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As for the Publican, he humbles himself and his humility justifies him before God. If there is a moral quality almost completely disregarded and even denied today, it is indeed humility. The culture in which we live constantly instills in us the sense of pride, of self-glorification, and of self-righteousness. It is built on the assumption that man can achieve anything by himself and it even pictures God as the One who all the time "gives credit" for man's achievements and good deeds. Humility—be it individual or corporate, ethnic or national—is viewed as a sign of weakness, as something unbecoming a real man. Even our churches—are they not imbued with that same spirit of the Pharisee? Do we not want our every contribution, every "good deed," all that we do "for the Church" to be acknowledged, praised, publicized?

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But what is humility? The answer to this question may seem a paradoxical one for it is rooted in a strange affirmation: God Himself is humble! Yet to anyone who knows God, who contemplates Him in His creation and in His saving acts, it is evident that humility is truly a divine quality, the very content and the radiance of that glory which, as we sing during the Divine Liturgy, fills heaven and earth. In our human mentality we tend to oppose "glory" and "humility"—the latter being for us the indication of a flaw or deficiency. For us it is our ignorance or incompetence that makes or ought to make us feel humble. It is almost impossible to "put across" to the modern man, fed on publicity, self-affirmation, and endless self-praise, that all that which is genuinely perfect, beautiful, and good is at the same time naturally humble; for precisely because of its perfection, it does not need "publicity," external glory, or "showing off" of any kind. God is humble because He is perfect; His humility is His glory and the source of all true beauty, perfection, and goodness, and everyone who approaches God and knows Him immediately partakes of the Divine humility and is beautified by it. This is true of Mary, the Mother of Christ, whose humility made her the joy of all creation and the greatest revelation of beauty on earth, true of all the Saints, and true of every human being during the rare moments of his contacts with God.

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Originally posted by John Earp

Edwards and I agree that God cannot sin. What we disagree on is the reason why. My view gives glory to God for his MORAL excellence in choosing to act in wisdom and love and God's NATURAL attribute of infinite intelligence (not too different from Edwards). These in tandem reveal a God who cannot sin. He cannot because he wills not to, based on his wisdom, love, and infinite intelligence.

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Do we all tend to take "humility" and "glory" and turn them sometimes into an "either/or," and other times into a "before/after?"

Why?

Should we?

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How does one become humble? The answer, for a Christian, is simple: by contemplating Christ, the divine humility incarnate, the One in whom God has revealed once and for all His glory as humility and His humility as glory. "Today," Christ said on the night of His ultimate self-humiliation, "the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him." Humility is learned by contemplating Christ who said: "Learn from Me for I am meek and humble in heart." Finally, it is learned by measuring everything by Him, by referring everything to Him. For without Christ, true humility is impossible, while with the Pharisee, even religion becomes pride in human achievements, another form of pharisaic self-glorification.

The lenten season begins then by a quest, a prayer for humility which is the beginning of true repentance. For repentance, above everything else, is a return to the genuine order of things, the restoration of the right vision. It is, therefore, rooted in humility, and humility—the divine and beautiful humility—is its fruit and end. "Let us avoid the high flown speech of the Pharisee," says the Kontakion of this day, "and learn the majesty of the Publican's humble words. . . ." We are at the gates of repentance and at the most solemn moment of the Sunday Vigil; after the Resurrection and the appearance of Christ have been announced— "having beheld the Resurrection . . ."—we sing for the first time the troparia which will accompany us throughout the entire Lent:

Open to me the gates of repentance, 0 Giver of Life, For my spirit rises early to pray towards Thy holy temple,
Bearing the temple of my body all defiled;
But in Thy compassion, purify me by the loving kindness of Thy mercy.

Lead me on the paths of salvation, 0 Mother of God,
For I have profaned my soul with shameful sins,
and have wasted my life in laziness.
But by your intercessions, deliver me from all impurity.

When I think of the many evil things I have done, wretch that I am,
I tremble at the fearful day of judgement.
But trusting in Thy loving kindness, like David I cry to Thee:
Have mercy on me, 0 God, according to Thy great mercy.

