts but to confront the powers that enslaved humanity — to destroy death and bring us to life.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15) 

This is not the appeasement of an offended deity, but freedom from the enslaving power of death, the fear of death, the devil — and so, also, from the power of sin.

Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians 2:15)

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8)

For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:9-10)

He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24)

This early Church Fathers understood the atoning work of Christ to be not one of divine penalty or appeasement but of divine victory over everything that stood against us.

St. Irenaeus, in Against Heresies (5.21.1), “He has therefore, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging war against our enemy, and crushing him who had at the beginning led us away captives in Adam, and trampled upon his head.” 

St. Athanasius, in On the Incarnation (2.10), “For by the sacrifice of His own body He did two things: He put an end to the law of death which barred our way; and He made a new beginning of life for us, by giving us the hope of resurrection. By man death has gained its power over men; by the Word made Man death has been destroyed and life raised up anew.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his Catechetical Orations (§24), speaks of  how Christ deceived the devil by offering himself under the veil of our human nature, like bait to a greedy fish, “the hook of divinity might be swallowed with the bait of the flesh, and thus when life came to dwell in death and light shone in the darkness, that which is understood as the opposite of light and life might be utterly destroyed.”

St. John Chrysostom, in his Paschal Homily, tells how Christ destroyed death by enduring it, and Hades by entering into it. “It is in an uproar because it is now made captive. Hell took a body, and it discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.”

Christ did not go to the Cross to deliver us from 
God but to rescue us from the power of death, 
the power the devil, and the power of sin.

Tears of Repentance

Tears of repentance flow from an awareness of some sort of  “distance” or “disconnect”from God (and others — and even within ourselves), and there is a longing to return. There is no actual distance, of course, between us and God, which would be impossible, but we still do distance ourselves in our thoughts and attitudes.

St. Paul said, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior” (Colossians 1:21). Yet, even while we were hateful toward God, “we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son — how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10). Even so, we may still often turn away from God, curving inwardly upon ourselves.

There are things that are alien to our nature and not at all what we were created for. We are beset by many things the Fathers called “passions” — disordered movements of the soul that distort human nature and separate us from God in our thoughts. They arise when the soul’s natural powers are misdirected:

What, then, is evil? Clearly it is the passion that enters into the conceptual images in accordance with nature by the intellect; and this need not happen if the intellect keeps watch. Passion is an impulse of the soul contrary to nature, as in the case of mindless love or mindless hatred for someone of for some sensible thing. In the case of love, it may be for needless food, or for a woman, or for money, or for transient glory, or for other sensible objects or on their account. In the case of hatred, it may be for any of the things mentioned, or for someone on account of these things. Again, vice is the wrong use of our conceptual images of things, which leads us to misuse the things themselves. (St. Maximus the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love, 2:15-17)

The powers of the soul were given to us by God for doing good, but when we misuse them, we create the passions. The passions were not planted in us by God, but we ourselves bring them about through our negligence. Yet, the Fathers did not teach that passions must be annihilated — but they must be transfigured.

So we are given the gift of repentance. Repentance is not merely sorrow over wrongdoing but it is a cleansing, a purging of the distortions that have clung to us. When we weep with godly sorrow, it is not because we are being diminished. Quite the opposite, it is because we are being restored. Something is being discerned in us, uprooted in us.

Tears of repentance are not the product of human effort. St. John Climacus, in The Ladder of Divine Ascent, speaks of tears as a second baptism, a gift from God to the humble. Do not force them, or try to work them up — that will do you no good — but do not try to hold them back, either. Let them simply come, for they are healing. When we weep in repentance, the heart is being softened, and the passions are being loosed. The tears we shed mark the nearness of our freedom.

The man who sighs over his soul for but one hour is greater than he who raises the dead by his prayer while dwelling amid many men. The man who is deemed worthy to see himself is greater than he who is deemed worthy to see the angels, for the latter has communion through his bodily eyes, but the former through the eyes of his soul. (St. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies)

The end of the Christian life not a cold detachment, but a love that is free, pure, and fully rooted in God. When the soul has brought the passions to their proper us, it is illumined by divine love and becomes like God in all things, with a heart of compassion.

And what is a merciful heart? It is a heart burning with compassion for the whole of creation, for humans, for birds, for animals, and even for demons and all creatures. From the memory and contemplation of them, his eyes flow with tears. Due to great patience, his heart becomes small, and he cannot bear to hear or see any harm of even the slightest sorrow happening in creation. And because of this, he offers prayers with tears at all times. (St. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies)

Tears of repentance mean that things are 
being uprooted in you that do not belong. 
Let them flow freely, for they are 
a gift from God, and your 
deliverance is at hand.

When All Creation is Subject to Christ

In First Corinthians 15, St. Paul unfolds for us the gospel and its cosmic dimension. He begins: “Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:1-4). In the balance of the chapter, he shows the scope and significance of the gospel, and its final resolution:

Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that everything has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be All in All. (1 Corinthians 15:24-28) 

The gospel Paul preaches is not merely a local or regional concern but is without geographical boundaries — indeed, it knows no cosmic limitations whatsoever. In several other of his epistles, Paul lays out the “big picture,” the express and eternal purpose and pleasure of God accomplished through Christ.

