Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
All who are called will answer, its predestined.
***The Reformed God is not the God of the Church. He is the God of the Reformation, just as the Mormon God is the God of Mormons and not Christians.***
Are you lumping us in with non-Christians? I certainly hope not.
Says who?
Arians and Monophysites consider themsleves Christians too. But is it possible to have more than one kind who believe in more than one and the same thing?
I am no lumping ayone into naything. If they are perceived as outsiders, it is their doing and teaching that lumps them on a different pile.
Well, the Bible for one, but you don’t believe in it, so arguing the matter is pointless.
Hey, that was a great non answer. You are really good at that. Keep it up and we’ll have you running for President some day.
Where does the bible say so?
You don't like the truth.
They cannot, which is why we perceive so much of their faith being in men. As the responses to you indicated, they can show that there is A God, but not THE God. For that they must rely on the opinions of uninspired men, since we have seen what some of them think of scripture. On this very thread their faith has been described to us by them as wholly irrational, a totally blind faith. I would think, then, that such questions as you ask would be unanswerable. A blind faith is based on nothing.
It should also be differentiated from inerrancy. Inerrancy is a lack of error, while infallibility is the incapability of error.
A parallel example is the word "saved." The difference between what we Orthodox consider "saved" and most if not all Protestants do, is like night and day.
Have either of you read C.S. Lewis, especially The Great Divorce? It may not be "Orthodox", but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you're used to seeing from "the West". This is from the Preface:
Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable "either-or"; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a pool but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, "with backward mutters of dissevering power"--or else not. It is still "either-or." If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in "the High Countries." In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere Heaven.
But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.
***
Kosta: It is utterly un-Orthodox to argue that if we discard or doubt something in the Bible it's not gonna be pretty.
First, I'm not Orthodox, so that doesn't exactly apply to me. :) Second (and more seriously and more importantly) I never said anything about doubt. Doubt can be a very useful thing, and is the basis of scientific inquiry. In fact, if taken seriously, it shows us just how little we actually know, and demonstrates the necessity of faith.
God—our Christian God—does not draw us by fear...
If that were true in full generality, then why did Christ speak of punishment at all? Why wasn't He gentler when He rebuked the Pharisees, when He told the parable of the talents, or when he talked about the goats and the sheep? Do you think that makes Him some sort of "divine terrorist"? Fear can be an attention-grabber. God does not force us to do anything, but there many ways in which He gets our attention.
...but through love.
Yes, always!
If I see a building, it is evidence of a builder.
Yes it is.
If I look at the universe ("the Creation"), it is evidence of a Creator, based on our knowledge that all things are caused; it is cause and effect.
Now you begin to beg the question, by assuming that the universe was indeed created.
Something was the first step (the first cause) in a chain reaction that caused all this to exist, something that by necessity pre-existed the existence, something not of this world.
This is not a logical necessity at all. Why must there be a first? It is nothing more than an assumption that there is a first. In fact, when you state that "based on our knowledge that all things are caused", this can also be taken as evidence against a hypothetical "first cause".
That first cause is what we call God.
Yes we do. But unfortunately your argument failed to prove its existance.
It really takes a very special person to deny that something caused all this to exist, or to claim that a house just built itself from ground up!
But it does not take a "very special person" to see the difference between Creation (which God made ex nihilo) and construction, which is simply a rearrangement of things that are already here!
It is impossible logically to PROVE God's existance. Think about it: How can God be "deduced"? Deduction works from general to specific (the opposite direction of inference). There is no set of axioms that can circumscribe God, and if there were He wouldn't be God! So we have to work from inference.
The Creation was created to procreate based on created physical laws, perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion), a self-generating and re- generating mechanism.
The laws were created? Ah, but this is where it gets interesting! We can observe things like the motions of planets or the interactions of atoms and, through empirical evidence, predict with confidence how these things might behave. So there seems to be a sort of natural order, or law that governs these things. Now if we really are to speak of a "first cause", then wouldn't that be the Law itself? But I don't mean the mathematical relations we use to describe the behavior of things, but the very essence of the Law itself which surpasses all understanding:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." (John 1:1-3)
We are subject to God's Logos, not He to ours.