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Originally posted by sglr

Do you believe the Old Testament Prophets' predictions of future events were inspired by God?

Thanks,
SGLR

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Originally posted by albert

Dear PoW. . .

If Jesus, when he was incarnate on earth as our representative, had a divine nature that made him incapable of sin, and if he was omniscient and so forth, then he did not become what we are at all. It is absolutely intrinsic to being human that one is limited in terms of knowledge, and that one has the capacity to sin apart from fellowship with God. If Jesus was not like that, then no matter protests to the contrary, I don't think he was in a meaningful sense human.

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Originally posted by sglr

PoW,

I don't see any problem with Schmemann's comment.

SGLR

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As for the Publican, he humbles himself and his humility justifies him before God. If there is a moral quality almost completely disregarded and even denied today, it is indeed humility. The culture in which we live constantly instills in us the sense of pride, of self-glorification, and of self-righteousness. It is built on the assumption that man can achieve anything by himself and it even pictures God as the One who all the time "gives credit" for man's achievements and good deeds. Humility—be it individual or corporate, ethnic or national—is viewed as a sign of weakness, as something unbecoming a real man. Even our churches—are they not imbued with that same spirit of the Pharisee? Do we not want our every contribution, every "good deed," all that we do "for the Church" to be acknowledged, praised, publicized?

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But what is humility? The answer to this question may seem a paradoxical one for it is rooted in a strange affirmation: God Himself is humble! Yet to anyone who knows God, who contemplates Him in His creation and in His saving acts, it is evident that humility is truly a divine quality, the very content and the radiance of that glory which, as we sing during the Divine Liturgy, fills heaven and earth. In our human mentality we tend to oppose "glory" and "humility"—the latter being for us the indication of a flaw or deficiency. For us it is our ignorance or incompetence that makes or ought to make us feel humble. It is almost impossible to "put across" to the modern man, fed on publicity, self-affirmation, and endless self-praise, that all that which is genuinely perfect, beautiful, and good is at the same time naturally humble; for precisely because of its perfection, it does not need "publicity," external glory, or "showing off" of any kind. God is humble because He is perfect; His humility is His glory and the source of all true beauty, perfection, and goodness, and everyone who approaches God and knows Him immediately partakes of the Divine humility and is beautified by it. This is true of Mary, the Mother of Christ, whose humility made her the joy of all creation and the greatest revelation of beauty on earth, true of all the Saints, and true of every human being during the rare moments of his contacts with God.

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How does one become humble? The answer, for a Christian, is simple: by contemplating Christ, the divine humility incarnate, the One in whom God has revealed once and for all His glory as humility and His humility as glory. "Today," Christ said on the night of His ultimate self-humiliation, "the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him." Humility is learned by contemplating Christ who said: "Learn from Me for I am meek and humble in heart." Finally, it is learned by measuring everything by Him, by referring everything to Him. For without Christ, true humility is impossible, while with the Pharisee, even religion becomes pride in human achievements, another form of pharisaic self-glorification.

The lenten season begins then by a quest, a prayer for humility which is the beginning of true repentance. For repentance, above everything else, is a return to the genuine order of things, the restoration of the right vision. It is, therefore, rooted in humility, and humility—the divine and beautiful humility—is its fruit and end. "Let us avoid the high flown speech of the Pharisee," says the Kontakion of this day, "and learn the majesty of the Publican's humble words. . . ." We are at the gates of repentance and at the most solemn moment of the Sunday Vigil; after the Resurrection and the appearance of Christ have been announced— "having beheld the Resurrection . . ."—we sing for the first time the troparia which will accompany us throughout the entire Lent:

Open to me the gates of repentance, 0 Giver of Life, For my spirit rises early to pray towards Thy holy temple,
Bearing the temple of my body all defiled;
But in Thy compassion, purify me by the loving kindness of Thy mercy.

Lead me on the paths of salvation, 0 Mother of God,
For I have profaned my soul with shameful sins,
and have wasted my life in laziness.
But by your intercessions, deliver me from all impurity.

