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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2006 4:48 PM (GMT -6) |   | HERE'S FROM A BOOK I JUST BOUGHT TO READ...
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Christ's Death: A Rescue Mission, Not a Payment for Sins
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Frederica in Orthodoxy
[Beliefnet, January 10, 2005]
An excerpt from "First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journey Through the Canon of St. Andrew"
Every day, Christians pray "deliver us from evil," not knowing that the Greek original reads "the evil," that is, "the evil one." The New Testament scriptures are full of references to the malice of the devil, but we generally overlook them. I think this is because our idea of salvation is that Christ died on the cross to pay His Father the debt for our sins. The whole drama takes place between Him and the Father, and there’s no role for the evil one.
But for the early Christians, the evil one was a very real and malevolent presence. Temptation coaxes us toward sin, and sin leads to sickness and death, and ultimately confinement in the realm of the evil one. The devil’s main purpose is not to scare us, in a horror-movie way; when we’re scared of him we’re alert to him, and that might undermine his plans. Instead, he wants to quietly, subtly lure us into stepping away from God. Sin leads to death, but death also leads to sin. Hebrews 2:14 explains that the evil one has always controlled the human race through fear of death; that’s what most deeply terrifies us and makes us grab at earthly security. But "whoever would save his life will lose it" (Matthew 16:25). That’s the bitter trick. Desperate, selfish clutching lands us in the realm of death.
But God sent Christ to rescue us; He took on human form (showing us that these humble human bodies can bear the presence of God, like the Burning Bush bore His fire), lived a sinless life, went into the realm of Hades like all human flesh, and then blasted it open by His power. Death could not contain Him, because He is Life. When we join ourselves to Him and begin to assimilate His Life, we too are freed from the control of the evil one.
This is not a "ransom" paid to the Father; the Father wasn’t holding us captive. It is an offering, but not a payment. Look at it this way. Christ suffered to save us from our sins in the same way a fireman suffers burns and wounds to save a child from a burning home. He may dedicate this courageous act as an offering to the fire chief he loves and admires. He may do it to redeem the child from the malice of the arsonist who started the fire. But his suffering isn’t paid to anyone, in the sense of making a bargain. Likewise, God redeemed His people from the hand of Pharaoh when He rescued them in the Red Sea. But He didn’t pay Pharaoh anything. He Himself was not paid anything. It was a rescue action, not a business transaction, and our redemption by Christ is the same.
There are some things that developed in Western Christianity that don’t appear in this account at all. As you can see, there’s no concept that our sins put us in God’s debt legally: No idea that somebody has to pay something before He can forgive us. He just forgives us. When the prodigal son came home, the father was already running toward him with his arms open. He didn’t say, "I’d like to take you back, son, but my hands are tied. Who’s going to pay this Visa bill?"
This means that something else is missing—guilt. Now, of course we are responsible for our sins, and guilty in that sense. But we’re not born carrying the debt of guilt for Adam’s sin. That’s what the fourth-century theologian Augustine of Hippo meant by the term "Original Sin." But his theory was not widely accepted in the early church (in fact, not all Eastern Christians call him a saint, and he was far from the towering figure that he became in Western thinking later on.) The idea of inborn debt compelled Augustine to say that, logically, a baby who died before baptism would have to be damned.
Instead, although early Christian spiritual writings are continually focusing on sin and repentance, the concepts of guilt and debt rarely appear. St. Andrew, like most writers of the age, views sin instead as a self-inflicted wound. Likewise, he sees God as compassionate rather than wrathful. God is always described as rushing to meet us like the father of the prodigal, or coming like the good Samaritan to bind up our wounds.
In Orthodoxy, there is less of an emphasis on discrete, external acts of sin, and more a sense of it being a pervading sickness. Christ didn’t come to save us just from the penalty for our sins, from death and eternal misery. He came to save us from our sins, now, today—from the poison that flows in our veins, that alienates us from the Light, that marches us toward death. He saves us like the fireman carrying that child from a burning building. We are as helpless as that child; nothing we do saves us. But as we gradually creak open the rusty doors of our hearts, we begin to discover the faint sense of His presence. He was there all along, as He is present in every person He creates. Attending to that flickering flame, we nurture it and allow it to spread, until we are filled with His light and glory.
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2006 8:47 PM (GMT -6) | | | .
Kallistos Ware quipped in his British, Oxford lecturer way, "that when it comes to 'theories' of the atonement, the addage should be SAFETY IN NUMBERS" -- as no one expression sums up everything entirely.
btw -- he liked both "Christus Victor" and that of Christ being our perfect example.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/21/2006 7:50:30 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2006 8:49 PM (GMT -6) | | for balance, two definitions....
SEE
http://www.orthodox.clara.net/death_and_resurrection.htm
...................................................................................
. . .
REDEMPTION
There are two different words for redemption in the New Testament. The first, lytro-o, (lutrow ) means to "buy off" or "ransom." It has three applications: -
1. ransoming from captivity … as in the release of prisoners. Christ has forgiven our sins by his sacrificial death.
