Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
Christ is Risen!
“As for the putative cultural inaccessibility of John’s Gospel way back when (i.e., in the period of which we are presently speaking): Any student of Plato would have felt very much “at home” with John, beloved apostle, in this speaking of the very greatest, of the most tremendous things ordained by God (Plato’s “Beyond”), as directly experienced and contemplated in the human psyche: the “site and sensorium” of conscious experience that Plato called the Metaxy, the “In-Between” of human experiential reality....”
Most of the catechumens then, as now, were not educated in the Greek Philosophers, BB. As for those who were, well actually reading +John might have been even more dangerous for them spiritually since while +John, and the subsequent Greek Fathers, used Platonic vocabulary, they made a point of the fact that they were the New Israel not the New Athens. The godfather of a convert friend of mine always used to tell him that we Greeks were very thankful to God that so many of our ancient statues and writings had been preserved since they remind us of what the Incarnation saved us from!
But hardly the stuff to make sweeping generalizations fostering doctrine upon, imho.
You mean sinlessness of Mary, or which doctrine?
Mary is described as “kecharitomene”, a unique word formation, that refers to her “graced” in the past tense. It is similar to “filled with the Holy Spirit” in the case of St. John. There are also multiple parallels with the Tabernacle that is not to be touched, and the logical reasoning that since Jesus had the rather unusual opportunity to design His own mother, He would probably want her perfect, so perfect she was.
This being said, I understand that there is no scripture that spells it all out, but as Catholics we do not consider that a valid requirement. Further it is possible to read the scripture in the way that suggests she did sin, for example, in losing Jesus in the temple. Ours is one interpretation among several, which happens to be consensus fidelium.
Christ is Risen!
“Of course, such would be a most rude awakening and rebuke to the fem-libs out there. But then they are self-deranged anyway, and so possibly hopeless. :^)”
Now this is an interesting response. I have always read that sermon as being far more advice and admonishment to husbands than to wives! I guess that shows why the popular response to +John Chrysostomos is hardly gender specific. In any event, were a man to be married to a feminist, this sermon makes it clear that his duty to her does not change any more than it does if she is no longer the svelt bride of his youth.
Once upon a time I was asked to be the “koumbaros” or sponsor (like a best man) at the wedding of a very conservative fundamentalist Protestant to an Orthodox convert woman. His understanding of the relevant verse from Ephesians had light years more to do with his future wife submitting to him than recognizing his role in her theosis and hers in his. At the wedding dinner in my toast I quoted the passage from Homily XX I snipped here earlier. After their honeymoon he asked me where it had come from and I gave him a copy of the entire sermon. Some months later he told me that that sermon had transformed his whole concept of marriage and the husband’s role it it.
He went on to become Orthodox, by the way! :)
You just created a new definition that no dictionary has. Sacrifice is certainly a deed we associate with love, but not love itself.
Thus, your sweeping generalization, in my opinion, is not only incorrect, but could be misleading because any and every sactrifice is not love.
Romans 5:12 can be interpreted in two different ways (which is typical of +Paul's, what i call, "muddy" writing style).
Also +Paul makes a sweeping generalization "we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character," (Rom 5:3-4) which is an unfounded fallacy that has caused many a problem in social upbringing and probably undue suffering for many (you know, it mut be twue "because it's in the bible.")
I take +Paul with a grain of salt. And so does the Church: use him where he is orthodox and ignore him where he is not. He had his moments, but clearly his Epistles are not on the par with the Gospels (although reading what +Paul had to say, one would get the opposite impression).
I cannot shake the impression that all the Orthodox Church is rejecting is the term, while accepting the essence
The Orthodox Church simply does not read Romans 5 as the West does. His words ho pantes hemarton may be interpreted not only as because all men sinned (Orthodox reading) but also in whom [Adam] all men sinned(Western reading).
The Orthodox/orthodox interpretation simply states that we all sin and those sins are ours, not inherited.
The local churches were not 'Catholic', they were Christian and met in houses.(Rom.16:5)
The scriptures that these local churches had did not have the Apocrypha in them, they were added in the 3rd century coming with Origen's corrupt LXX
True Christians had the Old Testament that the Lord used, the Jewish Canon, which did not have the Apocrypha in it.
The rest of your post is not worth time responding.
Thank you, you saved me time in repudiating more RCC nonsense.
You're WRONG.. I once knew a young man that loved his CAR.. another that loved his DOG, and yet another that loved an IDEA..