When I think of the many evil things I have done, wretch that I am,
I tremble at the fearful day of judgement.
But trusting in Thy loving kindness, like David I cry to Thee:
Have mercy on me, 0 God, according to Thy great mercy.

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Originally posted by albert

Dear PoW,

Regarding a Greek influence... It is quite obvious that the latter were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. ...The Biblical writers shared a basically Hebrew world-view and did not think in those terms.

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Is Orthodoxy Neo-Platonic?
by Dr. Thomas Mether
orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/orth_plato.htm

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AS PER A CHARGE THAT CHRISTIANITY IS A: "Self-Conscious Synthesis with Paganism: Eastern Orthodox historical discussions often praise the early church’s opposition to Platonism as found in thinkers like Origen. But, in discussing deification, they seem to have little difficulty in embracing the pagan philosophy of Plotinus (205-270 A.D.), the primary systematizer of Neo-Platonism."
ANSWER

There are so many factual things wrong with this claim, which by vague generalities gets to rely on ambiguity of what actual relations existed or did not exist. There is no motif of deification in Plotinus and notice they give no citation from the Enneads as standard academic practice would require. Vague of who, specifically, embraces Plotinian philosophy in their talk of deification. There is no naming names or giving of dates or sources. For example, did St.
Maximos, father of Byzantine theology quote Plotinus? As it happens, he did twice. He refers to Ennead I.2, 1:118 and IV. 3, 1:134. Neither has anything to do with deification. So, who did? They state but without support. By the way, Calvin quotes atheists so I guess his theology is contaminated by them. Anyway, another academically questionable tactic for a claim that has no support.

Eastern Orthodox thinkers at times insist that they have purged neo-Platonism from their thinking by slight changes in Plotinus’s system.

This is an elaboration and variation on the original unsupported assertion with one difference. Which Eastern Orthodox thinkers when literally claim that "they have purged neo-Platonism from their thinking by slight changes in Plotinus’s system." No names named. And it ignores the very important distinction of ousia and hypostasis. If one looks at number of citations, the Fathers actually quote Aristotle more than Plotinus or the Platonists. Aristotle is a common conceptual framework to Orthodox and Calvinist theology. Much of the Fathers Platonist vocabulary comes from Origen’s attack on Celsus or from Pseudo-Denis whose neo-Platonism is Syriac, not Plotinean. Nicene vocabulary is a critical re-construction of Origen’s conceptual vocabulary. This is inherited by both Orthodox and Calvinists. And where Orthodox Trinitarian theology departs from the west, it is more Biblical than the west’s! Consider.

Towards late antiquity, two words were in philosophical use which meant substance or substantive being. s Aristotle put it, being can be said in many ways or there are many meanings of Being. He isolated and identified Being according to the different categories of which substance (ousia) was the most fundamental, Being as act and potency, Being as true, and Being as contingent as opposed to necessary/essential. There has been on and off again the debate over the question of whether this listing of the meanings of Being is complete. We will return to that in a bit. The Byzantine answer was it was incomplete.

As indicated, there were two words used for substantive being in late classical philosophy. The first was Aristotle’s ousia. The second was hypostasis from Stoic origins. But they each developed a meaning that made them not exactly synonymous. Ousia increasingly came to mean a substance/thing to the extent it was a kind of substance/thing or a thing of a typical nature or essence. Hypostasis increasingly came to mean a substantive mode of existence in its unique and distinctive particularity and individuality.

Into this context comes the tradition of Judaism. Philo uses these distinctions to suggest that the personal God of Israel is a uniquely distinctive and singular reality or hypostasis in contrast to the impersonal thought thinking itself thing (ousia) of Aristotle. One branch of Middle Platonism picks this up and God and souls become hypostases while impersonal things, including cups, chairs, etc., become ousias. The other branch of Middle Platonism represented by Numenius of Apamea pushes the God as impersonal monad and ousia interpretation which nevertheless reinforces the ousia = non-personal substance/thing of a typical kind and hypostasis = personal substance of a uniquely and distinctive individual (usually God as person).

