Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
FK to Kolokotronis And I would say that man's nature is exactly as God ordained it to be. There was no mistake. Through Adam's sin, all humanity is born with a sinful nature totally incapable of coming to God, much less of even doing good
Kolokotronis' statement is what Apostolic Church taught from the beginning. All indications are that God desired man to be immortal.
Sin, FK, presupposes reason and free will (by necessity) or else it is not sin. You are saying that God ordained Adam's sin which is to say that He "programmed" Adam to sin.
This is sheer nonsense.
Adam was created with a possibility of being immortal. God planted a choice in the middle of the Garden of Eden, for man to choose. Man chose mortality. God did not make that choice for Adam. And wile you maintain that God ordained Adam's Fall, the real burden is Adam's obedience to God's wish for him to fall.
Again, a choice to be a choice must be free and not an obligation.
I'm not sure how your first sentence can work unless you believe that Jesus was born with the sinful nature. Is that what you hold? If so, then doesn't that mean that the man Adam was born in a superior state to that of the man Jesus?
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "could". :) Do you allow for the possibility that Adam "would" have chosen not to sin? I do not. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Jesus, and no need for Christianity. God ordained what God ordained.
This is certainly a Calvinist innovation and corruption of God's Word. We are supposed to believe that "God is Love" who creates and willfully condemns men to eternal hell for absolutely no responsibility that man has, since they cannot choose but evil?
Well, I do believe that God passes over some, and does not give the grace they would need to be saved. But I place no duty on God to give such grace to anyone. He is the potter, and I'm just thankful that He chose to give it to some.
Mayabe you need to look up the word rationalizing which you seem to use a lot and confuse it with "understanding" when it is devising self-satisfying but incorrect reasons for one's behavior.
"God repented" is of course nonsense, but "it was a way to convey a message."
And what message would that be HD? That God said "Ooops!" Why not just say that God's, Who is slow to anger, got angry (although we all know that God doesn't get angry, right?) and decided to drown not just the rotten man (whom He ordained to be rotten according to your theology), but innocent animals as well -- save for those few (which Noah sacrificed every day; wonder how come he didn't run out of some species...). What's the message, HD?
This is amazing! Penguins were not known, which is why no one is mentioning them, but hares were very much known to the Hebrews. And everyone could see that hares are not hoofed animals that don't chew cud.
Likewise, why would God tell people that the earth sits on four pillars instead of telling them that the earth is round and has no corners? Your rationalizations are suggesting that God deliberately told people things that were not true.
Darn it, if the world just took care of Gallileo, things would have been less confusing today. We would all believe in errors and be perfectly content that the earth is flat, that it sits on four pillars, that diseases are caused by demons, that lightening is God's anger, that the heavnes are in the sky above, that the moon is a perfect sphere, that hares chew cud and that bats are strange birds.
Perhaps those who look for errors find errors, and those who live in denial find none.
I believe that you choose to fins but a few. If you tell me what "few" means to you, I will tell you how close or far you are from the truth.
And the more I study the more I find that others have had the same questions and have provided plausible explanations
You mean by "study" them to say devising self-satisfying but incorrect reasons as "explanations?"
As I said before, God creating the universe in six days was never part and parcel of the Creed of the Church. It comes from the presumption that the author of Genesis was trying to write historical and scientific information. With the knowledge that science has given us, it seems highly unlikely that the author WAS intending to write a scientific tract. In either case, it is not necessary to believe that God created the universe in 6 days or over a billion years - our salvation depends on other issues.
Actually I do not believe the earth is 6,000 years old and do believe the earth could very easily be billions of years old. I find this completely compatible with Genesis 1 and 2. There is simply no indication of how long Adam was in the garden. Adam could have existed millions of years. It is my personal belief things evolved around the garden. That would explain how when God told Adam that in the day he eats of the fruit, he will die, Adam knew what dying was. However I should caution you I have never read this viewpoint anywhere and it could be heretical.
You certainly could be correct. Science will not be able to prove or disprove this. It certainly is feasible to say that Adam was in the Garden for many years before the temptation.
Believing in a virgin birth and God raising someone from the dead sounds like foolishness as well. I believe Paul said it was foolishness to the world. And, btw, you're the one who believes that bread and wine gets changed to flesh and blood.
Touche! However, the Church doesn't say that the accidents become something else. They continue to have the appearance of bread and wine. Thus, again, science cannot prove or disprove anything regarding the transubstantiation. On the other hand, young-earth Creationists claim that the earth was formed in 6000 years despite the visible evidence. There IS no visible evidence of the Eucharistic elements changing to something else - it is strictly based on faith. Young earth creationists deal with visible evidence and deny it all.
Oops...that's the wrong side, jokus. Come back to the light.... :O)
Yes, I know, the devil doesn't need my help. I am only disagreeing with your take on early Christianity.
