Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
Great men like Tertullian were anathematized because they dared to reject, body and soul, the mechanical Christianity they saw en route. His art was the only thing that preserved his memory from being sent whirling down the memory hole.
I'm starting to become mindful of the fact that Easter approaches quickly, and I ask the Good Lord to stamp out any doubt that lurks in my heart or lingers in my mind, and that temptingly whispers, ' the Resurrection: it's only a tale to deaden the knowledge that immortality of the soul is a lie.'
jo kus, the point of my original post is that no matter the differences of opinion regarding the issue of whether the will is truly free or enslaved, nearly everyone (free-willer or not) prays as if it all depends on God, and that that is significant.
I still don't see how "simultaneity" can have any meaning for us humans. But, if God plans around us then His sovereignty is destroyed. Of course God would have the power to do it if He chose, but it would necessarily make Him weaker. That would allow the creation to lead the creator.
How is God DEPENDENT upon us, then???
He is dependent if He takes into account His foreknowledge of our decisions into His decision to elect us. Regardless of whether God is subject to time, He acts in time as far as we can comprehend. If not, then there is no longer any need for discussion, and you cannot claim to be right because the true answer is unknowable. That would raise all of my views on predestination to a par with your views because the true answer cannot be known.
Moreover, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 is written by St. Paul to a consecrated bishop and recommends the study of scripture to a "man of God". This passage can as soon be used to prooftext that only bishops should read the scripture.
Which, incidentally, is the key to your circuitous dispute with Kosta about inerrancy of the scripture. The scripture uses verbal images to convey elements of the Holy Tradition. It is in the nature of verbal communication that idiomatics get in the way, and imperfection of human memory gets in the way. When Christ speaks of mustard seed and mustard tree, the Tradition is very clear: it is an idiomatic expression of the essence of faith, and not a botany lesson. Likewise, when the family composition of a biblical patriarch is mentioned, the Tradition does not stumble over what most likely is a human error of recollection. But when you divorce the Scripture from Tradition, the imperfections of the verbal form of expression become noticeable. It is not unlike the Russian peasants replacing priceless ancient icons in their possession with modern kitsch because the old ones were pockmarked and the paint peeled off here and there. If he valued the icon because it is from Granddad, he would love it for the pockmarks all the more. When the Granddad is forgotten, the icon is viewed as painting and personal preference for brighter colors and realistic shading takes over.
Modernity: Gallileo, medical science, zoological taxonomies, the sola scriptura superstition, are all the wrong light in which the scripture should not be viewed. "Mustard is the tallest tree" is an inerrant statement in its context and in the light of the Tradition. Pasted into a botany book is it erroneous. So? You cannot study anatomy from iconographers either.
On the contrary, most of us once held "the other's point of view" in varying forms and degrees.
But thankfully, we've come to regard salvation as all of God and none of man.
It's a lot less stressful and profoundly reassuring.
Christ's death and resurrection accomplished what none of us could do. He acquitted us of our sins and made us acceptable to God.
The rest is postscript.
OK. I am reminded of a line by St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.
"Pray as if everything depended on God."
"Do as if everything depended on you."
Sorry if I didn't catch your meaning from your original post.
Regards
Exactly. Biblical truth is in its spiritual message, not in the hard-facts. Thus, if we assume that everything is exactly the way the Scripture says, then we must assume that either (a) God did not say mustard seed is the smallest seed and mustard tree is the tallest tree (because it is neither), or that (b) God didn't tell the truth. Yet, when taken in its proper spiritual context of the message being conveyed it really doesn't matter if botanically the statement "fits."
Let me just say this: faith is not only an encounter with God, but our relationship to God, our interaction with God on His terms. It is not a history lesson. What matters is how Christ-(un)like we are no matter how much we quote the Scripture.
Love is not something we can see, yet we know it exists; it is real. How doe we know it's real? Trough its manifestations. Love manifests itself in acts of mercy, gifts, sacrifice, etc. It is always indirect, it is always an expression of an invisible but very present and real, true and unchaining entity we know as love. It had nothing whatsoever to do with science, history or genetics.
