Posted on 11/04/2004 5:52:42 PM PST by gobucks
Great article, lots to consider. I like the standpoint of the preacher, towards the end, where he explains why we must hold back on judging others.
As I understand it, Eastern Orthodox theology has always refused to make a canonical decision on the faith/vs works controversy. They say that both approaches can be justified through scripture. If one reads the Philokalia, there are lots of examples of theologians writing on either side of this divide.
The "once saved" concept relates to absolute salavation by faith, so much so that the single moment of faith is all that counts. Eastern Orthodox don't try to deny it, but rather to point out a more complex picture, very well done in this article.
"As I understand it, Eastern Orthodox theology has always refused to make a canonical decision on the faith/vs works controversy."
Well, heck, that would explain why the author didn't make a stand on it!! I've a bit more homework to do obviously; and thanks.
"And if you are 'un-saved', because you unfaithed yourself,..."
What I mean is this: a typical protestant wants to sense that he/she indeed is 'alive' in Christ. But many of them grow up learning that 'faith' doesn't exist without works, due to that NT Book James, which entirely ignores Christ, but for verse 1.
As a result, they get steeped in works ideas from day 1. Some end up thinking it leads to faith, but most don't; most simply hit the works road b/c they can't bear the thought of being lonely. I've seen the ultimate family weapon exercised to control thinking and behavior used over and over: rejection.
So, to pursue acceptance they get good at Pharisee type works. At minimum, they get regular, predictable, confirmation it leads to acceptance by family and peers at church. And then many of them, way too many, go on to lead secret lives. Instead of aynomously checking out religion threads on FR (which would be a fruitful expenditure of time), they instead enter the front door of the porn shop next door to browse. Sorry, I meant the porn shop in the bonus room, the one plugged into the router.
There is this idea out there that Christ isn't real enough to defeat that secret life, that he doesn't have enough to offer, doesn't have what it takes, to overcome those temptations, now just a few keystrokes away. That he is not tangible enough to help us create an environment where those temptations largely and simply evaporate.
Why do these secret lives develop? Why? Because works doesn't banish loneliness after all. So all kinds of weird behaviors and habits grow, all designed to address that loneliness, that built in hunger of being on the 'inside'.
(btw, I'm not really arguing w/ you nsachen. I'm presenting a frame of reference, in the hopes I will have revealed to me why some of the orthodox don't seem to struggle w/ this works/faith idea.)
Anyway, there is this black and white reality in my experience: giving up works, and accepting by faith alone, that I am not going to hell, but going home (indeed, that I'm already there in a sense, but that goes down all kinds of time roads I won't go into) leads inevitably to those very works James so heartily encourages us to pursue.
Works are the intrinsic artifact of regeneration in other words....
The orthodox position seems to imply that regeneration is a myth.
"There are only ten."
Well, 10 rules as you present them doesn't make sense really. If it did, the O.T. would have never become 'old'.
did you notice that all of your excerpts followed a pattern:
none from the gospels. Also, most were from literature that was deliberately directed toward the Jewish, law obsessed, audience. Paul wrote Hebrews to the Hebrews.
I'm not trying to goad here; I'm trying to 'get' it. Where in the gospel does it indicate that someone who experienced the 'born again' thing amjig Christ refers to, goes, ah nuts. I'm done w/ this, that born again experience I had was fake, I'm going back to paganism...and then Christ states what happens?
"If one perishes then one does not have and never had eternal life."
Agreed, and validated by ALL my experience so far. Can't find the corresponding scripture reference that supports my agreement however...
"Thanks!...if anything, you've caused me to learn something this evening! :-)"
Your are welcome and thank god for Free R. I can't count how many evenings have passed where I did NOT learn somehting new.
"I believe the answer to your question(s) can be found in the parable of the prodigal son."
I could be mistaken, but what I learned was that this was the attitude when WE should take upon the return to rightness once someone submits themselves to authority.
There is no controversy. The Orthodox position is that you are saved by Grace alone, not by works. They do differentiate between works of law and works of faith. In Judaism, works of law is what makes you acceptable to God. To an Orthodox Christian, only God's mercy saves. You can't earn it, you can't bargain for it. There is no controversy.
