01 September 2009

What did Eastern Orthodox preach before Khrapovitsky, Kalomiros and Romanides?

An Orthodox friend of mine asks. He answers with this wonderful (to my ears, at any rate) passage:

"But in what manner does Christ perform His work of salvation, and how does He save man? The law of justice condemns to death the sinner, who through sin forfeits his right to live, which was given to him on condition that he would live and act in accordance with the divine will. Every transgression and disobedience, says St. Paul (Heb. 2:2), is recompensed after a judicial trial. And again he says: "Whosoever hath broken a law of Moses dieth without pity on the testimony of two or three witnesses" (Heb. 10:28). Adam and Eve died as a result of being punished by the Creator because they failed to live in accordance with His commandment. Moreover, none of the men descended from them are exempt from condemnation to death, because they have a natural tendency to sin and readily commit sins during their lives. But when in behalf of the sinner the new man dies voluntarily, who is by nature and by choice sinless; when Christ out of love for the repentant sinner surrenders Himself to voluntary death, a righteous man in behalf of the unrighteous men, then the satisfaction of divine justice becomes complete; moreover, even God's goodness, which seeks to treat men with mercy but without setting aside God's justice, which punishes sin, is satisfied too, and thus comes to exercise it's own function, by treating the sinner mercifully and saving him through the grace of Christ, who died voluntarily in the place of sinners. Thus the death of Christ becomes a means whereby the two prominent qualities of God, His righteousness and His goodness, come to equilibrium, neither of them being disregarded, but both of them, on the contrary, coinciding wonderfully."--Three Great Friday Sermons And Other Theological Discourses By Apostolos Makrakis (1831-1905). page 39. published by The Orthodox Christian Educational Society 1956 Henderson Street Chicago IL.

229 comments:

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Chris Jones said...

I can see why you like this passage. Unfortunately, if the Orthodox Wiki is to be believed, Mr Makrakis cannot be regarded as a mainstream Orthodox thinker.

That does not mean, of course, that this particular passage is in any way heterodox.

123 said...

'As the Very Rev. Archimandrite Isaias Simonopetritis explains in The Orthodox Church and Proselytism, "while Makrakis was condemned by the official Church and the monasteries of Mount Athos, he was not excommunicated, for fear that his numerous followers among the middle classes of Athens would turn him into a martyr figure"....

Blessed Elder Philotheos (Zervakos) has written The Errors of Apostolos Makrakis. Although not yet in English translation, it is summarized in part in Dr. Constantine Cavarnos's book "Blessed Elder Philotheos Zervakos". In his criticism the Elder emphasises that he does not mean to say that there is nothing of value in Makrakis' writings, especially the earlier ones, but that they must be approached with caution.'

At the very least, Mr. Makrakis does not represent Orthodoxy is any mainstream way - and not beyond the borders of a single country. Quoting him as being representing what 'the Eastern Orthodox believe' is like quoting Sergius Bulgakov or Avvakum Petrovich of the Old Believers - or, like quoting an ELCA/Seminex document to prove what the LCMS believes.

William Weedon said...

Chris,

Do you think preaching along those lines was uncommon among Orthodox Christians prior to the mid 20th century? Romanides and company would, no doubt, regard it as a Western intrusion not consonant with "pure" Orthodoxy, but the resistance Romanides experienced to his own ideas at the time seems to indicate that Western or not, it was rather widely held.

123 said...

Met. Kallistos Ware gives an important caveat to Councils from the same era often called the 'western captivity of the church' due to the Orthodox having to study in the West or Western dominated schools due to the Turks and the RC Poles (and the backwardness of Russia at the time just emerging from the Time of Troubles):

"In the 17th century, as a counterpart to the various "confessions" of the Reformation, there appeared several "Orthodox confessions," endorsed by local councils but, in fact, associated with individual authors (e.g., Metrophanes Critopoulos, 1625; Peter Mogila, 1638; Dositheos of Jerusalem, 1672). None of these confessions would be recognized today as having anything but historical importance. When expressing the beliefs of his church, the Orthodox theologian, rather than seeking literal conformity with any of these particular confessions, will rather look for consistency with Scripture and tradition, as it has been expressed in the ancient councils, the early Fathers, and the uninterrupted life of the liturgy. He will not shy away from new formulations if consistency and continuity of tradition are preserved."

123 said...

I don't think opposition to Romanides was due to any one thing - and not primarily because of the point you are trying to make. He was also primarily opposed here in the West, which at the time he was writing (and in the Archdiocese he was in) was heavily dominated by Western concerns - as is often the case with immigrants to the West from 2nd and 3rd world countries with rich, glorious (long past) histories.

A slightly different way to look at this is to consider the term transubstantiation. It was heavily used in this same 17th-19th century period. Does this mean that transubstantiation was an Orthodox teaching? Obviously no. It was simply a term that was used, tried on for its Orthodoxy. It has often been noted that at the time, the Orthodox were just confused by everything going on in the Western churches - they didn't know what they were talking about most of the time. This was exacerbated by the turkokratia, forced conversion and discrimination by Poland including the Unia, the western models adopted in Russian seminaries at the time, and the fact that many (especially Greek) clerics had to go abroad to study freely (to either Protestant or RC institutions). This often led to simply using Protestant arguments against RCs and RC arguments against Protestants. It was only in the Silver Age of Russia and once some stability had been brought to the emerging Balkan and Greek nations following thier wars of independence and the fall of the Ottoman Empire that Orthodox were able to begin the intellectual process of formulating their own responses to the idiosyncratic theologies that developed independent of them in western Europe.

123 said...

There is also a good post on Makrakis by Aaron Taylor here:

http://logismoitouaaron.blogspot.com/2009/02/makrakism-returns.html

Chris said...

The juridical approach to our salvation is not inherently wrong for the Orthodox; I've been saying that for a long time. But it is incomplete if left to stand alone.

I don't know much about Mr. Makrakis, but I'll find out.

Orthodox theology is about change. Christ's Resurrection allows us to follow his commandments so that we may change, in body, soul, mind, everything. The juridical model makes us passive players and unchanged. If Christ's coming in the flesh was so that everything may be healed (St. Gregory the Theologian), then change, theosis, is certainly the heart of salvation.

Past Elder said...

When I was a Righteous of the Nations (well I still am, but I mean practicing as such) I was struck by the view in Judaism (meaning Orthodox, of course) that all this stuff arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Messiah even is. As if God had this perplexing problem of how to be just and merciful at the same time, then worked it out, whereas God has no such problem at all.

Rabbi Luzzatto, aka Ramchal, laid it out well in Mesillat Yesharim, the Path of the Just (1740). If God were really all about justice, demanding its complete satisfaction, the sinner would be wiped out on the first offence; but he is not, and the world itself exists entirely on the mercy of God allowing the possibility of repentance and understanding the incompleteness of human efforts -- so that, while he is entitled to and could demand complete satisfaction, he does not, and shows us thereby that much as we are to value justice, we are to value mercy more, even as that, the mercy of God, is how we are allowed repentance in this life and "salvation" in the next.

(Messiah being connected to heralding one stage in that unfolding, not to forgiveness of sin.)

"Forensic justification" is not juridical; we are not made righteous, but declared righteous in Christ, which to God may be juridical but to us is entirely a work of undeserved mercy.

To understand which EO is entirely unhelpful, being demonstrably a consensus about nothing except there is a consensus, now if only one can figure out what it is and who really has it, missing the distinction between Law and Gospel, which being a distinction, is not a separation of two things, but a distinction of aspects of one thing.

Or as we tell our kids, we do good works, not to be saved, but because we are saved.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Mr. Makrakis was not condemned for his views on Atonement. He was condemned for his views on the tri-partite composition of man and /or God.

I have actually read from a book ( I would have to do some reaserch to find it again) on the life and writings of Blessed elder Philotheos Zervakos, where he himself used much the same juridical language.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Here is a quote from a 19th century Russian Saint and from his catechism approved by the Holy Synod of Russia:

Metropolitan Philaret’s Catechism on redemption:

"206. Q. How does the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross deliver us from sin, the curse and death? A. The death of Jesus Christ on the Cross delivers us from sin, the curse and death. And so that we may more easily understand this mystery, the word of God enlightens us about it, as far as we can accommodate it, through the comparison of Jesus Christ with Adam. Adam naturally (by nature) is the head of the whole of humanity, which is one with him through natural descent from him. Jesus Christ, in Whom Divinity is united with Humanity, by grace became the new, all-powerful Head of the people whom He unites with Himself by means of faith. Therefore just as through Adam we fell under the power of sin, the curse and death, so we are delivered from sin, the curse and death through Jesus Christ. His voluntary sufferings and death on the Cross for us, being of infinite value and worth, as being the death of Him Who is without sin and the God-Man, is complete satisfaction of the justice of God, Who condemned us for sin to death, and immeasurable merit, which has acquired for Him the right, without offending justice, to give us sinners forgiveness of sins and grace for the victory over sin and death…”

Anonymous said...

The juridical model makes us passive players and unchanged.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

We will endure the struggle between the old nature and the new creation in Christ until we die. Our total transformation in Christ will not occur until the Parousia.

Meanwhile, we are being enabled daily by the work of the Holy Spirit to live the life of Christ within us which will give evidence of true and living faith and result in all sorts of wonderful works.

As Luther put it so well, "faith is a lively, active, busy thing."

A former Lutheran should have a better understanding of that.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Here is another from the the catechism of Right Rev. Constas H. Demetry D.D. Doctor of the Ecumenical Throne Approved by the Holy Synod of Greece 1929

ON THE ATONEMENT OR PROPITIATORY SACRIFICE

Q. What Dogma is found in the fourth article?

A. In the fourth article we find the Dogma of the Propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus.

Q. What is the propitiatory or atoning sacrifice of Jesus?

A. The sacrifice of His sinless life, which He offered upon the cross, which was necessary to offer to God, and which He did that the divine Justice, which had been insulted by the disobedience of our First Parents, might be propitiated.

Q. What would have occured if this sacrifice of Jesus had not been offered?

A. The body of man, after undergoing in this life all this misfortune, would finally have died, as also now, but without any hope of a resurrection, and the soul would have been punished eternally in the life to come far from God; while now, because of the sacrifice of Christ, the soul is delivered from punishment, (if man believes in Him and is perfected living after His commandments), and the body is to be raised and united each with its soul.

Athanasios Boeker said...

And another:

"Christ's sacrifice propitiatory for the apeasing of divine justice and effecting of reconciliation between man and God.

From Rev.George Mastrantnis's catechism page 90. copyright 1969 endorsed by Patriarch Athenagoras and Archbishop Iakovos. The OLOGOS Mission St. Louis Mo.

123 said...

No one is arguing that such language was used, just as to whether it represented a short-term adoption of Western terms and paradigms regarding a question peculiarly formulated in the West. The same could be said of these sorts of pro-Protestant/pro-Catholic formulations as was said of the Councils from the same broad period: "None of these... would be recognized today as having anything but historical importance."

Juridical language is often used in Orthodoxy, but not to the extremes that the Reformers took it as they sought to delineate between assured salvation/justification and a related but wholly distinct growth in sanctification (not salvation proper). There are a host of assumptions and issues that would lead one to 'need' such a differentiations, which are foreign to the mind of the Orthodox Church.

Regarding the related concept of the wrath of God, see St. John Cassian:

http://orrologion.blogspot.com/2006/01/st-john-cassian-of-spirit-of-anger.html

Some scriptural and patristic notes relating to Kalomiros' 'The River of Fire' (see especially the patristic part at the bottom):

http://orrologion.blogspot.com/2006/01/scriptural-and-patristic-notes.html

'The River of Fire' itself, if you haven't read it already:

http://www.philthompson.net/pages/library/riveroffire.html

And St. Nicholas Cabasilas on a wrathful atonement:

http://orrologion.blogspot.com/2006/01/against-western-concept-of-atonement.html

All that being said, while the pendulum swung far toward blind acceptance of a given Orthodox Christian's preferred form of 'western captivity' (Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican) in the time period discussed, the neo-patristic synthesis that sought to correct it is also being questioned on various fronts, too. Such is the process of 'reception' in the Orthodox Church - a person, saint or patriarch, or Council can say what they want, it don't make it 'The Faith' of the Orthodox unless it is received (cf. the reception or lackthereof of various ECs, Lyons, Florence, Brest-Litovsk and the 'Response' of the Eastern Patriarchs to Vatican I).

123 said...

Well, so far St. Philaret is the only respected authority you have cited, and he would fall smack dab in the middle of the 'western captivity' Russia experienced, which is acknowledged on all sides.

Again, the issue isn't whether one can find language that sounds 'western' or examples of its use. The issue is whether it represents the thinking of the Church, or just a particular time and place of the Church or certain of her persons. Most any Orthodox would package this language together with any Orthodox examples you would find of the terms transubstantiation and 'the seven sacraments' (found in the same Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow, if I remember correctly).

Athanasios Boeker said...

It was not a short termed western captivity, but the belief of the early church it'self. As can be seen from the texts below.

"You see, even if they lived a long time, nevertheless FROM THE TIME THEY HEARD THE WORDS, "Dust you are, and to dust you are to return," and received the sentence of death, they became liable to death and you would say from that moment they were dead. So this is what Scripture is also implying when it says that "on the day you eat, you will truly die" that is to say, receive the sentence of being mortal from now on. just as in the case of human tribunals, when someone receives the sentence of beheading and is cast into prison, even if he stays there a long time his life is no better than that of dead people and corpses, being already dead by reason of his sentence, in just the same way they, too, from the day they received the sentence of mortality were dead by reason of their sentence, even if they lasted a long time. -St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis

“We were enemies of God through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. There must therefore have happen one of two things; either that God, in His truth, should destroy all men, or that in His loving-kindness He should cancel the sentence. But behold the wisdom of God; He preserved both the truth of His sentence, and the exercise of His loving-kindness. Christ took our sins in His body on the tree, that we by His death might die to sin, and live unto righteousness.” (1 Peter 2:24)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem {Catechetical Lectures: Lecture 13 no.33}

Athanasios Boeker said...

How about this authority:

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite says:

"Also remember, Spiritual Father, to advise sinners not to suppose or believe that they receive forgiveness from God for their sins only on account of them fulfilling their rule; God forbid! This is a heretical opinion, for according to the theologians, sin is infinite, and as an offense to the infinite God, no finite creature, especially an impure creature like a sinner, by works or by fulfilling a rule, can be loosed from it: "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags" (Is. 64:6). But they are to certainly believe that they receive forgiveness for their sins: 1) on account of the infinite mercy of God; 2) ON ACCOUNT OF THE INFINITE SATISFACTION WHICH THE SON OF GOD OBTAINED ON BEHALF OF SINNERS THROUGH HIS DEATH AND THROUGH THE BLOOD SHED ON HIS CROSS, AS PAUL SAID: "NOT BY WORKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS WHICH WE HAVE DONE, BUT ACCORDING TO HIS MERCY HE HAVE SAVED US" (Titus 3:5); AS JOHN SAID: "AND THE BLOOD OF JESUS
CHRIST HIS SON CLEANSETH US FROM ALL SIN" (1 Jn. 1:7) And as Basil the Great says: "THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS IS BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST." And finally, 3) they should consider the third reason for the forgiveness of their sins, which they do after sin. These good works, however, are not to be understood as natural in and of themselves (because in thinking about them this way, they will never be able to forgive sins and gain eternal salvation), but inasmuch as they are united through faith with the supernatural grace of Jesus Christ, which brings them about and effects them and makes them worthy of divine acceptance (from Koressios) The words spoken above are verified by God Himself Who says through Isaiah: "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake" (Is. 43:25). Do you hear? He says I am the one, sinner, Who blots out your sins and forgives you, and not on account of your rule and chastisement, but on account of My own mercy
and compassion. "For Mine own sake."

From the "Exomologetarion: a Manual of Confession" by our Righteous God-bearing Father St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite. Chapter Ten Section 9

123 said...

St. Nicodemus was also writing at the same time we are discussing. Highly regarded, but not perfect, and not accepted in all his details.

St. Cyril represents exactly what I wrote before: such language has often been used but in a context and to an end very different than that brought to the metaphor than is brought by Protestants. The need to establish a strict delineation between salvation/justification and sanctification so as to find assurance of salvation in the juridical work of Christ is something more than a mere metaphor, it is the hypothesis of the soteriological systems it gave birth to. This is why the Orthodox Church has shied away from such language as it became more and more familiar with Protestant thought; juridical language isn't 'wrong', but it can be confusing (internally and externally) given the way such language is used by some non-Orthodox Christians. A similar analogy would be the way in which 'partaker of the divine nature' was acceptable in the first century, but became less helpful after the Arian Controversy and Nicea I; another analogy would by St. Cyril of Alexandria's language regarding the one nature of Christ, which became less helpful following Chalcedon (and Cyril's own 'accommodation' with Antiochene and Roman sensibilities toward the end of his life). Just as we wouldn't necessarily go back to speaking in these previously acceptable ways due to intervening events and heterodoxies, neither would we return to soteriological language so easily misconstrued when understood through a Protestant lens - while not in any way denigrating the possibility of such language being understood in a completely Orthodox way. Perhaps some language is even helpful for those attempting to find a way to align their 'captive' intellect with their converted nous and karthia.

Athanasios Boeker said...

So that there is no misunderstanding between us Orrologian I will state the way I understand the Patristic use of Juridical language. I will give a quote from Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen) With whom I agree;

"Following the words of Christ and St.Paul in scriptures, the Holy Fathers use a juridical or legal model to explain how Christ broke down the barrier of sin separating man from God.

The Juridical explanation can be expressed in basic terms as follows: At The Fall, death was the sentence for sin. When He died on the Cross, Christ took upon Himself that sentence, but since He was without sin and thus undeserving of the sentence, the sentence was abolished for all mankind, and mankind was freed from the consequences of the primal transgression."

William Weedon said...

Fr. Salaris of All Saints in St. Louis preached this upon the Theophany a few years back - more Western captivity?:

Now we have the perfect sacrifice – a perfect someone – to lay our blame on. Unlike the old Adam who tried to make Eve and the serpent his scapegoats and thus caused mankind to be cast out of the Garden of Eden, Jesus, the new Adam, comes and takes responsibility for sin and suffers God’s wrath against sin so we don’t have to and opens the gates of paradise for who believe. By becoming the perfect and sinless scapegoat and sin offering, He takes away sin and the resultant sting of death and opens to way to the unending presence of the light and love of God. So, let us lay our sins, our failures, and our despairs on Jesus so that He can drown them by the virtue of His baptism. Then, just as those priests in the Old Testament partook of the flesh of the sin offering, let us, with joy in our hearts, as the priesthood of all believers, partake of the Body and Blood of Him who deigned to be baptized in the Jordan River for our salvation. Glory to Jesus Christ!

123 said...

Agreed, though even here I can see a Protestant walking away assuming this language represents what he believes. There is also a strain of patristic and Orthodox thought that sees death as a gift of God so that sin would not endure forever. From this vantage, death is seen not primarily as a 'sentence', which statement can imply that God establishes and enforces such as sentence out of the necessity of His Justice or Honor or Holiness, but as the result of sin. Death was not able to hold him because it had no claim on Him as He had not sinned. He was also Life Itself/Himself, so He was able to descend to Hades with our common human nature and then raise up that same, commonly held human nature, divinizing it fully in the Resurrection and ascending with it to heaven where He and it (we, in some sense) is 'Today', forever.

123 said...

Less than felicitous.

Again, it can be understood in an Orthodox manner by taking into account how the Fathrs (e.g., Cassian) explain what the 'wrath of God' is, but it is equally misunderstandable by non-Orthodox beholden to Protestant assumptions.

Many a cradle Orthodox does not understand the different paradigm Protestants bring to such statements. Until recent decades and centuries there wasn't the need to define most of the area we are discussing because the Orthodox shared assumptions about God, wrath, judgment, salvation, etc. that developed rather differently and separately in the West (for whatever the reason [juridical Latin] or based on whichever person's theology [Augustine, Anselm]). More and more, such differences are being identified, understood and enunciated, but there has not developed an across the board 'dogma' for how to respond to the various and differing theologies of Protestantism related to this topic. Such development of a response takes time and discernment; the Orthodox follow the advice of St. Gamaliel in the Acts to wait and know them by their fruit.

William Weedon said...

I think, Chris, you might be trying to create a difference in fact when there is only one in emphasis.

William Weedon said...

I mean, in the Lutheran Church we sing:

God said to His beloved Son:
"It's time to have compassion!
Then go, Bright Jewel of my Crown,
And bring to them salvation.
From sin and sorrow set them free;
Slay bitter death for them that they
May live with you forever."

We also sing:

He hath for us the law obeyed
And thus the Father's vengeance stayed
Which over us impended.

I used to think these were utterly irreconcilable pictures of God. But it's when you see their coherence - as in the quote that started this thread - that it only increases our adoration and love of the Blessed Trinity.

"God showeth His good will to men!" as we sing in another hymn.

Anastasia Theodoridis said...

Nice try, William, but no cigar.

