Posted on 11/30/2003 5:21:17 PM PST by drstevej
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Bruce Nolan: How do you make someone love you without changing free will?
God: Welcome to my world.
It understand that you feel this way. We don't see our clergy as having the authority to make statements into law. They are learners as we all are, and are free to express their opinions, of course. Then it is up to the consensus of the church as to whether or not their opinions have any value, at which point there may be discussion among us.
In the Orthodox church, every member can be a theologian and all are subject to the gift of knowledge from God. We do not have leaders who are more knowledgeable or who have greater access to God.
This may be true, though I have never heard of it before. And the reason it may be true could have nothing to do with his statements about the eucharist.
Though it was not word-for-word, as he himself stated, in my eyes it was the same statement of belief.
Augustine is adamant and explicit that God's Choice to NOT perform the Salvific Miracles in Tyre and Sidon was a matter of His pure prerogative, not limited by any imagined divine "Miracle Bank" from which only a certain number of mighty works might be drawn
No, you are reading what I wrote wrong.
God has ordered the universe in a certain way.
He could also order it in another way.
Ordering it another way precludes the ordering in the first way, its an EITHER/OR logic gate dictated by time and place. Christ cannot be crucified both in Jerusalem and Peking. Lazarus can't be raised from the dead both in Palestine and Anitoch at the same time. Jesus can't sit down at 4 pm by the Sea of Galilee on a Thursday in April in AD 31 to multiply loaves of bread and also do so simultaneously in Armenia.
Christ himself presents the choice of working the miracle in Palestine or Lebanon. Obviously the same miracle cannot be worked in both places simultaneously. They could of course be done sequentially or simultaneously to different subjects, but then the effects would still be different than that fo the choice.
If Christ heals a certain person in Palestine to manifest his glory, He is then constrained from healing the same person again in Lebanon at the same time.
The choice of locations of miracles has consequences in subsequent occurances. "Woe thee, Corozain, woe to thee, Bethsaida: for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes." If done there, consequence X happens there. If done here, consequence Y happens there. EITHER/OR. No possibility of doing the same thing in both places is presented. To put it bluntly YOU MADE THAT UP.
So if Christ converts instead of an Augustine, the wayward son of some illiterate peasant in Gaul, the world is not merely deprived of the conversion of Augustine, but it is deprived of the writings of Augustine which flowed from that conversion and through which God works other conversions. Similarly, if God works miracles in Lebanon instead of Palestine that don't convert the Jews to convert the Syrians, consequences inevitably flow beyond their conversion, because their conversion influences other events.
have left off the remainder of the citation
No, it wasn't and isn't relevant to the point I was addressing.
From this we clearly understand that God could "add something to the present creation"; that is, He could perform Salvific Miracles in Tyre and Sidon and also perform equivalent Miracles in Chorazin and Bethsaida, if He -- of His own pure prerogative -- had so chosen.
I wasn't talking about additions, but choices. Christ can only chose one apostolic leader. He can raise up either Peter or Judas, but not both to the leadership of the twelve. From the single choice of either flow other consequences for the rest of history.
This is entirely true; but it is equally true that God could have chosen to enlighten both, Augustine himself and your other anonymous "wayward son" -- of His own pure prerogative.
Yes He could have, but that wasn't what I was talking about, was it? Why bring it up?
They are not "elect" because God has not created a world in which they are saved, although He could have done so, but perhaps only at the expense of the salvation of others.
In itself, this idea is a direct assault upon the Aseity and Omnipotence of God Himself. It is to bind All-Powerful God with the chains of necessitarian trade-offs -- as the Greek "gods" were bound by the Loom of the Fates, binding the Creator under the creature
Oh baloney OP! God can't just remove people from history and then have no further consequences, because events in time are linked. Take away St. Augustine, and you inevitably must take away his writings and all the influences they have subsequently. We for example, wouldn't be discussing him right now. These influences can be replaced with other influences, but they won't be St. Augustines, and their replacement requries additional choices, while we are just talking about a single choice. The influences from other choices might be of identical influence if God so willed it, but there are many more choices that would dictate they would not be.
The choice of Augustine or an iliterate nobody are not necessitarian, but the consequences are necessitarian. An Augustine influences the world, an illiterate nobody does not. Again, you are introducing elements into the dicussion which are not relevant.
None of them.
This description and the post from the priest in Oklahoma sound right to me.
We are drifting further and further from the point here. Salvation is by ascending with the Body of Christ into heaven. This is the Catholic belief. Surprised?
But what is the relevance to the notion that dogmas are not such until the people consent to them?
Ask your Bishop whether he agree he has no authority to make laws at a council or for his diocese! Where do you think the Holy Canons come from, the dogmas and creeds, the form of the liturgy?
They are learners as we all are, and are free to express their opinions, of course. Then it is up to the consensus of the church as to whether or not their opinions have any value, at which point there may be discussion among us.
Was Nicea just an opinion until accepted by all, or was it objective truth?
Again, address this belief to how Chalcedon is a dogma since the Copts and Syrians rejected it, while Robber Ephesus is false even though all the East accepted it. Except by excluding the Copts and Syrians a priori, there has yet to be any consensus on anything in the Church since AD 449! Shall we reject it all?
