Linus7
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Over on the recent Mary thread I posted this:
But I did not want to retype the whole schmear again, so I quoted what I wrote on the other thread.
Anyway, it seems to me that one of our chief difficulties in communicating with Protestants - and perhaps with some, if not most, Roman Catholics - is that we do not see God as having been angry or offended and therfore needing to be placated with human blood.
For Evangelical Protestants especially, the metaphor of a courtroom best describes the concept of salvation. Each of us is guilty. God's justice demands our eternal condemnation. Someone must pay. Jesus' sacrificial death is credited to the individual through faith. At that point the transaction is complete; the debt is paid; the individual sinner is off the hook forever - Once-Saved-Always-Saved. The Judge bangs His gavel on the bench and proclaims, "Not guilty!"
I have more to say but have run out of time for now.
Anyone care to comment?
I wanted to start a thread to discuss what I think is the really BIG difference between Orthodox Christians and others: the Orthodox doctrine of salvation.From Linus7:
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I suspect part of the problem with this thread is that different languages are being spoken.
If one has the idea that salvation is a kind of judicial transaction, in which the sacrifice of Christ is used to satisfy a guilty verdict against each individual human for his or her crimes (sins), then it follows that, in order to be saved, Mary must have some crimes to which Christ's credits can be applied.
In this paradigm, Mary's (or anyone's) sinlessness would obviate her (or his) need for the Savior.
The problem with that paradigm is that it is not Orthodox.
The Orthodox doctrine of salvation is that sin is a problem inside of man that prevents him from loving and knowing God and thus fulfilling his destiny to become like God and to participate in the life of God.
It is not that God's pride, honor, and sense of justice are offended somehow.
After all, He could have just forgiven us all without Christ having to die if that would have worked.
Trouble is, such a thing would not work because it would not be enough somehow. It would leave us unchanged.
That is why simply "crediting" us with the sacrificial death of Christ doesn't work either.
Christ had to come and live as a man and die and rise again - in other words, do all that He did - in order to defeat death, heal our sick souls, and rescue us from the devil (not from His Father).
Christ had to recapitulate the life Adam should have lived - and more, He had to defeat death - in order to rescue us.
It is a mystery I do not fully understand. No one on this earth really does.
Sin is a not an offense against God's legal code. It is a sickness that destroys man.
Grace through faith in Christ brings healing.
Human works do not detract from what the Savior did, they are made possible by it.
What the Savior did also made possible His Mother's sinless life.
God foresaw Mary's faith and chose her to be the holy vessel that would bear His Son as a Divine Man. He applied His timeless grace to her, looking ahead to what - beyond time in the eternal decrees of the Father - Christ had already accomplished.
God healed her human nature by grace and made it possible for Mary to be the New Eve. By her obedience she accomplished what our first mother failed to do.
But Mary's faith and obedience do NOT detract from what Christ has done; on the contrary, they are part of the great glory of it. Without Christ, Mary could not have done what she did. She would, like the rest us, have died in her sins.
As it is, by the great salvific grace of God applied to her preveniently, she lived a life of obedience, free from sin.
This is to the glory of Jesus Christ, He who alone made the sinless life of His Mother possible.
Unless we in some measure understand these things, we cannot truly understand what it is our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us and how it is that His Mother could have led the sinless, pure, immaculate life that she did.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory forever!
But I did not want to retype the whole schmear again, so I quoted what I wrote on the other thread.
Anyway, it seems to me that one of our chief difficulties in communicating with Protestants - and perhaps with some, if not most, Roman Catholics - is that we do not see God as having been angry or offended and therfore needing to be placated with human blood.
For Evangelical Protestants especially, the metaphor of a courtroom best describes the concept of salvation. Each of us is guilty. God's justice demands our eternal condemnation. Someone must pay. Jesus' sacrificial death is credited to the individual through faith. At that point the transaction is complete; the debt is paid; the individual sinner is off the hook forever - Once-Saved-Always-Saved. The Judge bangs His gavel on the bench and proclaims, "Not guilty!"
I have more to say but have run out of time for now.
Anyone care to comment?