"Thaddeus, can you clearly state the orthodox position on why Christ died?" So the Bible uses a lot of metaphors for salvation. Ransom, running a race, fighting a fight. This language is biblical and we Orthodox use it. It isn't theories, and I kind of hate that word, because it implies a bunch of "possible" options and then one or a few may turn out to be true. It's atonement metaphors. St Gregory the Theologian in his Second Paschal Oration (4th century), one of the greatest theologians of all time, says that if you take the ransom language literally, you get heresy. Satan doesn't have that kind of power, and God isn't holding us hostage. It's a metaphor that means what was needed to free us from death was provided. Similarly, imagine reading "run the race" as literal and assuming salvation is a competition. It's absurd to squeeze every possible literal detail out of the words in Scripture. But the worst is "Penal Substitutionary Atonement" which says that justice = retributive punishment for sins, and thus God is obligated to be merciless, keep records of wrong, and relegates the heart to a secondary issue rather than primary. A person who cannot let any crime go without punishing someone is fundamentally not merciful. And letting guilty people go free because an innocent person volunteered to take their place is not justice. Justice is making things right, and God uses both retribution and mercy to make things right, and is not obligated to punish. (Justification of man means to make man how he should be.) So what is ACTUALLY going on? A variety of things, not "theories" or even metaphors but a variety of real things. 1. Physical death is defeated. In the time of the Apostles, people weren't worried about going to Hell for breaking God's rules. The enemy that oppressed them was death, and the Gospel centered around Christ trampling down death by death. The Fathers talk of how much death pushed people towards sin, and so a major incentive for sin was defeated along with defeating death itself. And death was defeated by having it filled with Life Himself. Anyone who dies now goes to be with Christ and will be resurrected on the day of judgment. (Being with Christ doesn't mean you like being with Christ or are "saved.") So to know death was defeated was a powerful message. 2. Spiritual death can be defeated. All sin comes from distance from God. He is love itself, beauty, the logos, the source and standard of all that is good. If we distance ourselves from Him, we do what is "right in our own eyes" and eventually we die. The life of the Christian in the Church opens the door to begin living in a way that reflects God, and the sacraments in the Church open a way to actually unite with Him through that transformation. And the death happens through death to the self as Scripture says, through taking up your crosses daily. (If the Cross was a once-for-all payment it would be extremely offensive to say now WE have to take up our crosses. Wasn't Christ's work enough? It was, but we have to participate in it, we have to walk through the door now that it's open.) 3. Union with God is possible. It was already a powerful message to know death was conquered, and even more to know that with God's help, evil within us can be conquered. But a step even above all this was that man is built to be "partakers in the divine nature", that he was made to be even closer to God than husband and wife. This is the message of the Ascension and Pentecost after the Resurrection, that humanity has united with divinity. Part of how we come intimately close to anyone is to have knowledge of them, which is why sexual intercourse is called "knowing" in Scripture. It is by the Cross that we come to know the basis of who God is, that He bears all our sins (not as legal payment but literally we sinned against Him in His Passion), and most of all when, after so much evil has been unjustly done to Him, He looks at them and says "forgive them Father, they know not what they do." That is a revelation of the incredible heart of God, the same heart we all fail in, and it is only by comparing ourselves to that heart do we repent, and by seeking to have that heart (by God's grace) that we can become close to Him and become like Him. Salvation is to be united with God, which comes through the defeat of physical death, the transformation of the heart into God's likeness, and above all, a deepening encounter with Him.