This entire discussion is so interesting to me because it illuminates precisely the divide Fr Tom is talking about. You want to cut salvation up into a process. I don't think its sustainable, you just end up falling into a myriad of interpretative problems.
But I have questions - you talk about rewards, special rewards, richer experience of life. What reward can there be but God?
Do you see the insidious nature of this entire conversation? What is life about? What is heaven about? What is the true, ultimate meaning of life for a creature, for a human being? Anything other than God is nothing, it is all waste, it is all passing and garbage compared with God. What is being saved? Being saved for God, being saved into oneness, communion, fellowship with God.
Any discussion about a salvation which is anything other than friendship with God, communion with God, is wrong. Everything spoken of in the scriptures - particularly eternal life - is a consequences of that communion, and cannot healthily be viewed separated from it. As the scriptures say,
He is our salvation. Over and over again.
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And this is where I would say Father Thomas gets it wrong. He's not able to distinguish between the free gift of God by faith alone and discipleship which will cost us everything because he sees the word 'saved' and his default position is that the word must mean saved from hell in every context.
Haha! Man this actually made me laugh out loud. Fr Tom was the dean of St Vladimir's seminary, for starters. The hubris is shocking.
But, you clearly didn't read the OP. He literally goes into a discussion about what we're saved from and what we're saved for, and how they're different and why it matters.
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I think you badly miss the mark with John 8:30. In fact, you get it almost perfectly backwards. What Christ Jesus says is not, "great, now that you believe, you get to try to be a disciple in addition". No, no. What he says, is if --
if -- you continue in my word, then you will be shown to be those who learn from me. Disciple is mathetes, a learner. The "Truly" before disciple is from alethes, shown to be, what is revealed, an undeniable reality when something is tested. The plain reading here is: If you continue in His wordy, then you will shown to be actually a learner. The distinction is not between a follower and a non-follower but a true follower and a false one. That's what alethes means.
You cannot know Christ, follow Christ, even believe in Christ without doing the works He does. On this point, the scriptures are quite clear. You want to look at it as causative, i.e., I hate father and mother then I get to go to heaven. No. It's quite the opposite - I have accepted grace, have chosen to love God above everything, even my own life, and therefore by comparison I hate and reject anything in my life which would separate me from Him or compromise my relationship with Him. As St Paul says, I count it all as loss. It's consequence, not causative. So again, it's everything and nothing; nothing, because there's no salvation that isn't a complete and utter grace and gift, there's nothing we can do to save ourselves. We deserve none of it. And everything, because being saved our entire life and being and purpose is reoriented and focused solely on God.