We know God as real presence in our lives through His blessings, and through the message, the "essence" of Scripture. We must never use Scirpture to explain the world, or to deny it.
No, you cannot say that and leave it at that, this is where both Agrarian and I hit the ceiling. Biblical truth is whatever the Tradition teaches. If it teaches a hard fact then the truth is in the hard fact. "And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven" (Matthew 16:19). This means that if the Church says that 2 x 2 = 5 then Christ will make it 5, hard truth.
God MADE us in His image - which means we have been given a rational intellect and a will. No other visible creature has that. So HOW is God's sovereignty taken away if He made us this way? Are you saying God now regrets giving us too much control over His actions?
God's sovereignty is NOT destroyed by ANYTHING we do! That's like saying a fly on the table is controlling my sovereignty because I choose not to crush it...Does that make me "weaker"? Am I dependent on the fly??? Your argument is not making sense - and in regards to God and man, the void is even greater than a fly and myself.
He is dependent if He takes into account His foreknowledge of our decisions into His decision to elect us.
"Dependency" in this case presumes time. Is God "planning" what to do with us within time? No, He is outside of time. He has access to ALL time at once. It is only from our point of view that it appears that God would be dependent on man's actions. Your position that God does not view man's response before electing someone is certainly within the realm of Catholic teaching's flexiblility on the matter. I am "trying" to see things from how God would see them outside of time, since He is the point of reference in this discussion, not man. A being outside of time does not have a past or future. Thus, there is no "waiting" to make a decision, no dependence on what we do, and no guessing or hoping that we fulfill His plan. All time is compressed into one moment. To go beyond this is a mystery - and probably, I have gone too far in this conversation. :)
Regards
Now, you are changing what you wrote in your last post from "salvation by works vs. salvation by grace" to, "God does all and we do nothing". These two ideas are NOT synonymous. I presume that by a "work", you don't mean "love"? You think you will be saved without love? I am curious to know if you believe that we are created in the image of God or the image of a domesticated and trained puppet. Perhaps rather than posting Scripture verses or other people's writings, maybe you should detail exactly what you mean by "salvation by works". One paragraph will do. Thank you in advance
Regards
And, to continue, these verses refer to the Greek Old Testament, the Septaugint, not the entire Bible that we have today. Some of the writings that we have were not even written yet when Paul wrote to Timothy at Ephesus! Paul is telling Timothy to look to the Scriptures of HIS YOUTH! Since Timothy did not have a Hebrew father to bring him up to read Hebrew AND he lived in the Diaspora, it is fairly certain that Timothy was reading the Greek Old Testament in his youth...
These verses do not prove anything close to what Protestants claim they do.
Regards
Very lucidly stated. I agree completely.
I grant that I may be misinterpreting what you mean here, but statements like these still raise huge red flags for me. I'm not accusing you of thinking that you will become your own "gods", but the language that has been used on this thread by the Orthodox just has a certain tenor to it that I think might be a little confusing to some. For example, here is what the world renowned source of all truth, Wikipedia, says about the meaning of "divinization":
divinization - Divinization is the "making divine" of an earthly entity or activity.
The concept of divinization is present in many faiths including Buddhism, Hinduism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Christian mysticism. In some faiths it is a literal union with the divine, in others, it is a realization or experience so direct as to be called union, in others the building of a relationship with God. It is also described as anything from becoming "gods"/God to being holy. It is also refered to as theosis and deification, esp. in the Christian Faith.
I "think" I know you all well enough to know the basics of where you stand, but I am curious to know if the perception by others of the terminology is something that concerns you in the least.
+John Damascene explains it thusly:
I can see why Mary is so elevated, but it also says that it was God who purified her, and that it was God who overshadowed her. I still don't see why Mary deserves credit for contributing to our salvation. What did she do to deserve credit? Or, did Mary simply "contribute" by being an "empty" vessel to be used by God, with no credit going to her? I don't see any free will on Mary's part in this passage.