But you already knew that.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Orrologian,

I am in total agreement on "death as being a gift from God," I would call it a loving punishment, because it is a punishment and because it was a loving means to put an end to our fallen condition. But I would also include that God is "just" as He is loving, as St. Athanasios the great wrote in chapter two of On The Incarnation, "It would be unthinkable that God should GO BACK ON HIS WORD and that man, having transgressed, should not die." in other words God is a God of Truth and when he says something will be a result of a transgression, then it will come to pass. God is just and he must punish, but He is not just for the reason that He always tempers His justice with mercy.

William Weedon said...

Yes, I knew that you of all people wouldn't buy it - but it still holds: within Lutheranism the Father is not regarded with fear and terror, but with love and gratitude, because He gave His Son to blot out our sins with His blood, to destroy our death, and to deliver us from the divine wrath or hell.

As we sing at Epiphany:

Almighty Father, in Your Son
You loved us when not yet begun
Was this old earth's foundation!
Your Son has ransomed us in love
To live in Him here and above:
This is Your great salvation.
Alleluia! Christ the living
To us giving
Life forever,
Keeps us Yours and fails us never. LSB 395

Or as we sing at Christmas:

Should we fear our God's displeasure,
Who, to save, freely gave
His most precious treasure?
To redeem us He has given
His own Son from the throne of His might in heaven. LSB 360

William Weedon said...

One more, a little child's hymn for Christmas:

God loves me dearly,
Grants me salvation,
God loves me dearly,
Loves even me.

I was in slavery,
Sin, death and darkness;
God's love was working
To make me free.

He sent forth Jesus,
My dear Redeemer,
He sent forth Jesus
And set me free.

Jesus, my Savior,
Himself did offer;
Jesus, my Savior,
Paid all I owed.

Now I will praise You,
O Love Eternal,
Now I will praise You
All my life long.

Edward Reiss said...

It seems to me that I remember a similar discussion on the Orthodox-Lutheran discussion list.

Anyway, I have a question or two for Chris Orr:

You stated that these statements can be understood in an Orthodox fashion. OK, but why should your "Orthodox fashion" take precedence over Athanasios Boeker's?

And, if this is not really settled yet, how can you be sure that yours and not Athanasios' will eventually triumph?

It seems to me that both sides can cite fathers who agree with them to a greater or lesser degree, so why not wait until the Church has spoken?

Anonymous said...

You stated that these statements can be understood in an Orthodox fashion. OK, but why should your "Orthodox fashion" take precedence over Athanasios Boeker's?

Heh, good question. These EO's can't even agree with each other --does support the Lutheran view that the Fathers have value but should be read with caution.

Christine

Athanasios Boeker said...

Christ1242,

You need to study church history. Your own included. There were theological controversies in the Early Church(and the Orthodox Church today) as there was/is in the 16th-21th Century Luthernism. Remember what scripture says about. "There must be heresies among you that those who are approved should be made manifest." (Paraphrased of course) But we are getting off the topic.

123 said...

I don't know anything about Athanasios Boeker so I can't say anything about him. I can say that I think my presentation is more in line with the broad thinking of Orthodoxy today on such subjects. Most don't discuss it. Those that do do so due to experience with non-Orthodox communities and their understanding of these same issues. I put Athanasios' points within the broad 'corrective' to too negative a presentation of 'the West' within Orthodoxy. I don't disagree with the need for such a corrective. For instance, Fr. Seraphim Rose wrote a wonderful piece defending St. Augustine, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, the 'Russian Chrysostom', has affection for certain Lutheran books, etc. At the same time, such corrective need to be kept in context and not presented as showing 'agreement' with Protestant conceptions where there is none (except for the use similar phrases and terms, though used with differing assumptions underlying them).

Athanasios' reminder to review church history and the lack of agreement is important - especially given the level of disagreement within not only Lutheranism, not only confessional Lutheranism, but within the LCMS, WELS and ELS each. The same is obviously true within a church many times larger than the LCMS, the Orthodox Church.

123 said...

...why not wait until the Church has spoken?

In Orthodoxy, dogma and doctrine are not the primary arenas for 'what the Church believes'. Tradition is the proper way in which the Church lives. The Church speaks only when it must. Dogma in Orthodoxy - much as it was in the time of the ECs - is the fence around the farm showing the people the boundaries within which they must stay if they are to remain in the Church. The ECs did not create or sanction compendia of doctrine and all that can be known for certain of the Faith. The fence is not the farm.

While the Church has not spoken definitively, doctrinally, this does not mean nothing can be said. I am sure that both I and Athanasios place our own thoughts before the Church for Her approval.

Dixie said...

Pastor Weedon, is the friend who answered the question with this specific quote a relatively recent convert or a cradle Orthodox?

William Weedon said...

He's been Orthodox for some years now, but not a cradle by any means.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Amen Orrologian, Amen.

Edward Reiss said...

Orrologion,

"I can say that I think my presentation is more in line with the broad thinking of Orthodoxy today on such subjects. Most don't discuss it. Those that do do so due to experience with non-Orthodox communities and their understanding of these same issues. I put Athanasios' points within the broad 'corrective' to too negative a presentation of 'the West' within Orthodoxy."

OK, but as I pointed out, the Church has not spoken, so isn't it a little too soon to declare one side truly Orthodox? I ask because it seems to me that we have no way of determining how far the "correction" will go.

Regarding the "Russian Chrysostom". If he loved certain Lutheran books, isn't it possible he understood Lutheranism on its own terms and still loved the books?

There are admittedly a lot of hypotheticals in my question.

Anonymous said...

You need to study church history. Your own included.

Yeah, no kidding. Raised Lutheran (mother), Roman Catholic father, spent 10 years in the RC, have attended Eastern liturgies both Catholic and Orthodox, I guess I do need to study some more.

I think I know SOME church history -- including vis a vis heresies.

But then when I left the Church of Rome to return to my Lutheran roots, I never felt the need to go back to Catholic blogs to keep proving my point over and over.

Orthodox converts seem to see it differently.

Christine

Dixie said...

The reason I asked is because early in my convert experience I ran into a group folks who were convinced that Orthodoxy and their particular denominational views were completely compatible but there were problems in their denomination so they were leaving it for the Orthodox Church but seemed to think that there wouldn’t really be a substantive change in anything they believed. And there was a lot of picking out quotes from Orthodox authors that aligned with their denominational beliefs. Didn’t know if this was something similar (—and it appears it is not).

Even I believed the change from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy would be very minimal. However, I have to think that over time the folks in that group began to experience very real differences and probably would not say the same things today. I know I sure did!

I don’t think converts are being hoodwinked on this subject though. You aren't suggesting that, are you?

Edward Reiss said...

Orrologion,

"While the Church has not spoken definitively, doctrinally, this does not mean nothing can be said. I am sure that both I and Athanasios place our own thoughts before the Church for Her approval."

Of course. The issue, though, is that if the Church has not decided, and several opinions are permitted, then what is orthodox is not been decided yet. I don't think you are forbidden from stating your opinion, it is just that it seems it is just that, your opinion, until the Church has spoken. Other opinions may reflect Orthodoxy and be contrary to your views.

I also understand that the Church need not speak to every issue, as some are settled without being "dogmatized" formally. It just seems to me, and I admit I am an outsider, that this has not been definitively decided by the Church, and claims that the words cited on this thread by Fr. Weedon et. al. have a meaning very different from their "Western" sense seem problematic. Consider the following:

"Following the words of Christ and St.Paul in scriptures, the Holy Fathers use a juridical or legal model to explain how Christ broke down the barrier of sin separating man from God.

The Juridical explanation can be expressed in basic terms as follows: At The Fall, death was the sentence for sin. When He died on the Cross, Christ took upon Himself that sentence, but since He was without sin and thus undeserving of the sentence, the sentence was abolished for all mankind, and mankind was freed from the consequences of the primal transgression."

This was cited by Athanasios. Is it really reasonable to re-interpret e.g. "Christ took upon Himself that sentence, but since He was without sin and thus undeserving of the sentence, the sentence was abolished for all mankind" in a manner alien to substitutionary atonement? I don't think so, not for a minute.

And that is the rub, as far as I am concerned. In my interaction with EOs, and to some degree RCs, what is actually written matters very little compared to the framework one sees the writings through. We see this in the counter quotes supplied, rarely is a citation dealt with in any detail. And so, the claim is things can always be read in an "Orthodox" way, which too often seems to go against the normal sense of what is written or spoken. One fellow I know insisted Communion is not for the forgiveness of sins, despite the words right there in the liturgy. He only relented when a priest said, more or less, "forgiveness of sins means forgiveness of sons....".

123 said...

Dixie, your comments and question point to why it is so important "to become Orthodox, it is necessary to immerse oneself all at once in the very element of Orthodoxy, to begin living in an Orthodox way." (Fr. Pavel Florensky) When joining en masse as a congregation (or, often, it seems, in joining the Western Rite) it is easy to forget you are joining the church and not just a new confederation or "this'll do for now" assembly of like-minded religious folk. Orthodoxy isn't just a matter of accepting or denying this or that doctrine or practice, Orthodoxy is carried by the whole of Orthodoxy. The mind of the Church is only learned in the Church, it is the whole complex of doctrines, practices, sights, sounds, smells, actions, etc. that share the fullness of the faith - only one part is simply that, a part. it reminds one of the blind philosophers and the elephant.

Dixie said...

The mind of the Church is only learned in the Church, it is the whole complex of doctrines, practices, sights, sounds, smells, actions, etc. that share the fullness of the faith - only one part is simply that, a part. it reminds one of the blind philosophers and the elephant.

Christopher, I fully agree with you and that is why these particular conversations can be so frustrating to watch! I think one cannot understand how much sense you (Christopher) are actually making apart from this immersion. But it is good that you try to make our Orthodox faith accessible.

123 said...

The late Archbishop Peter (L'Huillier) was a noted canonist within Orthodoxy. He'd been a bishop a long time, so even Patriarchs and Metropolitans were a little in awe of him remembering back to when they saw him from afar, or were taught by him.

A favorite response of his to some nonsense said by an Orthodox rep at an ecumenical or academic gathering was: "It is his opinion." He also said they were stupid and knew nothing of canon law, but it was in the most nonjudgmental, quivering French accent that you couldn't really be offended by it.

So, yes, it is my opinion. At the same time, it is Athanasios' opinion, too, same with St. Philaret, Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Iakovos, Fr. George, etc. As I pointed out, St. Cyril was wrong in his preferred formulation, too, as Chalcedon confirmed. St. Maximos was a simple monk, but he more truly stood contra mundi than did St. Athanasius the Great, the learned head of the Egyptian Church.

I am also no arguing that the quotes Athanasios provided are to be understood in a way other then their clear sense. I am noting that the Church of that day was quite beholden to doctrinal formulations that before and since are found to be foreign to Orthodoxy. Due to lack of education (due to the turkokratia, the Mongols, Poles and the Time of Troubles) and to a lack of experience with Protestantism/Catholicism and what is assumed behind what can often be Orthodox sounding phrases, Orthodox from the 17th to 19th centuries oftentimes simply parroted Catholic critiques at Protestants and Protestant critiques of Catholics. These were noble attempts to try and respond to the non-Orthodox in language they could understand and to try and find common ground where possible, but it was usually according to presuppositions which themselves were foreign to Orthodoxy. It's like the cheating husband asking "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" It sets up the question in an inappropriate context. As Orthodoxy gained greater understanding of the West and confidence in its ability to formulate a specifically Orthodox position (not just response), you have seen such foreign formulations (like transubstantiation) go by the wayside as being 'less helpful than previously thought'.

That's odd about forgiveness of sins and the Eucharist. The priest communes each and every faithful with, "The servant of God (Name) receives the Body and Blood of Christ for forgiveness of sins and eternal life." As I said, "It is his opinion", he may also be stupid and know nothing of canon law.

Anonymous said...

The mind of the Church is only learned in the Church, it is the whole complex of doctrines, practices, sights, sounds, smells, actions, etc. that share the fullness of the faith - only one part is simply that, a part. it reminds one of the blind philosophers and the elephant.

Oh boy. The Empire makes itself known.

Is the Good News of the Gospel somewhere in that whole dissertation?

I used to hear the same thing as an RC. I am so glad to be away from all of this.

Christine

Athanasios Boeker said...

We should, in this case, stop judging something according to who states it, rather than what is being actually being stated.

I would encourage every one, no matter what denomination, to stop reading what the modern party liners say about an Orthodox teaching, for a moment, and start reading the primary texts themselves. Most of the priests and bishops who are echoing the Anti-substitutionary Atonement views are themselves American Converts from Protestantism.

Who can really say that there was a "Western-Captivity" that needed to be overthrown by the Neo-Patristic scholars? Maybe the opposite is true and we are living in a "Paris School" or "Romanidian school" Captivity of Eastern theology?

Iconoclasm was the overwhelming view of the Byzantine Church hierarchy in the 700's, It was finally repudiated.

123 said...

"The Good News of the Gospel" is communicated in that "whole complex of doctrines, practices, sights, sounds, smells, actions, etc." The only point attempting to be made is that a text won't tell you everything just like a picture isn't the same as being there, just like poems and songs about love are not the same as being in love, just like the Official Baseball Rules don't really tell you what it's like to play or watch a real game of baseball.

Were I to be writing specifically on the Gospel, perhaps I would be more specific. I will try to talk about everything at once next time, so I leave you with no questions. In case I forget to mention, we Orthodox also believe 2 + 2 = 4 though I'm sure I could find some Old Calendarist or Athonite monk to claim it is simply reflective of a masonic banking conspiracy or a natural error resulting from the acceptance of the filioque.

Other opinions may reflect Orthodoxy and be contrary to your views.

Agreed. The opinion that most reflects Orthodoxy is that this isn't a question at all, so it's not really discussed. Go to the services, pray morning and evening, fast, confess and commune and don't worry about all this is what they would say. Doesn't mean someones don't take stabs at formulating an Orthodox response to non-Orthodox questions and formulations. Athanasios is quite right about perspective.

William Weedon said...

Dixie,

You asked if I were implying the Orthodox converts are being hoodwinked. No, I am not. I do believe that the tendency on the part of many modern Orthodox to distance "genuine" Orthodoxy from the juridical way of proclaiming the Gospel is a false move on their part out of polemical desire to make the difference between East and West bigger than it actually is. I believe that this teaching is also part of the patrimony of the Orthodox, and a very joyous one at its heart. I rejoice whenever I encounter an Orthodox person holding to it, and that's why I was glad my friend sent me the quote, which he also was rejoicing in.

123 said...

...the tendency on the part of many modern Orthodox to distance "genuine" Orthodoxy from the juridical way of proclaiming the Gospel is a false move on their part out of polemical desire to make the difference between East and West bigger than it actually is. I believe that this teaching is also part of the patrimony of the Orthodox...

You are correct that it is a part of the Orthodox patrimony, but it is used far less often and it is understood as merely a metaphor rather than as the founding paradigm in support of surety of salvation by making it forensic and the bifurcation of justification and sanctification with the former being salvation proper. That is not mere metaphor, but the basis of a system explaining the How of salvation.

Within the life of the Church as a whole - within her services, prayers, ascetical practices and treatises as well as exegesis and catechisms (following Western models) - this difference is understood and kept. When looking at it as a 'topic' or 'heading' it is easy to misconstrue its place in the whole.

Within native Orthodox circles such language can be used freely because it is understood within this context. In an context alien to traditional Orthodoxy - the Protestant and RC West - such assumptions cannot be made. In fact, they lead to dramatic misunderstandings. Then a distinction has to be made. I had a conversation once with a cradle Arab Orthodox raised in the US, a grad of St. Vlad's. He 'yes, yes'-ed me about all this, but noted how we speak in juridical language, too, etc. When I explained in simplistic detail what I was taught to believe regarding the necessity of Christ to pay our debt to God because of his need to preserve His holiness, justice, etc., to perfectly and mercifully punish sin so as to remain just and holy, etc. he was absolutely shocked. "That's not what we believe that means!" Exactly. But, this highly educated and knowledgeable priest assumed no one could assume something as terrible about God as I had explained. It doesn't matter that God also set about to fulfill our debt to Him. That's great. But it still leaves a God that will not forgive, he'll simply pay the necessary tab on the side. That is the 'bloodthirsty' assumption behind such schemes when tied more literally than metaphorically to an explanation of the 'mechanism', the How and Why of salvation, which is the case in western systems of soteriology based on juridical models. This is why atheism was born in the West (more specifically born within the Reformed church, where it is more clear cut and cold-hearted).

Fr. Stephen Freeman at the Glory to God for All Things blog has ongoing posts (and comments) on this very topic. He is an eloquent enunciator of the differences and where they are to be found in Scripture and the Fathers.

Past Elder said...

Hard to imagine this is all about a guy who bypassed the learned scholars of his day and gave his message and mission to fishermen and a tax collector for a foreign ruler.

123 said...

I agree. Let's get rid of homoousios and dyotheletism, too. What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem, after all? The Bible's all I need.

Of course, Jesus was perfect God and perfect man, so he was likely able to speak in a way they could understand. Then again, they didn't seem to understand it all until Pentecost and even then feel into judaizing tendencies until called on it by Paul - and the churches he founded starting falling to error while he was still writing letters.

Past Elder said...

Yeah right, well back to the Byzantine labyrinth then. Anybody got Theseus' phone number?

123 said...

No need to call Theseus, the Fathers of all the Ecumenical Councils except Nicaea were 'Byzantine'.

Such subtleties are only important when it comes to quia subscription and the equally byzantine interpretations and counter interpretations of the Book of Concord by its various adherents - just take a look at what keeps WELS and LCMS from fellowship, not to mention the liturgical/catholic wars within the LCMS and how they read the BofC.

William Weedon said...

Chris,

You might want to run a check on your understanding of this through a writing by a modern Lutheran theologian like J.A.O. Preus II:

http://www.mtio.com/articles/bissar33.htm

He follows Caemerer in noting that justification is one metaphorical complex of Gospel proclamation found in the NT, but that there are many others.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

Yeah, we just dig Justification so much because Rome kept giving us guilt trips all the time. Guilt? Guilt? Let's go to the court room image and see what the Word of God has to say about my guilt!

But, as people like to keep heaping guilt trips on folks, I think it continues to be a relevant image.

Edward Reiss said...

Orrologion,

"So, yes, it is my opinion. At the same time, it is Athanasios' opinion, too, same with St. Philaret, Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Iakovos, Fr. George, etc. As I pointed out, St. Cyril was wrong in his preferred formulation, too, as Chalcedon confirmed. St. Maximos was a simple monk, but he more truly stood contra mundi than did St. Athanasius the Great, the learned head of the Egyptian Church."

As has been pointed out, there are Fathers who agree with a juridical view, too. Also as I have said, the EOC has not definitively spoken on the issue, as if she has, you could simply point this out.

"I am also no arguing that the quotes Athanasios provided are to be understood in a way other then their clear sense. I am noting that the Church of that day was quite beholden to doctrinal formulations that before and since are found to be foreign to Orthodoxy."

As Athenasios pointed out, how do you know your views are not the "captive" views? The fact is, you don't. You might claim that due to living Orthodoxy you are closer to the truth, but that implies those who speak of justification as a substitution or in a legal framework are living Orthodoxy less than you. There is no way to check this until the Church speaks, which it hasn't or I am sure you could appeal to something other than what looks like "penumbras and emanations". For example, if I say images are forbidden, you could point to the plain practices of the Church as well as an explicit statement in a church council. End of discussion.

Basically, you would have us accept what you are saying Orthodoxy is based on your own authority.

Finally, are you willing to say the theologians cited in support of a more juridical view of justification are wrong? Based on their writings it seems you would have to since they rather clearly state what you would say is a reflection of "Western Captivity".

Anonymous said...

This is why atheism was born in the West (more specifically born within the Reformed church, where it is more clear cut and cold-hearted).

Really?? Last time I looked Stalin wasn't raised in a "Reformed" culture.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

"Really?? Last time I looked Stalin wasn't raised in a "Reformed" culture."

Yeah, but Lenin and Stalin just stole the idea from that German Marx. The east can never, never, never learn anything from Germans - thus the eternal lesson of history =o)

Here is a question that I have about the whole discussion. I understand historically that different questions ended up being asked in the East and the West (indeed, I'd posit that different questions are being asked now, not only on the basis of East and West but also within the various languages within both East and West). However, sometimes it seems as though the East, when dealing with the West, rather than answering the questions the West had to answer, or evaluating the the answers to the questions raised as being good or ill, simply says, "We didn't have to deal with that question - so your answer is. . . well. . . it's not something we say, and we don't want to answer your silly Western question."

Am I overly off in my observation? It seems as though there can be some stonewalling - we in the West just can't "get" the real answer because we are too caught up in our questions or history. . . but that ends up being unsatisfactory.

Athanasios Boeker said...

The question I would like to ask, and I think this is the hinge that the whole "Romanidian/Kalomirosian party" line turns on, is "Do any of you lutherans really believe that God is a bloodthirsty tyrant that cannot just forgive without His pound of proverbial Flesh, or that He has a nagging wife named "neccesity" hanging over His head, that will not let Him forgive you?"

P.S. How is that for a Misrepresentation?

Past Elder said...

Atheism born in the West? I got one word for you -- Diagoras.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but Lenin and Stalin just stole the idea from that German Marx.

Marx was influenced by Kant, Voltaire and socialist intellectuals in France. His Jewish parents also had him baptized at the age of six with the view that it would help him achieve greater success in society.

