Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
I think you will find that hesychastic fathers leave no doubt that we are born in complete depravity, slaves to sin (oh yeah, the Calvinists would love that part!), unable to choose anything but evil, and that we are saved by God's loving grace out of that rot.
I am no expert on Greek of course, but is it correct that the ancient Greek term for "slave" became the modern Greek word for "laborer" or "bondsman?" Ancient Greeks considered every man who worked for someone else not feee. Only those who worked for themsleves were considered free men. Anyone serving anyone else was not.
If man is bonded one way or another, man is never truly free. Yet Scriputre tells us just the opposite: unlike the animals, who are driven by necessity and are bonded to necessity, we are free to choose. Adam and Eve were free to choose not only God but evil, thus being totally and truly free.
If we were bonded to God, then we would do nothing that He doesn't want us to do, we couldn't sin. The error of Protestants is precisely their claim that once they accept Christ they cannot sin. And they have issues with the church or Papal infallibility?
I'm not sure I understand why being physically dead is an unnatural state. I know we don't get our new bodies until the end, but why is this existence unnatural? Also, why is there a presumption that these people are uncomfortable? Has Moses or David, or Mary! (or any other heavyweight from way back), been uncomfortable for thousands of years and counting?
We do not pray for the Saints. They pray for us.
Yes, but as is often said, you do pray "to" the saints. This is a major issue of contention between Catholics and Protestants. One thing I think I've learned on this thread is that your "prayer" is really a prayer for a prayer. You "pray" (in a request sense) to a saint for a "prayer" (in a worship sense) on your behalf. A pretty subtle distinction for the lay universe to handle. If I were Pope for a day, I would figure out another way to characterize this. :)
Well, the differences are more than substantial, although not in the Five Books of Moses, save for the "virgin" issue. The oldest Masoretic (Rabbinical) Text dates to 10th century AD. The book was found in a Moscow synagogue. Jamnia, by the way, was a rabbinical meeting that anathemized Jesus of Nazareth and the out all the books used by Christian Jews. The meeting took place in 100 AD.
Some consider Jamina to be the date and place where the Hebrew Canon was finalized, but some will dispute that. The fact is that Hebrew canon was growing; by 500 BC only the Five Books of Mose constituted the "Bible." In the next 400 or so years, up to the birth of Christ, Prophets and Psalms were added, along with the seven books included in the Septuagint, which was a Jewish working Scripture written in Greek for the Alexandrian Hebrews who did not speak their ancient lanuage any more or Aramaic, but only Greek.
The Gospels quote from the Septuagint but the Protestants choose to ignore that fact. Catholics use a mixture of MT and Septuagint. The Orthodox Church retains the entire Septuaging as the source known as the "Old testament."
Catholic dogmas of Immaculate Conception, etc. can be traced to the "Apocryphal" books. But so can many other Orthodox and Catholic doctrines.
The Septuagint is the oldest complete Old Testament Scripture, dating back to third century BC, so it cannot be accused of being modified by the Christians.
Death is not our natural state. Death is unnatural because God did not create us to be mortal; we became mortal through fault of our own.
When Adam and Eve were created, they were without sin and therefore immortal. The state humanity was created in is our "natural" state. Our fallen state is not our natural state, separated from God.
A bulb disconnected form the electrical source is a dead bulb. What good is a bulb if light doesn't shine through it? Adam and Eve were alive in God, Who is our sole source of existence. Separated from God, who is Life, our light went out, as we died unto sin.
Restoring manking to its original state is the only "natural" state of man. I don't know of any unnatural condition that is pleasant. Do you? If you do, then my example is bad, but it's late so I can't think of any other examples. Nonetheless, you get my drift.
Yes, but as is often said, you do pray "to" the saints. This is a major issue of contention between Catholics and Protestants
I know and I have to give it to you for having taken the time to learn the subtle difference. In fact your summary "prayer for a prayer" is quite good. Most Protestants, except Calvinists, admit that the Saints (in heaven, the "famous" ones) prey on our behalf along with angels. Most Protestants except some Anglicans do not accept prayers (as requests) to the saints. Yet, early Church records show that this was the practice and understanding of early Christianity.
I mean, if we can accept such complex things as the Holy Trinity, one essence and three persons, or Christ, fully God and fully Man, accepting requests for prayers is not such a foreign idea. Also, remember that Holy Trinity, as understood by the Church and accepted by most Protestants, as well as the duality of nature of Christ in one Person is not exactly word-by-word in the Scriptures either.