Quite the opposite, the Orthodox should be applauded for the clarity and boldness of their language, especially by us in the West facing Calvinist caricature of Christianity. At some point, I am sure, the Church was looking for the right symbol of the faith. The outline of a fish was one candidate under consideration. But she chose the Cross, -- the starkest reminder of the Incarnation and the Resurrection. That shocked the pagans and the Jews, and the Muslim are still shocked that we have a God who empied Himself to the death on the Cross for the love of men. The truth of man as a beloved creation, an icon of God ordered to sainthood and called to divine embrace, -- called to theosis, -- should be proclaimed boldly in our degenerate age.
I am glad you mentioned that. However, the example you give of +Peter receiving the keys is different from saying the earth is flat. There is nothing hard-fact about +Peter receiving the keys — we accept it on faith.
The Orthodox would say that what is in Philokalia is what Church teaches, spiritual message or hard-fact; that the Fathers would never teach anything the Church does not believe, did not believe or will not believe.
Here is what +Gregory Palamas had to say about the world, quite authoritatively, I must add:
"Establishing the immovable earth as the centre He encircled it in the highest vault with the very moving heavens and in His great wisdom bound the two together by means of intermediary regions...For while the heavenly bodies encircle the earth in rapid and perpetual motion, the immovable body of the earth necessarily* occupies the central position, its state of rest serving as a counterbalance** to the heaven's mobility..."
Needless to say, he did not prove any "necessity" in any of this, and the "counterbalance" is an intuitive conclusion except that in the universe it involves an equal and opposite force, not lack of it. Thus, binary stars "dance" around each other, instead of one being "counterbalanced" while the other stands immobile. If that is your 2+2=5, then it's obviously wrong. The Church needs to stay with the spiritual ideals and not make inerrant hard-fact claims about anything because none will be found in the Scripture. To put it mildly, +Gregory Palams has notions yet he presented them as "facts."
The Church should teach mercy and as virtues, and stay away from math.
This example does not show that the truths of the Holy Tradition must be confined to the matters of faith and morals.
This being said, let us be clear that geocentrism is not exactly wrong. The geocentric view would complicate the mathematics, as it is an inconvenient coordinate system. Nevertheless, science (yes, science, -- not Bl. Palamas) teaches that observations from any coordinate system form a scientifically valid picture of the world. Einstein loved to imagine a physics lab falling in an elevator or twirling around a ferris wheel. His insight was that a physicist in such a lab does not need to know anything about the peculiar trajectiory of his lab to arrive at the correct laws of physics, even though he might have a harder time with it.
Let me tell you about myself. I live in a geocentric world. It rotates around Elk Grove, CA. in the evening. In the morning, the center moves to Roseville, then goes back. Except on weekends. It is very stable under the vault, although we had too much rain lately in the intermediary regions. Most people I know live just like Palamas explained. True, some of us busy themselves with matters that compel us to adopt innatural heliocentric view, or even the perverse milkyway-centric view. They are but exceptions that prove Palamas's astrophysics in their own peculiar way.
If the Church begins to teach geocentrism again, nothing will change. We'll have the same seasons, the same satellite TV, and the same Carl Sagan intoning about "billions and billions"
It's not the nature, size, shape or color of the gift, but the love that is behind it that matters. If we love God, it matters little if the schools teach geocentric or heliocentric, creationist or evolutionist world. It is all somehow irrelevant and, from an absolute point of view, wrong and meaningless. Fact and truth are not synonimous. Truth is something we will know one day.
The truth is only in God. As +John says "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (4:24) In faith and in the spirit of love. Not in fact.
I think the disagreement is not over theology of the scriptural inerrancy, but over your apparent attempt to separate "hard fact" from "spiritual truth", because it came methodologically perilously close to the sola scriptura heresy, which in a likewise manner separates Scripture from the Tradition.
Perhaps we developed an allergy to it and overreact.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.