And this is where we differ with our soteriology. God isn't interested in numbers. The number of Jews who were converted don't matter. Neither do the Gentiles. You look at it like it wasn't "successful". I look at it as God brought in the right people at the right time. There isn't anyone of His sheep that He lost.
I am not taking the discussion in that direction. I am merely saying that Christianity WAS an innovation - something that was VERY much different then what the Jews expected. Jesus was considered a failed Messiah, at best, by them. He hung from a tree. The were not 'saved' from slavery, as far as they could tell. Jesus disregarded the visible applications of the Law. This should give a new respect for Paul and Peter, who had to evangelize people based on this new paradigm that the Jews just did not comprehend. I am not saying anything about GOD'S point of view, of course!
Of course the Jews accepted them; at least those who accepted God by faith. They became Christians. The others have no faith and, as we know, it is God who gives us our faith.
Yes, God gives us faith. He opens our hearts to Him.
Regards
If Adam had no choice but to do what he did, it is not a sin, FK. If I force you to do something you don't want to, then it is not your fault. Choice requires freedom to choose. No freedom, no choice; no choice, no sin. Choice cannot be ordained.
You got is exactly backwards: if God compelled Adam to sin by not giving him a choice, then Adam was forced to disobey and therefore he did not commit sin. In fact, his "disobedience" actually becomes obedience. Thus your theology turns everything upside down! Man is guilty of obeying God! Man gest punished for being unable to resists what God pre-programmed him to do. Man gets "redeemed" by God for having obeyed God. If Judas obeyed God, then you must believe Judas to be a righteous man who only did what God ordained him to do.
Jesus took on human nature AS GOD INTENDED. In other words, it did not LACK anything. OUR own selves were born WITHOUT something. This lack of grace has wounded us, much like a disease. This disease is not our original selves, but something that results because we lack God's orignal Grace. Adam and Jesus were not born lacking anything of human nature. Thus, Adam COULD certainly have REFUSED. We believe (if I may speak for my Orthodox brother) that Adam was equipped to resist the tempter - which Jesus DID. Not because of His supernatural self, but His human self was missing nothing...
Do you allow for the possibility that Adam "would" have chosen not to sin? I do not. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Jesus, and no need for Christianity. God ordained what God ordained.
chuckle...God did not wait with baited breath to see the results of what Adam would do. He certainly KNEW what Adam would do - AND, working within Adam's free will, made something of incredible evil - the wounding of all future mankind - into something of incredible goodness - the Incarnation of our Lord and Savior. Why would God have to force anything? He knew what Adam would do and provided accordingly for all human kind.
Well, I do believe that God passes over some, and does not give the grace they would need to be saved. But I place no duty on God to give such grace to anyone. He is the potter, and I'm just thankful that He chose to give it to some.
This denies the responsibility that MEN have for their own evil actions. The Church has always taught that men have been given the power to obey God's commands. Everyone. That some don't proves that God allows free will of men to co-exist with His sovereign will. Yes, we are very thankful that He has chosen to reach down to us.
Regards
"We believe (if I may speak for my Orthodox brother) that Adam was equipped to resist the tempter - which Jesus DID. Not because of His supernatural self, but His human self was missing nothing..."
You spoke well for your Orthodox brother! :)
FK, it all comes down to what our true nature is as opposed to that distorted one we are born with on account of the Sin of Adam.
"Do you allow for the possibility that Adam "would" have chosen not to sin? I do not. Otherwise, there would have been no need for Jesus, and no need for Christianity."
Your reasoning is flawed. What possible reason would there have been for the Incarnation if there had never been a Fall?
I'm beginning to agree with my more perceptive fellow members of The Church. You guys really do believe God set us up!
So in your view, faith is simply a belief in the existence of "a" God, even if it is the wrong one? (Clearly, the Pharisees did not believe in the correct God, as Jesus called them hypocrites.) I don't see that as faith at all. True and God-given faith must be in Christ. The Pharisees did not have this.
I believe that Protestantism only concentrates on the "either God does everything or man does everything". "by the grace of God I am what I am; and his grace towards me was not in vain, for I laboured more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." 1 Cor 15:10
I have acknowledged many times your saying that you believe that we do nothing good on our own, however, I still see that you give man individual credit. Free will demands this.
[continuing] See the interaction? See that we are a result of God's Grace? But see also how Paul notes that God's gifts were not wasted! It was not in vain! Doesn't this presuppose that man CAN ALLOW God's grace to fall in vain? Even a "saved" person?
I don't see the interaction at all, here, in terms of salvation because I don't think Paul was even remotely talking about salvation here. He was talking about his own preaching, and the grace God gave him to enable him to do so. God graces us in many different ways. Sure God may have graced me with the potential to be a great musician, but through my poor choices I might have blown that. I don't think it is the same at all with salvation. Those God chooses will be saved.