We have here the elements of a conceptual revolution in ancient philosophy and religion. It was the characteristic trait of ancient philosophy, religion, and humanism that the individual was not valued in and of itself in its particularity but only as an paradigmatic instance of a universal ideal type. Person was just an epiphenomenal mask. By contrast, as Tillich brings out, even the post-Christian humanism of the modern world is Judeo-Christian to the extent the unrepeatable individual per se is valued in and of itself. The roots of this contrast is in the Trinitarian controversy and the debt the parties owed to Philo and Origen.

Consider, the Christological controversy was settled in terms of ousia (homoousia) as the substantive divinity of both the Father and Christ. They are of one essence. Now, in the Trinitarian controversy, given the pre-history of the words ousia and hypostasis and given that ousia was implied already in the omoousia solution to the christological issue and finally given that the conventional and more common word for person (prosopon) had no ontological weight given its epiphenomenal connotation, the Church Fathers chose hypostasis to designate God in his distinctive, unrepeatable, and individual personalities in all their distinctive particularity because it had ontological and substantive weight—personhood was ontologically ultimate. They feared that the use of prosopon would convey a modalist or Sabellian message which would be a subordination of persons to impersonal ousia. And this is what the Latin and Calvinist west, even as early as in Augustine’s time, did not understand and confessed it did not understand. As Fr. Theodore Regnon, S.J. put it, "Latin philosophy (Christian theology) considers the nature in itself first and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy (Christian theology) considers the agent first and passes through it to find the nature. The Latins think of personality as a mode of nature; the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person. The western lack of understanding of what the Greek Fathers had accomplished in the nature of the distinction and relations of priority within it between ousia and hypostases led to a certain re-paganization of Trinitarian thought in which the philosophical essentialism of an unreformed ousiological metaphysics engenders the accent to fall on the divine unity in the west."

Now the so-called "monarchia of the Father" in eastern Trinitarian theology means person trumps impersonal thing. Even the divine ousia exists because the Father is the PERSONAL source of the communion of divine hypostases that is the ousia. The west tends to take it the other way around, beginning with ousia, and thus, from an eastern perspective, betrays the very essence of the meaning of the Trinity as interpersonality as ultimate reality. With the influx of insufficiently re-constructed philosophical concepts in the west, you get the re-paganization of Christian theology in the west as instanced by debates over God’s foreknowledge of future contingents, whether it is matter or form of an ousia/substantial thing that individuates (and individuates both things and persons), and so on. The west was captured by an ousiological metaphysics. This metaphysics held western theology in captivity. It is in its nominalist form coming from William Occam that we find it still in captivity in the Calvinist’s even having the very question of whether God knows future contingents in light of predestination, and time. This was a metaphysics, St. Maximos the Confessor points out, that saw time as an enemy and thus sought that stable enduring thing through change that thereby is the most fundamental kind of being. Thus, that kind of perdurance was dubbed with the past participle he says. In essence, what is called by contemporary philosophers "the metaphysics of presence" according to Maximos is really the metaphysics of the past, as fully complete and determinate, used paradigmatically to colonize all the other temporal modes of present and future. The present is the predestined creature of the past both in Calvin and Newton. The essentialism downgrades accidental being or sumbebekos. Now sumbebekos as accidental being was also not well understood in the west. It is not being that exists in another like a form of being found within one of the predicate categories. It designates the happenstantial, the contingently situational so it is not precisely necessary-essential that my wife has auburn hair; that she has this hair color is accidental in the sense of sumbebekos, it is fortuitous in the sense that her hair could have indifferently been auburn or not auburn but it is necessary that it have some color. This kind of accidental being can be found in every category. Thus, in the pagan Greek view, that a human is this or that individual is accidental but it is necessary that a human be somebody. The distinction then between accidental being in the sense of sumbebekos from an accident-predicate is that the accidental being is the contingent or fortuitious actuality according to every necessary category. So, accidental being in this sense is the contingent affection or actual constellation or situation or event that takes place according to the necessity of different categories. On the Orthodox reading, this sumbebekos is really God’s governance or the concrete realization of God’s purpose in time. To downgrade it is a spiritually sick symptom of the religiosity of sarx that finds time to be a corrosive force that bears no faith or hope. Thus, accidental being just as the unique particularity of persons and the future, is downgraded in pagan metaphysics in favor of fully determinate being-essences (the dead, fully completed and determinate and deterministic past idealized as enduring presence) or ousiological being for the paradigmatic past participle. It was not till Scotus developed his concept of haecceity and the individual’s will did you find the beginning of the overturn of a ousiological metaphysics in western Christian theology. Maximos pointed out the original meaning of sumbebekos was not negative as it as in pagan philosophical theology but was positive. It meant the adventurous and creative way things are "brought together." So, in Orthodox theology coming from Maximos, the pagan agenda to make (persons and) reality in its concreteness, in all its contingency, fortuity, distinctiveness, and unique unrepeatibility unreal in favor of impersonal, universal, and necessary is set on its head. Thus, sumbebekos, as very purposeful counterpoint in Byzantine theology, is the creative way (Logos) that God brings all things together (sumbebekos) in the existential fullness of their realization (uparktikos) of his eikonomia. This lead Maximos to revolutionize Aristotle’s categorical analysis of Being in one of its meanings. But to back up a bit. Now, the Cappadocians start to make systematic use of these terms ousia and hypostasis to build the foundations of eastern theology. But it is St. Maximos the Confessor who really completes this task and thus is called the father of Byzantine theology. This takes us back to the question of whether the meanings of Being given by Aristotle are an exhaustive list. For Maximos states:

