http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-easter.html
Thanks for the link, and I have reasonable agreement with it. I just can't match the money lines with what I have been taught of Orthodoxy. For example:
"Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave."
But the forgiveness spoken of is extremely limited. Upon the single next sin, the next time he falls again, the person again has a reason to mourn. Likewise:
Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
This doesn't appear to match the theology. Hell is still there and many people still go there to this day. What Jesus did spared no one from hell itself. It just gave men the chance to not go there if they were smart enough to make the correct decision. That's not insignificant, but it isn't all that big a deal either, compared to what we view as the finished work of Christ. The "weakness" I am speaking of is not stand alone, but only in comparison to the God we see.
+John Chrysostomos: “Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.”
FK: “This doesn’t appear to match the theology. Hell is still there and many people still go there to this day. What Jesus did spared no one from hell itself. It just gave men the chance to not go there if they were smart enough to make the correct decision. That’s not insignificant, but it isn’t all that big a deal either, compared to what we view as the finished work of Christ. The “weakness” I am speaking of is not stand alone, but only in comparison to the God we see.”
The extent of the chasm which has opened between the patristic theology of The Church in the East, a theology which developed in the first 4 centuries after the Crucifixion, and that which has developed in the non Latin West over the past 500 years is truly breathtaking! I suppose one of the best reasons for an Orthodox Christian to spend time on these threads is to more fully understand just how very different Western Protestant/Reformed society is from the Orthodox Christian cultures of the East. When we say to inquirers that Orthodoxy is “counter cultural”, we really mean it.