The English word love is nebulous, sacrifice is specific..
In other languages the love word is the result of sacrifice.. same thing..
Sacrifice don't prove love, sacrifice IS LOVE..
This is so "RC". Everything is filtered through the institutional church, which has the power to change doctrine and dogma if enough of it's leaders get together and say so. The individual rather than being empowered is emasculated.
Even during the Apostolic Era we have examples of a priestly class subverting Christianity for their own empowerment.
3John:9"I wrote to the church but Diotrphes who loves to have preeminence among them, does not receive us."
Our Saviour made our salvation an individual event, not a product of institutional control, to be dispensed by men at their choosing.
Luke 17:20-21 "Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them and said,"The Kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you."
I have observed that
MOST RELIGIOUS consensus issues and processes
have been and are 99.9% POLITICAL in operation beginning to end.
I have no spiritual faith in such operations at all.
Occasionally there are exceptions, mercifully.
“True Christians had the Old Testament that the Lord used, the Jewish Canon,...”
Where in heaven’s name did you get this idea? Christ and the Apostles used the Septuagint which contains the Apocrypha. The so called “Jewish Canon” wasn’t put together until the Council of Jamnia in the late 1st century AD.
The Jews have always had the Torah and the Prophets. The books in dispute at the Council were minor books. When Christ said “It is written” he was definitely referring to Torah and the Prophets.
Amen. This morning I read 1 Corinthians 3 which speaks to this very thing. Righteous teachers are given by God for instruction. The church is a community of like-minded believers whose worship God leads and enjoys, all subject to His word. And the Holy Spirit is given to each Christian, personally. As Paul said to the church at Corinth..
According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." -- 1 Corinthians 3:9-17"For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.
Here is an excerpt from an article called “The Originality of Original Sin”
http://catholica.pontifications.net/?p=2252
I thought this article was quite good , equally good were some of the response posts (don,t click next after article and scroll down)
Excerpt;
The concern here has been to understand the impact of God’s gratuitous self-communication on the human being. But the Catholic Church can hardly insist that all theology must think in scholastic categories and replicate the theology of Thomas Aquinas or Robert Bellarmine, especially when so many of her own theologians are thinking the faith outside the scholastic box. Consider, for example, the presentation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Karl Rahner:
The Immaculate Conception means that Mary possessed grace from the beginning. What does it signify, though, to say that someone has sanctifying grace? This dry technical term of theology makes it sound as though some thing were meant. Yet ultimately sanctifying grace and its possession do not signify any thing, not even merely some sublime, mysterious condition of our souls, lying beyond the world of our personal experience and only believed in a remote, theoretical way. Sanctifying grace, fundamentally, means God himself, his communications to created spirits, the gift which is God himself. Grace is light, love, receptive access of a human being’s life as a spiritual person to the infinite expenses of the Godhead. Grace means freedom, strength, a pledge of eternal life, the predominant influence of the Holy Spirit in the depths of the soul, adoptive sonship and an eternal inheritance. (Mary, Mother of the Lord [1963], p. 48)
Like us, Mary is born into a sinful world and must engage in spiritual battle against Satan and the principalities and powers. Like us, Mary is mortal and lives in the knowledge of her mortality. Yet she differs from us in one crucial respect: from the very first moment she came into existence in her mother’s womb she was indwelt by the Holy Spirit and thus enjoyed intimate, enduring communion with God. In this sense, the blessed Virgin Mother was, by the grace of God, free from sin, original and actual. Do Orthodox Christians truly desire to deny this? If the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is reformulated in positive terms, as the assertion of Mary’s possession of the Holy Spirit from conception, does the doctrine then become acceptable to the East? And if Catholics and Orthodox can agree on the original purity of the Theotokos, do they not in fact essentially agree on original sin?
I,ll post the article on a thread if you wish?
But unfortunately I will not be able to participate much because of a busy upcoming week.
Here is something you may enjoy.
MIRROR OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
by St. Bonaventure
http://www.franciscan-sfo.org/ap/bona/MIRROR.htm
Dear Friend, We are united In the Eucharist The Body of Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ,thus we are one family in Christ! This will ultimately heal any differences.
I truly believe this in my heart.
I wish you and your family a most Blessed Day!
“When Christ said “It is written” he was definitely referring to Torah and the Prophets.”
