“How many times can one be baptized?”
“Once. It’s the beginning of the process. The process is different for every soul. Every one of us is given the same Seed, but we are different soil.”
But if you can lose the “seed” by sinning don’t you have to start the process over again?
“The use of “recreated” is a western concept; the idea of restoriation is more in line with Orthodox doctrine what Christ came for:”
No, what Christ said was “Ye must be born again” not restored. Paul says “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation, old things have passed away, all things are become new”, not restored.
Be serious, please. God does not leave us; we leave God through our ungreatfulness every day. God's offer of love and salvation always stands. The Seed was given. If we toss it away we are lost; no life will come of it. If we hold on to it, pick it up again, it will give life. It all depends what kind of soil we are. And we can change. God doesn't.
Kosta: “The use of “recreated” is a western concept; the idea of restoriation is more in line with Orthodox doctrine what Christ came for:”
BD: No, what Christ said was “Ye must be born again” not restored. Paul says “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation, old things have passed away, all things are become new”, not restored.”
You are misunderstanding what kosta is saying, BD. The Fathers taught in accord with +Paul, that baptism is a death and resurrection through which we share Christ’s Death and Resurrection and rising out of the waters of baptism we are indeed raised into a new life as a new creation. For example:
“Are we only dying with the Master and are we only sharing in His sadness? Most of all, let me say that sharing the Master’s death is no sadness. Only wait a little and you shall see yourself sharing in His benefits. ‘For if we have died with Him,’ says St. Paul, `we believe that we shall also live together with Him.’ For in baptism there are both burial and resurrection together at the same time. He who is baptized puts off the old man, takes the new and rises up, `just as Christ has arisen through the glory of the Father.’ Do you see how, again, St. Paul calls baptism a resurrection?” +John Chrysostomos.
But then the process of theosis starts. When Kosta or I or any Orthodox person speaks of “restoration” rather than “re-creation”, we do so because the theology of The Church is that Christ’s Death and Resurrection restored to humanity the potential which Adam and Eve were created with and lost in the Fall, that potential being that they would become both the image and the likeness of God, divinized through theosis which is a process, or so we are taught by the Fathers. The “re-creation” through baptism is part of the “restoration” of that potential.