It is no accident, or rather, is foreordained blind inspiration that the Stagirite spoke both worse and better than he meant. For when he says that ‘indeed the inquiry or perplexity concerning what being (on) is, in early times and now and always, is just this: what is substance (ousia) (Meta Z 1.5, 1028b).’ he begs the question by his reduction of the problem of Being to that of one kind of substantial being. For the categorial determinations of the meanings of Being that have their focus or reference to a more fundamental kind of being are multiple. For as Tradition has taught us to see, there is another substantive mode of existing which is that of the personal mode of existence. The logos was in our tongue but we could not see. There are hypostases that are a personal mode of existence (tropos hyparxeos) that is the referent or fundamental kind of being that has characteristic manners or modes (tropoi) of being as modifications of the first-personal to be (eimi) that is the voluntary (thelesis) analogue to ousiological energeia and that can existentially realize (uparktikos) itself contranaturally, naturally, or supranaturally with their respective vices and virtues.

So, for example, (remember Byzantium did not go through a dark ages like the west did. It maintained high literacy, even in Latin {because of their fierce pride in being descendents of the Romans, even military communiques to the Romanians, for example, were in Latin until 1081} classics were studied and known through the schools, and it had almost all the classical and patristic works of antiquity, in sharp contrast to the west, and thus, was the source, usually still unacknowledged in western secondary literature, of the Greek texts being translated by such as Moerbeke in the time of Aquinas down to the Renaissance when refugees from Byzantium brought texts, like the Dialogues of Plato, to Ficino), the question of individuation was never posed within the new metaphysical framework of Byzantine theology as a choice of the essence or matter of an ousia. Human existence is comprised of human nature (ousia), with its matter and form, as a species principle of nature (logos physeos) that is individuated by the personal mode of existence (tropos hyparxeos) of the hypostasis. But Orthodoxy has a developmental view. Even if there had been no fall, Adam would have still had to evolve from the Image into the Likeness through the Incarnation (anselmian theory is wrong on the eastern view if purpose of Incarnation was just to correct the fall because Church is the goal as the Body of Christ) in a process called theosis (deification) in synergy with the divine Energies. While in principle it is the hypostasis that individuates, instead of one of the metaphysical elements of the human ousia, it is the process of theosis that is the actual process of individuating the one becoming a person in the fulness of the Likeness of the interpersonality of the Trinitarian life. So, see, the east is in a very different conceptual universe, metaphysically, than the west and which the west has not appreciated as yet in its attempts to grasp eastern theology/metaphysics. So, Thomist and Calvinist discussions seem, from an Orthodox perspective to, too uncritically inherit a pagan concept without sufficient critical reflection on the legacy of its pre-Christian meaning and implications. The on-going issue of the relation of Greek philosophy and Orthodox theological expression is an issue for any properly responsible theology that has to be methodologically fastidious about the concepts it uses and/ or may read into Scripture. Proof of this, at least in the case of Thomas and Calvin, is the very need to be concerned about whether or not God knows individual souls, particulars, or future contingents. The Orthodox understanding is that the pagan concept of divine immutability was an allergic reaction to time and contingency that needed to find a time-proof foundation of necessity for religious reassurance. Time was the evil Kronos who ate its children. So, the concept is symptomatic of a spiritual sickness of the religiosity of sarx (which in Orthodoxy is not "flesh," but deathliness, related to sarcophagus, it is the opposite of spirit, it is de-spiritedness that emotionally believes in death more than God despite what the head believes). Pagan philosophical theology sought a predestinied necessity in a time-proof order or an anti-time God. Since everything human is temporal, one gets the unknown God because God is what anything temporal-mortal is not.

