tuesdayschild
OC.Net Guru
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2007
- Messages
- 1,000
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
;DJustinian said:Hahaha, yea if you live in an alternate historical reality...
;DJustinian said:Hahaha, yea if you live in an alternate historical reality...
I am not saying to forget a thousand years of history, but in the instance of the subject of this thread, look at the beliefs and emphases of both East and West and its theologians and Fathers for the first thousand years in terms of various prisms through which to view the atonement.ozgeorge said:a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then...
Your "logical" answer to this seems to be "Just agree with me now". It ain't gonna happen
The terms are not meaningless but mean different things to each group.tuesdayschild said:I had not heard that translations of the liturgy. But I do not think it is a nonsense argument to suggest that if terms in the Creed (or any document) are defined differently by different groups of people then the term in question becomes meaningless since it ceases to communicate a mutually-agreed upon idea.
Nice one! Thanks, I get it. Ha Ha!Justinian said:Hahaha, yea if you live in an alternate historical reality...
The commission of sin involves injury to God Himself. there is need of virtue great than is found in man to be able to cancel the indictment. For the lowest it is particularly easy to commit an injury against Him who is greatest. Yet it is impossible for him to compensate for this insolence by any honour. He, then, who seeks to cancel the indictment against himself must restore the honour to Him who has been insulted and pay more than he owes, partly by way of restitution, partly by adding compensation. Jesus alone, then, was able to render all the honour that is due to that Father and make satisfaction for that which had been taken away. The former he achieved by His life, the latter by His death. The death which He died upon the cross to the Father's glory He brought to outweigh the injury which we had committed; in addition He most abundantly made amends for the debt of honour which we owed for our sins.OCA priest wrote:
The main flaw of 'substitutionary' atonement -- which is NOT taught by the
authentically orthodox catholic Christian Tradition -- is that it asserts that
our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died INSTEAD OF US. This theory is also
complicated by ideas of 'satisfaction of divine justice' and false notions of
what it means for us to be 'saved'.
The Antiochian Orthodox priest response is:
There honestly is, however, no single dogmatized model of the
atonement which is put forward in Orthodox teaching. The Scripture
and the Fathers use many different images and ways of discussing the
mysterious reality of salvation, most of which cannot be reduced to
systems (buying oil for one's lamp, for instance).
He is Sanctification, as being Purity, that the Pure may be contained by Purity. And Redemption, because He sets us free, who were held captive under sin, giving Himself a Ransom for us, the Sacrifice to make expiation for the world. And Resurrection, because He raises up from hence, and brings to life again us, who were slain by sin.A ROCOR priest wrote:
The idea of the "Atonement" as a Ransom was repudiated in no uncertain terms
by Sainy Gregory Nazianzen (4th century) who said:
The commission of sin involves injury to God Himself. there is need of virtue great than is found in man to be able to cancel the indictment. For the lowest it is particularly easy to commit an injury against Him who is greatest. Yet it is impossible for him to compensate for this insolence by any honour. He, then, who seeks to cancel the indictment against himself must restore the honour to Him who has been insulted and pay more than he owes, partly by way of restitution, partly by adding compensation. Jesus alone, then, was able to render all the honour that is due to that Father and make satisfaction for that which had been taken away. The former he achieved by His life, the latter by His death. The death which He died upon the cross to the Father's glory He brought to outweigh the injury which we had committed; in addition He most abundantly made amends for the debt of honour which we owed for our sins.He theorised that the payment *was* made to God the Father. In Anselm's
formulation, our sins were like an offence against the honour of a mighty
ruler.
Which we should all be doing!I may not be able to post much between now and Pascha because I have to prepare for Pascha.
Isn't this what he's been saying all along?Tamara said:Andrew,
...But I think what is key is that there is no single dogmatized model of the atonement which is put forward in Orthodox teaching according to the Antiochian Orthodox priest and even Lubeltri's message mention that the Roman Catholic church did not dogmatize anyone theory.
...
So there appears to be agreement on this issue that neither church dogmatized any one theory. I guess the next step to figure out is what theories does each church put forward and how does each church define them.
I think that is what Welkodox and I have both been saying; that substitution may not be the main motif in the Eastern Church but it is not entirely and systematically absent either.Schultz said:Isn't this what he's been saying all along?
Hardly. That's a very old and tired canard.Demetrios G. said:The problem with the penal satisfaction theory is that it give rise to the Filioque.
Our specialty it seems.lubeltri said:Hardly. That's a very old and tired canard.