Stalin, on the other hand attended seminary and ultimately rejected his Orthodox heritage. Can't blame that on anyone else.

Christine

123 said...

...the EOC has not definitively spoken on the issue...

The Orthodox Church, again, does not normally speak on any issue. The lives her tradition in its voluminousness across centuries and languages and personalities. Only when a specific problem arises within the Church does she speak, and then only after quite some time - she often prefers to leave such things to God and time following the lead of St. Gamaliel in Acts.

The example of icons is interesting. Was it only after the 7th Council that icons were 'really' allowed, because it was only then that the Church officially spoke? That would be the legalist, canonist example, but such is not the way. The Church hold the tradition of icons to be a teaching and practice of the Fathers. Not all understood this - even after what became known as the 7th EC - but it was the tradition of the Church.

As to whether I am on the right side or the wrong side, I simply work out my salvation in fear and trembling and try to remember I will give account for every word. I do not believe I have spoken contrary to the tradition. You are more than welcome to test that; I am more than willing to place my thoughts before the Church for correction or confirmation, which is the way things are done.

So, asking me to tell you the definitive position on anything but the dogmas from the 7 ECs is something that can't be done. Even 'Palamism' is not put forward in any official way apart from the way it is spoken of in the services, in the prayers, the lives and works of the saints.

Taking the same tactic, one will not find much in the services, in the prayers, the lives and works of the saints that go beyond a simple use of the judicial as a passing poetic metaphor rather than as the underpinning of a certain way of understanding salvation: justification by grace alone through faith alone.

...are you willing to say the theologians cited in support of a more juridical view of justification are wrong?

I am merely saying that the patristic leaning Protestant very much wants pedigree, and he can find it if he takes the wrong canon of truth to the Fathers as much as when he takes the same canon to the Scriptures.

I think this is the third time I have noted that juridical language is a part of the Orthodox tradition, but it is not used in the same way as Protestants use it (toward an idiosyncratic understanding of salvation/justification) or was an initial and not completely successful attempt to graciously use what were then the most modern, acadmeic terms and concepts to communicate with the non-Orthodox (much the same can be found later when the Church attempted to use 19th century German philosophy to communicate with the non-Orthodox) and is therefore not a helpful metaphor to use in any primary way. Met. Kallistos notes that much of the work from this time is is seen as having only "historical importance". Orthodoxy doesn't have 'confessional documents' in the way Protestants do - there is a different way.

...Stalin wasn't raised in a "Reformed" culture.

I said atheism, of the modern variety not that railing against ancient paganism, was born in the West, not that it didn't have adherents only there. Mao. Pol Pot.

William Weedon said...

In answer to Athanasios, no, we don't teach or believe that. The Lutheran Study Bible addresses the concern, though, under Romans 3:

Some thoughtless modern theologians have likened Paul's teaching on the atonement to child abuse because the Father sent the Son as a sacrifice. This assertion ignores Christ's willingness to make full satisfaction for sins. Christ is true God “reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). The Father sent the Son the way a patriotic father sends his son to war for the good of his nation. A father does not send a son cheerfully, but sincerely, anticipating sacrifice, victory, and reunion. See LSB 556:4-9

(which I cite here:

But God had seen my wretched state
Before the world's foundation,
And mindful of His mercies great,
He planned for my salvation.
He turned to me a father's heart;
He did not choose the easy part
But gave His dearest treasure.

God said to His beloved Son:
“It's time to have compassion.
Then go, bright jewel of My crown,
And bring to all salvation.
From sin and sorrow set them free;
Slay bitter death for them that they
May live with You forever.”

The Son obeyed His Father's will,
Was born of Virgin mother;
And God's good pleasure to fulfill,
He came to be my brother.
His royal pow'r disguised He bore,
A servant's form, like mine, He wore
To lead the devil captive.

To me He said: “Stay close to Me,
I am your rock and castle.
Your ransom I Myself will be;
For you I strive and wrestle.
For I am yours and you are Mine,
And where I am you may remain;
The foe shall not divide us.

“Though he will shed My precious blood,
Me of My life bereaving,
All this I suffer for your good;
Be steadfast and believing.
Life will from death the vict'ry win;
My innocence shall bear your sin,
And you are blest forever.

“Now to My Father I depart,
From earth to heav'n ascending,
And, heav'nly wisdom to impart,
The Holy Spirit sending;
In trouble He will comfort you
And teach you always to be true
And into truth shall guide you.)

123 said...

...we in the West just can't "get" the real answer because we are too caught up in our questions...

Good question/observation. This gets at the way in which Orthodox do theology: conciliarly, within the Church. The fact a question is being asked doesn't mean the Church will speak to it. Just because the question is asked by others that see themselves as Christian but which the Orthodox don't recognize as being such in the proper sense of the term doesn't mean it will be spoken to. As an extreme example, the Church of old didn't comment on the goings on within either the Nestorian or Non-Chalcedonian churches after they went into schism. The Church would speak on only intractable problems in a dogmatic fashion only once an idea or problem arose within her, and arose to such a degree that it caused significant problems (not just problem in this or that province). So, monoenergism and monotheletism came over from the Non-Chalcedonians and caused problems within the Church - it was spoken to. Origenism in its various forms would not die - it was spoken to. Iconoclasm moved from a theologoumena to an aggressive movement - it was spoken to and fought over for centuries.

The questions that so dominate Western religious discourse did not affect the Orthodox. Even after more prolonged contact with the West and Western missionaries, it barely affects the Orthodox. After the persecution of the Communists and the attempted eradication of the dominant religion of Eastern Europe (Orthodoxy, except in Poland, Czechoslavakia, Croatia, Albania, etc.) Protestant missionaries have had more of an effect on the Orthodox; this has happened at the same time as waves of former Protestants have converted to Orthodoxy in the West, which has led to more and more discussion regarding the Orthodox position on these foreign questions (plural for the various permutations of Protestant theology, even within 'denominations'). Tentative answers are beginning to be put forward, responses/corrective to them are given, as well.

The difficulty is in not being forced to argue within the categories and rules and terminology of a doctrine so obviously foreign to the mind of the Orthodox Church. Some feel these idioms can be used (as did many of those writing in the 17-19th centuries when they adopted RC or Protestant ways of speaking), others feel nothing can or should be said apart from what has been traditioned on to us; others are in the middle. The Church is feeling her way toward the best way to answer the questions raised, the best way to deal with them. The dramatic evolution and change in these doctrines makes it difficult to formulate a single answer. 100 years ago no one would have seen the kind of Baptist and Charismatic influence being exported, for instance, the modern forms of worship, bands, etc. In some ways, these changes help to answer the challenge of Protestantism for Orthodoxy: 'their Jesus is not the same yesterday, today and forever; they're not the same as last year.' The 'decadence' and perceived 'aggression' of the West also helps to undercut what would have been an allure not so many years ago.

More to the point, I think you can agree that asking the wrong question leads you to the wrong answer. For instance, is the universe made of earth, air, fir and water OR earth, air, fire, water and ether? Wrong question, wrong answer. That's a basic example, of course, but it gets at what the Orthodox (and converts to her) are or have come to realize about the presuppositions and idioms of mind lying behind much Protestant theology.

William Weedon said...

Or, in the words of Caemerer (great little book, Timothy, if you're reading this long thread!):

The simplest summary that Jesus could give of the work by which the church is built was: forgive sins. That is the great act by which God Himself plays the role of servant. Instead of demanding His due, inflicting a rightful penalty, gouging out His pound of flesh from each debtor, God gives His own dearest and best, His Son, into death for our sins. He does not hold the sins of the world against it; He becomes the great Forgiver. Then He puts that word of forgiveness into the lips of His people. (*Christ Builds His Church*, p. 43)

Edward Reiss said...

Orrologion,

"I am merely saying that the patristic leaning Protestant very much wants pedigree, and he can find it if he takes the wrong canon of truth to the Fathers as much as when he takes the same canon to the Scriptures."

Again, since the Church has not spoken, it is actually your private opinion that this is so. I do not accept I have the "wrong canon" simply because you have chosen one side of an intra-Orthodox issue. You can say your side is Orthodox all you want, but what you have not done is show that to be so.

"I think this is the third time I have noted that juridical language is a part of the Orthodox tradition, but it is not used in the same way as Protestants use it"

And I think this is the very thing under discussion. You merely assert it to be so. As I pointed out before, there is no reasonable way to change the language into something other than a juridical view of justification. I know this because yo udon't want to discyuss what any bishops or saints actually say, but instead say they cannot mean what they plainly say because of the "mind of the Church" or some such. If you do that, I cannot stop you, nor would I even if I could. As someone once said, you are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

Anyway, such an approach to the Scriptures, the fathers and other theologians seems much closer to liberal Protestantism without the social liberalism than historic Christianity. Why does everything have to be a cipher--except when the words actually agree with you, of course.

Edward Reiss said...

Athenasios,

No, and what Fr. Weedon said. :-)

Anonymous said...

He does not hold the sins of the world against it; He becomes the great Forgiver. Then He puts that word of forgiveness into the lips of His people.

Amen. Verbum Domini Manet iIn Aeternum.

More valuable than all the philosophical and patristic "pedigrees" in the world.

1 Corinthians 1:22-25

Christine

William Weedon said...

Christine,

Yes, of course. YET, I do want to acknowledge the "pedigree" concern that Chris referred to. It's not, as he asserts, that of a patristically minded Protestant, but the very concern of the Lutheran Symbols and so of the Lutheran Christian. They rest the claim of their teaching solidly upon the Sacred Scriptures, but they appeal to the Fathers to show that their understanding of the Sacred Scriptures especially concerning the Gospel of forgiveness is not NOVEL, but witnessed by the Church across the ages. That neither gives to the Fathers an infallibility they never claim for themselves nor does it denigrate them to being manipulated for one's own use. Rather, the joy is hearing from fellow Christians in ages past the very words of life from which the Christian still lives: words of the forgiveness of sins, divine life, and everlasting salvation anchored in the bloody death and glorious resurrection of the Son of God. Lutherans approach the Fathers as witnesses, not as "rule" as the FC states it so well.

Anonymous said...

Pastor Weedon,

I am neither an iconoclast nor antipatristic. Lutheran theology accords them a high place while recognizing that they often do contradict one another.

The same Fathers that inform Lutheran thinking are also responsible for many of the doctrines I was expected to accept as a Catholic and are still divisive between Lutherans and Catholics. Gregory the Great had his gifts to be sure, but giving a boost to purgatory was one I can do without.

For what it's worth.

Christine

123 said...

Again, since the Church has not spoken, it is actually your private opinion that this is so. I do not accept I have the "wrong canon" simply because you have chosen one side of an intra-Orthodox issue. You can say your side is Orthodox all you want, but what you have not done is show that to be so.

I have only claimed this is my opinion, and I quoted Abp Peter to underline that fact. Take it or leave it. There are facts aplenty to back up my 'opinions', but, as you can see, simply sketching things out requires far more pixels than is polite in a combox. The church of the ages did without massive touchstones of confessional orthodoxy for centuries, the Orthodox Church continues this backward tradition. Her mind is to be found and understood not primarily in decrees, but in its totality, its wholeness.

I have always founds texts obvious clear except when I go back to them later remembering what I thought they said. The Bible looked very different to me on its own terms than it did through the lens of Walther's Law and Gospel. In fact, rereading the Bible was the immediate precursor to my becoming Orthodox. After years hearing of Orthodox worship and prayer that are imbued with Scripture, those same Scripture speak and sing in a way, now, they never did before. Call it post-modernism if that's the intellectual windmill one prefers to tilt at; such change in the reader reading the unchanging Scriptures has been noted throughout Christian history, usually against those claiming Scripture and its perspicuity as the basis for their heterodox beliefs.

It's difficult to accept another's idiom as one's own.

Past Elder said...

The mind of the Church? The Church speaks? Submit it to the Church? What, When and How?

Judas at Starbucks, if I didn't already believe that "Orthodoxy" is simply a consensus that there is a consensus, with no consensus about what the consensus was, is, or will be, or who actually has it, just that ir exists, I would after reading all this 70 comments on.

Only speaks when it has to? When does it not have to? The Great Commission is reserved for special events?

The simple fact is, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches alike are nothing more than the state churches of the Roman Empire, anachronistically living after the Empire which created them, hardly the church of Jesus Christ or the Apostles, to which indeed its writers can be extended a subscription, but a quatenus one, insofar as they witness the Gospel, not the quia one of the EO or the RCC -- though at least in the latter, if you want to submit to or hear "the church" you know where in the hell to go, rather than to some consensus that there is a consensus about which there is no consensus except that there is a consensus which is proved by the consensus.

Bleeding Oracle of Delphi stuff, that.

123 said...

That's an interesting perspective, and I guess I can see how one might see that from the outside. That is not really the experience on the inside. There are differences to be sure, but not to any significant degree affecting the center of the faith. There are, of course, outliers here and there given perhaps too much rope, too much leeway (God does it for us, after all) in a Church the size and scope of Orthodoxy, but it doesn't rise to the level of the kind of diversity one finds even in the LCMS, not really. America is an odd ball and may perhaps allow greater 'diversity' due to its fragmented episcopacy, but America is teeny weeny within Orthodoxy, but people do mistake what's closest for what is.

The state church jibe will very quickly lead you away from the orthodox, catholic doctrines that the Reformers sought to retain. Evangelicals and Baptists and Charismatics don't usually mind jettisoning it, for the same reason, but you may want to be careful where your rhetoric may lead you. Incidentally, it's probably worth looking further into how church-state relations actually worked - there is a popular Dan Brown version of the same that is rather inaccurate, while also being focused on the bit of the Roman Empire that the Roman Empire let go and forgot as a backwater pretty quickly after its conversion, i.e., Rome. It should also be noted what areas lay outside of the Empire for quite some time - not just the 'monoculural heretics' either, but vast tracks of the Orthodox that were under Islam or Persia or barbarians who agreed with the Church that was also a state church here and there, but not where they were.

Past Elder said...

Well, I've never read any Dan Brown nor been to the movies made therefrom, and hell yes, there would hardly have been a Rome to be bishop of had not Justinian got it back. Speaking of which, I believe Gregory was rather enamoured to the Byzantine ladies of high station.

Although speaking of views from the inside, the view that the Roman Empire was essentially a Greek thing at least since Constantine would be a view indeed from the Greek inside, although I gotta say, when the Eastern Empire makes it a millenium after the Western implodes, it does have its talking points.

If "forensic justification", or not, the central article of faith on which the faith stands or falls, or not, is not at the core of the faith then what in all flying mitres and crosiers is?

Then again, late night TV is full of preachers hawking stuff that they say you won't really get until you buy in, so I guess that approach too is a quick path away from the orthodox and catholic faith the Lutheran Reformation conserved.

Anonymous said...

it's probably worth looking further into how church-state relations actually worked -

Looking into, as opposed to living within ??

Christine

Anonymous said...

I never really liked the "Jesus the Lawyer" image. ;)

I was challenged by this post I found elsewhere in a combox:

“Substitution is clearly an essential part of our understanding of atonement. The problem is when (primarily after Anselm) atonement is thought primarily as the propitiation of God’s wrath, as if it is God who needs to be changed in the atonement and not us.

For example: the evangelical protestant informs his would-be convert that God is a holy God and cannot tolerate sin. All people sin and therefore all deserve the just penalty for that sin. Christ took our place on the cross- God’s holy wrath placed on Him, so that we can be reconciled to God.

Note though, that in this scenario, it is God that has the problem that needed remedied, and so God is reconciled to us. But this is not how scripture portrays it.

God is always seeking sinners out. The voice of God walks in the garden calling out for the sinners. It was Adam who hid. The atonement changes us, reconciles us - not God.”

William Weedon said...

Jesus the Lawyer is present, though, in Scripture. Or should we say, Jesus the Advocate (Paraclete).

The problem with this caricature of the atonement is that it doesn't give the whole account. The "problem" (it is more dire than a problem, but since you used the term...) is not God's but the sinner's who cannot live before the holiness of the Blessed Trinity. So God devises a way for the sinner to stand in His presence - which standing in His presence proceeds to cleanse and sanctify the sinner through and through. Worshipping Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness under the blood of Christ, the sinner is slowly (in this life) but finally (at the resurrection) healed of the wounds that sin has inflicted. This is the Holy Spirit's ongoing work in our lives - and where it is not taking place, then there is no "justification" whatsoever. Said another way: The One who forgives sinners remains the implacable and unalterable Enemy of sin itself.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

Note though, that in this scenario, it is God that has the problem that needed remedied, and so God is reconciled to us. But this is not how scripture portrays it.

If I'm going to be smacked down with holy smite as a sinner - that really, really is my problem. In fact, something that involves smite is my problem. The fact that God alone can and does provide the solution does not mean that this somehow denotes a weakness, flaw, or imperfection in God. It simply shows that He acts in love and mercy, acts without any worth or merit on my part.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

More to the point, I think you can agree that asking the wrong question leads you to the wrong answer. For instance, is the universe made of earth, air, fir and water OR earth, air, fire, water and ether? Wrong question, wrong answer. That's a basic example, of course, but it gets at what the Orthodox (and converts to her) are or have come to realize about the presuppositions and idioms of mind lying behind much Protestant theology.

Ah, close - but I cannot let your analogy stand. You see, you have flipped one vital thing -- the question being asked is one that is considered "outmoded" today, and thus wrong. The East doesn't take the approach that the issues of the West of "outmoded", but rather that they are unimportant because they were not asked in the East.

A better example would be someone asking "What do we make of Stalin's policy of gulags" and having someone say, "I'm an American; we've not had the gulags nor been under Stalin, so your question is the wrong one to ask."

It sort of denies the impact of what has happened in the rest of the world - just as Orthodoxy can ignore what happens in the rest of the Church (of course, we're not really part of the Church, so who cares. . . other than Christ).

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

Another thought for consideration.

Rome refused to translate things out of Latin.

The East refuses to deal with concepts that are foreign to their immediate discussion.

I see a similarity - both would pull back from presenting God's Word into a changing society or context. One did it literally through language itself, the other through concepts.

Past Elder said...

Pastor Brown -- actually Rome did not refuse to translate things out of Latin; the Trent Catechism found no essential objection to vernacular, but thought that since the demand for vernacular was associated with those teaching doctrinal error, to do the former would in the popular mind lend credence to the latter.

Which is not at all to refute the similarity you see, but to suggest a finer focus on it -- that by staying with Latin exclusively out of fear of seeming to ratify what it saw as doctrinal error, the Roman church in a different way did the same thing as the East, place their immediate discussion foremost and not deal with anything foreign to it, in the process pulling back from proclaiming God's Word to a changing society or context.

Anonymous said...

The fundamental problem with Lutheran Atonement that I am confronted by is still that God doesn't save us from our sin - He saves us from Himself and His Holy, white-hot wrath against His disobedient sinful creation. God isn't really merciful in this paradigm, for He must still have His honor avenged/release wrath for past, present and future wrong doing.

If God was truly merciful He wouldn't have to "punish" anyone - not even the Messiah - in wrath. Rather, like the parable of the prodigal Son/Loving Father He would forgive and welcome back with no strings attached - without wrath. The cross should be viewed not as the punishment and wrath of God but rather as a "sponge" sucking up sin, death, and suffering, that they might be wrung out and deposited in hell where they belong. The Cross is "kenotic" - an emptying of sin that life may prevail.

Lutheran Atonement requires double punishment: once upon the cross for the Messiah, and then, also, if people do not believe in Him, those individual sinners too (eternally in the unquenchable fires of hell). It's the image of a big wrathful, angry, vengeful God and the breeding ground of Atheism.

Matt said...

Oruasent said:

If God was truly merciful He wouldn't have to "punish" anyone - not even the Messiah - in wrath. Rather, like the parable of the prodigal Son/Loving Father He would forgive and welcome back with no strings attached - without wrath. The cross should be viewed not as the punishment and wrath of God but rather as a "sponge" sucking up sin, death, and suffering, that they might be wrung out and deposited in hell where they belong. The Cross is "kenotic" - an emptying of sin that life may prevail.

Lutheran Atonement requires double punishment: once upon the cross for the Messiah, and then, also, if people do not believe in Him, those individual sinners too (eternally in the unquenchable fires of hell). It's the image of a big wrathful, angry, vengeful God and the breeding ground of Atheism.


BINGO (sorry not so profound). Hosea 6:6 fits well. Its about restoration, healing not some bi-polar vengeful God.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

God isn't really merciful in this paradigm, for He must still have His honor avenged/release wrath for past, present and future wrong doing.

You set up a false dichotomy there, one that is not present in the Scriptures. God is repeatedly shown as being both merciful an One who punishes sin. Take Psalm 28 - as soon as David calls upon the Lord's mercy, there is a declaration that God will punish those who are evil.

It is not that God is either merciful or just - it is that He is both. The Crucifixion is the method by which God cleanses us - and if we are not cleansed and placed under His mercy, then His Justice still stands. I would end up saying that the Eastern approaches minimize and slough off sin - but this ends up being old ground.

Edward Reiss said...

oruaseht ,

If God is never vengeful, what do we make of what he did to the Amalekites? "Blot our Amalek" is a reference to wiping out Amalek. In what way is that "healing" and not vengeance fo rAmalek's unprovoked attack against Israel? (Which is sort of like our unprovoked acts of sin....)