Using a Biblical base to modify Greek pagan concepts, divine immutability in Orthodoxy is God’s loyalty to his promise (his Word, his Church) to his (Church designed) creatures. It is the immutability of his commitment through and outside of time. It is the basis of the fact that economia was the telos, and thus, foundation of the creation. Church is the fulfillment of covenant. Covenant is the inner purpose for creation. Creation is the outer staging for the inner purpose. So, the Church, as Body of Christ, is the fruit from which the tree that bore it, the cosmos, was itself borne and born, as St. Diadochus of Gaza puts it. God’s immutability is that he is agape, essentially and contingently, immutably a sharer of Person with Persons, uncreate or create. Time has no nature apart from this agenda, and thus, is nothing in relation to it, and thus, is not an obstacle or issue for or about divine immutability unlike the unregenerate paganism of the insufficiently methologically critical Calvinism.

We derive our reconstructed metaphysics and cosmology from dogmatics. It was the Catholic and Protestant west that tried, especially after Aquinas, to mix and match. Only Luther showed some sophistication in these matters. But Calvin’s Institutes depends on un-re-examined concepts from the western philosophical-theological tradition. By the way, Barth’s discussion of Calvin is an effective deconstruction and expose of Calvin’s non-Christian philosophical legacies, including the neo-Platonic concepts in Calvinist theology. Anyway, I hope this shows just how minute the fine-tooth combing of Greek concepts in order to serve Christian theology was.

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Originally posted by sglr

John,

Do you believe the Old Testament Prophets' predictions of future events were inspired by God?

Thanks,
SGLR

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Originally posted by Springs

Hey Doc,
Welcome back. I suppose you are driving all your friends crazy by talking with a British accent!

It's good to read a post that doesn't contain the words 'homosexual' and 'remarried'[:P] Not that there's anything wrong with that. ha

I think that the 40 days in the wilderness attest to the fact that Jesus had freewill, not to mention the anguish in the garden, but God has said we will not be tempted with more than we are able to overcome. I believe that we can overcome any temptation if we are connected to God and rely on his Spirit.

I may be out to lunch here...how old are these posts?? !!

Jesus was fully God and fully man. The Bible tells us He was tempted in every way as we are. If not...then what He experienced could not be temptation and we have a God who was not fully man as well as fully God. I find this encouraging...to know that He experienced the same temptations I do and that He understands. God took a necessary risk when He created us with free will...a risk that was necessary if we could truly choose to love Him. In a sense He took a risk sending His very own Son. Jesus could have chosen not to die.

There I got my two cents in before all the big guns showed up.

I'm going out of town to a convention. I won't have to do any public speaking but I'll have as much fun as you did, and I'll look better doing it!

-S



"God has instituted prayer so as to confer upon his creatures the dignity of being causes." — Blaise Pascal

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Originally posted by writerdad

Matt:

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I think everyone can recognize that John is being cyber-cute when he writes: "I see you admit that on your view God is a moral robot." Sglr obviously mis-typed.