Or do you really mean that the only consensus that counts is the consensus we agree amongst ourselves to say it counts? That's a rather circular arguement. "We're right because we all agree we're right." And its corrolary "All of you are wrong because we all agree you all are wrong, and our consensus counts, while your opposite consensus doesn't."
Do you see the problem with what you are saying yet?
Are you ever going to address the errors I pointed out in what you attribute to us in your #109?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1031277/posts?page=109#109
Specifically, you said:
"There is no real *union* between the Created and uncreated within the concept of transubstantiation"
Thus denying our belief in the existence of both the created body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation of the bread and wine, and its permenant union to the divinity via the soul, and
"In our view, transubstantiation is a practical denial of the Incarnation. Because it promotes the changing of the created to Uncreated instead of the union."
Which I pointed out is absolutely false, since we teach the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, and certainly not His divinity.
Do you now agree with transubstantiation with these corrections to what you think it teaches, or do you still reject it?
The only problem I see is that your western eyes are unable to see things from the eastern perspective, and I am unable to convey that perspective well.
After that I believe you to be behaving in a somewhat arrogant manner, as if you had any real knowledge or experience within the Orthodox church. The priest whose post was put up by OP was not espousing lutheranism, as you called it, but was correctly describing Orthodox Christian beliefs. From the beginning it has always been hard for you to accept that we are two very different churches, for whatever reason.
There are some things on this site which may be helpful for you if you are truly interested in trying to understand us. After that, there are some thing which are only understood after many years within the church. There are some thing which are outside your realm, such as our Blessing of the Waters and Paschal season. These things can only be truly understood from years of experience. I do find admirable your tremendous interest in us. :-)
The quotes are meaningless for discussion because we both intrepret them differently.
In the Mystery of the Eucharist and at the moment of the priest's invocation, God the Holy Spirit descends on the bread and wine which have been set forth and sanctified, and transubstantiates them into Christ's body and blood (not transforms them but transubstantiates them; for the substance is changed while the form of bread and wine remain to our eyes unchanged).THE RIGHT REV. NICHOLAI, Bishop of Ochrida
No it doesn't Hermann. It is from outside the church that you come up with these ideas, and from a western perspective. These are merely documents, and they cannot be taken outside their perspectives of time and place, and especially they cannot be seen as more than the simple words they are.
You seem to like to take one thing that works for you and make it into a mountain. It is a drop in the bucket of our Holy Orthodox faith, which is about forests, not trees. You are western and you seek a single detail to focus on or highlight. I am eastern and look at the whole tomato. LOL.
Now if I were to go back and find some RC document from a long time ago that is no longer valid for your faith, and post it with great persistence, insisting that this is what you believe and implying that you don't know your own church well enough to understand that, I am reasonably sure you would protest. So, there you go, as the Greeks say.
Careful, next thing you know you'll be sprinkling babies! Tis a slippery slope on which you are treading. ;-)
"That is no wonder since the Western paradigms were invented a dozen centuries after the energetic paradigm of Greek-language early Christianity--and lack lineal continuity with Greek-language early Christianity."
Apparently, the author, like many Orthodox I've encountered, denies that anything written in Latin is useful for the faith, but rather is in fact heretical. Moreover, he refuses to recognize that Palamism is a development of the same period 1250-1350 as is Thomism, but instead conflates it with the Christianity of the Apostolic Fathers pre-AD 200, while denying any link between the Fathers and Scholasticism, although Scholasticism was nothing more than an exposition of the totality of the Fathers.
I did find this interesting: "The Orthodox accept that the bread and wine become Christ's ontological Body and Blood at the Epíklesis or Invocation of the All-Holy Spirit". Even if he doesn't want to say "transubstantiation", he just said it anyway with a lot more words.
And its no surprise to see the usual gross distortions of Catholic beliefs:
"Likewise, Aquinas, not distinguishing Essence from Energy, got involved in the silly notion of Christ's members partaking intentionally (conceptually) of the divine Essence--apothéosis (a heresy in Orthodox eyes) rather than théosis."
Contrarywise, St. Thomas Aquinas says "It is impossible for any created intellect to comprehend God" (ST, Pt I, Q 12, Art 7) and "Therefore whosoever sees the essence of God, does not know all things." (ST, Pt I, Q 12, Art 8). Thus, he certainly does not preach apotheosis and does preach theosis:
"By this light the blessed are made 'deiform'--i.e. like to God, according to the saying: 'When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is' (1 Jn. 2:2)." (ST, Pt I, Q 12, Art 5)"Now the gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature. ... For it is ... necessary that God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the Divine Nature by a participated likeness ..." (ST, Pt II-I, Q 112, Art 1)
Aquinas never says we become God or join his substance or essence. We see the essence by partaking in grace (energy if you will) and by its manifestation to us as operations.
With the proper intention, it is valid--but, for the Orthodox, still a necessary step short of being afthentikón "real, genuine, authentic."
Same for Catholics. We say Sacraments had apart from the Church lack the reality of the sacrament - the communication of grace. Another invented but nonexistent difference.
The conceptual gulf is unbridgeable as a result of the hiatus of over seven centuries of barbarous Dark Ages and the Latins' being cut off from the East.
Back to the "East has the truth, Latins only have truth by communicating with the East" paradigm.
I like the thing FormerLib said a little while ago. I think it went like this: "There was once a woman who did not have enough trouble in her life, so she went out and bought a pig."
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