The Church really has no "hard evidence" to prove it, but then again +Paul tells us we believe things by faith and not by provable evidence. (cf Heb 11:1)
"I think you will find that hesychastic fathers leave no doubt that we are born in complete depravity, slaves to sin (oh yeah, the Calvinists would love that part!), unable to choose anything but evil, and that we are saved by God's loving grace out of that rot."
I don't think so, Kosta. None of the Fathers save perhaps Augustine, believed in the total depravity of man at birth. The Fathers taught that while we might have lost the "likeness" of God at the Fall, we didn't lose the "image" of God. As +John of Kronstadt wrote: "Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him, because evil is but a chance misfortune, illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement." It is fair, however, to say that without grace we cannot move from a state of being a bondsman or servant to sin towards theosis.
"I am no expert on Greek of course, but is it correct that the ancient Greek term for "slave" became the modern Greek word for "laborer" or "bondsman?"
No. The Greek word then and now for slave as we today think of slaves is "sklavos".
"Ancient Greeks considered every man who worked for someone else not feee. Only those who worked for themsleves were considered free men. Anyone serving anyone else was not."
Not quite, but close. There were many people who worked for others but were not sklavoi or douloi. The distinction to make is that there were different types of people who come under the English word slave and different states of life that we generically call slavery. Justin Martyr sort of makes this distinction:
"To yield and give way to our passions is the lowest slavery, even as to rule over them is the only liberty. The greatest of all good is to be free from sin, the next is to be justified; but he must be reckoned the most unfortunate of men, who, while living unrighteously, remains for a long time unpunished. The end contemplated by a philosopher is likeness to God, so far as that is possible."
"Sin, Gehenna, and death do not exist at all with God, for they are effects, not substances. Sin is the fruit of free will. There was a time when sin did not exist, and there will be a time when it will not exist. Gehenna is the fruit of sin. At some point in time it had a beginning, but its end is not known. Death, however, is a dispensation of the wisdom of the Creator. It will rule only a short time over nature; then it will be totally abolished." +Isaac the Syrian
Tomorrow, interestingly enough, is the feast of +Isaac the Syrian.
I will have to look up individual fathers on this. Too late for tonight, though.
The simplest answer is that we were not made to be souls without bodies. God created us as a body and soul. I think it is very unnatural to have anything removed from you — if we can imagine what it would be like if our heads were cut off and we continued to live. I just can't see how it is not something terryfying, and unnatural.
Freedom in God, as enjoyed by Adam, implied the possibility of falling away from God. This is the unfortunate choice made by man, which led Adam to a subhuman and unnatural existence. The most unnatural aspect of his new state was death. In this perspective, "original sin" is understood not so much as a state of guilt inherited from Adam but as an unnatural condition of human life that ends in death.
So every human in existence (since Adam) throughout time has spent his entire time on earth in an unnatural state? Given that you have said that God experiences all time simultaneously, how would you put the fall into the context of God's plan? (I know you know that God is omniscient.) Would you say that it was God's plan that mankind should spend 99.999999% of his collective existence on earth in an unnatural state? Would you say that God changed His plan based on Adam's choice? IOW, was it God's original plan that all people would be born immortal on earth, but man foiled this plan?
In the East, man is regarded as fully man when he participates in God; in the West, man's nature is believed to be autonomous, sin is viewed as a punishable crime, and grace is understood to grant forgiveness.
Hence, in the West, the aim of the Christian is justification, but in the East, it is rather communion with God and deification. In the West, the church is viewed in terms of mediation (for the bestowing of grace) and authority (for guaranteeing security in doctrine); in the East, the church is regarded as a communion in which God and man meet once again and a personal experience of divine life becomes possible."
This is especially instructive. How would you phrase God's view of sin? Is there a need for God to forgive sin?
Deification? I know you and Kolo have talked about theosis, becoming more "God-like". "Deification" implies an idea to me of becoming "as a God", or "equal to God". Does it go to this extent, or is it an unreachable goal?
Yes. Every human being since Adam was born with the consequece or Adam's sin, which is mortality. Every one of us was born separated from God.
Now, we are not necessarily conscious of our unnatural state as something unnatural, and I see that the thought probably never occurred to you until now that our "natural" state may not be natural.