[On Matt. 23:37:] Isn't it clear that God is PINING for us? That God greatly desires us? He gives us so many gifts to come to Him, to choose Him. And yet, many still refuse. "And ye would not!" I hear exasperation in that voice. Frustration.
I don't agree that God pines for us. Why would He if He already knows the outcome? I do agree that it sounds like frustration, but I would put it in the same category as God asking Adam where he was because He didn't know. Jesus is teaching us what the non-elect look like, just as He teaches us what the elect do look like.
You are presuming that the person is falsely claiming faith, when in actuality, the person is mis-informed of his idea of what faith IS. An incorrect idea of faith will lead a person to "falsely" claim faith - which James sets about to correct. Faith comes with ethical teachings that we are bound to hold.
I have no idea what this means. :) So, a person can falsely claim faith, but still really have true faith? I still don't understand what you say faith does and does not include (i.e. love, etc.), where it comes from, and how much credit man deserves for his cooperation in his faith.
Well, can a person be saved without love? If a man's faith does not include love, what good is it? It is dead. Catholics do not separate the two. I am using these Scriptures to illustrate what happens when you say "faith alone - without works of love".
No, a person cannot be saved without love. I don't say "faith alone - without works of love", I say it is included in true faith, given by God. But you are separating the two because you hold that it is possible to have faith without love. That is separation. I think you'll say that God has something to do with faith, but as to love, you seem to put that all on man's choices. You say that love has to be a free will choice, which means uncoerced by God. You also say that God gives everyone all that he needs to be saved. That leaves the final power as to a man's salvation in his own hands. And yet, you still refuse to admit this.
Yes, I am fully with you here.
[To Kolo:] I guess that what I am getting at is that Christ received his human nature not by de novo creation, but from his human mother. She had the result of Adam's sin in her -- i.e. corruption and death (for she did die) -- and would it not be true that she passed on that same human nature to Christ? Is this not why he hungered and thirsted, etc...?
Based on Kolo's answer, it looks like we have three separate views going on at the same time here. :) I have said that I don't think Jesus was subject to any of the fallen nature of humanity because Paul tells us that such was passed down through the MAN. That would make Jesus exempt. I am taking your view to be that man's fallen state was passed down to Jesus through Mary, and Jesus used His free will to decide not to sin. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) One problem I have with that is that since Adam was not "born" in a fallen state, wasn't he born in a superior state to Jesus?
Kolo appears to be saying that since Mary was graced with a pre-fall nature, that Jesus was thus not subject to man's post-fall nature. One problem I have with that is that if Mary herself was born in the normal way, with the fallen state from both of her parents, then didn't God eliminate her free will by gracing her as He did? What fallen human chooses PERFECTLY throughout an entire lifetime to never sin, not even once? No one. The fix would have had to be in, and that would seem to take away free will. Just as no one in human history has ever chosen to do only evil acts, in human terms, from beginning to end, so no one else, save Jesus, has ever chosen to do only Godly acts.
To FK, I would point out that as K points out, we do not believe that human nature is intrinsically sinful, in the sense of guilty and deserving of the wrath of God by very definition -- we do believe that it is fallen, and that this fallenness results in both sin and death in our lives.
(Leaving God out of it for this point) But if you say that our fallen nature (implicitly necessarily) results in both sin and death, then how is that not intrinsic? Would it make a difference to say a guaranteed result is intrinsic?
He was tempted in all ways as we were, except without sin. If he fully took on human nature, this had to be real temptation, as experienced by Christ in his human nature.
That's interesting. I don't think I could agree to His temptation being as "real" as it is with us, though of course, the man Jesus was tempted. The difference I see is that Jesus the man had inside information that none of us have. That is, divine knowledge of eternity. Given the divine knowledge of Jesus the man, do you really think He was sweating His answers to satan in the desert? I do not, although I would say that a large majority of humans would. If you know, because I'm not sure I even know my own position on it :), what is the separation between the knowledge of Jesus the man, and Christ the God during the earthly life of Jesus?
For if he wasn't to receive his human nature from his mother, then why bother with being born -- why not just appear with a newly created glorified human body that would then go through the play-acting of pretending to suffer, thirst, hunger, cry, and need rest?
Well, that would have ruined prophecy as we know it, I suppose. The Bible would have had to have been completely rewritten. God could have done it, but the bottom line is that we cannot know why He chooses to do everything He does. I do agree that the human man Jesus did actually and really suffer, etc., but I don't think that necessarily translates to a fallen condition which He simply chose to overcome.