Are you trying to argue that the so called “Jewish Canon” was only the Torah and the Books of the Prophets and that it was Hebrew language scriptures (of the Pharisees I suppose?) which Christ and his uneducated Apostles were quoting and not the Septuagint? Considering that fully 2/3 of the OT quotes in the NT come from the Septuagint, that would be surprising. In some instances, Christ’s quotes from the OT are found ONLY in the Septuagint.
The fact of the matter is that no Christians used the “Jewish Canon” of the OT until Protestantism developed in the 16th century; plenty of Jews did, but not Christians.
Yes! We positively deny the existence of Original Sin, as do the Fathers.
"If the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is reformulated in positive terms, as the assertion of Mary’s possession of the Holy Spirit from conception, does the doctrine then become acceptable to the East?"
No! The Church has not spoken definitively on when The Most Holy Theotokos became "κεχαριτωμενη". There is all sorts of speculation about when, some saying in the womb, some saying when she enetered the Temple as a child, some when the Archangel Gabriel appeared before her. Personally I believe it must have been at or before she reached the age of reason. +John Chrysostomos himself argued that Panagia was not in fact sinless, though admittedly this speculation was not within the consensus patrum. The fact of the matter is the Fathers always admitted that they were speculating about this.
"And if Catholics and Orthodox can agree on the original purity of the Theotokos, do they not in fact essentially agree on original sin?"
Absolutely not! Do you understand what "Original Sin" is? Isn't that covered in RCIA? Saying that Panagia was sinless from conception says nothing about the existence or non-existence of "Original Sin".
Marys Fiat “Let it be done to me”
By Mary saying yes...This reverses Eve,s Sin in the perfection of Mary
As St. Irenaeus says, “Being obedient she became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert. . .: “The knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith.” Comparing her with Eve, they call Mary “the Mother of the living” and frequently claim: “Death through Eve, life through Mary.”
The following is an excerpt from http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:gWwECLkKDUwJ:communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/RKereszty.pdf+Jesus,s+fiat&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us
When Mary said yes ,she has implicitly yet wholeheartedly accepted in faith all that has been said to her by the Lord as she accepted the Word made flesh into her womb; moreover, this initial acceptance of the sacrifice of her Son becomes explicit at the foot of the cross. Her consent to the Father in that she allows the self-donation of her Son to the Father to take place in our stead and for our sake is full and wholehearted because she is the Immaculata, the one conceived without original sin and full of grace. Therefore her Yes, her acceptance, is not weakened or divided by any sinful tendency. In this way, Mary who became the Immaculata by being fully redeemed in advance by her Son’s sacrifice, makes the sacrifice of her Son fully her own. And in so far as Mary is the archetype and the beginning of the church, in her the sacrifice of Christ has become the Church’s sacrifice. The patristic phrase “personam ecclesiae gerens,” “in persona Ecclesiae,”denotes a kind of representation that is truly valid only when the role that is played (persona) potrays precisely the subjectivity of the Bride-Church. But how could a sinner be capable of playing this role, which demands spotless love. The disposition he would have to portray would necessarily always be something high above him, an ideal that had not been realized, so that it would not be possible anywhere for the Church to play the role assigned to her in Christ’s sacrifice in keepin with what was expected. This is why the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is a strict postulate of ecclesiology... The assent of the Ekklesia to the sacrifice of the Son must press on until it reaches Mary’s perfect selflessness, so that this agreement may not retain any stain of the egotism that allows Jesus the Paschal Lamb to be slain for one’s own redemption and perfection .
end of excerpt
Just as we see a prefiguring and “types” of Old Testament faithful men Abraham,Moses etc....Culminating to PERFECTION with Jesus, so do we see the prefiguring “types” of faithful women Sarah,Rebecca ,Miram etc.. culminating to PERFECTION with Mary.
This is all I can give you from the Catholic perspective tonight.
I have a busy week ahead as I said in a previous post.
I,ll try and address this further If I can find the time.
I wish you a Blessed evening!
I repeat: not all sacrifice is love, ergo your definition is wrong.
For lurkers, FTD subscribes to a 19th century extremist Lutheran Old Testament scholar who denies Septuagint.
FTD claims that LXX was retro-written by Greek Christians to make it "fit" the New Testament.
In other words, FTD says that Septuagint is, to put it simply, a fraud. You may want to take that in to consideration when discussing this with this individual.
Which Jews? Certainly the people who had the most say in the Temple, the Sadducees, considered only the Torah as canon.
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