Also, as Re. Brown said, it is a false dichotomy to claim that God is either vengeful or merciful. It is like saying a soldier is either a loving father or the guy who shot the terrorist with the bombs strapped to his belly.

I would also like to add that the soteriology put forth by the Orthodox here more or less reinterprets the whole OT economy of salvation by more or less ignoring the bloody, vengeful parts while accepting the merciful, loving parts.

William Weedon said...

Oruaseht,

You've bought into a frequently offered mischaracterization of the traditional Western position; I know, for I bought into it myself for a time. It just doesn't stand the test, though. Go ASK folks if that's what they believe about God the Father and you'll find the truth. I did. The teaching that God in His justice punishes sin and that God in His mercy forgives sinners and that these two truths meet in stunning grace and mercy on the cross, does not leave the sinner cringing before a vengeful God, but rejoicing before a God whose love astounds and awes. He'd do THAT for me? He'd do THAT to have me as His own?

This is no inert message - it does not leave the sinner in his sin. It MOVES the sinner to hate his sin like never before and by the power God supplies to fight against it, overcome it, and be healed of its wounds.

Does "Jesus, Grant that Balm and Healing" sound like resignation to sin? Read through it again and think about this false caricature you are offering of Lutheran teaching.

William Weedon said...

Edward,

That is an extremely troublesome tendency, and one which I have noticed as well. In effect, it guts the Word of God. And Aslan is regarded as a "tame" lion. Folks miss the boat when they say:
But He's nothing but love, nothing but goodness. That is absolutely true, of course, but there's the terror: we're not!

Past Elder said...

Judas Priest in a mitre, didn't anybody read Ramchal above? He got it exactly right -- God ain't got no problem at all, we do, and if we are alive to manufacture such theological difficulties even that is by the mercy of God, who, if he were the vengeful God interested only in his own justice he would have removed us long ago as the surgeon removes deadly cancer from a body.

But he does not. Even at the Fall, he promises a way out, makes a covenant with Noe with all Man, calls out a people and gives them his Law to be an example to Man, then sends them Prophets to keep them on track, and with all that, neither they in particular nor Man in general can perfect themselves by works even when God himself shows them exactly how to do it.

Not that God didn't know it would go that way, we didn't; we always want to think it's just a matter of betterment, advancement, progress, enlightenment, instead of facing the fact of sin.

That is why the Law had to come before the Gospel. There can be no turning from sin if there is not an acknowledgement of sin to be turned from.

And that is where our theological difficulties really come from -- anything, even salvation, except if it's salvation from sin. That would make me a sinner, and a sinner does not want to say he's a sinner -- whereupon the mercy of God, on which the entire existence of everything depends, creates in him who came before God screaming for justice a plea for mercy, upon when the mercy of God in Christ is announced to him, even as said (when not replaced by some modern "option") at the beginning of the Divine Service.

123 said...

..."What do we make of Stalin's policy of gulags" and having someone say, "I'm an American; we've not had the gulags nor been under Stalin, so your question is the wrong one to ask."

That is a good question to ask and puts into context what it is that such an Orthodox response is received as. Thanks.

To stick with your metaphor, I would characterize the Orthodox response slightly differently. What we hear is, "There is a Gulag under my bed, there is a Gulag in the closet, there are secret renditions going on all around us to Gulags, the government's power is based on Gulags with the complicity of corporations and the Masons" or "Daddy, I'm afraid of Gulags, why do I have to go to a Gulag?", etc.

There is a preoccupation that is excessive and unhealthy. It takes something true - the existence of a Gulag or something like it, prisons, even secret prisons run by the CIA - and magnifies it so it looms large, it takes away boundaries of its use and knowledge, etc. Similarly, the juridical metaphor is seen to become a more literal basis for explaining a mechanism of salvation that puts salvation wholly in God's hands thus preserving 'security'.

One can argue against the misuse of the juridical metaphor or against the mistaken need to enshrine salvific certainty/surety as a central definition of salvation. I think the former is often something more keenly felt by Reformed and Roman Catholics, and the majority of non-Lutheran, non-Orthodox Christians hail from these denominations, so this has been a primary (tentative, of course) line of thought developed by the Orthodox. Former Lutherans tend to focus more on the latter as they see justification narrowly defined in its specifically Lutheran sense to rarely if ever used prior to Luther.

So, yes there are Gulags and they look a lot like prisons, but not all prisons are gulags and gulags are not ever present, ubiquitous tools of worldly power. Equally, yes, juridical language is used in Scripture and the Fathers, but it is not the ever present, ubiquitous underpinning and hermeneutical lens through which salvation is most properly understood - especially in the post-Reformation era -, for the Orthodox.

Note, I'm not arguing 'against' you or the Lutheran position, but simply attempting to explain or describe what is believed and why.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the excellent responses to my post. They still fail to answer the question of why God must be wrathful or vengeful or punish? If God is mercy & love, as is asserted, then what *greater than God* maxim makes Him *have to* unleash wrath an avenge His hurt honor?

These are ideas in concert with Greco-Roman egoism & honor mores. Plus a double helping of Anselm thrown in with a feudal notion or two and you've got the building blocks of Reformation Atonement. Historically, you can't find this Lutheran view of the atonement except in the last 500+/- years.

William Weedon said...

Again, NOT true. Consider the following, please:

For our sins, says the Apostle; we had pierced ourselves with ten thousand evils, and had deserved the gravest punishment; and the Law not only did not deliver us, but it even condemned us, making sin more manifest, without the power to release us from it, or to stay the anger of God. But the Son of God made this impossibility possible for he remitted our sins, He restored us from enmity to the condition of friends, He freely bestowed on us numberless other blessings. – St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Galatians 1

If Phinees, when he waxed zealous and slew the evil-doer, staved the wrath of God, shall not Jesus, who slew not another, but gave up Himself for a ransom, put away the wrath which is against mankind?…Further; if the lamb under Moses drove the destroyer far away, did not much rather the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world, deliver us from our sins? The blood of a silly sheep gave salvation; and shall not the Blood of the Only-begotten much rather save?…Jesus then really suffered for all men; for the Cross was no illusion, otherwise our redemption is an illusion also…These things the Saviour endured, and made peace through the Blood of His Cross, for things in heaven, and things in earth. For we were enemies of God through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. There must needs therefore have happened one of two things; either that God, in His truth, should destroy all men, or that in His loving-kindness He should cancel the sentence. But behold the wisdom of God; He preserved both the truth of His sentence, and the exercise of His loving-kindness. Christ took our sins in His body on the tree, that we by His death might die to sin, and live unto righteousness.--St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XIII

William Weedon said...

Or these:

“And the Lamb of God not only did this, but was chastised on our behalf, and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down on Himself the apportioned curse, being made a curse for us. And what is that but the price of our souls? And so the oracle says in our person: “By his stripes we were healed,” and “The Lord delivered him for our sins,” with the result that uniting Himself to us and us to Himself, and appropriating our sufferings, He can say, “I said, Lord, have mercy on me, heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee.” - Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica, X.1

For the wrath of man reaches at most the body, and the death of the flesh is the utmost that they can contrive against us, but when God punishes, the loss reaches not to the flesh alone – how could it – but the wretched soul also is cast along with it into torments. -- St. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily 87 on Luke

For it was by reason of Adam's transgression of the commandment that we, having our faces turned away from God, returned to our dust; for the sentence of God upon human nature was, Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return; but at the time of the consummation of this world, the face of the earth shall be renewed; for God the Father by the Son in the Spirit will give life to all those who are laid within it.--St. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily 36 on St. Luke

William Weedon said...

Or these:

And so the human race was lying under a just condemnation, and all men were the children of wrath. Of which wrath it is written: "All our days are passed away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told." Of which wrath also Job says: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble." Of which wrath also the Lord Jesus says: "He that believes in the Son has everlasting life: and he that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him." He does not say it will come, but it "abides on him." For every man is born with it; wherefore the apostle says: "We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." Now, as men were lying under this wrath by reason of their original sin, and as this original sin was the more heavy and deadly in proportion to the number and magnitude of the actual sins which were added to it, there was need for a Mediator, that is, for a reconciler, who, by the offering of one sacrifice, of which all the sacrifices of the law and the prophets were types, should take away this wrath. Wherefore the apostle says: "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." Now when God is said to be angry, we do not attribute to Him such a disturbed feeling as exists in the mind of an angry man; but we call His just displeasure against sin by the name "anger," a word transferred by analogy from human emotions. But our being reconciled to God through a Mediator, and receiving the Holy Spirit, so that we who were enemies are made sons ("For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God"): this is the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. – Enchiridion 33

William Weedon said...

Or even these by Palamas:

“A sacrifice was needed to reconcile the Father on high with us and to sanctify us, since we had been soiled by fellowship with the evil one. There had to be a sacrifice which both cleansed and was clean, and a purified, sinless priest…. God overturned the devil through suffering and His Flesh which He offered as a sacrifice to God the Father, as a pure and altogether holy victim – how great is His gift! – and reconciled God to the human race…Since He gave His Blood, which was sinless and therefore guiltless, as a ransom for us who were liable to punishment because of our sins, He redeemed us from our guilt. He forgave us our sins, tore up the record of them on the Cross and delivered us from the devil’s tyranny." --St. Gregory Palamas, Homily 16, 21, 24, 31

William Weedon said...

One more point, you ask "why MUST God be wrathful or vengeful?" That is the wrong question. The question is how has God revealed Himself to us in His Word? What does He say of Himself? Can you find the Church Fathers ever shying away from proclaiming the terrible reality of the Lord's wrath? I think not!

Acolyte4236 said...

One swallow does not make a spring. Even if the initial citation necessarily must be read as implying a penal model of the atonement and a vindictive theory of justice, this won’t be sufficient to show that this is Orthodox teaching. I can find plenty of statements among the Lutheran pietists that practically deny sola fide. Are we to take such statements as normative and representative for Lutheranism? Obivously not.

Second, why go back only that far? Basil’s homily on God not being the cause of evil certainly isn’t in line with the penal view of the atonement and a vindictive view of justice. Basil explicitly denies such an inference. The same is true for Maximus, Cyril and a host of other authors up through Mark of Ephesus and Palamas as well. These are all ecumenically approved and “inspired” teachers of the Church, trumping local synods and modern jurisdictional catechisms. Not only that, but Orthodox Scripture makes it clear that God is not the author of death. (Wisdom 1:13) So yes, the Church has spoken on the matter.

Third, the question isn’t if there is judicial language or not. It is analogous to the question about the meaning of dikiao meaning to declare righteous. That isn’t relevant. What is relevant is what theory of justice and righteousness is operative in those texts. Lots of different views of law and justice float through history using much the same terminology, just as various moral theories employ the same moral terms but mean significantly different things. It is not as if Utilitarians and Kantians agree on the meaning of “right”, though they both employ the same term. So talking about a “juridical” model isn’t really helpful.

Consequently, the language of “satisfaction” in Philaret needs to be fleshed out. What concept is denoted there since in the history of theology there are many theories of what constitutes satisfaction? One can’t move from one theological context to another and just assume that a translated phrase means the same thing not only in the respective languages, but in the respective theologies. It is just like with the Catholic term “merit” which does not mean in that theological system what most users of English take it to mean.

So what is required here is a demonstration of what is the operative theory of justice and law in the various texts. Otherwise it is just question begging. So far, none has been forthcoming and so all I see is a bunch of equivocating.

Acolyte4236 said...

(cont.)

In the same vein, I don’t know of any specialists in say Athanasius or Cyril who think that their language of justice and law picks out the Augustinian notion of vindictive justice. Not only that, even if it did, Augustine didn’t adhere to a penal model of the atonement as do the Lutherans and the Reformed, (regardless of what is contained in Lutheran hymns). So even if true, its rather Pyrrhic. And I don’t know of any specialist in Augustine who takes his Roman understanding of justice to be isomorphic with that of the Reformers either. And no scholar of Palamas that I have read either in the US, France or Greece thinks that Palamas holds to a penal model of of the atonement. Its like finding language of confession and absolution in Luther and then claiming he taught the same doctrine as the Pope.

And here clarity is required, because the Christus Victor model is a substitutionary model. Conflating substitution with penal model is a mistake. Anselm’s satisfaction theory is a substitutionary model of the atonement, but it is not the penal model of the atonement. The latter took another four to five centuries to develop and come about. Satisfaction for Anselm means something quite different for him than it does for later Protestants. Despite all of Weedon’s claims of caricature, scholar after scholar confirms that these fathers didn’t teach the penal model of the atonement or adhere to the theory of justice advanced in the Reformation period. I seriously doubt he has the expertise or the argument to over turn decades of non-Orthodox scholarly consensus on the matter.

Acolyte4236 said...

(cont.)

As for the good Father Salaris, I know him personally and I know plenty of people at his congregation and to my knowledge, none of them adhere to a penal model of the atonement and a vindictive theory of divine justice, especially when we have disussed this very point.

And no, iconoclasm wasn’t the overwhelming view of Church hierarchy in the 700’s. It was the imperially imposed policy at the point of a sword such that most confessions of it aren’t worth the paper they were written on, anymore than was the case when the emperors were Arian and imposed some species of Arianism. In places where there wasn’t imperial power the hierarchy most emphatically taught otherwise.

Opposition to a penal model of the atonement isn’t some product of the Paris school or Romanides per se. What is required is that Orthodoxy teaches a penal model rather than just employing juridical language or the language of satisfaction models in places. Good luck with that. And this is another way I know that the Church has spoken on this matter. There is no tradition of a penal model of the atonement in Orthodoxy just like there isn’t one of forensic imputation ungrounded in the state of the agent either.

As for the Russians, Orrlogion has rightly noted periods of Protestant and Catholic influence and this stretches to icons of the Trinity, icons of the Father and the Spirit, which are not permitted in Orthodoxy. This includes the intrusion of Gnosticism and German Idealism, which affected not only people like Soloviev in Russia, but Western authors like William Law in England and Jakob Bohme in central Europe. Are we to take such anomalies as acceptable too when they clearly contravene ecumenical teaching and canons? No.

As for converts, everyone is a convert to Orthodoxy. No one is born Orthodox. We are all baptized and chrismated. Its not as if when the doctor pulls you out that he sees the stamp on the ass and exclaims “Hey Bob, we got another Orthodox!”

The strategy of trying to lessen the gap between Orthodox and Lutheran teaching and thereby stave off conversions to Orthodoxy is misguided for a number of reasons. The every day liturgical experience will speak for itself. Second, the Lutherans still maintain a number of Roman unscriptural doctrines that can’t be justified with Sola Scriptura, such as the Filioque, their platonic understading of divine simplicity, the Beatific vision, etc. Not only that I have serious doubts the Lutherans uphold the appropriate Christology and instead along with the Reformed adhere to the heresy of monoenergism.

123 said...

Again, it's whether one takes wrath as metaphor or literal: is it different than God's right arm, eyes, forgetfulness, etc.?

Often the wrath being discussed is a 'state' of wrath, rather than the wrath of God at us, too.

Finally, there is also the way in which Sts. such as Basil, et al would tailor the level of their preaching to the understanding of their audience. That is, literal meaning for the simplest, typological and/or allegorical for the more advanced.

William Weedon said...

Perry and Chris,

Once again we arrive at the impasse that when the Fathers say what you do not wish them to say then we are misunderstanding them. I don't know away around that impasse, any more than I know a way to persuade you that Lutheran doctrine does not produce a picture of a blood-thirsty vengeful tyrant, but of a loving heavenly Father whose love is manifested in the gift of His Son into our flesh to bear our sin, die our death, and bring to us the gift of new resurrection life.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

What impasse? There'd only be such if there was some lack of scholarly consensus on what these texts mean, and there isn't. Patristic scholars of all stripes deny that the Fathers you cite teach a penal model of the atonement and a vindictive theory of justice.

i never claimed that the Lutheran view produces a bloodthirsty tyrant.Thats a rhetorical gloss. It does propose a penal model of the atonement, does it not? Does it propose a transfer of created moral credit from Christ to us does it not? And that that created moral credit is not grounded in the state of the agent, correct?

Where is any of that in Orthodoxy? Spoof texting without analysis, ignoring established scholarship on these texts doesn't really help your case. You need to demonstrate that the terms and texts mean what you claim that they mean, rather than just suppposing that the words mean what they mean in period centuries away in another language and theological context.

As for the Lutheran interpretation of the Fathers, isn't that done through the Lutheran confessions? Perhaps if you put the Lutheran confessions down the impasse would pass.

William Weedon said...

Perry,

You can speak of scholarship being certain of this, but I've not been convinced from the evidence that it is so and an appeal to scholarship can be a circumventing of dealing with the evidence.

About Lutheranism, we don't speak in any of the terms that you used for us. Lutherans don't have a single "theory" of the atonement and it can readily be shown that the fully-orbed Scriptural doctrine of the same (which cannot be fit into any single "theory") is taught in our churches. Lutherans don't speak of "created moral credit" (where on earth does such lingo originate?), but of our Lord's most holy obedience to His Father's will. We do not speak of a "created moral credit not grounded in the agent" but we do rejoice that through living faith, Christ's righteousness is given to us as our own, and that through it we stand before the Father clothed in His holiness. Further, we clearly state that NO ONE is clothed in this righteousness who is not simultaneously being renewed by the Holy Spirit and healed of the wounds of sin. The way that Dr. Luther expressed this once is:

This life is not godliness, but growth in godliness;
not health, but healing;
not being, but becoming;
not rest, but exercise.
We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way;
the process is not yet finished, but it has begun;
this is not the goal, but it is road;
at present all does not gleam and glitter, but everything is being
purified.
- Martin Luther, A Defense and Explanation of All Articles (AE 32:24)

Phil said...

"Lutherans don't have a single 'theory' of the atonement..."

Thanks for emphasizing this, Pr. Weedon. I've always thought it was strange to talk about "theories" of the atonement. Which "theory" of the atonement does the Trinity subscribe to? It's a silly question.

What do the Eastern Orthodox make of Psalm 137? Could Christ pray those last verses without sinning?

William Weedon said...

Phil,

It's great to just run through the Scriptures and see what our Lord's sacrifice accomplishes - it totally bursts the bonds of every theory (also true of our hymnody, drenched as it is in the Sacred Scriptures).

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

The reference to scholarship was just to note that you had not dealt with the evidence. That was the point. You give no analysis. Your argument turns on ignoring what those terms mean in their contexts. The scholarship brings analysis-linguistic, historical, theological and philosophical. The fact that non-Orthodox scholars across the globe come to the same judgment contrary to your claims indicates that it is not a matter of the Orthodox simply saying that the texts don’t mean what they appear to mean. What it indicates is that there is textual eisegesis going on and on your side of things. All of those scholars, even Lutherans, aren’t coming to the same conclusion for decades and even centuries because they were reading Romanides. Thunberg isn’t exactly a member of the Orthodox Church last I checked.

Noting that Anselm and Calvin speak of satisfaction is no proof that Anslem taught what Calvin taught, because it isn’t true and demonstratably so.

Really? Lutheranism doesn’t speak of the righteousness whereby God is righteous qua the divine essence as opposed to the righteousness imputed to us? That’s funny, because I keep finding it in Luther, Melancthon, Chemnitz, Gerhard, Walther, et al. They don’t deny that the imputation is grounded in the soul? That’s funny because that is what the above authors keep telling me, not to mention all Lutheran seminarians and pastors I know. Justification is not grounded in the soul of the agent but in the forensic imputation. If the justice is not God’s uncreated justice, then its created and earned by Christ qua man in his earthly life. Then it’s a created moral credit.

And even if it were true that the Lutherans do not have a single theory, their teaching entails a penal model nonetheless as they affirm themselves. Jesus is punished instead of us.And I do think the Scriptures teach a specific theory, as the church taught for the first thousand years, namely the Christus Victor model, which is why Lutherans like Aulen tried to piggy back Lutheran theology onto it.

Is Christ’s obedience on earth, does that incur merit or divine favor or justice? If so, is that God’s eternal justice or something created post incarnation?

What you mean when you speak of Christ’s righteousness as your own its in terms of being yours like the term square can be applied to a circle. Its forensic and alien righteousness. It is not mine in so far as I participate it in realistically. Its an extrinsic non-constitutive relation.

You speak of Christ’s righteousness, so again, is this his eternal righteousness or one he earns on earth?

And it is irrelevant that you affirm a contiguity between inner renovation and forensic justification, since that doesn’t imply that the forensic declaration is grounded in the soul and that we congruously participate in the divine activity as say Augustine taught. Ockhamism dressed up like Augustine is still Ockhamism. Moreover, the sanctification of the soul is a created moral effect of divine efficient causation. On your theology, like Rome, God is not the formal cause of creatures and hence God has no real or constitutive relations with creation. Luther himself was sufficiently explicit on this point following the scholastics.

Past Elder said...

God bless me sideways -- first Scripture, then the "Fathers", then scholars of the "Fathers" -- is this the faith delivered to fishermen and a tax collector to take into all the world or a graduate seminar (relax, took 'em and taught 'em)?

William Weedon said...