But it is clear that the way we are is not the way God created man.
Orthodoxy regards sin simply as "separation from God." In fact, the Greek term is "missing the mark" (the "mark" being Christ); when God is not our mark, we sin. As long as our aim is to imitate Christ, as long as we are in communion with Him, we don't. That's where the idea of frequent confession and communion comes from.
Is there a need for God to forgive sin?
God neither has needs, nor is He driven by necessities. If we follow Christ, we will feel a need to confess our sins, not as a legalistic obligation, but as a realization that we have been ungrateful to Him.
Confession is not a true confession unless it is grounded in what the Greeks call metanoia (change of mind), a permanent and irrevocable rejection of that which we confessed as our ingratitude to God. We believe that God forgives us if our ingratitude is an honest failure and our confession an honest desire to change our mind. God will forgive if we honestly try, even if we honestly fail.
"Deification" implies an idea to me of becoming "as a God", or "equal to God"
Oh, no, never equal to God! That would be pagan. Theosis is becoming God-like, Christ-like. It is a process, a spiritual growth to holiness through faith in God, in due time. The "official" Saints reached that likeness to God more than your average bear. They have achieved that by denial of their passions and carnal qualities of our fallen nature, and incessant prayers. They became empty vessels, "poor in spirit," without egos, clean glasses, through which the light of God could shine for others to see and know Him.
People who achieve theosis don't know it. Their humility does not allow them to arrogate such quality. They consider themselves truly unworthy of any honor or title. In fact, they are truly disconcerned with such things as honors and titles, or anything of this world for that matter. :-)
Well, maybe originally, but it takes time to write things down (and make copies), and many events had not even happened yet so they couldn't have been written down. Do you believe that God mandated, regardless of whether He gave the Apostles advanced notice, that the scribes of the Bible would physically put pen to page? Did God cause the Bible to be written? You are writing as if you believe that the scribes of the (eventual) Bible made their own free will choices on what to include in their writings. Is this correct?
If I can find one phrase in the non-canonical writings of the Fathers, no matter how clearly that father's position is seen, I need to find a consensus among others to prove that this is the teaching of Christ. That is the difference between canonical scripture and oral (i.e. patristic, written to us) tradition.
I suppose it is human nature to give some merit to a view that is widely held. But does popularity make it correct? I fully admit that I start with the premise of giving "my guys" the benefit of the doubt. However, no man, nor group of men, gets my agreement if what they say doesn't pass the scriptural test as the Spirit leads me. That's why it is not the end of the world when I might disagree with my fellow churchgoers on some issues. But, if my pastor walked in some Sunday morning and announced that Jesus never claimed to be God, then I would be outta there.
As it is, the Protestant position is not to be more cautious in the study of the Fathers, but to ignore them unless something suits their agenda (which is, exclusively, fragments from St. Augustine).
In this case, our only agenda is the word of God.
I can recognize my Church in the writings of Justin Martyr, Clement, Ignatius or Irenaeus, -- can you?
No, I only recognize my church inasmuch as it is in Christ, not in the writings of any man.
But a sacrament has a defined meaning. ...
OK, all I meant was that we practice many similar things but we attach very different meanings to them. I just looked up "sacrament" and it appears to refer pretty much to "your" practices and interpretations. They are clearly defined.
Many, -- indeed not all, -- Protestant churches would not baptize a child before the age of reason. This deprives that child of the grace of baptism and endangers his soul should he die unbaptized.
I freely say that my church is one. :) I'm pretty sure that you all have said that an infant baptism performed in a Protestant church "CAN" be effective. However, what do Catholics say happens to victims of abortion, or to any child who dies before the age of reason (and living in a non-Christian family)? Are the salvations of those children really mainly determined by their parents?
Me: "We deny the necessity of man-driven works."
But then you deny scripture. When Christ commanded us to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, etc. He did not say anything about man-driven, He just said, do it.
I agree. Where we disagree is where the power for these works comes from. We just say that man does not produce good works from himself or his own autonomy. Every good work comes from God. He gets all the credit and all the glory for every good work. Whatever reward in heaven we might get from God is of course up to Him. I know that when I face judgment one thing I'm NOT going to say is: "But Lord, look at all the nice things I did..."
Also, no mature Protestant is looking for any excuse not to obey God (good works) in this world. Good works automatically flow from a regenerated heart.
