"...I was just frustrated at not knowing how I brought this on myself."
Like I suggested earlier, read +Athanasius "On the Incarnation". It will explain things pretty well. Then later we can start on +Gregory of Sinai, +Symeon the New Theologian and +Gregory Palamas to get a better feel for the Holy Trinity and theosis!
LOL! Maybe he'd be better off reading Tertulian, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine on the Trinity???
Regards
I wanted to keep my word, so I just finished reading the entire link to +Anthanasius you gave me earlier. For whatever it's worth, here are my comments: :)
Even from C.S. Lewis' introduction I felt challenged. While he in no way dismissed new works (including his own :), his message was to always look back to the original older works for real authority. Instinctively, that sounded reasonable to me, but only on a guidance level, as opposed to authority. It is good to look at the early works. I agree with many of the holdings of the early works. Problematic was that it seemed clear to me that he believed that the way to understand scripture was through man, exclusively. That is, from this introduction. This passage leaped off the page at me:
Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St. Luke or St. Paul or St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.
He appears to be equating that which I never could. In addition, he appears to be saying "'Old' absolutely means correct". Plenty of false faiths are older than Christianity.
A big HOWEVER is found here:
People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.
Admittedly, this leaves me genuinely confused as to what his ultimate view was on the Magisterium (including papal infallibility?) or the Consensus Patrum. BTW, to both of you, as the two terms have been used on these many threads, what is the distinction between "a decree by the Magisterium" and "a decree by the Consensus Patrum"? (If "decree" isn't the right word, then fill in whatever is right for what you know I mean. :) My instinct would be to say that if the laity rejected the latter it would fall, but not with the former.
Finally, I was moved by this comment by Lewis:
We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity.
A beautiful and true sentiment. Many of our divisions are important and most worthy of discussion in places like FR, even with passion, but it comforts me to know that in the end we are all still good Christian brothers and sisters in Christ.
Well, since I've spent this much time on the introduction, I think I'll start a new post for the body of the work we are actually talking about! LOL! I promise I will cut it WAY WAY down. :)
[From chap. 2:] He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. (emphasis added)
This could probably fairly be taken either way, but the highlighted words struck me as distinguishing between the real thing, OR a facsimile of the real thing. I think that if Jesus was the "real thing", He would have to have real human DNA inside Him.
[From chap. 3:] (14) You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. He, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep ...
It's the same material. I fully agree, it's not fake material, it's the real thing.
[Id.:] (16) When, then, the minds of men had fallen finally to the level of sensible things, the Word submitted to appear in a body, in order that He, as Man, might center their senses on Himself, and convince them through His human acts that He Himself is not man only but also God, the Word and Wisdom of the true God.(emphasis added)
Now we're in business! :) If I am following all of this, this is the same way I meant it, although of course I didn't say it as well as +Athanasius.
[Id.:] (17) ... As with the whole, so also is it with the part. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the works of His body and through His activity in the world.
I am definitely starting to warm up to this guy. :)
[Id.:] ... as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father. Not even His birth from a virgin, therefore, changed Him in any way, nor was He defiled by being in the body.
Yes, yes, yes. :)
[Id:] (18) You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme speak of Him as eating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body, as a body, was born and sustained with the food proper to its nature; while God the Word, Who was united with it, was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing Himself through His bodily acts as not man only but God. Those acts are rightly said to be His acts, because the body which did them did indeed belong to Him and none other; moreover, it was right that they should be thus attributed to Him as Man, in order to show that His body was a real one and not merely an appearance. (emphasis added)
We are most absolutely on a roll. :)
[Id.:] From such ordinary acts as being born and taking food, He was recognized as being actually present in the body; but by the extraordinary acts which He did through the body He proved Himself to be the Son of God.(emphasis added)
Anything from the peanut gallery on this one? :)
[Id.:] To speak authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is not human but divine; and who could see-Him curing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, and still deem Him mere man and not also God? (emphasis added)
I'm going to wind up posting this whole book to illustrate my agreement with what he is saying. :) From what I can tell after reading it all, clearly the money chapter for this conversation is chapter 3. [There are others on point such as chap. 7, (48-49)]. Of course, I would respectfully disagree with the normal stuff you would expect me to disagree with, such as in chapter 4 [24], when he says that God did not arrange the manner of the death of Christ, etc. However, I was very pleased at how few these honest disagreements occurred. :) Overall, this is a terrific read. Thank you so much for recommending it to me (twice). LOL!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!