Perry,

Again, your philosophical categories just miss the boat. You claim you understand Lutherans, but with every word you write I'm convinced you don't. The righteousness which the Blessed Trinity imputes to us poor sinners is neither the righteousness of the divine nature alone nor the righteousness of the human nature alone, but the righteousness of the total Person of the Son of God according to both natures in His most complete obedience to the will of His Father. This is given us as a gift, but it is a LIVING gift that enlivens those who receive it. For Luther and for Lutherans, the "grace" (imputed righteousness and forgiveness of sins) can never be separated from "the gift in grace" (the Holy Spirit).

Anonymous said...

If God is mercy & love, as is asserted, then what *greater than God* maxim makes Him *have to* unleash wrath an avenge His hurt honor?

Hurt honor? No. God's wrath is against sin, He's not subject to the weakness of human ego.

Ananias and Sapphira found out what happened when they lied to the Holy Spirit.

God forgave David for his adultery with Bathsheba but at the expense of the life of their child.

You'll have to do a whole lot of Jeffersonian Bible chopping if you want to have it your way, Burger King style.

And once again I must ponder that most ponderable of ponderings: why is it that Lutherans who become Catholic don't feel the need to keep coming back and nattering about why everyone should be Catholic.

What is it with you Orthodox?? And can any of you state your positions in two paragraphs or less?

Gott hilf uns!

Christine

William Weedon said...

Perry,

That last came across as a slam, and as I reread it I cringed. What I mean is this: just as the Orthodox rightly say that no one can understand Orthodoxy from reading a book, just so with Lutheranism. It needs to be lived. It is not a philosophical theory or some sort.

William Weedon said...

P.S. Another way of getting at "grace" and "gift in grace" is to recall that our Catechism teaches that WHERE there is forgiveness of sins, THERE is also LIFE and SALVATION.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

If I miss the boat with philosophical categories, then sola fide misses the boat with its philosophical categories. This is just special pleading on your part.

Second, I am convinced with every word you write that you do not understand Scripture, the Fathers or Orthodox teaching.

Third, Is the righteousness of Christ a single activity or two activities? And in Christ’s willing not to go to the Cross obedience or disobedience to the Father’s will?

Fourth, the question is not whether the imputation and sanctification can be separated or not. Two contiguous entities might always exist together simultaneously, but that doesn’t answer the question of whether one grounds the other. So I am quite aware that Lutherans hold that they always go together, but that isn’t the question. Its an attempt to evade the question, which is, is one the ground for the other or not? Is this a realist taxonomy or a nominalistic one?

Further if Lutheranism and Orthodoxy must be understood by living them, then why do you keep appealing to texts to show some kind of theological isomorphism? This is again special pleading. When I adduce texts, its that we can’t understand Lutheranism from texts, but when you adduce texts, its somehow the clear and obvious meaning.


If the gift is a living gift, what is the life given? Is it the eternal life of God or a created effect in the soul? Are attributes all one and the same in God or real different things? Are they predications or propterties?

Edward Reiss said...

Regarding scholarship and the meaning of words. Isn't it true that the burden is on the one who asserts a meaning appear from the natural sense of the words? Also, there is scholarship which re-interprets history and theology in accordance with new theories. JEDP anyone?

Another thought, Orrologian says that only by being Orthodox can we understand the words in an Orthodox way, while Perry says that Scholarship tells that our interpretation is wrong. Which is it? Can we understand them through scholarship or being Orthodox? The way Orrologion was stating things he seems to deny scholarship can tell us what the words mean, only being immersed in Orthodoxy xan.

And if words are so useless outside of an Orthodox setting to tell us something about Orthodoxy, why do Orthodox post comments at all? Shouldn't they just ask us to come to a liturgy and let things begin to roll?

I don't think God speaks as if he was encrypting messages so that only those who are in the "know" can understand what he says. In fact, that seems closer to a gnostic approach to the communication--don't look at what is written or said, look for the hidden meaning which only initiates can see.

William Weedon said...

Perry,

I have no idea what you mean by sola fide having a philosophical category.

As to whether I understand the Scriptures or the Fathers, well, I know that I do not understand either as well as ought, and pray the Holy Spirit to continually grant me His illumination and the grace of obedience to what He teaches.

The righteousness of our Lord is of His PERSON and thus involves the synergy of both human and divine wills. Our Lord could not sin so His asking the Father for another way was not sinful (can the Holy One sin? No). But what is most important is His submission to the way that the Father did will salvation to be accomplished.

The ground of the imputation is never in the new obedience; the ground of the new obedience is in the imputation.

I must have have missed the texts you adduced? You mentioned authors, but didn't cite them, unless I'm much mistaken?

The life that is given is the life of the Blessed Trinity Himself. Our Symbols specifically teach that not just the gifts of God, but God Himself indwells sinners. "I in You and We in them." Jn 17

The attributes of God, according to Jacobs, cannot simply be regarded as synonymous with the Divine Nature, for in His omniscience God knows things which He does not will (He is never the cause of sin, for as St. Augustine said, He is the cause of all causes, but not the cause of all choices).

Acolyte4236 said...

Reiss,

Weedon asserts that the meaning is the same in the texts he cites and what the Lutherans teach. He then bears the burden of demonstration. So far, all I have seen is the tossing out of more texts. I mean the ones from Palamas are a hoot. I’ve read a lot of Palamas and Palamas’ scholarship and no one working with the original texts thinks Palamas endorses the ideas that are found in the Reformers regarding the atonement. Its absurd.

Second, so Orthodox are free to discard the lexigraphical determination that dikiao, to justify, means to declare righteous too? Fantastic.

I am saying that scholarship can fix and find out publically accessible facts. I don’t think Orrologian is denying that. He thinks I suspect a deeper meaning of the term understand, but I will let him speak for himself.

I don’t think God speaks “encrypting” messages either, which is why I don’t think every Father, including Augustine who didn’t believe in Sola Fide, as Luther himself admitted in a good number of cases, completely misunderstood salvation by faith in the Scriptures. Luther’s approach has a good deal of similarity to Gnosticism, especially in regards to the canon. These books are canonical because they preach my a priori decided upon message and these don’t because they don’t. See Lee's, Against the Protestant Gnostics.

Past Elder said...

Bloody right. All this "Orthodox" stuff, if that were Christianity, proves nothing but that Nietzsche, the only philosopher worth reading, was right, God can't be omnipotent because he manifestly cannot speak clearly.

Generalfeldmarschall von Moltke once said no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I am amazed that any interest in "Orthodoxy" survives first contact with the Orthodox.

Herr Messdiener, if you wish this to attain to an academic discourse, I would suggest you begin by following its conventions, and address the participants by title, which in "Weedon's" case would be "Pastor" or "Reverend".

Anonymous said...

I thank thee (says the Orthodox), my heavenly Father that I am not like other men (the Lutherans).

Praise the Lord!

It was bad enough that ten years ago when I was deciding whether to swim the Tiber or the Bosphorous that I headed to Rome.

I now see it could have been worse.

What is this, grunt school where everybody is called out by their last names??

Christine

William Weedon said...

I do often wonder if many people who object to sola fide do so because they continue to confuse a God-wrought and lively faith with a mere knowledge of historical data. I always think back to Acts 15:9 - cleansing their hearts by faith.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

Is faith the formal cause of justification? Is it an instrumental cause? Is it the only formal cause? Last I checked formal causation was a philosophical category. Luther’s theology and that of post Reformation Lutheran theologians like Gerhard are filled with philosophical categories, especially when they talk about sola fide. I can throw a rock and hit Concordia publishing from my house so its not like I haven’t read this stuff. I was just at the seminary yesterday in fact.

Sola fide turns on philosophical distinctions, which is why Augustine didn’t believe it since he didn’t endorse the same Ockhamistic philosophical distinctions.

I didn’t ask of it involved the synergy of both his wills or not. I asked if it was one or two activities.

Second, I asked if attributes were all the same in God or not? Are they predications or properties?

Third, do you deny that Christ willed not to go to the Cross? He says “not as I will.” Why would willing to not go to the Cross be sin, since you seem to think so?

Fourth, was Christ predestined to obey and go to the Cross or could he have done otherwise?

Fifth, if the righteousness is the righteousness of his person, is his person divine or human and divine?

“The ground of the imputation is never in the new obedience; the ground of the new obedience is in the imputation.”

Right, like I said, the declaration of justified is not grounded in the agent. Thanks for confirming what I wrote.

If Jacobs says that, why does he disagree with Chemnitz who says that the difference in attributes is mental and in God they are all one and the same? Why is it that Lutherans disagree on the doctrine of God? I guess we can’t understand what Lutheranism is after all.

And its ambiguous to say synonymous with the divine nature, as that could be referring to linguistic usage or metaphysics. What text from Jacobs do you have in mind?

Edward Reiss said...

"Weedon asserts that the meaning is the same in the texts he cites and what the Lutherans teach. He then bears the burden of demonstration. So far, all I have seen is the tossing out of more texts. I mean the ones from Palamas are a hoot. I’ve read a lot of Palamas and Palamas’ scholarship and no one working with the original texts thinks Palamas endorses the ideas that are found in the Reformers regarding the atonement. Its absurd."

The burden is on you guys to show other wise. The words seem pretty clear on their face. Maybe there is a mistranslation. Maybe Moses misspoke about the Amalekites. Or maybe the EODox who make these claims are wrong. Those have to be shown, and ISTM that the words them selves point against the EODOx arguments, here.

And as is my experience with the EOdox, you are not engaging with what is written or said, instead you say we don't understand and go on to discuss obscure philosophical categories (At least they are obscure to me)or assert that only the EOdox have the decryption key which changes "propitiation for sins" into something else.

"Luther’s approach has a good deal of similarity to Gnosticism, especially in regards to the canon. These books are canonical because they preach my a priori decided upon message and these don’t because they don’t. See Lee's, Against the Protestant Gnostics."

I actually read that book. :-) it was pretty good, too.

In any case, whether or not Luther's approach is gnostic or not does not make my claim--that looking for an esoteric meaning in the text seems gnostic--any less forceful. See Irenaeus, St. for examples of gnostics twisting rather clear texts into something quite different from what they say.

Phil said...

Pr. Weedon,

Your point is very important. Understanding this helped me come to terms with Melanchthon's language in the Confessions that the principal purpose of liturgical ceremonies is to teach--interpreted wrongly, this means that they're some kind of malleable object lesson, a perpetual "show-and-tell" put on for the sake of the enlightenment of the students in the nave...

But what do they teach? They teach the faith. And if they teach the faith, then they aren't purely rationalistic, intellectual, educational, or informational in an Enlightenment sense.

Edward Reiss said...

Past Elder,

"Bloody right. All this "Orthodox" stuff, if that were Christianity, proves nothing but that Nietzsche, the only philosopher worth reading, was right, God can't be omnipotent because he manifestly cannot speak clearly."

I wonder if that could lead one to atheism.....

Sorry for the snark, but I couldn't resist.

Phil said...

Edward,

This is what Wittgenstein realized: "What can be said, can be said clearly"--and not because of an elaborate philosophical justification but because the act of speech assumes that speaking clearly is possible.

Unfortunately, it seems like he wanted to believe but couldn't find what he was searching for.. Have you read J. W. Montgomery's Tractatus?

Acolyte4236 said...

Reiss,

No, the burden is on the one making the claim. He makes the claim that they teach his doctrine or the same idea. So again, no demonstrations have been forthcoming. You are reading most of these through translation form hundreds of years ago. Shall we take every English word in Scripture as sufficiently clear too? The meanings of words change over time and across cultures and languages. I don’t know why you get to assume that they don’t.

Simply producing texts doesn’t prove anything. Again, I can prove that Anselm and Calvin taught the same thing by the same method, since they both use the term “satisfaction.” But this is absurd and demonstratably false. So if its true there that the same term can mean something different for different theologians, then you cannot assume that similar terms mean the same thing across contexts.

So when Catholics speak of Confession and Absolution, do they mean what the Lutherans mean? I mean after all, they use the same words. See look here I can produce the texts. Same words, must be the same meaning. You Lutherans are just Catholics with works righteousness then! Oh please. Don’t be silly.

And as is my experience with the EOdox, you are not engaging with what is written or said, instead you say we don't understand and go on to discuss obscure philosophical categories (At least they are obscure to me)or assert that only the EOdox have the decryption key which changes "propitiation for sins" into something else.

I am not claiming the meaning is esoteric. I am saying that in different languages and different conceptual models terms can and often do change meaning. That requires no esotericism as anyone who learns a second or third language can attest.

It could only be established that the texts could only teach clearly what you think if it has so been established, which it hasn’t. So far, all that’s been established is that certain words and phrases occur in a variety of contexts and users of given languages through translations. That’s it.

William Weedon said...

Folks,

I have to bow out of the conversation for the time being - a homily to finish and then I'll be away from the computer the rest of the evening. But by all means, have at it. Please remember, though, to speak kindly and explain your neighbor's words in the best light. We're not served by pride and haughtiness in our dealings with any other, particularly those whom we disagree with. I'll join in again when I can.

Edward Reiss said...

Perhaps a little Luther could clear things up:

"This is certainly an extraordinary situation! It is just as if I denied that God had created the heavens and the earth, and asserted with Aristotle and Pliny and other heathen that the world existed from eternity, but someone came and held Moses under my nose, Genesis 1 [:11] "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"; I would try to make the text read: "God" now should mean the same as "cuckoo," "created" the same as "ate," and "the heavens and the earth" the same as "the hedge sparrow, feathers and all." The word of Moses thus would read according to Luther's text, "In the beginning the cuckoo ate the hedge sparrow, feathers and all," and could not possibly mean, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." What a marvelous art this would be—one with which rascals are quite familiar! Or, if I denied that the Son of God had become man, and someone confronted me with John 1 [:14], "The word became flesh," suppose I were to say: Let "Word" mean "a gambrel" and "flesh" "a mallet," and thus the text must now read, "The gambrel became a mallet." And if my conscience tried to reproach me, saying, "You take a good deal of liberty with your interpretation, Sir Martin, but—but—" etc., I would press until I became red in the face, and say, "Keep quiet, you traitor with your 'but,' I don't want the people to notice that I have such a bad conscience!" Then I would boast and clap my hands, saying, "The Christians have no Scripture which proves that God's Word became flesh." But I would also turn around and, bowing low in humility, offer gladly to be instructed, if they would show me with the Scripture that I have just finished twisting around. Ah, what a rumpus I would stir up among Jews and Christians, in the New and the Old Testaments, if such brazenness were allowed me! "

Cited here:

http://tinyurl.com/nvgtnz

It boils down to whether or not words have a meaning, or if every time we say something it is a wide open discussion as to what we just said. It seems to me your approach--that the natural sense of a statement needs to be shown to be so--destroys language. Maybe yo ucan show that we are not reading things according to the natural sense of what was written, but I have only seen that asserted, not proven.

When someone says to you "my car is in the driveway" do you immediately begin to wonder what they meant by "car", "in" and "driveway" because the natural sense of the words is something debatable? I admit it is possible for "my car is in the driveway" to be ironic, or something--but normally it means what it says.

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

This is it! I got it!

I, as a Lutheran, say that I have just as much a claim to the fathers as anyone else - so I can cite them.

The East says we don't.

Hence, I think, if I cite a father, someone needs to prove that I am citing them in error.

The East says, "You know nothing about our fathers."

It's the same approach Irenaeus used towards the Gnostics and Scripture -- they aren't their books, so they have no right or ability to cite them. We play on, like Christ preaching to the Scribes and Pharisees, "You claim to be the teachers of the Church and you do not even know this?"

I wonder if Irenaeus would have hung out on Gnostic blogs. Just perhaps. But I know Christ would have kept on preaching to the Scribes and Pharisees.

Past Elder said...

Apparently the "Greeks" are still searching for wisdom and find the Gospel a scandal.

So it's morphed into wisdom.

No worries Herr Reiss, what's a snark or two among friends?

Athanasios Boeker said...

It seems to me that when the Fathers of the Church speak of God Punishing people, the point they are making is that God justly allows forwarned consequences to take place. Consequences that He has chosen to be the punishment for sin.

God justly gives man over to what man has voluntarily chosen for himself ie. bondage to the the devil, and to a law of cause and effect, which as stated before was God's choen punishment for sin.

It is kind of like the law of gravity. If God said the day you jump off a thirty story building you shall die, He is not going to suspend His law of gravity just for you-you will die. It is like for some reason The Son of God submitted Himself to the laws of gravity to save us. So the Son placed Himself under a general punnishment for sin. It is not a belief that the Father throws the Son off the building.

Athanasios Boeker said...

I would like to add to my last comment by saying certainly God did not create death. And certainly we brought it upon ourselves by our wilful transgression of His commandment. But does this mean that God was completely inactive in His pronouncement of the sentence on Adam and Eve, in their expulsion from Eden, in His placing the cherubim with the sword of fire to prevent their return? Of course not! God did not will our first parents to fall. Nor did He, being Life Itself, create death. However, He allowed our first parents to fall, and He permitted death to enter into their life.

William Weedon said...

Athanasios,

Luther would agree with you. He once said:

“Everything that God makes he creates for life. He created things that they might be, and he called into being things that didn’t exist, as if they did [Rom. 4:17]. This means that life belongs to God’s purpose. But death has been introduced into the world through the devil’s envy, and on this account the devil is called the author of death. For what else does Satan do than seduce from true religion, provoke sedition, cause wars, pestilence, etc., and bring about every evil?”

Perry,

Did you have anything in specific you hold to be mistranslated in the citations I offered? I confess that I am foolish enough to believe when St. Cyril of Jerusalem said that in God's truth He would either have to destroy all men or cancel the sentence He imposed, He found a way to preserve both the truth of His sentence and the exercise of His loving-kindness on the cross of Christ, well, I don't think you have to be an Easterner to "get" what he's rejoicing in there. Maybe I'm just being dense, but I don't think what the Fathers have written here is hard to understand or contrary to the ways the words sound.

That is not to argue that the Fathers always use terms in the same way as Lutherans (for they don't always use terms in the same way as each other!), but that if you read citations in context, how a particular term is being used usually comes clear.

What words do you think we're misunderstanding?

William Weedon said...

P.S. I AM leaving now. I may check in later tonight. Maybe not - but will tomorrow for sure. The men intend to trounce the women at pinochle. All's fair in cards!

Athanasios Boeker said...

Now as far as God "not" have retributive justice, please explain the following passages:

"But further, attend, I pray, to the very principle of justice, and come to your own case. You have different sorts of servants: and some are good and some bad; you honour therefore the good, and smitest the bad. And if you are a judge, to the good you award praise, and to the transgressors, punishment. Is then justice observed by you a mortal man; and with God, the ever changeless King of all, is there no retributive justice ? Nay, to deny it is impious. For consider what I say. Many murderers have died in their beds unpunished; where then is the righteousness of God? Yea, ofttimes a murderer guilty of fifty murders is beheaded once; where then shall he suffer punishment for the forty and nine? Unless there is a judgment and a retribution after this world, you charge God with unrighteousness. Marvel not, however, because of the delay of the judgment; no combatant is crowned or disgraced, till the contest is over; and no president of the games ever
crowns men while yet striving, but he waits till all the combatants are finished, that then deciding between them he may dispense the prizes and the chaplets. Even thus God also, so long as the strife in this world lasts, succours the just but partially, but afterwards He renders to them their rewards fully."

St. Cyril of Jerusalem Catechetical Lecture 18, paragraph 4

And:

"Plato is proved to be more religious than these men (Marcion and his ilk), for he allowed that the same God was both just and good, having power over all things, and Himself executing judgment, expressing himself thus, And God indeed, as He is also the ancient Word, possessing the beginning, the end, and the mean of all existing things, does everything rightly, moving round about them according to their nature; but retributive justice always follows Him against those who depart from the divine law. Then, again, he points out that the Maker and Framer of the universe is good. And to the good, he says, no envy ever springs up with regard to anything; thus establishing the goodness of God, as the beginning and the cause of the creation of the world, but not ignorance, nor an erring Æon, nor the consequence of a defect, nor the Mother weeping and lamenting, nor another God or Father."

St. Ireneus of Lyon Against Heresies (Book III, Chapter 25, paragraph 5)

Anonymous said...

This is the most fascinating theological discussion I have ever witnessed! Reading the posts back and forth is much like watching a Star Wars Light Saber Battle. But who is the Sith? -- don't answer that. ;)

For the record, I'm not Orthodox, but I am challenged by their theology and practice. It is the only theological challenge left for Lutheranism. And it *is* a challenge!

Past Elder said...

Challenge? The only challenge is not to be convulsed by gales of laughter that such an anachronism should still exist.

The Sith, hmm, a species conquered by renegade monks, which after centuries of cultural inbreeding gave rise to many manifestations but all recognisable by their consensus on being Sith -- well that ain't too hard to figure out, is it?

William Weedon said...

The Jacobs text I cited is from his *Elements of Religion* p. 36:

"While God's nature is not the sum of His attributes, our knowledge of His nature is our knowledge of the sum of His attributes. But this does not imply that the distinction between the attributes exists only in the human mind or in the Divine revelation as it accommodates itself to the human mind. The distinction is a real one, since the relations which they express are different. God's knowledge cannot, e.g., be identified with His will; for the knowledge includes some things that the will excludes. Sin is an object of God's knowledge, but not of God's will."