The answer which you feel the Orthodox don't give on salvation is that yes, once saved, always saved. The difference is that we get saved after we die physical death. Orthodoxy has always taught that upon death, soul undergoes immediate judgemnt (particular judgment), whose essence is the same as that of the Final Judgment (in other words there is no "Purgatory"). The soul immediately foretastes the bliss of heaven or the discomfort of hell. At the Final Judgment, the souls are reuinted with bodies.
We believe that as Christians we can only live in Christ and become more like Him (theosis), but that in itself does not guarantee salvation. Theosis is a willing and free way of life that is characterized by works of faith, fasting, worshiping God and living in God.
FR has been a great blessing to me as well! Good "talking" with you! :-)
The question and it's framing completely by pass the actual and real, literal new creation in Jesus Christ. They always avoid the actual new birth because when confronted with the necessity of actual and real new birth, they have no answer as to how and when. So 'salvation' is always and perpetually seperated from actual new birth in their rhetoric and 'salvation' becomes a rather purposeful nebulous term that they will fight over to define in the way that best suits their particular version of 'free will'. In keeping with that deception, they will continually hold forth the Bible as mere 'holy information' that the reader must grant permission to be powerful.
There is no free will and therefore their entire arguments (to include those 'amongst themselves') are invlaid. Here is why:
God directly says we must be born again and that we are born again by the hearing of the word of God. He also says God is His Word.
We must be born again:
John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except any one be born anew he cannot see the kingdom of God.
We are born again by directly by hearing the Word of God:
1 Peter 1:23 ...being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the living and abiding word of God.
James 1:18 According to his own will begat he us by the word of truth, that we should be a certain first-fruits of *his* creatures.
That God is His Word:
John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. *He* was in the beginning with God. All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being which has received being.
John 6:63 It is the Spirit which quickens, the flesh profits nothing: the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life.
That is, God creates by Speaking. (everything on earth, Genesis, us as new creations in Jesus Christ, etc..)
Yet according to the speech which says you have free will, speech itself MUST be powerless else it violates the free will of the hearer. According to that speech which validates the free will lie, there is only one speech in total reality--itself as non-creating speech. It has to be non-creating or it violates the will of the hearer---the ultimate no no in the free will lie. Yet God says directly that we must be born again, that we are born again by hearing His Word (in keeping with His both being the Speech which formed the world and re-creating us as new creation in that very Word/Jesus Christ: 2 Corinthians 5:17 So if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new:)
God further says that the natural man, the non-regenerate(non-new creation in Jesus Christ) cannot know anything of the things of God:
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him; and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned;
So the author of the article on 'orthodox' Christianity's supposed 'view' of salvation is commenting/'persuading' on a purposeful definition of 'salvation' as in every way separated from actual and real new birth in Jesus Christ but is only some supposed emotional state God will have concerning you IF you supposedly use your 'free will' properly and is a direct lie. Thus they always say you can lose it if you make God mad enough, etc..
Heaven and hell will not be full of identical creatures in two different places (much less identical creatures who 'earned their placement' by their supposed use of 'free will'...) as is implied by the free will lie and in the article. Heaven is and will be full of real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ. Hell will be full of everything else.
Those who espouse free will always and perpetually hold forth the Bible is mere 'holy information'--it stems from their own self-validating lie of what speech is order to seem to have all the angles covered. But it is not their strength--it is their ultimate admission they have not been born again. How is it they have not known the Word of God(that births, real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ) as distinct from the speech that speaks through them--a speech that makes a virtue out of NOT being able to create anything? God says that is evidence they have not heard Him while they say it is proof that speech itself is something they manipulate in 'free will', that God is not His Word and that they are the most religious and pious for merely speaking non-creating speech.
John 8:42 Jesus said to them, If God were your father ye would have loved me, for I came forth from God and am come from him ; for neither am I come of myself, but *he* has sent me.
John 8:43 Why do ye not know my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word.