But the movement away from parochial schools was a Protestant project, that has lead to the scandal of publik skulz of today.
I admit I have no idea to what you are referring here. Would you elaborate?
But this is the fundamental Protestant idea [finishing a prior thought, but leading into ...]. The notion that a bunch of lawyers and politicians can go and starve an innocent disabled woman to death because an electoral process of law has lead to it, -- I am referring to Terri Schiavo, of course, -- is a direct product of the mentality according to which everyone is his own pope and therefore entitled to autonomous moral judgement.
You are really trying to blame Protestantism for what happened to Terri Schiavo??? You are too funny. I did follow the case pretty closely because of how outraged I was by it. I do believe the judge who was involved was a long standing member of a Protestant church. Did you know that they KICKED HIM OUT because of this? A most proper cleansing. Do you think Catholic churches need to do any cleansing?
The one aspect of moral law on which you admit Protestantism has defected en masse (Lambeth Conference, 1930) is contraception. But this is the cornerstone of moral order that was destroyed by the left, -- and now, of course, the Church is waging a lone, despairing battle to steer at least its own flock away from that sin.
It's interesting that you bring up an Anglican conference as an example of Protestant error. I didn't think Anglicans were "exactly" Catholic, but I did think you all were in the "same family". I take it that you say that Anglicans, the Church of England, etc. are all fully Protestant and outside the "Church of Christ", as I have been told?
As to the contraception issue, I would fully agree that it led directly to Roe (Griswold v. Connecticut - 1965). There just isn't any argument. Both cases were travesties of justice and introduced us into the world of penumbras and emanations. Very sick. However, I can't agree with you that this is all the fault of Protestants. The entire society has decayed. (You must think that we have a lot of power over you in that we convinced such an overwhelming majority of Catholics to use birth control.) "We" did not. As I have said before to others, if Catholics voted (en masse) like African Americans, most of the social issues in this country, that we agree upon, would be solved.
Your question points up the difficulty for finite creatures like ourselves speaking about an infinite Being like God and the limitations our finite state has on the language we use to talk about God. The concept of plans or planning can have meaning only in a finite context where time has meaning. But for God, what meaning can time have save as an observable state? I suppose the quick answer is "No, we did not, do not and cannot foil His "plans"" but that's not satisfactory at all because the question presumes something, planning, which is not an attribute of God, at least as we understand the word.
"Deification? I know you and Kolo have talked about theosis, becoming more "God-like". "Deification" implies an idea to me of becoming "as a God", or "equal to God". Does it go to this extent, or is it an unreachable goal?"
The concept isn't that we become God, or the equal to God but rather "as gods" as +Athanasius the Great puts in "De Incarnatione". Personally I think +Gregory Palamas describes it better in The Triads:
"Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases. As we have seen, those privileged to be united to God so as to become one spirit with Him - as St. Paul said, 'He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him' (I Cor. 6:17) - are not united to God with respect to His essence, since all theologians testify that with respect to His essence God suffers no participation.
Moreover, the hypostatic union is fulfilled only in the case of the Logos, the God-man.
Thus those privileged to attain union with God are united to Him with respect to His energy; and the 'spirit', according to which they who cleave to God are one with Him, is and is called the uncreated energy of the Holy Spirit, but not the essence of God...."
And in this:
"We unite ourselves to Him [God], in so far as this is possible, by participating in the godlike virtues and by entering into communion with Him through prayer and praise. Because the virtues are similitudes of God, to participate in them puts us in a fit state to receive the Deity, yet it does not actually unite us to Him. But prayer through its sacral and hieratic power actualizes our ascent to and union with the Deity, for it is a bond between noetic creatures and their Creator."
FK, notice how +Palamas soundly denies that we can become united with the "essence" of God. If you look at most Greek icons showing Christ, you will see the words "W WN". This name doesn't translate into English in a satisfactory way, but at base it means "The Ultimate Being or Reality" It implies that this Being is beyond any existence we comprehend and is the source of everything out of nothing. Thus the Cappadocian Fathers, as I am fond of remembering, said "I believe in God; God does not "exist"." For this reason we as created beings cannot share in His essence but can only share in the divine likeness (have union with the divine energies or put another way, experience and exist within the divine, uncreated light) through theosis. To believe otherwise would be some sort of Hinduism or Buddhism.