Jacobs here recognizes something quite consonant with the biblical revelation which I believe Chemnitz and Gerhard overlooked, when they asserted that the distinction between divine attributes was only in the human mind. [And it is always worthwhile to recall that for Lutherans, the theological works of Gerhard and Chemnitz et. al. are highly valued and studied, but Lutherans hold that dogma only to be binding upon us which is set forth in the Book of Concord. ]

Edward Reiss said...

oruaseht,

A few years ago, there was a very active and interesting discussion forum between Lutherans and Orthodox. It is called Orthodox Lutheran Dialogue. There is a lot of good information in there, including posts by Orrologion, Fr. Weedon and me, among others. Here is the URL, it might help you as there were some very informed Orthodox commentators there too.

http://tinyurl.com/na8mlv

Lucian said...

I was also brought up with such an understanding. Everybody was, and still is. And I had no "problem" with it. Nor was I aware of ANY particularly earth-shattering differences between us and other Christian religions (Protestants or Catholics). The Catholics had the Pope and the Filioque, and crossed themselves backwards. The Protestants had "problems" with the Saints and with Icons and with Priests and with incense and with the sign of the Cross. But I had no idea that there is or that there might be something else. And the Bible also speaks about God's anger, punishment, jealousy, revenge, and so forth, and so do our prayers.

BUT...

But I'm an intellectual, like my father before me, and I have this mental problem: I just can't stop thinking... So, completely unaware of anything deeper, I basically reached a point where I discovered an interesting curiosity, which incited my logic, but not in any meaningful way... only in the sense that it was somehow weird, and were I to present Christianity to someone, and if that certain someone were to ask me this question, which was puzzling me (though only superficially), I would have no answer to give to him, and I didn't want to look foolish. (Besides, being a logical fellow, I also like being rigurous in my thinking -- that's why I liked St. Thomas Aquinas and his Scholastic thought so much, and that's why I liked Catholicism so much: they were like us, they didn't proselytise, -like the Protestants did-, and they had all this cool, well-developed logical thing going on).

So, what was it that was beginning to puzzle me? Well, it was nothing else than the well-known and un-surprising Parable of the Prodigal Son. Everybody knows what it's about. It's common-knowledge. Nothing new or surprising in it. I began sensing that its logic might contradict the other logic. But I didn't dispare, nor did I dare thought that there might be something super-deep to this seeming contradiction. Why so? Because whenever there were contradictions, they were resolved in a manner which destroyed neither one of the two sides involved (like, for instance, the seeming contradiction between our religion teaching us not to bow down to idols [on one hand], yet honor icons on the other: both sides were right: Exodus 25:18 does NOT contradict Exodus 20:4 -- obviosuly!). So I did nothing, and was not particularly intrigued by it either, only superficially.

Then other stuff kept coming up. There was this thing with dispassion-less-ness. That's how God was constantly portrayed; that's how the Saints (especially the Desert Fathers) were always described; meekness, forgiveness, and un-evil-ness were main themes. And this also seemed to contradict logic #1 and, not only that, but side with logic #2 against it. I was further puzzled, but still waiting for a way out, an answer that would neetly explain them both, or harmonize them, if You will.

What was the contradiction? Dispassion-less-ness means having no passion. (Logical enough, since God obviosuly has no inclination towards sin: it's a no-brainer). BUT the list of passion (which the holy monks avoided) included anger, wrath, rage, harboring ill towards someone; and they exhibited forgiveness, love, patience, humility, and so forth -- and rightly so, since they were merely living out Christ's clear words contained in the Preaching on the Mount of Olives.

So, now basically we have The Parable of the Prodigal son, and the "dispassion"-thing, and the monks with their lives and their writings, and the Saints, and the Preaching on the Mount of Olives.. and even the icons! (dispassion is the key word for describing how the Saints depicted in Orthodox icons look like; as opposed to those in post-Renaissance Catholic paintings) -- all these things made a common front, as it were, against logic #1, which had to do with God's justice, original sin, the punishment and/or repercussion of the sin(s) of the faters on the heads of their children: ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

[...to be continued...]

Lucian said...

[...continued from my previous comment...] :

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
(Adam & the rest of mankind, Ham & all the Africans, David & his first son by Bath-Sheba [who died], Israel in general [the following generations suffer on account of those which preceded them], other nations not received into the ranks of the Chosen People until the 3rd or 4th or 7th generation, the killing by Moses or Joshua Navi of the children of the nations they conquered, God's clear words that He DOES avange the sins of the fatehrs upon their children until the 3rd generation [and visits His mercy upon the children of the righteous until the 1,000th generation]). So I was puzzeld, but didn't realy care: sooner or later, it was going to elucidate itself. (Only that it didn't: at least not in the way I expected it to).

So then I thought to myself: well, we all know the answer to that: God is indeed good, and loving, BUT He's also righteous and just. BUT ... when I thought of that, the words of Scripture came to mind: "My ways are not like your ways, and my judgements are not like your judgements". Or "come let us judge ourselves, says the Lord, and if your sins are red as crimson, they shall become white as snow". -- Then I began to re-think some of the previosuly mentioned revenge-passages: God extends His wrath (which is not clear how He even possesses) to the 3rd generation; or to the first (David)... but even then He says in the same passage "...but I will give my mercies up to the 1000th generations to those who believe in Me". (1,000 as opposed to numbers like 3, 4, or 7).

SO...

So,... nothing! (And it's not like I was thinking over-intensely about it: it just didn't interest me all that much... for me, it was like something of a children-puzzle, which looks interesting superficially, when expressed, but to which there's not much underneath: like "why does the nose `freeze` in summer, when all things melt, but `runs` in winter, when all things freeze"). -- I was kinda hoping it would all go away by itself. -- But it didn't, and I found nothing new to settle the issue for me. (As I said, I had no idea that our religion is in any way different or special than the rest as far as this aspect was concerned).

Until I read Kalomiros: the man put it all together: OT, Gospel, Fathers, icons, dipassion... You name it.. basically everyting that I also independently discovered myself several years before, but was unable to put into words. And -just like in a thriller- while reading his essay, I remembered that I *DID* actually know that we don't believe in original sin: that's what my religion-professor told me when I was in highschool, I think: but the shock was so immense, and it all sounded so strange, that I simply couldn't process it: I just told him flat to his face that he's wrong, and just was beside myself how he could talk such stupidities (I mean, the man was NOT stupid, ok?). So I just put this singular episode out of my mind. An then there were other things, like all those times those Priests invited at religious TV-shows said something to the extent of us not being like the Catholics, who drag people to confession with "guilt": I never understood what that was all about: I just thought they were "humanists" in their mental formation (as opposed to realists: mathematics is a 'real' science; theology is a 'human' science), and humanists are known for their subjective and poetic and unexact and even biased way of thinking, so I didn't pay much attention to them... Well, anyway, things have changed now. -- That's all I wanted to say for now. We may be born into Orthodoxy, but we can't just absorb it all at once. We grow into it. Slowly. Step by step by step. It's a process. As Murphy said, it takes 10% of the time to do 90% of the work, and the other 90% of time to do the rest of the 10% of the work. Key words are patience, and time, and waiting.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

Jacobs’ text is rather brief. He seems to be insufficiently precise. What he seems to be trying to ward off is the idea that the attributes are purely nominal creations on our part. But all advocates of divine simplicity, or nearly all of them deny this, so this is not really an advance. Second, it depends on what he means by “real” which here has a precise history and it doesn’t seem to my reading of the book that he is being sufficiently precise on just the point on which things hang. Third, it is also possible and it seems likely from the discussion on those two pages that he is endorsing something like a Scotistic read. It is quite common in the Reformation tradition to endorse either a Thomistic or Scotistic reading, with the latter admitting of a formal distinction between the divine attributes. The latter part that you cite mirrors the language of the Scotists in sum on this point.

Fourth, Jacobs doesn’t seem to me to mark a real advance past the Platonism in the Lutheran doctrine of God for the simple reason that both Mueller and Pieper.

“In God, essence and attributes are not separate, but the divine essence and the divine attributes are absolutely identical, because God is infinite…On the basis of Scripture the Lutheran dogmaticians have maintained that objectively, that is, in God, essence and attributes are absolutely identical.” Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1, p. 428

So if Chemnitz and Gerhard overlooked a genuine plurality in God, then Mueller and Pieper did as well.

I think what you were thinking was that for Chemnitz and Gerhard the attributes were purely our creations. But that is not their view, nor that of Thomas or even Scotus. Chemnitz’ view is that in God, the attributes are one thing, but in our mind we have no single concept to cover all the things that are true of that one simple thing and so we have a plurality of predications or attributions. The attributions are not nominal creations by us, all the while recognizing that our mode of predication is skewed.

Acolyte4236 said...

Ken Boeker,

This is a perfect example of what I a talking about. Ireneaus is here citing Plato’s Laws. This is one of Plato’s last works, if not the last work. Ireneaus is arguing against the Gnostics who took God to lack providential and judicial care of the world. In fact, they divided benefits or blessings from providence and justice so that there were two agents. Plato is taken as superior to them in that he has both in God. Of course, this is no help to you if you wish to argue for retributive or retaliatory theory of justice in Ireneaus. Since Plato thought that the gods, if they are good, do harm to no one. To inflict harm, per the Crito and the Republic, only makes an agent worse and not better. In fact, Plato goes so far in the Republic to say that the stories of the gods in which they cause harm to others have to be edited so that those growing up do not read them and gain from them a bad example. Plato holds that retribution is understood as a consequence of immoral acts rather than retaliation. Immoral agents harm themselves and the Good can only be said to punish them in the sense that their departure from the Good causes harm to themselves as a consequence. Plato doesn’t endorse a retributive theory of justice.

Therefore, you can only use Irenaeus here as a witness to a retaliatory or retributive model if you convict him of misreading Plato. Again, simply finding the word doesn’t amount to finding the concept for non-retributive theories, like consequentialist (this doesn’t refer to axiological theories in normative ethics such as utilitarianism, but the theory of justice per se) use all of the traditional language, including terms such as just deserts, recompense and retribution.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Yes Perry. And it is a punishment that God allows and not one that God commits. Because it is Just. As St. John Damascene points out in "The Faith of the Orthodox:

"...all these must be understood not as if God Himself were energising, but as though God were permitting." and " Moreover, it is to be observred that the choice of what is to be done is in our own hands: but the final issue depends, in the one case when our actions are good, on the cooperation of God, who in His justice brings help according to His foreknowledge to such as choose the good with a right conscience and, in the other case when our actions are to evil, on the desertion by God, Who again in His Justice stands aloof in accordance with His foreknowledge.

Now these are two forms of desertion: for their is desertion in matters of guidance and training, and there is complete and hopeless desertion, The former has in view the restoration and safety and glory of the sufferer, or the rousing of feelings of emulation and imitation of others, or the glory of God: but the latter is when man, after God has done all that was possible to save him, remains of his own set purpose blind and uncured, or rather incurable, and then he is handed over to utter destuction, as was Judas. May God be gracious to us, and deliver us from such desertion."

Therefore God Justly deserts those unrepentant, who justly deserve to be abandoned.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Perry,

Ireneus was arguing against Marcionism, which held that the vindicative God of the Old Testament could not be the merciful Father of the New Testament. So Ireneus could have been using the term "retributive justice" as a simile.

You mentioned that
"Plato holds that retribution is understood as a consequence of immoral acts."

Yes, and I believe that is the point. God gives man over to a rebrobate mind. That is the "Just punishment." Man gets what He has been working all his life for. God does not violate his free will and give him something else.

Athanasios Boeker said...

St. Mark the Ascetic said,

"All the penalties imposed by divine judgement upon man for the sin of the first transgression- death, toil, hunger, thirst and the like-He (Christ) took upon Himself," -Letter to Nicholas the Solitary

If Retribution is understood as a consequence of immoral acts.

Then, Christ took upon Himself the retribution of the first man.

Acolyte4236 said...

Ken,

I agree with St. John and that is the same view given by Orthodox theologians like Romanides so I am not sure what you are disagreeing about. It is not the view given by Classical Protestantism though and it is not a retributive THEORY of punishment. It is an Issuiant account such as that one found here. http://www.amazon.com/Problem-Hell-Jonathan-L-Kvanvig/dp/019508487X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252589417&sr=1-2

As for Ireneaus, I believe I noted that he was responding to the Gnostics as well as how they split different divine properties into different agents-justice and goodness. In any case, the view you are putting forward is not the Classical Protestant view of punishment which relies on a retributive *theory* of punishment. So as far as I can see you agree with Romanidies, et al and that this was taught long before the period Weedon wishes to imply it was introduced as some kind of novelty. All of it turns on the word-concept fallacy.

I suppose a turn around question for Weedon would be, What did the Lutherans teach before Luther?

William Weedon said...

Perry,

Note, that it was not I who observed a change in Orthodox teaching on the matter; it was my Orthodox friend. I do happen to believe he was correct.

As to Lutherans before Luther, that's easy. They taught what Luther taught. That we are saved by divine mercy and not by our own doings; that God justifies the sinner by faith alone (when such faith is understood as living connection to the Blessed Trinity and not mere intellectual knowledge of divine revelation); that the Blessed Trinity has manifested His divine love for the fallen race of man by sending the Eternal Word into our flesh, giving Him into death that we might not die eternally and raising Him from the dead as the firstborn of all creation who sends forth from the Father His Spirit into our hearts to kindle faith and unite us to Himself; that Baptism saves us and that the Holy Eucharist is Christ's true body and blood, the sacrifice by which we were reconciled to God, now offered to us to heal us in body and soul; that the Sacred Scriptures norm all teaching in the Church and that other writers no matter what their holiness or learning are not put on a par with them; and so on.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

Your friend can’t observe facts not in evidence, which as the conclusion with Ken I think makes clear. Your citations seem to me to turn on a word-concept fallacy. furthermore, no speciliast in the field that I know takes Palamas or the other authors you cite to advocate a penal theory of the atonement or a retrivutive theory of justice. I seriously doubt all of those scholars are wrong and you are correct.

As for Lutherans prior to Luther, this is not the case. I’ve read enough of western theologians from Alcuin through Scotus to know that this isn’t so. None of them taught Sola Fide. Are you seriously claiming that Aquinas or Albert taught Sola Fide? The same goes for Sola Scriptura. Of course, they all taught the Filioque with Luther though.

William Weedon said...

Thomas actually runs quite well with how Lutherans use sola Scriptura in his Summa, when he writes:

"Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on the revelations (if any such there are) made to other doctors. Hence Augustine says (Epis. ad Hieron. xix, 1): "Only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them. But other authors I so read as not to deem everything in their works to be true, merely on account of their having so thought and written, whatever may have been their holiness and learning."--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, Part 1, Question 1, Article 8

When it comes to sola fide, well, though I know you don't agree with our understanding of their words, the Fathers can be quite clear. I think particularly of:

"Similarly we also, who by His will have been called in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, or our own wisdom or understanding or godliness, nor by such deeds as we have done in holiness of heart, but by that faith through which Almighty God has justified all men since the beginning of time. Glory be to Him, forever and ever, Amen." - St. Clement of Rome (Letter to the Corinthians, par. 32)

"Indeed, this is the perfect and complete glorification of God, when one does not exult in his own righteousness, but recognizing oneself as lacking true righteousness to be justified by faith alone in Christ." - St. Basil the Great (Homily on Humility, PG 31.532; TFoTC vol. 9, p. 479)

"They said that he who adhered to faith alone was cursed; but he, Paul, shows that he who adhered to faith alone is blessed." - St. John Chrysostom (Homily on Galatians 3)

“Here he shows God's power, in that He has not only saved, but has even justified, and led them to boasting, and this too without needing works, but looking for faith only.” Homily 7 on Romans – St. John Chrysostom

“And he well said, "a righteousness of mine own," not that which I gained by labor and toil, but that which I found from grace. If then he who was so excellent is saved by grace, much more are you. For since it was likely they would say that the righteousness which comes from toil is the greater, he shows that it is dung in comparison with the other. For otherwise I, who was so excellent in it, would not have cast it away, and run to the other. But what is that other? That which is from the faith of God, i.e. it too is given by God. This is the righteousness of God; this is altogether a gift. And the gifts of God far exceed those worthless good deeds, which are due to our own diligence.” Chrysostom, Homily on Philippians 3

Athanasios Boeker said...

Perry,

I suppose that with humility I must ask you what is the working definition that you would give for the term "Retributive Justice Model?"

I ask because when I think of retribution (which according to Webster: Is from Latin retribuere to "pay back" 1 : recompense, reward 2 : the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment especially in the hereafter 3 : something given or exacted in recompense; especially : punishment) I think of passages in scripture (and the Fathers) such as such as:

"But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God: WHO WILL RENDER TO EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and Honor and immortality, eternal life But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil." Romans 2

"For your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; 2 Thess. 1:2-9

And I just wonder where I am missing the mark by saying that the concept of just retribution is connected with God's providence in Scripture and the Fathers?

Maybe you could explain?

Thanks

Daniel said...

Pastor Weedon,

I realize I am posting late. I just did not have anything to contribute until now. I read this thread with much interest; it was very profitable in sharpening I think many sincere believers thoughts on salvation. Thank you for your role in promoting dialogue.

Lutherans have a dialectic that is interesting regarding God and judgement, namely His proper righteousnes and His alien righteousness. In the former, He is "at home" being merciful, kind and graciouis; in the latter He does what He does not want to do, but must- punish evildoers. At times Scripture uses the phrase "wrath" to describe this last alien work of God.

For Orthodox who do not operate from this framework, we I believe do not want to conceive of God as a Janus, who at times is merciful and love; and at other times is wrathful and punitive. The Scriptures teach that God is love.

Thus, just as when the Psalms speak metaphorically of God possessing eyes, nose, hands and the like; in the same way when Scripture tells of the wrath of God condemning, punishing and avenging, possibly this is nothing less than God allowing man free-will. Man condemns himself, and is judged according to his words and works- which shew forth one's true faith.

Indeed, this is where Orthodoxy and Lutheranism converge: Damnation is wholly of Man. We both reject Calvinism, and recognize that Hell is a place that we unfortunately place ourselves in. Kyrie Eleison.

Fr. Daniel Hackney

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

I don’t take this citation from Thomas as evidence of Sola Scriptura. Thomas takes sacra doctrina to include tradition for starters. Second, Thomas doesn’t adhere to the right of private judgment. Simply noting that Scripture is the highest material authority isn’t sufficient for Sola Scriptura as the Anglo-Catholic Laudians held to that but denied Sola Scriptura against the Puritans. You can’t get from Thomas’s more prima scriptura position to Luther’s Here I Stand without adding the right of private judgment. I’ve read enough of Thomas to know that while he may not have been fully Tridentine, he wasn’t an advocate of Sola Scriptura either.

The citations on sola fide are the stock citations I’ve seen recycled over and over again in Protestant sources. Now I have read cover to cover the entire 38 volume Schaff and Wace set when I was a Protestant. I didn’t think that these and other citations taught sola fide then and I certainly don’t think they do now. First, they lacked the requisite view of how taxonomies can and do work to be so understood. They are by and large realists about taxonomies and not nominalists. Second, in many cases what they mean by faith alone is the faith of Christ or the New Covenant rather than my faith as an instrument reaching up and laying hold of the merits of Christ. The latter view can be found in antiquity with the term “faith alone” but in the writings of Pelagius and Julian of Enclanum. So if I produce citations from Pelagius and Julian that assert salvation by “faith alone” will you grant me that Pelagius and Luther taught the same doctrine?

What you need to show is the concept is expressed and not simply the words used, otherwise this is just another instance of the word-concept fallacy. Furthermore, plenty of specialists in the relevant fields do not think these passages teach Luther’s doctrine of Sola Fide.

What I’d really like to see is a Lutheran give an exegetical case from Scripture alone for the Filioque.

William Weedon said...

Yeah, Perry, but the fathers said what they said. It's not really as hard to understand as you make it out to be. They GOT what St. Paul meant, and they expressed it clearly.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

I know its not hard, which is why the experts agree that they didn't teach sola fide or sola scriptura.

I think after reading forty plus volumes cover to cover I know well enough what they said.

And I never said it was hard. I was just pointing out the burden of proof your position bears, and that is hard. It was hard enough for Luther who made it quite clear that on sola fide, most of them were worthless and wrong, including Augustine. They said what they said and it wasn't sola fide. Luther admits as much, but I suppose you think Luther really didn't mean it.

Unknown said...

I'd like to perhaps offer something helpful. There is a document that is "considered to be the last example of pure Byzantine theology without any western influence whatsoever." And is extremely apropos for this discussion. That is the response of Patriarch Jeremias II to Tübingen.

Its probably worth a read for any who have not already read it.

Fr. Steven Salaris said...

Bill,

After all of those discussions we had over lunch or at my church when you were going to convert to Orthodoxy, I am surprised that you would quote one paragraph from one of my sermons and try to use it to argue for the "suffering of Christ to appease the wrath of the Father" theology. How many years (20+ isn't it?) have you been studying Orthodoxy? You know better than that. I'd have to check with my wife the psychiatrist, but I think that your current obsession with Orthodoxy vs. Lutheranism reflects your inner torment and attempts at self-justification over your decision to abandon the True Faith. As always, Bill, may Almighty God bless you all the days of your life. Now I have to go to confession because I just posted on a blog site - an instrument of the Devil.