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Are you two really arguing about whether God is humble first and glorious later (I read you this way John Earp.) or whether God is glorious first and humble later (And I take this to be John Earp's read of Sglr's comments.)?

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But while wisdom, love and the nominalizing concept of infinite intellegence (the Open-theist's invention; I reject OpenTheism.) -- which seems redundant to wisdom --

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What do each of you think on this question:

Do we all tend to take "humility" and "glory" and turn them sometimes into an "either/or," and other times into a "before/after?"

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Originally posted by feelinahole

PotOnWheel: do you ever just state things (like your own opinion) without quoting others at great length?

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

I believe without hesitation that the Father took a risk in creating humans and angels with free will because that is the kind of creation He desired

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

and because it is necessary in order for us to freely love - to choose.

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

I believe that we are created in the image of God and the exact imprint of the Father is found in Jesus Christ.

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

Therefore if he created us with freewill, He has free will Himself.

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Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
"You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

Jesus could have chosen "other" He could have decided not to choose the cross.

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Originally posted by moon_river_j

He was tempted "in every way as we are" so He could have chosen "other" there as well.

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Originally posted by John Earp

In my view, no, God is not "humble first and glorious later." I see moral goodness as simultaneous in God. For the sake of argument, at the moment He is humble, he is glorious. Given that God has always chosen the good (humble, for example), I do not see the time separation in God's moral attributes you seem to be trying to make. God's glory is revealed in his humility, most notably in the Cross.

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MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR
ad thalassium 42

On Jesus Christ, the New Adam Who "Became Sin"

(CCSG 7:285-289)

Question. [285] How is it that we are said to commit sin and know it (cf i Jn 1:8), while the Lord became sin but did not know it? How is it not more serious to become sin and not know it, than to commit sin and know it? For the Scripture says, For our sake God made him become sin who knew no sin (2 Cor 5:21).

Response. Having originally been corrupted from its natural design, Adam's free choice (repoaipeoic) corrupted along with it our human nature, which forfeited the grace of impassibility (cinaGeia). Thus came sin into existence. The first sin, culpable indeed, was the fall of free choice from good into evil; the second, following upon the first, was the innocent transformation of human nature from incorruption into corruption. For our forefather Adam committed two "sins" by his transgression of God's commandment: the first "sin" was culpa­ble, when his free choice willfully rejected the good; but the second "sin," occasioned by the first, was innocent, since human nature unwillingly put off its incorruption. Therefore our Lord and God, rectifying this reciprocal corruption and alteration of our human nature by taking on the whole of our nature, even had in his assumed nature the liability to passions which, in his own exercise of free choice, he adorned with incorruptibility. And it is by virtue of his assumption of this natural passibility that he became sin for our sake, though he did not know any deliberate sin (yv(i)[iiKT) auap-ria) because of the immutability of his free choice.' Because his free choice was incorruptible, he rectified our nature's liability to passions and turned the end of our nature's passibility-which is death-into the beginning of our natural transformation to incor-ruption. In turn, just as through one man, who turned voluntarily from the good, the human nature was changed from incorruption to corruption to the detriment of all humanity, so too through one man, Jesus Christ, who did not voluntarily turn from the good, [ 287] human nature underwent a restoration from corruption to incor­ruption for the benefit of all humanity.2