1John 4:5,6 *They* are of the world; for this reason they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. *We* are of God; he that knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
So: the gospel in truth is God Speaking and birthing real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ as a creating act of His will reflected in Word. Their false gospel is basic non-creating speech as rodeo gear to ride the other person's mere incredulity and never actually birth anything. If they 'win' they only ensnare the poor soul in ceremony and make them twice a son of hell as themselves.
(ancillary: ask your self why, on the eve of a huge political victory by Christians, would an immediate article appear on differences between some in that broad category...)
1John 5:1 Every one that believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God; and every one that loves him that has begotten loves also him that is begotten of him.
In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen
'So: the gospel in truth is God Speaking and birthing real, literal new creations in Jesus Christ as a creating act of His will reflected in Word. Their false gospel is basic non-creating speech as rodeo gear to ride the other person's mere incredulity and never actually birth anything. If they 'win' they only ensnare the poor soul in ceremony and make them twice a son of hell as themselves."
Ok. I'm pretty much ok with the thesis of your comments, and I agree with them. I'm trying to figure out how to reach these folks in an effective manner...
twice a son of hell ... I mean its a accurate representation of what's happening to the unsaved. But the rhetoric ... I've been trying to work on it..
Now, otoh, Christ used all kinds of unpleasant metaphors, like sons of the devil, children of the devil...
So, *sigh*...
"The one thought that should always be on our minds is that we are fighting FOR folks, not against them."
On FR, that is rare; even me. I'm working, heh heh, on it!!!
Thanks for this exchange!
fwiw, i'm pretty much trying to balance the reality of the arminian world I circulate in with the reality that the concept of time is a tough item to manuever within with these folks..
Basically, you can't be 'un-born again' once you've been born again in Jesus Christ as genuine new creation. The question and answer session of the article implies no actual new birth has occurred at all but emotional states (yours as a supposed non-new creation and God's) determine 'salvation'. Thus the article is not in any way 'orthodox'.
....come now, Macarius[1] (worthy of that name), and
true lover of Christ, let us follow up the faith of our religion[2], and set
forth also what relates to the Word's becoming Man, and to His divine
Appearing amongst us, which Jews traduce and Greeks laugh to scorn, but we
worship; in order that, all the more for the seeming low estate of the Word,
your piety toward Him may be increased and multiplied. 2. For the more He is
mocked among the unbelieving, the more witness does He give of His own
Godhead; inasmuch as He not only Himself demonstrates as possible what then
mistake, thinking impossible, but what men deride as unseemly, this by His own
goodness He clothes with seemliness, and what men, in their conceit of wisdom,
laugh at as merely human, He by His own power demonstrates to be divine,
subduing the pretensions of idols by His supposed humiliation--by the
Cross--and those who mock and disbelieve invisibly winning over to recognise
His divinity and power. 3. But to treat this subject it is necessary to recall
what has been previously said; in order that you may neither fail to know the
cause of the bodily appearing of the Word of the Father, so high and so great,
nor think it a consequence of His own nature that the Saviour has worn a body;
but that being incorporeal by nature, and Word from the beginning, He has yet
of the loving-kindness and goodness of His own Father been manifested to us in
a human body for our salvation. 4. It is, then, proper for us to begin the
treatment of this subject by speaking of the creation of the universe, and of
God its Artificer, that so it may be duly perceived that the renewal of
creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the
beginning. For it will appear not inconsonant for the Father to have wrought
its salvation in Him by Whose means He made it.
whole article: Athanasius
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm
"It is, then, proper for us to begin the treatment of this subject by speaking of the creation of the universe, and of
God its Artificer, that so it may be duly perceived that the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning."
Thanks for this .... ; if you look at my links on my home links page, you'll see I'm not that schooled really. But, the idea the word became 'man'.
Man, not boy, not guy, not woman, ....' man '.
How utterly, utterly consistent w/ my experience.
Thanks again.
thanks; do you have a link?
That tells me that Jesus doesn't cast us out; we cast ourselves out by turning our backs on His grace. Just as Christ stands at the door and knocks, but we must open the door and let him into our lives, we can also close the door later on, after effectively ushering the Lord out of our lives.
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