Acolyte4236 said...

npmcallum,

That won't be an example of of Orthodox theology prior to western influence. There were plenty of pro-unionist sources long before the Reformation. Lyon and Florence testify to that as did John Bekkos who was condemned for the Filioque at Blachernae.

Btw, byzantine was a Frankish slur. There never was anything called the byzantine empire.

Unknown said...

Perry, please reread my post. I was quoting someone else.

My point is that it is an engagement with Lutheran claims before Khrapovitsky, Kalomiros and Romanides. It critiques Lutheranism on many of the same lines within this discussion. Second, there is scholarly consensus that the Augustana Graeca is a significant modification of the confession so that it would be heard favorably upon Greek ears. Why would they need to do this if they were just maintaining the apostolic faith? Third, I think you'd be hard pressed to find in those letters a western influence. Is there something specific you are thinking of? Finally, it represents the written communication of our ruling primate at the time. Although that does not mean that this is the official position of the Church, it is probably the *most* official one we have...

Byzantine may have been a slur, but do Westerners know of any continuation of the Roman empire after the fall of Rome? Is it *wrong* to use this term for clarity's sake? I don't know of any Orthodox scholars that refuse to attend Fordham because they have Byzantine Studies program...

Unknown said...

For the record, I would love to see the answer to "Is the righteousness of Christ a single activity or two activities?" which has been merely avoided. I think it drives to the heart of the question, namely, imputation is nothing less than the refutation of dyothelitism (or at least I think that is what Perry is driving at).

William Weedon said...

My! A lot to respond to.

1. Perry, the "consensus of scholars" is - as any scholar should know - more than a bit problematic. The one thing you can be certain of is that it has, does, and will change. An iffy thing to hang your hat on. Gerhard was a patristics scholar to beat the pants of most anyone today, and he noted the same teaching of justification in the fathers. Thomas Oden, a modern patristics scholar, has argued along quite parallel lines and published his "A Justification Reader" that shows the Reformation understanding of justification was not the novelty that other scholars (one things of McGrath) have made it out to be. In any case, why dismiss the texts where the fathers teach faith alone with simply saying: "Scholars agree they didn't." How do you understand those texts then?

2. Fr. Steven,

My poor conscience is plagued by many, many sins (you would shudder if you had half an idea), but not becoming an Eastern Christian is not one of them. This thread began with an Orthodox friend sending me the citation I quoted because HE thought it interesting that the huge division between East and West on this question is not actually a huge division at all. I posted it, because I happen to agree - and that from my study of Orthodoxy over the years. Oddly enough, we had coffee together this a.m. and he gave me some outstanding articles by Vladimir Moss on this matter. I've only had time to finish reading one of them, but I thought it quite substantiating of the point my friend made in sending me the original citation. It's here:

http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/downloads/135_THE_NEW_SOTERIOLOGY.pdf

Again, here is an Orthodox Christian (albeit an old Calendarist sort) who is suggesting that there has been a shift on this matter, and shift for the worse in modern Orthodox treatments of divine justice.

Finally, on your sermon, I quoted a paragraph, it is true, but the whole I still have on my harddrive; I thought and still think it an outstanding preaching of the Gospel, specifically because of the way you speak about Christ revealed under the type of the scapegoat. I never thought you were portraying Christ suffering some passionate vengeance from the Father, but our Lord suffering the divine and passionless justice that Father, SON, and Holy Spirit mete out to sin (the rejection of love) and doing so willingly in obedience to His Father. It was well done.

3. NP,

Lutherans teach that monothelitism is a heresy. There is in our beloved Lord both a human will and a divine will, which work together in the united Person to constitute the righteousness which sinners are freely granted. The Formula of Concord specifically rejects that it is either the essential righteousness of the Divine nature alone (Osiander) or the righteousness of the human nature alone (Stancaro) that is imputed to us, but there we confess: "It is the entire Christ who is our righteousness according to both natures. In His obedience alone, which as God and man He offered to the Father even to death..."

Oh, it's the thread that never ends, and it goes on and on my friends... ;)

William Weedon said...

P.S. My friend also shared with me this coptic treatment of the atonement:

http://www.metroplit-bishoy.org/files/ecumenieng/Atonement.doc

Unknown said...

So is the act of imputation created or uncreated? Is the righteousness imputed created or uncreated? Christian metaphysics require it to be one or the other.

William Weedon said...

The righteousness imputed is a divine/human righteousness because CHRIST is that righteousness: "I mean, that the righteousness rests not on one or the other nature in Christ, but on Christ's entire person, *who as God and man IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS in His only, entire, and complete obedience*." FC Ep III:55

William Weedon said...

NP,

Also, I think this was way up the thread, the Epitome condemns the notion that "God does not dwell in believers, only God's gifts dwell in them." FC Ep III:65

Unknown said...

You sidestepped the question. Is the righteousness created or uncreated? Is the act which imputes the righteousness created or uncreated? Its a simple question.

William Weedon said...

I did not side step the question, I rejected that it is has to be a or b, and said it was a AND b. Why on earth does the righteousness HAVE to be either divine or human when the divine-human person IS that righteousness that is imputed in His most holy obedience?

As to the act of imputation, that is a divine act.

William Weedon said...

One more citation from the Formula:

Neither Christ's divine nor human nature by itself is credited to us for righteousness, but only the obedience of the person who is at the same time God and man. And faith thus values Christ's person because it was made under the law for us and bore our sins, and, in His going to the Father, He offered to His heavenly Father for us poor sinners His entire, complete obedience. This extends from His holy birth unto death. In this way, He has covered all our disobedience, which dwells in our nature, in our thoughts, words, and works. So disobedience is not charged against us for condemnation. It is pardoned and forgiven out of pure grace alone, for Christ's sake. FC SD III:58

Unknown said...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but to put it in language I know, the divine will of Christ emits a new substance, neither created nor uncreated, which is imparted to the believer. Is that the correct teaching?

I'm not trying to prod, I'm honestly trying to understand.

William Weedon said...

NP,

No problem, but um, NO. It is Christ Himself, the Divine-Human Person in His entire obedience, who gives Himself to us to be our righteousness. Christ *Himself* dwells in faith or said another way, faith clings to Him. When St. Paul says that in the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, this is the same thing as saying in the Gospel Christ AS our righteousness is revealed. He is set before us and imparted to us as the righteousness to which we cling.

Unknown said...

So how is the person of Christ imputed? I could perhaps see an argument from the Eucharist, since it is his body and blood. However, you frame it in terms of faith. By faith do you mean the Eucharist? If not, then how is Christ imputed?

William Weedon said...

Most certainly in the Eucharist - for there He feeds into us that body and blood which ARE our righteousness. But also in Holy Baptism, in which we are "clothed in Christ" - put into Him and joined to His death and resurrection - and also whenever the Holy Absolution is spoken by Christ's authority where He enters us via His words of promise through our ears. John 17 stuff. Us in Him. He in us. He is ever waiting to give Himself entirely to us as He "who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption."

William Weedon said...

Luther on Galatians 2:

As I have said, faith grasps and embraces Christ, the Son of God, who was given for us, as Paul teaches here. When He has been grasped by faith, we have righteousness and life. For Christ is the Son of God, who gave Himself out of sheer love to redeem me.

Unknown said...

Do we receive Christ in the veneration of relics (especially the martyrs)? Care for the poor? Marriage?

William Weedon said...

I'm not sure where in Scripture you'd get the notion that one receives Christ in the veneration of relics per se (not denying the miracle associated with Elisha's bones!), but certainly in the poor and in fulfilling our calling. One thinks of how Luther put these words into our Lord's mouth so beautifully:

"See that you do not fail to see Me. I shall be close to you in every poor and wretched man, who is need of your help and teaching; I am right there, in your midst. Whether you do little for him or much, you do it unto Me. You will not give the cup of cold water in vain."

As he said elsewhere: the world is full of Christ!

Unknown said...

Acts 19:11-12 would be one place where the presence of Christ appears to spill out into objects which do not bare a soul. And of course, as you mention the bones of Elijah.

We should also consider Christ himself imparted in the priestly and episcopal ordination rites. Confirmation. Unction. Gifts to the Church.

William Weedon said...

Lutherans, though, look for a divine promise of Christ that He will be present and wills to work through certain means. Thus, we know from Scripture that we serve Him in the poor and needy. We know from Scripture that Baptism clothes us in Him. We know from Scripture that in the Eucharist the body and blood of the Savior are partaken of through the consecrated elements. We know from Scripture that absolution swings wide the gates of the kingdom, imparting forgiveness.

William Weedon said...

Oh, and on the priesthood, we would certainly and joyfully confess that through it, Christ serves His people His rich gifts. For the priest "does not represent His own person, but Christ" as our Symbols state it.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

Its true that the judgments of scholars can change, but it is the erroneous thinking of many a freshmen that they never reach settled judgments either. My argument was that it is implausible all these specialists, and not for a short time have misread people like Basil and Chrysostom.

If Gerhard was such a great patristics scholar why does he adhere to non-biblical doctrines like the Filioque and a Platonic view of simplicity? And if we aren’t to go with scholarly analysis, shall we reject the scholarly analysis that dikiao means to justify? Shall we dispense then with Luther’s arguments since he was a “scholar” too?

Secondly, I’ve read Oden, and nothing in Oden’s little book proves that they taught Sola Fide. All it shows is that they taught Sola Gratia. But that is uncontroversial. Sola Fide may be a way to secure Sola Gratia, but I don’t think it is or it is the only way to do so. If I were in the context of the Latin theological tradition, I could be perfectly at home in Thomism or Scotism affirming a strong doctrine of providence and Sola Gratia without Sola Fide. Why do I need it?

McGrath and others are right that the idea of faith as a conduit for the declaration ungrounded in the agent was novel. It’s certainly not in the preceding Augustinian tradition.

I can understand those texts just as Augustine did. Chrysostom for example notes the value of faith as an inhering virtue that is valuable per se before God in his writings. That isn’t consistent with Sola Fide.

As for Julian and Pelagius, when they say that salvation is by “faith alone” by laying hold of Christ, again, does this mean that they taught what Luther taught or no? How do you understand the language in Pelagius’ commentary on Romans and the other epistles when he makes these numerous statements?

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

Now, when you state that Christ is a “Divine-Human Person” what exactly do you mean here? This looks entirely Nestorian for Christ is not a divine-human person. He is a divine person in which humanity has been assumed. This is exactly the same objectionable point in Reformed theology, although they take it in a different direction. The hypostasis of the Son is always and only a divine hypostasis into which humanity has now been taken into so that his hypostasis can be said to be composite after the union.

Second, if Christ is imputed our sins and the Father hates him for it as a sinner, then it seems either the Son is less than fully God or the Son that is hated is a second human Son. With the first option, God cannot hate someone and something divine since all that is divine is good and without blemish. So if the imputation doesn’t genuinely characterize the Son qua hypostasis then I don’t see how the imputation of righteousness can characterize us properly either and hence can’t be said to be mine. On the other hand, if it does genuinely characterize the Son, then the above problems loom, or so it seems to me.

As to monothelitism, first the Reformed also deny it, but that doesn’t prove to be exculpatory. Many imperial advocates of monothelism, as opposed to their Severian brothers, affirmed two wills in Christ, but they denied two actions or activities and rather that there was only one activity. They also affirmed that one moved and utilized the other so that the divine power subordinated the human power in Christ. Hence they embraced monoenergism. Hence the language of ‘according to both natures” is insufficient. So simply affirming two wills isn’t sufficient to prove that your position isn’t monothelite.

The two powers of choice in Christ are always in harmony, but that does not mean that they always have the same objects of choice as is clear in the Passion and other places. To affirm that they do is monothelitism. Second, is the glory Christ shares with us also human and divine or just human? Does human nature have a glory of its own? And if Christ’s human activity participates in his righteousness, why is it exactly that our human activity by divine power can’t also participate in our justification as Augustine taught?

William Weedon said...

Perry,

1. You assert, but do not demonstrate, that the filioque and divine simplicity are "non-biblical"; Gerhard (and countless other Lutheran and Roman Catholic scholars) obviously disagree with your assertion; not to mention St. Augustine! Why do you disregard THOSE scholars?

2. Lutherans hold to sola fide because this is the teaching of Scripture as evidenced by the exclusive particles: "without works" "apart from works of the law" "freely" "by grace." If you know Chemnitz, you surely know his exhaustive demonstration of this under the Locus on Justification. Why, I believe that even Hans Küng in his book on Justification admitted that Luther was right on three things: that justification is forensic; that the grace of God is the favor of God; and most important of all (the content of the sola fide, truthfully) that St. Paul excludes the moral law from justification. So the short answer is: we hold to sola fide because it is the Biblical teaching (and the fathers use the phrase - I'd love to hear YOUR explanation of what Chrysostom means when he uses it!).

I've not read Pelagius or Julian so I'm in no position to comment on their texts (they certainly don't sound like Luther in what is cited in Augustine).

3. Divine Human Person was not intended in any sort of a Nestorian manner - I hold and teach the enhypostia. The Person of the God-man is solely the Eternal Logos. I should have contented myself with the term God-man. But my point is that He is our righteousness in both natures, in each of which there are indeed their own proper activities.

4. The glory Christ shares with us is both human and divine. "The divine nature of the Son manifests, exercises, carries on, and completes all of its saving activities toward all of His members through His total fullness, not by itself and apart from the human nature, but rather in, with, and through that nature by which head and members are related... For Christ is our Head not only according to His divine nature but truly also according to His assumed human nature... Therefore, in this ministration, activity, and fulfillment the divine nature of the Son of God works in communion with His assumed human nature, not in the way water flows through a tube, but with the cooperation of the assumed nature, which in order that it may cooperate in these duties, possesses not only its own natural attributes, nor only created gifts, but also the entire fulness of the Godhead." Chemnitz

MG said...

Pr Weedon--

This is how Chrysostom understands "faith":

Then that no one should say, How are we to be saved without contributing anything at all to the object in view? he shows that we also offer no small matter toward this, I mean our faith. Therefore after saying, “the righteousness of God,” he adds straightway, “by faith unto all and upon all that believe.”

--St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Letter to the Romans VII

So Chrysostom thinks faith is a virtue. It is a volitional response to divine grace that God acknowledges as a morally positive quality worthy of (because it partially constitutes) our justification.

This is what Chrysostom means by justification:

Well, he says, in this way God is the more justified. What does the word justified mean? That, if there could be a trial and an examination of the things He had done for the Jews, and of what had been done on their part towards Him, the victory would be with God, and all the right on His side. And after showing this clearly from what was said before, he next introduces the Prophet also as giving his approval to these things, and saying, “that Thou mightest be justified in Thy sayings, and clear when Thou art judged.”

--St. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Letter to the Romans VI

Notice that justification is based off of the actual qualities inhering in a person--the *fact* of whether they are good or bad.

So we have a denial of Sola Fide here. Faith is a virtue, a positive moral quality, acknowledged by God as effective for justification. Justification is based on the real moral qualities inhering in a person. This includes faith, but also works:

But wherefore hath He chosen us? “That we should be holy and without a blemish before Him.” That you may not then, when you hear that “He hath chosen us,” imagine that faith alone is sufficient, he proceeds to add life and conduct. To this end, saith he, hath He chosen us, and on this condition, “that we should be holy and without blemish.”

Chrysostom, NPNF 1 vol.13. Page 50.3.

William Weedon said...

MG,

There is 1) no dispute that faith is a virtue. To hold that faith does not save BECAUSE it is a virtue but because of what that virtue does (holding the promises) does not in any way deny that faith is also a virtue.

2) When St. John explains "justify" in regard to the actions of God, he teaches that it means: "shown to be in the right." What it clearly cannot mean is "made right." God's actions do not MAKE him just. Think about that in regard to what you are proposing.

3) His last statement is not aimed against the "sola" which he frequently uses elsewhere, but seeks to guard precisely what Chemnitz and the Lutherans did as well: "For when Paul says that we are saved and justified without works, he is NOT excluding repentance or contrition as something which precedes, nor does he exclude the other virtues as things which must be present or follow... Our people, when we say that faith alone justifies, do not understand that as meaning that without repentance or contrition they have been promised immunity from punishment even if they continue in sins. Nor do they understand faith as being solitary, sterile, or dead, something which produces no good works or can stand before God with moral sin." I think Chrysostom would be saying: "EXACTLY!"

MG said...

Pr Weedon--

You wrote:

"There is 1) no dispute that faith is a virtue. To hold that faith does not save BECAUSE it is a virtue but because of what that virtue does (holding the promises) does not in any way deny that faith is also a virtue."

So are you as a Lutheran okay with saying you contribute toward your justification? That your faith is looked upon by God as righteousness because it actually is intrinsically righteous?

you wrote:

"2) When St. John explains "justify" in regard to the actions of God, he teaches that it means: "shown to be in the right." What it clearly cannot mean is "made right." God's actions do not MAKE him just. Think about that in regard to what you are proposing."

I am not contending that "to justify" means "to make right". Even granting you are correct, and that it cannot mean "to make right" the point is that we are only reckoned righteous if we actually are constituted righteous. Lutheranism has to be able to say that we can be reckoned righteous on some other basis than the fact that we are constituted intrinsically righteous. Otherwise you would have to say that we are reckoned righteous because God assesses our moral character as intrinsically righteous.

You wrote:

"3) His last statement is not aimed against the "sola" which he frequently uses elsewhere, but seeks to guard precisely what Chemnitz and the Lutherans did as well: "For when Paul says that we are saved and justified without works, he is NOT excluding repentance or contrition as something which precedes, nor does he exclude the other virtues as things which must be present or follow... Our people, when we say that faith alone justifies, do not understand that as meaning that without repentance or contrition they have been promised immunity from punishment even if they continue in sins. Nor do they understand faith as being solitary, sterile, or dead, something which produces no good works or can stand before God with moral sin." I think Chrysostom would be saying: "EXACTLY!"

I'm aware of your position on that subject. I'll grant that for the sake of argument your interpretation here could be correct (but I don't think it is correct because of other considerations; I'm just not sure I can persuade based on those considerations).

MG said...

Anastasios—

You wrote:

“I ask because when I think of retribution (which according to Webster: Is from Latin retribuere to "pay back" 1 : recompense, reward 2 : the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment especially in the hereafter 3 : something given or exacted in recompense; especially : punishment) I think of passages in scripture (and the Fathers) such as such as:”

Retribution seems more specific than that. It seems to involve the idea that there is something inherently good about positively inflicting harm on those that have done wrong in exact proportion to the wrong they have done. Payback and recompense is less specific. If I were a judge, I could pay someone back for something with the intention of reforming their character. If I thought their deeds were evil, and I thought their character needed to be reformed, I could inflict harm on them with the intention of fixing their character. Or I could pay someone back for something with the intention of deterring that person, or other people, from doing wrong to others in the future—because I thought their deeds were evil, so they should be discouraged from continuing in evil. Or I could pay someone back for some wrong they did with the intent of preventing that person from being able to affect others. In this case, because I thought they did evil, I thought they should be prevented from harming others, so I put them in prison, or had them executed, etc. which is a repayment for the wrong they did. So repayment need not mean retribution in the strict sense. It depends on the motivation.

MG said...

(Pr. Weedon, sorry for the multiple postings; I couldn't respond to the content in a single comment)

Regarding Romans 2:

In what sense does God render according to deeds? Does he do so by inflicting retribution (as defined in my comment above)? Or does he repay all in the eschaton by filling heaven and earth with his restoring/transforming/putting-to-rights justice/righteousness in Christ, which affects different people differently, based on their character (either it is blessing, or results in a state of suffering)? In either case, God is actively doing the rendering, and it is according to deeds. So it seems the second way of understanding Paul is at least permissible.

In this context in Romans 2, it is worth considering the fact that human beings are the ones that treasure up for themselves wrath. Many Jews thought they were storing up merit as a personal quality or status. But Paul tells them their actions actually make them store up something else *within them*—wrath. They are the ones doing the exchanging of “the riches of God’s kindness” for “treasures of wrath” implying that the treasures of wrath are something within them as a personal quality or status.

The difference between saved and damned, then, seems to be located in the agent’s reception or rejection of divine empowerment. Wrath does not describe a divine disposition towards humans. Rather, it seems wrath is a description of a destiny, for it is contrasted with eternal life, which is a destiny and an eschatological character-state. So it seems wrath here is a state or experience, based on how one either properly receives (eternal life) or improperly rejects (wrath) God’s empowering presence/grace (the divine energies). (See Stephen Travis’ Christ and the Judgment of God, 2nd edition for more exegesis, from whom I owe much of the above argument)

MG said...

You also cited 2 Thess.:

The description of the judgment that is given here is noteworthy for three reasons. First, it is described as fire. Second, it is described as taking place “from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power”. Third, the verses you cite are followed by these:

…when he comes to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at on that day among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus. (2 Thess 1:10-12)

This is interesting because in the ancient world, any reference to light is implicitly a reference to fire (they had no electricity, of course). So when it says that the damned will experience eternal destruction at the face of the glory of the Lord, the glory (light) is a reference back to the fire of Christ’s coming. The same thing is being talked about throughout, whether it is called “fire” or “glory”. Consequently, this verse is not talking about seperation away from God’s face, but punishment at God’s face when He appears on earth.