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1 -- Just as in another of his early works, the Commentary on the Lord's Prayer (CCSG 23:34,135-35,142), Maximus had openly avowed the presence of"gnomic"wlll in Christ, here in Ad Thalassiurn 42 he affirms the presence of "free choice" (upocupe-oic) in Christ as well. Later, in the heat of the Monothelite controversy, he would retract that assertion. He does so in Opusculum i, (PG 9i:29D-32A), written ca. 645^ where he refers back to Ad Thalassium 42 and explains that to affirm "free choice (itpoaipeoic) in Christ would be to introduce an ordinary process of appetency in his already-deified human will (Oe^ncnc). At this point, "free choice" could all too easily be associated with Tvcbun, which Maximus had at last narrowly defined as that"delit^ erative" sort of volition which entailed hesitancy toward the good, and which coul
not, then, be operative in Christ.
2 -- Paul's Adam/Christ analogy in Rom 5:12-19; i Cor 15:21-22.
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Therefore the Lord did not know"my sin" (r| £ut| auapTia), that is, the mutability of my free choice. Neither did he assume nor become my sin. Rather, he became the "sin that I caused" (f) 81' £|ie &[xapTia); in other words, he assumed the corruption of human ^ nature that was a consequence of the mutability of my free choice. I For our sake he became a human being naturally liable to passions, and used the "sin" that I caused to destroy the "sin" that I commit. Just as in Adam, with his own act of freely choosing evil, the com­mon glory of human nature, incorruption, was robbed-since God judged that it was not right for humanity, having abused free choice, to have an immortal nature-so too in Christ, with his own act of freely choosing the good, the common scourge of our whole nature, corruption, was taken away. At the resurrection of Christ, human nature was transformed into incorruption because his free choice was immutable. For God judged that it was right for man, when he did not subvert his free choice, once again to recover an immortal nature. By "man" here I mean the incarnate Logos in virtue of the fact that he united to himself, hypostatically, the flesh animated by a rational soul. For if the deviance3 of free choice introduced passibil­ity, corruptibility, and mortality in Adam's nature, it only followed that in Christ, the immutability of free choice, realized through his resurrection, introduced natural impassibility, incorruptibility, and immortality.

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3 -- The notion of the mutability (ipojir}}, or, understood pejoratively, the deviance" of human free choice, well known from the anthropology of Gregory of Nyssa.was exploited by Maximus as well. See, in particular, Ep. 6 (PG 9i:432A-B); also Paul Blowers, "Maximus the Confessor, Gregory ofNyssa, and the Concept of'Per-Petual Progress,'" Vigiliae Christianize 46 (1992): 156-7. On the antecedent develop­ment of this theme in Gregory, see Jean Danielou, L'etre et Ie temps chez Gregoire de Mwe (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), pp. 95-115.
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Hence the mutation of human nature over to passibility, cor­ruption, and death is the condemnation of Adam's deliberate sin. Man was not created by God in the beginning with such a corrupted nature; rather, man invented and knew it since he created deliberate sin through his disobedience. And clearly condemnation by death is the result of such sin. Yet the Lord took on this very condemnation of my deliberate sin, that is to say, the passibility, corruptibility, and mortality of our nature. [289] He became the "sin" that I caused, in terms of the passibility, corruptibility, and mortality, and he sub­mitted voluntarily to the condemnation owed me in my nature, even though he himself was blameless in his freedom of choice, in order to condemn both my deliberate "sin" and the "sin" that befell my nature. Accordingly he has driven sin, passion, corruption, and death from human nature, and the economy of Christ's philan­thropy on my behalf has become for me, one fallen through disobe­dience, a new mystery. For the sake of my salvation, Christ, through his own death, voluntarily made my condemnation his own, thereby granting me restoration to immortality.

In many ways, I think, it has been shown in this brief discussion both how the Lord became sin but did not know it, and how human­ity did not become sin but did commit and know sin-both the deliberate "sin" which man committed first, and the subsequent nat­ural "sin" to which the Lord submitted himself on humanity's account, even when he was completely free of the first kind of sin. So according to the intended purpose (oxoTioq) of the text as we have rendered it here,4 and respecting the proper conceptual dis­tinction between the two meanings of "sin," it is by no means better to commit and to know sin than to become sin. For the former "sin" incurs separation from God, since free choice voluntarily rejects divine things; but the latter "sin" may very well hinder evil, since it does not allow that wickedness of free choice that is based on the infirmity of nature to advance into concrete action.

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4 -- Maximus presupposes the Alexandrian hermeneutical principle of the ultima "intention" (oK07l6c,) of scriptural texts, their pointing beyond themselves to a rug" spiritual and eschatological purpose. The principle is found abundantly in un^ Gregory ofNyssa, and other Greek patristic exegetes prior to Maximus.
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