Yup
“It may not be “Orthodox”, but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you’re used to seeing from “the West”. This is from the Preface:”
Well, you are right. Its not Orthodox in the sense that an Orthodox probably wouldn’t put it that way, but ultimately Lewis is speaking of dying to the self and theosis which of course is thoroughly Orthodox.
I have noted elsewhere on these threads that Anglicans are the nearest in mindset of all the Western Christians to Orthodoxy and Lewis of course was the best sort of Anglican gentleman. The finest introduction I have ever read to On the Incarnation was written by Lewis. Some truly magnificent modern Orthodox spiritual writings have come from a monastic who lived in England for forty years at the end of the 20th century. Although the Elder Sophrony was Russian by birth and spent years at Mount Athos, his writings from the 1950s on show the influence of English thought and manner of thinking. When one reads the tracts of +J.C. Ryle, it is often, if not always, as if one of the Greek Fathers was dropped into Victorian England with a complete command of the English language.
That an Anglican would demonstrate something akin to an Orthodox mindset and thus write things which sound like “English Orthodoxy” is not a surprise, ZS.
Thank you very much, That was great.
When we speak of infallibility there is no need to differentiate the two, since infallibility—by necessity—encompasses inerrancy. That which is infallible (incapable of error) is also inerrant (free from any error).
Have either of you read C.S. Lewis, especially The Great Divorce? It may not be "Orthodox", but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you're used to seeing from "the West".
As Kolo observed, it is a western way of conveying what "dying unto oneself" is, forsaking the world and all its riches which we cannot take with us. I would also agree with Kolo vis-a-vis his comment about Anglicans being the closest (spiritually) to the Orthodox, although some Catholic monastics are too.
Thanks for sharing that. I always enjoy reading Lewis, as I find in him a very recognizable mind set expressed in a "foreign" language. :)
In fact, if taken seriously, it [doubt] shows us just how little we actually know, and demonstrates the necessity of faith
No, it doesn't follow that doubt demonstrates the necessity of faith. Faith and doubt are mutually exclusive.
If that were true in full generality, then why did Christ speak of punishment at all? Why wasn't He gentler when He rebuked the Pharisees, when He told the parable of the talents, or when he talked about the goats and the sheep?
He threatened and rebuked ordinary, insignificant Pharisees, and small money changers. Why didn't He threaten Ponitus Pilate and the Sanhendrin? Do you think God would engage in small talk with local zealots? And where is "love those who hate you" in "your father is the devil," or "you don't know the scripture and the power of God?" Where is compassion? Is it really plausible that this is one and the same Jesus speaking? I doubt it.
+Mark is not a witness, but a follower of +Peter. He is re-telling what he heard. +Matthew and +Luke copy from +Mark, chapter by chapter, verbatim in most cases, and sometimes adding to them their own details (remember that +Luke is also not a witness, but a follower of +Paul, neither of whom knew Christ personally). +Matthew and +Luke also share what they borrowed from another source (the "Q"), which are narratives (popular myths) about Jesus' ministry.
So, when Christ is quoted as saying something, the quotes are not necessarily His words. We have no way of knowing what was said and what was made up and filled in 40 years after Christ's death by the writers of the Synoptic Gospels.
We can judge, however, the behavior of the Church in the earliest days and we realize that it completely rejected any violence, even self-defense. Christians who were in the army had to lay down their arms and get out. The nascent Church was as pacifist as it gets, imitating Christ's final days. If the core of their belief was on Christ making threats, they would have followed His example by imitating that behavior. The complete absence of any violence or resistance among early Christians indicates that the early Gospels did not teach a threatening Christ, but a humble one.
Proof is based on sufficient evidence. Evidence is that which constitutes proof. Exactly what constitutes "proof" or what is considered "sufficient" evidence is a based on human factors. Extraordinary or not, any proof requires sufficient evidence.