MG said...

In the subsequent verses I quoted above, this same glory fills the saints. Like the damned, they experience the face of the glory of the Lord when He comes. Because God’s glory is light, and light is fire, the saints are being filled with divine fire. It is the same fire—the uncreated glory of God—that burns the reprobate that glorifies the saints.

This is supported by the fact that the destruction described is everlasting, which means that it is tied to God’s eternal power. Furthermore, Paul prays that God will fulfill by his power every action the Thessalonians undertake, with the intent of making them worthy of Christ’s glorification in them. Paul prays that they would be receptive to divine power, having faith (accepting God’s grace/glory/power in the Gospel) instead of disobeying/not knowing God (rejecting God’s grace/glory/power in the Gospel). So the difference between saved and damned here does not seem to be located in a different kind of divine disposition or action toward them, but rather in whether or not the human person acts to receive (by the virtue of faith) or reject (by the vice of unbelief) God’s glory.

So it looks like the text at least *could* be talking about the glorification of creation at the second coming of Christ resulting in either suffering or blessedness for different people. In fact the text is probably talking about the fact that the damned cannot stand the divine glory because they have not been constituted worthy by a choice to receive as a gift the glory and power of Christ.

William Weedon said...

MG,

St. Paul teaches that we make zero contribution toward our JUSTIFICATION, that it is God who justifies, but His justification brings about exactly what He promises. He MAKES the ungodly just, and He does this through the forgiveness of sins and the gift of Christ who becomes and is our righteousness.

Does a Christian contribute toward salvation? Everything in answer to that question hangs on what you mean by "salvation." If you mean justification, no. If you mean, is there a role for the human will, renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and thus willing together with God the destruction of sin and the faith that clings to the true God, then indeed there is something in us.

There is a remarkable passage in Pseudo-Chrysostom that the Reformers treasured: "I cannot prove that he who works the works of righteousness without faith has life, but I can show that he who believes, apart from works, both has life and gains the kingdom of heaven. For without faith no one has life. The thief believed, and he was justified by the mercy of God. And at this point do not say to me that he lacked the time in which he might live righteously and perform honorable works; for I would contend and I would assert that faith alone by itself saved him. For if he had survived and yet neglected his faith and his works, he would have lost his salvation. But we must not ask questions of this type or raise such a point, because faith in itself saved him, but works in themselves in no way justify those who work them." It's in Migne - and I have no idea who Pseudo-Chrysostom is, but they thought it was the Golden Mouth himself at the time of the Reformation.

Note that we do not believe in a legal fiction: God regarding the unjust as just when they are in fact not. We believe that it is God's regard and declaration of justice that creates the justice it declares. He's God. He speaks and what He speaks happens.

William Weedon said...

Oh, and should add one more facet: it is always an eschatological event. The righteousness whole and entire will be manifested on that day by a complete healing. As we journey towards that day in faith, the healing is partial, the righteousness progressing but in great weakness, and so God always keeping us under His gracious and unmerited pardon as we move toward the fulfillment on the Day.

William Weedon said...

In line with what I just posted, consider the words of Piepkorn I quoted as my New Lutheran Quote for today:

Whatever we do that is acceptable to God we do "in Christ." What we do by our own native powers is only to resist the impulse and to handicap the operation of the Holy Spirit - to quench the Spirit. Yet the good that we do, even though we do it in Christ, we do. It is our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, our oblation of service, our offering of faith. But because the impulse and the power comes from Christ, because He works both the will and the deed within us, it is still Christ who is the ultimate Priest, the One who is really offering the sacrifice of perfect obedience in deed and in suffering to heavenly Father. To deny this or to minimize this, is to deny the biblical doctrine of the unity of the Head and the Body, of the Bride and the Bridegroom. -- Arthur Carl Piepkorn, *The Church* p. 241, 242

William Weedon said...

P.S. Chemnitz on the whole locus of justification is stunning and very helpful. I particularly loved his citation of St. Augustine on Psalm 56 in the Vulgate:

"You find nothing in us as a cause for saving us, but You find much reason for condemning us; and yet out of Your mercy for the sake of Christ You receive us."

Athanasios Boeker said...

Mg,

Thank you for sharing your insights on this profound subject.

However, lets's consider for a moment the following quote from St. John Damascene:

"Moreover, it is to be observed that the choice of what is to be done is in our own hands: but the final issue depends, in the one case when our actions are good, on the cooperation of God, Who in His justice brings help according to His foreknowledge to such as choose the good with a right conscience, and, in the other case when our actions are to evil, on the desertion by God, Who again in His justice stands aloof in accordance with His foreknowledge.

"Now there are two forms of desertion: for there is desertion in the matters of guidance and training, and there is complete and hopeless desertion. The former has in view the restoration and safety and glory of the sufferer, or the rousing of feelings of emulation and imitation in others, or the glory of God: but the latter is when man, after God has done all that was possible to save him, remains of his own set purpose blind and uncured, or rather incurable, and then he is handed over to utter destruction, as was Judas. May God be gracious to us, and deliver us from such desertion."

And,

"Also one must bear in mind that God's original wish was that all should be saved and come to His Kingdom. For it was not for punishment that He formed us but to share in His goodness, inasmuch as He is a good God. BUT INASMUCH AS HE IS A JUST GOD, HIS WILL IS THAT SINNERS SHOULD SUFFER PUNISHMENT.

The first then is called God's antecedent will and pleasure, and springs from Himself, while the second is called God's consequent WILL and permission, and has its origin in us. And the latter is two-fold; one part dealing with matters of guidance and training, and having in view our salvation, and the other being hopeless and leading to our UTTER punishment, as we said above. And this is the case with actions that are not left in our hands." -chapter 29 De Fide Orthodoxia.

The point that St. John Damascene is making is that those who remain to the end of their life unrepentant God justly wills to give over to punishment.

The problem I have with Kalomiros, and main stream thought on this subject, can be summed up in this analogy: After reading Damascene I picture God in the role of a govenor who is watching over an execution (a self-inflicted execution if you will). He has the "power" to give a stay of execution or let the execution take place. Kalomiros I think would liken God more to the chap outside the fence holding a vigil candle, absolutly helpless to either save or punish.

St. John also states,

"A just judge justly punishes one who is guilty of wrong doing; and if he does not punish him he is himself a wrongdoer. In punishing him the judge is not the cause either of the wrongdoing or of the vengence taken against the wrongdoer, the cause being the wrongdoer's freely chosen actions. Thus to God, Who saw what was going to happen as if it had already happened, judged it as if it had taken place; and if it was evil, that was the cause of it's being punished. It was God Who created man, so of course He created him in goodness; but man did evil of his own choice, and is himself the cause of the vengence that overtakes him."

God's Primary/Antecedent Will is that we all enjoy eternity as bliss. But if we refuse to repent His Secondary/Consequent Will is that we justly reap the reward of our own action.

And why, you may ask, is it that some may suffer the uncreated fire of love as torment in eternity? I answer,"Because God obviously believes they justly deserve it."

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

1. Granted, I didn’t demonstrate it here, but I have elsewhere.

Secondly, I am unclear why I bear the burden of proof to show that doctrines you profess are unbiblical. Your confessions and theologians put them forward and so you bear some burden to show that they are.

Can you defend either doctrine from Scripture alone in terms of being exegeted from the text of Scripture alone?

Catholics think it can be demonstrated, but not from Scripture alone. This is why they invoke tradition and philosophical theology. I believe their arguments are bad ones since they rely on fabricated texts, an intrusion of non-Christian philosophy that has a distorting effect on Christian Triadology and Christology, and do not represent the consensus partum as expressed in the councils of the church.

Calvinists and Lutherans though have a different standard. I don’t think either of these doctrines can be demonstrated by Scripture alone. Can you demonstrate the idea of divine simplicity or the Filioque by Scripture alone? So for example, can you give me one passage of Scripture that expressed the idea that the eternal person of the Spirit is produced as from one principle from the Father and the Son? Just one?

Its true, I think Augustine is wrong here, but that is because he at that points falls outside the consensus partum. This isn’t the case with the relevant views on sola gratia and the inclusion of works born of grace in our justification. Second, Lutherans think that he is wrong when he is in line with the other Fathers on including human activity in Justification and Luther says as much. Did Luther misread the patristic corpus n the crucial point or no?

Furthermore, most biblical scholars of various theological persuasions claim that those doctrines cannot be justified from the classical texts put forward by the Franks. This is why Rome issued its famous “White Paper” where it backs off the idea that ekpouresis is a sufficient biblical ground to justify the Filioque.

So I don’t dismiss those scholars out of hand. With scholars who advance the doctrine of the Filioque for example, I have engaged their arguments. Second, most of them admit it can’t be justified by Scripture alone and appeal to philosophical theology and/or tradition. Third, most biblical scholars across traditions admit it can’t be justified or found in the Scriptures. Consequently my judgments are in fact in line with the biblical scholarship on this question for the last 50 plus years.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

2. Sure, I know that Lutherans think that the Scriptural phrases “apart from works” implies Sola Fide, but I don’t think they do for a host of reasons. Augustine’s teaching seems perfectly consistent with the biblical language on that point without Sola Fide. Second, even if the Scriptural language expressed a preclusion of all human activity in terms of outward acts, it would still leave untouched the idea of faith as an intrinsically valuable virtue that pleases God. Third, Paul speaks in Thessalonians of our works “pleasing” God and that seems to be nothing else than his favor.

I’ve read Chemnitz, but I’ve also read Newman. I wasn’t moved by Chemnitz’s claims. Goodie for Hans Kung, who I take to be more in line with liberal Protestantism than Augustine on grace in any case. I don’t think Kung was right and I don’t think Luther was right so mentioning another person I think is wrong won’t move the ball down the field unless you can give me an argument demonstrating as much.

Besides, the question isn’t whether justification in terms of the declaration is forensic or not, but what the ground of it is. Saying that grace is divine favor seems to make grace created. This is why the Lutherans like the Reformed follow Rome in the doctrine of “created grace” they just disagree with Rome on the nature of created grace and that was the heart of Luther’s beef-nothing natural and sensible can be an adequate ground for the supernatural. And saying that Paul excludes the moral law from justification is vague since it would only be germane if the moral law is precluded human activity energized by divine grace or divine power. I don’t think Paul excludes the latter. Love in me fulfills the law and we are co-workers with Christ.

If you can’t figure out how I understand Chrysostom’s use of the phrase then you need to spend more time thinking of how I understand the matter. What is a virtue for Chrysostom? What is faith for Chrysostom? What is the ground for the change in taxonomic classification in justification for Chrysostom? Is it Christ’s faith that saves me or my own for Chrysostom? I’d make the friendly suggestion that these are the questions you need to consider prior to charging me with disagreeing with Chrysostom. I don’t think on this point that Augustine and Chrysostom disagree.

And I’d love to hear your explanation of Pelagius and Julian when they say that we “reach up by faith alone” to grasp Christ. Did Pelagius teach sola fide too since after all, he uses the same language? If you haven’t read Pelagius or Julian on this language, I’d suggest reading some Eck or Fancis De Sales or other counter-Reformation sources, since they made this charge more than once. I’ll dig up some citations from Pelagius for you and you can judge for yourself. But the point is, simply using the phrase “faith alone” doesn’t prove that there is a relation of conceptual isomorphism. You need to demonstrate on a cases by case basis that the author means the same thing Luther did and I don’t think that claim can be substantiated. As I noted, no serious specialist in Chrysostom thinks that he taught sola fide.

In my own judgment, Luther’s theology still strikes me as a modified form of Okhamism where there is a strong cleavage between the natural and the supernatural, where the former serves as an instrument of the latter via will. No sensible particular can divine since no sensible particular is an essential product of a cause of the same essence. Hence sensible particulars at best can serve as instruments, extrinsically related to their cause-faith is thereby related to its cause, God, extrinsically, and acts as a highway or vehicle upon which travels merit since the merit cannot be caused by anything natural.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

3. It was interesting to me that you said that Christ is a divine-human person…twice. This indicated to me that it wasn’t a mere flub, but a more precise statement of your “God-man” language. Regardless of whether you intended it or not in a Nestorian manner, the expression is Nestorian or Monophysite a la Severus. Great, you teach the enhypostia, but I’d need to know what you mean by that since your language about the hypostasis being also human raises serious doubt that you profess the Chalcedonian doctrine.

I am not clear on what it means to say that he is our righteousness in both natures. I’d need to know what you take righteousness to mean in each case. This is why I asked if there were two activities in Christ, which you seemed to flatly deny. Do you affirm that there are two activities or energies in Christ and that they do not always have the same object of choice or no? Does the divine will predestine the human will in Christ or no?

4. Yes I am familiar with Chemnitz, but Chemnitz also says things like

“And they have actually boiled it down to this, that the hypostatic union is the highest and most intimate coming together by which the divine *nature assumes* and the human nature assumed and made the property of the divine, so that these two natures, apart from all change or commingling, come together, concur, and are united *to produce* one person in Christ.” Two Natures in Christ, p. 59

Or this gem,

“And from this figure we have come to use *as equivalents* the terms, essence, nature or person with reference to the incarnation of Christ.” ibid, p. 90

Added to these is the fact that Chemnitz seems to identify the energies with the essence in God making their difference merely epistemic like Rome does. But the real question is if he can say with dyoenergism that the one divine person has willed with two powers of willing two different objects of choice or not, since every monoenergist can say that there is a :communion” or theandric activity in Christ.

And if we can share his eternal glory why can’t we share his eternal righteousness too? Why must it be earned or merited?

William Weedon said...

Goodness, we are wondering all over the place from the point raised in the original post. But with a deep breath...

1. On Filioque, if you know Chemnitz, you know Loci I:142ff. There he rests the Scriptural demonstration of filioque on Gal. 4:6 (Spirit OF the Son); John 20 (where the Spirit is breathed out by Christ - the argument from economic to ontological); John 16:15 (where the Spirit takes from the Son as He proceeds from the Father). A Lutheran treatment of the question can also be found here:

http://www.angelfire.com/ny4/djw/lutherantheology.filioque.html

Yes, that's your old buddy David Jay Webber.

2. There is no doubt that the grounding of the claim of justification is in the righteousness that is Christ Himself, whom God has made our righteousness. The grounding is not "in" us save that Christ Himself is present in faith. Are you familiar with the Finnish school (Manermaa, Puera etc.) on this question?

3. To say that He is our righteousness in both natures is to say that HE is our righteousness, and we know Him solely in both natures, unmingled, but also undivided. It is the God-Man - the Eternal Word, who assumed a human nature from the womb of the most holy Virgin - who is our righteousness in His most holy obedience, rendered to His Father. As the prophet Jeremiah foretold: "The LORD, our righteousness" - that is the name of the Branch of David's house.

4. I do not understand the point you are making in citing the Chemnitz stuff under 4. Can you spell out your objection for me?

William Weedon said...

On #3 again, to clarify, faith justifies because it lays hold of Christ as our Mediator, our Propitiation, our Lamb of God - and the Christ our faith holds to is from the incarnation ever in two natures, though one person.

Acolyte4236 said...

Weedon,

Yes, I have read Chemnitz, but he really doesn’t provide an exegesis. Second, Gal 4:6 refers to the economia, not the generation of the person of the Spirit. And besides, the Spirit is called the Spirit of truth too. Does that imply that he eternally proceeds from the divine attribute of truth? John 20 is also in the economia and not the generation of the person of the Spirit.

Here are a few reasons why the argument from the encomia to the theologia won’t work. First, it assumes a certain view of simplicity to guarantee that the economia is isomorphic with the theologia. Without that doctrine, the argument won’t go through. Second, in the econonmia the Son is conceived by the Father and the Spirit in the womb of the virgin. If we follow the argument through then the Son will be begotten from the Father and the Spirit and hence we have Spirituque. This was exactly the conclusion Augustine came to but realized that he couldn’t go that far. The same goes for the baptism of Christ.

John 16:15 is no help either for similar reasons. If the Son has what the Father has by virtue of the common essence and therefore the person of the Spirit is generated from both as from one principle, then either the Spirit isn’t God or the Spirit proceeds from himself since he has everything the Father and Son have by virtue of being of the same essence. The argument falters since it requires that the Father and Son have something that the Spirit doesn’t have. Last, the passage is talking about the teaching of the Son that he received from his Father that the Spirit will now continue to teach the apostles. Vv. 5, 10, 12-13. It is not talking about eternal procession of the person of the Spirit and there is nothing in the grammar to indicate as much.

And yes, I’ve read Webber’s bit before and was only moved by the errors he made there. There isn’t anything new in it or particularly insightful. And there certainly isn’t an exegetical case showing how it comes from the Scriptures alone. So I am afraid you haven’t shown that the Scriptures teach it.

I can only see why the righteousness can’t be in us if I take a view of human nature as fundamentally alien to God. Other than that, I can’t see why the righteousness of Christ has to be earned or can’t be genuinely ours. Why can’t our working also be fully Christ’s working as Paul says, not I but Christ in me? This is a problem if the works are discrete particulars and their genus is nominal, but then again, I am not a nominalist. And yes I am familiar somewhat with the Finnish school, but it isn’t clear that it represents Luther’s mature thought, but his early thought. Second, in Manermaa’s piece on Luther and theosis Luther makes it clear that what counts as theosis is acreated effect causedin us by divine power and that isn’t theosis since it is partaking of something created and not the divine nature.

Again, to say that “he is our righteousness” as an answer to the question of whether it is created or uncreated is ambiguous. You need to spell out what that amounts to. Is the righteousness eternal? If so, then obviously it wasn’t merited.

My point with the citations from Chemnitz was to note the obvious major Christological goofs so that your citation doesn’t really prove that our positions are isomorphic given Chemnitz confusion.

Athanasios Boeker said...

MG,

One of the great points I believe you made was:

"If I were a judge, I could pay someone back for something with the intention of reforming their character. If I thought their deeds were evil, and I thought their character needed to be reformed, I could inflict harm on them with the intention of fixing their character. Or I could pay someone back for something with the intention of deterring that person, or other people, from doing wrong to others in the future—because I thought their deeds were evil, so they should be discouraged from continuing in evil. Or I could pay someone back for some wrong they did with the intent of preventing that person from being able to affect others. In this case, because I thought they did evil, I thought they should be prevented from harming others, so I put them in prison, or had them executed, etc. which is a repayment for the wrong they did. So repayment need not mean retribution in the strict sense. It depends on the motivation."

All of the above is true about God's justice. However, I must add that when St. John Damascene states, "after God has done all that was possible to save him, remains of his own set purpose blind and uncured, or rather incurable, and then he is handed over to utter destruction, as was Judas. May God be gracious to us, and deliver us from such desertion." There is no positive benefit to be recieved by the subject, or anyone else for that matter, for this "payment due." It is a "Final Payment" for permanent opposition to God's grace.

MG said...

Pr Weedon--

you wrote:

"St. Paul teaches that we make zero contribution toward our JUSTIFICATION, that it is God who justifies, but His justification brings about exactly what He promises. He MAKES the ungodly just, and He does this through the forgiveness of sins and the gift of Christ who becomes and is our righteousness.

Does a Christian contribute toward salvation? Everything in answer to that question hangs on what you mean by "salvation." If you mean justification, no. If you mean, is there a role for the human will, renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and thus willing together with God the destruction of sin and the faith that clings to the true God, then indeed there is something in us."

This does not seem to respond to my interpretation of what Chrysostom said. He seems to be saying we contribute to our justification, so you seem to disagree with his interpretation of Paul. You haven't shown that Chrysostom's quotes should be taken any way other than what I argued is the obvious sense. And though I disagree with your interpretation of Paul as well, the issue at hand is whether or not Chrysostom interprets Paul the same way you do.

MG said...

Pr Weedon--

You wrote:

"Note that we do not believe in a legal fiction: God regarding the unjust as just when they are in fact not. We believe that it is God's regard and declaration of justice that creates the justice it declares. He's God. He speaks and what He speaks happens."

It seems to me that if a judge declared about a completely vicious criminal "you are considered righteous now" before sending him to prison, then even if the criminal's character radically changed and he became actually righteous through rehab, the judge still would have been fictitious. The judge's judgment still would have been based off of a fiction. Just because you begin to be infused with righteousness at the time of justification, and subsequently become righteous, does not mean that it is based off of reality at the time that the person is declared righteous.

I know that Lutherans will say that this is analogous to God declaring "let there be light", when there was no light. But notice: God doesn't say "look, light exists" when it in fact it does not. God's declarations pick out reality, because He is the God of Truth.

Athanasios Boeker said...

Here are a couple of relevant quotes that I believe explain the Orthodox view of God's "wrath."

In essence the wrath of God is one of the manifestations of the love of God, but of the love of God in its relation to the moral evil in the heart of rational creatures in general, and in the heart of man in particular.-Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, On Redemption.

“Man was led into his captivity when he experienced God’s wrath, this wrath being the good God’s just abandonment of man." -St. Gregory Palamas.

William Weedon said...

And this post tops 200 comments - who'd have thunk it. And it is only to note I'll be a couple days getting back to the comments, Perry and GC, because of I have stuff to attend to here. But I will return, because "it's the thread that never ends!"

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