Your very mistaken. Because Creation cannot on its own communicate with God, on account of its natural limitations. It is the son who makes the link to the father. The son is the one that makes the link for us to be saved. That is why we are called the body and Christ is the head. Together we are given to the father for reconciliation. without the proper understanding, Christology is lost in translation. The reconciliation is repeated at every Divine liturgy. Again, His act is not to satisfy the fathers wrath. His act is to unite humanity with the uncreated.lubeltri said:Hardly. That's a very old and tired canard.
The filioque predates the penal satisfaction theory by hundreds of years. Perhaps you can try one of the other anti-Western cliches?Demetrios G. said:Your very mistaken. Because Creation cannot on its own communicate with God, on account of its natural limitations. It is the son who makes the link to the father. The son is the one that makes the link for us to be saved. That is why we are called the body and Christ is the head. Together we are given to the father for reconciliation. without the proper understanding, Christology is lost in translation. The reconciliation is repeated at every Divine liturgy. Again, His act is not to satisfy the fathers wrath. His act is to unite humanity with the uncreated.
Once again we have strawmen, complete with generalizing everything as "Western" and using phrases like "hideous" and "whacked out" and "buying off an upset God." Really, this is probably, deep down, one of the chief reasons I did not become Orthodox. What is so clear in Scripture and the Fathers is denied by so many Orthodox as "Western." I would suggest you read the article I posted that gives a balanced Catholic view instead of reading a caricature from an Orthodox who shows signs of convertitis.Tamara said:I thought this was helpful because this Orthodox gentleman defines some terms from the original Hebrew and Greek
from this blog: http://perennialrambler.blogspot.com/2006/01/wading-into-controversy.html
"What is particularly interesting is that in On the Incarnation 2:7 (with the relevent passage quoted above) St.Athanasios says pretty clearly that had it only been an issue of trespass, repentence would have been sufficient However, the sad fact is that our repentence would not have been sufficient to undo the damage done to human nature when Adam fell from grace. And this is where we move into the central theme of St.Athanasios' treatise - that Christ came to heal human nature, restoring divinizing grace to it. The central part of fixing this damage of course, was to destroy the power of death; and Christ did this by submitting to the "law of death" and being the Light which overcomes darkness, transforming the grave into the womb of our ressurection.
Foreign to all of this is any notion of God needing His honour repaired. That would seem pretty clear given St.Athanasios' words on the would-be sufficiency of repentence (were it not for the corruption and death which flow from it). He could not have said such words had he entertained the later teachings of heterodoxy on this topic.
Beyond this particular document of St.Athanasios though, there are all sorts of terms which many westerners (myself included) seem to have difficulty seeing on the page without misunderstanding them. For example...
Atonement - Hebrew Kippur/Kapher which means to "cover over" with the implied understanding of this resulting in reconcilliation. This does not at all require a belief that one is somehow buying off an upset God. The Greek word used for atonement in the New Testament is katallage which simply means to reconcile via an exchange/transformation (you can check this yourself by following the etymological references provided in a New Testament Greek concordance like Strong's).
Sacrifice/Offering - Hebrew Qarav, which means "to draw near". The purpose of the sacrifices of old was to (insofar as they were able) bring a man close to God. In fact the same root word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament in the context of sexual relations (and hence may be part of the reason why the relationship between God and His people is portrayed as being that between a husband and his bride.) Again, none of this relates to the later (heterodox) teachings on Christ's feat of salvation.
Justified - Greek Dikaioo, which means to render one has he ought to be, and/or to declare/demonstrate that one is as he ought to be. The closest aspect of this to the later-day western conception of this subject, is the idea that God is making a statement about someone. Whatever way you slice it, it has nothing to do with pacifying a grievous offence given to God.
Ransom - Greek Lutron, which means the price paid to liberate someone, such as a captive or a slave, with the distinct sense that the "ransom" dissolves whatever it is that was binding that which is being liberated (from it's root luo). Now, unless one believes that it was "God the Father" who was our jailor and from whose oppression we needed liberation, then it is quite clear that the Anselmian theory (and it's bastard children) are not at all called for."
Makes absolutely no sense.Ransom - Greek Lutron, which means the price paid to liberate someone, such as a captive or a slave, with the distinct sense that the "ransom" dissolves whatever it is that was binding that which is being liberated (from it's root luo). Now, unless one believes that it was "God the Father" who was our jailor and from whose oppression we needed liberation, then it is quite clear that the Anselmian theory (and it's bastard children) are not at all called for."