So important had this pagan custom be come for Roman clergy by the 11th Century that it was listed among the reasons for the Anathema pronounced by Cardinal Humbert on July 15, 1054 against Patriarch Michael in Constantinople which precipitated the Western Church's final falling away from the Orthodox Church: "While wearing beards and long hair you [Eastern Orthodox] reject the bond of brotherhood with the Roman clergy, since they shave and cut their hair." [!]
Yikes! That seems a little harsh. :) Do you give any credence to that, or was this guy just bloviating? :)
"They teach us to Til the soil to unearth the truth. All good agrarians know that!"
Very droll. :-)
We could back into all of this by attempting to analyze in detail exactly what the influences of Origen on Orthodoxy were and are. This is a very complex topic, but must always end with the fact that Orthodoxy has never considered Origen to be a saint, and he is considered to be a father of the Church only under very qualified conditions. It is most proper to say that we consider him, like Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, to be an early Christian writer/thinker.
Actually, though, I would rather very much enjoy going through a great amount of bandwidth (or even a small amount) discussing the specifics of the neo-Platonism of Orthodoxy. Not what the "non-controversial consensus" of non-Orthodox scholars about our theology is, but rather a straight-forward discussion of what we believe and how we pray and worship, and how it is or is not neo-Platonic.
In other words, do we live our spiritual lives like neo-Platonists, or do we live like Christians? Or if you will, suppose that the average educated American were to walk into one of our churches and stand through a few services, and maybe chat with parishioners at coffee-hour after Liturgy. Suppose that this person were to be given a question (choose one best answer): Did what you just experience strike you as being based in a. the philosophy of Plato, or b. the Old Testament? What do you think the answer would be?
You may chuckle at the Orthodox self-understanding as a continuation of the Hebrew religion that Christ came to fulfil. I am equally free to chuckle at the idea that an ancient Jew might walk into the local Reformed church today and recognize what was going on as worship, let alone a continuation of his religion.
We've gotten to the point where you say that "Neo-Platonism is an essential core to Orthodoxy although it obviously must be different in some important ways from the pagan form."
That's at least a start. I'd still like to know some specifics about what that essential core of Neoplatonism exactly is that I believe and that I live out in my spiritual life.
Regarding Edward Moore, I'm afraid I've never heard of the guy. I looked him up on the internet, and it appears that he got his doctorate from and teaches at some correspondence course school in Seward, Nebraska that I've never heard of that is affiliated with a rather bizarre little "Orthodox" group that I've never heard of.
Even assuming that he knows what he is talking about, I'm not quite sure of what to make of his comment that " in his zeal to correct Origen, and, as we have seen, to provide a rational, philosophical explication of Christian dogma, Maximus ended by articulating a salvation theory that is, perhaps, more Neoplatonic than authentically Christian."
So St. Maximus, in his zeal to correct a Platonist, ended up articulating a Neoplatonic theology? Hm.
"I am he that prepared light, and formed darkness; who make peace, and create evil; I am the Lord God, that does all these things." [Esaias 45:7]
The Greek word used is derived from Greek kakos, meaning "of bad nature" or "wicked." In the Hebrew version the word ra` is used meaning "bad" or "evil."
I know it was from the KJV. I brought it up because I thought I remembered you saying the KJV was a bad translation earlier. I wondered why you were quoting it now. Plus, why does your own Greek version use "evil" if you distinguish between the Greek and the Hebrew?
Since we are no this subject, maybe you can explain how come 2 Kings 8:26 says Ahaziah was 22 years old and 2 Chron 22:2 says he was 42 when he became king? , In my NIV, both verses say he was 22 years old. If you want to just declare that wrong, so you can declare that there is a conflict, then I can't stop you.
2 Sam 6:23 says Michal had no children and 2 Sam 21:8 says she had five!, ...
There does not appear to be universal agreement on whether these are the same people or not. My Bible says the latter is Merab, but acknowledges that there is disagreement. I would hardly call that a slam dunk.
"I think he means that because of her sinlessness, she was as morally guiltless as was Eve prior to the fall. I do not think that he means that she was not subject to the results of the ancestral sin -- i.e. corruption and death."
Exactly! The Sin of Adam brought sin into the world and distorted not only our nature but creation itself. One of the results of this is that every living thing dies, not necessarily because of personal moral guilt. Even in our True, Pre-Fall nature, we had free will and could choose to cut ourselves off from God as Adam and Eve did. The Theotokos, by virtue of her freely given response to God's grace, did not make that choice and thus attained perfect theosis (which is the purpose of our creation), but she still lived, as we do, in a fallen world and so died as we all will until sin itself no longer exists. Indeed, her theosis resulting in bodily resurrection is/was as dependent on Christ breaking the bonds of death as much as anyone else's because it is not necessarily personal guilt which held the souls of the righteous dead of the OT in hades but rather the general power of sin and death over all creation.
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