Well, from God's perspective, if we can assume we can even talk about it, the Plan has been devised from all eternity and is done. God is there. We aren't. He sees Adam in Paradise and He sees saved humanity in Paradise at the End of Times. Our detour does not change His plan. God's plan was to create man in His image and likeness, who will be in communion with Him.
Now, I have seen many models of this. Mine is perhaps naive but it works for me: God stands with his feet apart and looks down. He sees both feet at the same time and that distance is eternity. We are little ants on the ground between his feet. God has cleared a small portion of the ground to show the path between His feet, but some ants wonder off because they are curious or because they see something to the side and wish to investigate. Some get too from from the trail and get lost. Those who stick to the trail reach the other foot eventually, even if their path is not exactly straight.
Now, God could have placed all the ants into a tube stretched from one foot to the next, in which case none of the ants would be lost, but they would also not be free.
was it God's original plan that all people would be born immortal on earth, but man foiled this plan?
Maybe you should ask yourself if God made Adam and Eve in Paradise so they can become corrupt and die? Did God destroy His own crown-jewels intentionally? If God wants man in Paradise in His image and likeness and Adam and Eve were what He wanted, and that's where He wants people to be, why would He then create the chaos that resulted?
I think it makes more sense that we are the culprits of the destruction of our own blessings rather than God, Who, after, all gave them to us.
I take nothing personally, as an insult, or as a disparaging remark about my faith. I'm a callous, loveless person. You said so yourself. :O)
Yet Protestants think they invented the wheel by insisting on personal interpretation of the Scripture and questioning the authority of the Church!
You rely just as much on personal interpretation as Protestants. Only your interpretations come from a bunch of old men who sit around and say, "Yep that's what we think it means."
I read through much of Irenaeus' works last night on heresy. He also talks about talks about the mystery of the scriptures, their infalibility, and our inability to fully grasp all the concepts of God. It should be noted the very high regards Irenaeus had for the infallibility of the scriptures, the belief that God is omniscience and omnipotent, and the very low regards he placed upon man's ability to interpret the holy scriptures.
And we don't? Church Tradition (not tradition of men) is gorunded in Scripture. What the Church teaches can not be in conflict with the Scripture. What does the Church teach that is scripturally untrue or unsound? Do you find Holy Trinity or Christ's duality fully defined in the Bible? Of course not! For if they were, we wouldn't have had Nestroians and Arians, and Sabellians, and so on, who confused these truths.
The interpretation of the Scripture is not everyone's individual prerogative. There is only one Truth and it is not relative. The early Church recognized that and the Church today realizes that. We simply can't have billions of Bible readers, each claiming a different version of the Truth.
your interpretations come from a bunch of old men who sit around and say, "Yep that's what we think it means."
I feel so sorry for you. I do. You must have a terrible need to be important, so you achieve that sense of importance by denigrating people whom you have never bothered to read, for if you have, you would have never made such a statement. But, ignorance is bliss, as they say.
We are lucky. As to what would have happened if Eve changes her mind, or Mary, or Judas, the scripture does not tell. Perhaps God does not want us to know?
Although I tried, I don't know if I was actually funny or not, but I assure you that my "sneer switch" was turned off when I posted. :) I was trying to be half smart-aleck, but I was also trying to support Harley's statement.
I was trying to get to a key issue of to what degree is God dependent on man? We both agree that God already knows everything that's going to happen and all that we'll do. The question is: does God alter, or even make, His plan BASED on what human decisions are, or does God make His true and perfect plan from the beginning and "arrange" for it to come true? I simply vote for the latter.
We appear to differ on who deserves the credit for the unfolding of world history exactly in line with ancient prophecy. I was pointing out that it cannot be by accident or luck that God wins EVERY time! Are there not more than 250 messianic prophecies (major and minor) in the OT? How do you explain that they ALL came true if any one man in the pipeline (over hundreds of years) could have thwarted the whole thing by choosing incorrectly? I cannot explain it, other than, it wasn't luck. Why in the universe would God leave anything to luck?
That's over reaching and you know it! :) We certainly disagree, but in none of my learning was I ever taught to be "anti-Rome". LOL! I was simply taught what I was taught, it was never compared to "those Catholics" over there, who have it all wrong. I had to come here to learn those things. :)
AND, if it were true that we instinctively condemned everything held by Rome, then you would not have so graciously bestowed the title upon us of "Heretics".
What a crock! And, I suppose, Luther was bound by the Word of God by some faculty other than reason?
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