Perhaps he cut and pasted them from somewhere else.Schultz said:My only question is what are this Orthodox gentleman's credentials/experience in translating from Hebrew and Koine Greek? Where did he get these translations from? Are they his own?
You want to know why it makes no sense to you. Because you don't see the whole picture. You have to start at the fall of man. See why he fell. It's not just a moral issue. It's an ontological one as well. After Adam fell even if he asked for forgiveness from god he couldn't return to Paradise. Because the link between uncreated and created was severed. Christ became the new Adam to correct what had gone wrong. Man was not immortal on his own even in Paradise. He had to be in communion with god to be immortal. That is why you don't understand those terms posted above. The reason why Christ came is to save us and creation from death.welkodox said:Makes absolutely no sense.
welkodox said:lubeltri, I can't say I blame you. I don't know what I would have done if I had run across this kind of nonsense before I converted. Luckily it was a while after that I gradually became aware of it.
NOTE: The quote ends above. I don't know how this post all got in the blue box. My response to the quote is below:
I came across it before I converted, near the end of my catechumenate during the debates about Mel Gibson's Passion movie. It was a stumbling block but I chocked it up to an Othodox allergy to the substitutionary atonement. There were too many other wonderful things about Orthodoxy to keep me away over this one point. But peridodically, I want to throw my hands up and scream over what seems to be a deliberate obtuseness when it comes to this subject. Some people just WILL not listen to any argument put forth and stubbornly will not accept any subtlety to the substitutionary view and insist on throwing up strawman after strawman.
The good thing is that I generally only find it here at OC.net and not in my parish.
The question it asks is: "To whom is the ransom paid?"welkodox said:My issue was with the ransom view put forward. In place of "makes no sense", I should have said "faulty".
Yes, that is the question.ozgeorge said:The question it asks is: "To whom is the ransom paid?"
Yet, if what you say is true, there is no ransom. Yet, clearly there is a ransom that was paid by Christ on our behalf. But to whom?It cannot be paid to God, since God was not holding us to ransom because of our sins. We were enslaved to Death and the Devil by our sins, and to say that Christ paid a ransom to death and the Devil to liberate us is ludicrous.
Or, another possibility is that "ransom" is a metaphor, and is not to be taken literally.welkodox said:Yet, if what you say is true, there is no ransom. Yet, clearly there is a ransom that was paid by Christ on our behalf. But to whom?
I can't see how that wouldn't radically vitiate the meaning of the Atonement though, just as saying for instance that the words "bodily resurrection" are not to be understood literally.ozgeorge said:Or, another possibility is that "ransom" is a metaphor, and is not to be taken literally.
It's not at all at odds. In fact it complements it. But that's not the point. The point is that western theology focuses on sin alone. Very much like Orthodox converts. Focusing on sin is a dead end. It doesn't end at the cross. If we don't look at it from an orthodox perspective (even if both end at the same place) It doesn't bring eternal life. What gives us eternal life is focusing on the Eucharist. The Eucharist puts us in communion with Christ. Christ puts us into communion with the father. The Holy spirit razes us from the dead. The church will continue even after the second coming and forever. It's what gives us ever lasting life. The heavy focus on sin and the cross has also infected the orthodox. Most orthodox don't even know that life eternal depends on communion with Christ through his church. The churches have emptied out because people don't know what the church is there for. That's why.BrotherAidan said:Demetrios G
I would not at all disagree with you. But I also do not see how Christ paying for our sins as part of the purpose of his death on the cross is at odds with what you have written.
I would not wish to say that any of the bibilical motifs for understanding the cross are metaphorical; mysteries that we can't fully comprehend? Yes. Metaphors, No.ozgeorge said:Or, another possibility is that "ransom" is a metaphor, and is not to be taken literally.
So, again, I ask, to whom was the ransom paid if it is a literal ransom? As St. Gregory says, the one who held us in bondage is the evil one, so did he receive the ransom?BrotherAidan said:I would not wish to say that any of the bibilical motifs for understanding the cross are metaphorical; mysteries that we can't fully comprehend? Yes. Metaphors, No.
Totally agreed. Demetrio's explanation is correct, but it is not the only explanation. The fullness of the Atonement, the Mystery of Faith, cannot be limited to one theory (a better term might be "expression" or "representation").BrotherAidan said:Demetrios G
I would not at all disagree with you. But I also do not see how Christ paying for our sins as part of the purpose of his death on the cross is at odds with what you have written.