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:19-23) 

He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10) 

 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)

It is the salvation, the redemption, the deliverance, of all of heaven and earth; which is to say, of everyone and everything. All are brought to unity and summed up in our Lord Jesus Christ. “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:22-23). Christ is the one who fills everything in every way, and the Church, which is the Body of Christ, is that fullness of him. In this way, all creation becomes the Body of Christ, and so does God become All in All.

We find this understanding echoed in the early Church Fathers. For example, in St. Irenaeus of Lyons, in Origen of Alexandria, and in St. Athanasius of Alexandria: 

For the Creator of the world is truly the Word of God: and this is our Lord, who in the last times was made man, existing in this world, and who in an invisible manner contains all things created, and is inherent in the entire creation, since the Word of God governs and arranges all things; and therefore He came to His own in a visible manner, and was made flesh, and hung upon the tree, that He might sum up all things in Himself. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.18.3)

If, then, that subjection be held to be good and salutary by which the Son is said to be subject to the Father, it is an extremely rational and logical inference to deduce that the subjection also of enemies, which is said to be made to the Son of God, should be understood as being also salutary and useful; as if, when the Son is said to be subject to the Father, the perfect restoration of the whole of creation is signified, so also, when enemies are said to be subjected to the Son of God, the salvation of the conquered and the restoration of the lost is in that understood to consist. (Origen, De Principiis 3.5.7) 

For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit. As St. Paul says, “Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He triumphed on the cross,” so that no one could possibly be any longer deceived, but everywhere might find the very Word of God. For thus man, enclosed on every side by the works of creation and everywhere — in heaven, in Hades, in men and on the earth, beholding the unfolded Godhead of the Word, is no longer deceived concerning God, but worships Christ alone, and through Him rightly knows the Father. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 45)

Christ is intimately and inextricably 
united with all creation. It is as all creation 
is subject to Christ, and Christ is subject 
to the Father, that God is All in All.

The Incarnation As Mutual Indwelling

The Incarnation is the mystery of God and humanity dwelling together in unbroken, inseparable union. Christ has taken on our full humanity, not as a vessel or garment to be cast aside but as that which he has become, without in any way detracting from his full divinity. For “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). This union is not a blending or confusion of natures but a co-inherence — a mutual indwelling — such that wherever the Son is, both divinity and humanity are fully present. St. Maximus the Confessor speaks of this great and encompassing mystery:

By his gracious condescension God became man and is called man for the sake of man and by exchanging his condition for ours revealed the power that elevates man to God through his love for God and brings God down to man because of his love for man. By this blessed inversion, man is made God by divinization and God is made man by hominization. For the Word of God and God wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of his embodiment. (Ambigua 7)

“God became man” in order to save lost man, and — after he had united through Himself the natural fissures running through the general nature of the universe ... to fulfill the great purpose of God the Father, recapitulating all things, both in heaven and on earth, in Himself, in whom they also had been created. (Ambigua 41)

The deified person, while remaining completely human in nature, both in body and soul, becomes wholly God in both body and soul, through grace and the divine brightness of the beatifying glory that permeates the whole person. (Ambigua; Patrologia Graeca 91, 1088)

In the Incarnation, Christ did not become merely one of us but one with us. He is not simply one man among many but the one in whom God’s eternal purpose to bring unity to all in heaven and on earth — all are summed up in Christ (Ephesians 1:9-10). Christ is in all and all are in Christ. This mutual indwelling is the heart of salvation. 

Christ has united human nature to himself, and so is present in all humanity, sustaining each one of us. In him, humanity is healed, restored, and brought into union with God. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus says, “That which he has not assumed he has not healed; but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved” (Epistle 101, To Cledonius).

The Co-Inherence of Divinity and Humanity in our Lord Jesus Christ means that salvation is not some abstract, legal declaration, but a real and transformative union. Through such tangible means as baptism and the Eucharist, we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection, and by the Holy Spirit we share in his divine life. “It is no longer I who live,” says Paul, “but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4).

The Incarnation is the co-inherence,
the interpenetration, the mutual indwelling
of divinity and humanity, of God and humankind.
It means Christ is in all and all are in Christ.

Some Moment Other Than the Cross

The Cross is where the world is judged and the sins of the world forgiven. For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). Christ is “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:12). Even as he was being crucified, our Lord Jesus Christ prayed for us all, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

The Moment of the Cross is the only true moment, the only moment in which we belong — the only moment there is. To turn away from this moment is to turn toward non-being. To embrace this moment is to embrace Christ, who draws us to himself. Looking to this moment, Lord Jesus said, “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:31-32).

When we do not forgive others, or ourselves, 
we are living in some moment other than 
that of the Cross, for the Cross is where 
the forgiveness of all is revealed.