www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Ecumenical Councils

Dear Father Deacon Edward,

Actually, you are a far better Christian than I could ever hope to be, Sir!

Cheers!

Alex

Alex,

It's true that Eastern theology accepts various soteriological theories as legitimate; thanks for pointing that out as a corrective to my over-emphasis. The Western tradition, as far as I know, also accepts theosis and other models as legitimate; John Paul II himself was fond of using theosis language, from what I recall. Even so, what about the idea from Trent that death was something with which God had "threatened" Adam, or with which He had punished him because He was offended and indignant? Are those views also legitimate for the East? (I don't have any well-thought-out reason why they shouldn't be, so I'm asking more out of curiousity. You could just say, "Yes," but I'm hoping you might be able to say a bit more about this. )

Thanks, and God bless,

Maximos (Jason)

Dear Alex,

Such comparisons are always dangerous. Each of us is on a different rung of the ladder of Divine ascent -- and therefore we are in different places on our spiritual journey of theosis. One of the problems with ladders is that, sometimes, one slips back a rung or two.

Our place in this journey is never static, never without movement, never without its moments of epiphany and regret.

Fr. Deacon Edward

Dear Jason,

Certainly, any thought of death is very threatening!

The Eastern Christian perspective tends to focus on "sin" much like "illness" and there are fatal illnesses as we know . . .

Salvation is about saving us from eternal death, healing us and building on that healing in a spiritual way i.e. Theosis.

God doesn't change in His love and care for us.

But we certainly can and do change toward God. When we move toward God, we become more like Him, permeated, as we become, with His deifying Grace and Love.

When we move away from Him, we can only expect spiritual ruin, death, eternal damnation.

It is like the figure of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation at the Last Judgement Who opens the book that records all our misdeeds.

The Lamb utters not a word - we will all know how ungrateful we have been toward Him.

And this is why we should spend this life in repentance and prayer, crying to the Lamb to have mercy on us and destroy our sins before that day.

Alex

Dear Father Deacon,

Thank you for confirming my earlier statement!

You are truly a great person and when I read your posts here, my spirit soars like a carefree eagle through the heavens!

Alex

Brethren,

Here is another ways of approaching orginal/ancestral sin.

If we stop focusing on Councils and Papal degrees for a moment and turn back to the scriptural lesson book at hand (Genesis), we find that God didn't need to punish us for our sin. The sin itself is the punishment.

In the day that you eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall surely die.

Pretty simple. He didn't say that He would kill them, He just said that eating of this will ultimately kill you based on how I have arranged things.

So, Eve is deceived into enticing Adam to eat of it. Since Adam was charged with keeping the rules, Adam is the primarily disobedient one, disobedience being the ancestral sin that we inherit, the wages of which are death since Adam and Eve are no longer allowed to eat from the Tree of Life.

[If we read well, we understand that they never had everlasting life ex officio (they were mortal from their creation) but that they could have lived forever had they kept eating from the Tree of Life; had they only been obedient.]

Fortunately, God placed the Cheruvim before the Tree of Life with a flaming sword to keep the man and woman from eating from it any more.

As more than one Orthodox theologian has said, 'The positive side of death is that, at least in death, we stop sinning.'

If God hadn't kept Adam and Eve away from the Tree of Life, they would have gone on with their disobedience forever since they would have kept living.

A lay theologian in New York often speaks of Adam and Eve's eating from the forbidden fruit as their "Declaration of Independence." In effect, God granted that independence, saying "now how long can you live without Me? And the three score years and ten, how pleasant will they be with death hanging over them?"

In Christ,
Andrew