Obviously the evidence I offered is not sufficient proof to you. Ultimately, we decide what is true or not true. So, no matter how you turn it around, we believe in that which meets our personal standard of "sufficient evidence." It is utterly solipsistic in nature.
Either it was created or it existed from all eternity. However, just like a building, everything in nature is a complex structure and despite violence quite orderly, and that suggests a builder. I did not propose an intelligent builder; I simply said that something caused all this to exist, and just as parents pre-exist the child, so does this something pre-exist the creation.
If we assume that the universe existed eternally, then we must assume that organized structures existed eternally, and our experience tells us otherwise. For the pre-existence of the universe to hold any water, some organized structure (matter, black holes, etc.) along with physical laws had to exist in order to create the rest of this world. In which case the first cause, again, pre-existed the rest—except that it is not outside of nature, but its "primordial" first element. Which presupposed the eternal existence of "nature" (whatever that means). There are Eastern religions that subscribe to that belief.
ZS: Yes we do. But unfortunately your argument failed to prove its existence.
God is simply the name we give to that which gave rise to the universe, which by necessity had to pre-exist it. The existents of a building is evidence of a builder. The other alternative is to say that a building is evidence that it always existed and was never built. Which one if more "sufficient evidence?"
Apparently, when it comes to God, Christians believe (without sufficient evidence) that He is not only the First Cause, but that He was never "built" or "made" by something else. Moreover, God is taught to be simple and indivisible, that He is eternal and never changes. You, as a Christian, must believe that, yet you tell me that I offer insufficient evidence!?
And my claim is modest, without making inferences into God's simplicity, eternity or lack of change (perfection), never mind the biblical details! So, if my evidence fails as "sufficient evidence" what are to say about the Bible, Christianity or any other so-called "holy books" and religions?
But it does not take a "very special person" to see the difference between Creation (which God made ex nihilo) and construction, which is simply a rearrangement of things that are already here!
Creation ex nihilo is a giant leap of faith. Nothing can not give rise to something. Creation is, by definition, rearrangement of things "that are already here," the building blocks. But the blocks have to exist before any building takes place.
By denial. By negative knowledge. By knowing what God is not. This is the backbone of Orthodox theology: apophatic knowledge. The west always relied on the cataphatic proof, which is closer to our logic, but limited (just as out mental capacity is). Apophatic knowledge goes beyond that.
A good ex maple of the cataphatic approach is St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. The other one is Catholic teaching on transubstantiation.
The Orthodox approach to God is best summarized in St. John of Damascus' Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book I, Chapter III
Because of the properties of the physical world which are inherent in matter, namely gravity. We don't know why it exists, or what it is, but we can measure it and predict it to be proportional to the mass. We just know that gravity exists.
Now if we really are to speak of a "first cause", then wouldn't that be the Law itself?
Why? The stew tastes good not because the chef adds flavor but from the ingredients inherent in the elements of the stew. God simply provided energy, and the rest is simply a consequence. If I make a hammer, that hammer can do best what hammers can do. It can't paint a picture! The "law" is in the nature of things, how they are, in their essence. A house does not fly, but airplanes do. You are presupposing that God necessarily decided what properties the matter and energy will have. I don't see why.
I am not sure what you mean by "essence of the law itself."
We are subject to God's Logos, not He to ours
Logos is not "the Law." Nowhere in the Bible is it translated as "the Law."
We are subject to the physical world. We can be destroyed by forces that we cannot control. Whether God controls these or not is a speculation.
One thing seems certain: the earth is an oasis in a sea of hostile universe, literally a speck of dust which, by comparison to the outside world is a miraculous microcosm and potential cornucopia of endless blessings for its creatures.
If humanity follow what Christ taught us (love those who hate you, forgive so that we may be forgiven, mercy, loving your neighbor as yourself, etc.) we could have a paradise on earth, free of wars, crime, fear, hunger, unnecessary suffering, insecurity, greed, injustice, etc.
We are capable of that (because we have the dominion on earth in the image of God, and a potential for mercy in His likeness), and we have been blessed all these centuries since Christ to know the message, and have done absolutely nothing to come even an inch closer to making that a reality.
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