***“The west is missing the point: being a Christian is not memorizing the infallible bible but a way of life, and that way of life is found in the Church.”***
If that is what you think, you are WAY off. You should spend more time around REAL protestants. We drink beer and everything :>)
We do encourage people to memorize scripture, but that is not the end all to living a life of Christ. We also encourage charity, loving your neighbor, witnessing, etc.
***Exactly right, because the created purpose of man is to attain theosis, to become like Christ.***
We call it sanctification, the Holy Spirit working in us to be more Christ like.
Sounds like someone attached to a divine tractor and being dragged like a rag doll. We believe in cooperating with the Holy Spirit, as a patient would cooperate with a physician. We can always refuse. But in Reformed theology, one is ambushed and taken hostage by the Holy Spirit, and then frogmarched off to heaven, to borrow Mark's terminology.
“You should spend more time around REAL protestants. We drink beer and everything :>)”
Now that’s encouraging! :)
“We call it sanctification, the Holy Spirit working in us to be more Christ like.”
Well, you should call it “theosis” and thus avoid confusion....
“Leading the repentant man to undertake spiritual work, the Holy Spirit, Who called him to repentance, also grants him His comforts and teaches him not to turn back nor be attached to anything of this world. To this end, He opens the eyes of the soul and gives her to see the beauty of the purity reached through the works of repentance. In this way He kindles in it zeal for complete purification both of itself and of the body, that the two may be one in purity. For this is the aim of the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit - to purify them completely and bring them back to their original state, in which they were before the Fall, by destroying in them all adulterations introduced by the devil’s envy, so that nothing of the enemy should remain therein. Then the body will become obedient to the dictates of the mind in all things, and the mind will masterfully determine its food and drink, its sleep and its every other action, constantly learning from the Holy Spirit to “keep under” the “body, and bring it into subjection” (I Corinthians 9:27) as did Apostle Paul.” +Anthony the Great
“The deifying gift of the Spirit is a mysterious light, and transforms into light those who receive its richness. He does not only fill them with eternal light, but grants them a knowledge and a life appropriate to God. Thus, as Maximus teaches, Paul lived no longer a created life, but “the eternal life of Him Who indwelt him.” Similarly, the prophets contemplated the future as if it were the present.” +Gregory Palamas
‘Can a man take fire into his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?’ (Prov. 6:27) says the wise Solomon. And I say: can he, who has in his heart the Divine fire of the Holy Spirit burning naked, not be set on fire, not shine and glitter and not take on the radiance of the Deity in the degree of his purification and penetration by fire? For penetration by fire follows upon purification of the heart, and again purification of the heart follows upon penetration by fire, that is, inasmuch as the heart is purified, so it receives Divine grace, and again inasmuch as it receives grace, so it is purified. When this is completed (that is, purification of heart and acquisition of grace have attained their fullness and perfection), through grace a man becomes wholly a god.” +Symeon the New Theologian
Comments?