2. ransoming from debt … as in the forgiveness of money owed. Christ has dealt with what we owe God from whom we have estranged ourselves.
3. ransoming from slavery … the meaning of this is clear. Christ has set us free from the curse of our own moral helplessness and the death that is its due.
Unlike sacrifice and justification, ransom is much more focussed on the goal of salvation being our liberation from sin, suffering, evil and death by the victory of Christ. It embraces the resurrection as the crowning glory of Christ’s justifying sacrifice for our freedom. Not unsurprisingly, therefore, it is redemption that is most often used by the Church Fathers as the key and context to the experience of salvation in the Church; precisely because it incorporates the other biblical ideas connected with sacrifice and righteousness in a paschal frame of reference. The great deliverance of humanity from the grip of evil and death was secured at the resurrection but it will not be manifest in its entirety until the Last Day, the Judgement and the New Creation.
When the Church fathers handle this theme of redemption, although they talk metaphorically about Christ deceiving the devil by the hook or bait of his humanity as He bleeds and dies on the cross, they are at pains to point out that the ransom was paid neither to the devil nor to God the Father. The heresy associated with the first option is that the devil has rights over God, which, of course, he does not. This is dualistic and anti-Christian. The heresy associated with the second option is that the ransom of the Son offers satisfaction to the Father. This heresy is not as rare as one might think. Anselm came perilously close to it in the post-Orthodox west and bequeathed a dangerous legacy to Catholic and Protestant Christianity in the maturation of that heretical idea that the compassionate Son surrenders himself to appease the wrathful Father.
Metaphors, then, should not be pushed beyond their appropriate range and appropriateness. "Ransom" in Christian thought means simply that we are in a mess of our own making and God has himself got involved in Christ to set us free. Meeting sin and death on their own ground, He has put both to flight. "To whom payment is due?" is a question both irrelevant and unnecessary. Attempting to answer it is dangerous. We are dealing here with deep mysteries, not logical propositions and dialectical reasonings. Our language must not be stretched beyond its breaking point. St. Gregory the Theologian reminds us that those who try and pry into the mind of God go mad.
The second Greek word, agorazo, (agorazw ), means to "buy for oneself." This occurs in 1 Corinthians, amongst other places: -
"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." [1 Corinthians 6:19-20]
"You are not your own." By this is indicated that our ransom from slavery to the devil means that we now are the servants of God. The mark of salvation is not then merely freedom, but liberation to be totally free in service to the Lord. This obedience is born, not out of craven fear, but a loving and respectful relationship of trust and confidence in a friend, who is Jesus. (John 15:15). Through him we have access to the Father in the Spirit. We receive by that same Spirit our adoption as sons of God.
Effortlessly, then, the theme of redemption moves us into the heart of the ongoing Christian life that is as much part of the salvation process as that defining Easter event which gives it its shape and content. Our final redemption, therefore, awaits us as we walk in the Light of the Risen Christ. We may now complete in understanding that crucial text in Romans introduced in the third study of this series when we examined the relationship between the Cosmic and the human in salvation terms: -
"We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in travail together until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." [Romans 8:22:25]
Orthodox Christianity teaches that the term redemption is the both key and the context that opens up and holds together the whole biblical witness concerning our salvation. This is for the simple reason that both the cross and the resurrection are brought into view and it is the only interpretation that can include all the aforementioned themes of sacrifice, justification and victory in one coherent message.
With redemption in mind, it becomes both necessary and expected that Christ, having done battle with evil and death on the cross, should rise from the dead in order to ransom our souls and bodies from their bondage to death and oppression by evil, within and without. All this is the action of Love that cannot bear to see its beloved humanity languishing under the curse of sin and death. So, while His body remains yet still in the tomb, Christ also descends to Hades to liberate the righteous from before his earthly time from their dark prison. This enduring image of our iconography of Pascha offers real hope to a broken and dying world. Salvation means that we cannot put piece the pieces back together on our own: but God can. He has done so and He will do it finally … if we work with Him and for Him!
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Sahid
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Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 2/5/2006 5:38 PM (GMT -6) | | |
I'm rolling something over in my head. This might be what Abelard was trying to say; I don't know.
As I more closely study the scriptures, both the divine and human aspects become more and more vibrant. They are very human books, full of error and self-contradictory. But they also include a rich kernel, not the void-of-content kernel that certain modern scholars would affirm, but one which seriously challenges us. What if the idea of sin as uncleanness or some-thing that is "on" you and makes you bad is just a way that we have coped with our fears and imperfect understanding of morality? What if the records of God's revelatory relationships with figures like Moses were modified to include a temple system for the purpose of reconciling sinful man to the "God" who is unable to freely forgive?
When Jesus died the curtain in the temple was torn in two. But John says (using admittedly very sacrificial language) that the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. If forgiveness has been taken care of from the beginning, how would a temple/sacrificial system ever be fully appropriate?
When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they saw their nakedness and were ashamed. When God found them, he didn't say, "Hey, where's your spiritual covering that I created you with?" He said, "Who told you?" Apparently, God was ok with their nakedness. But they weren't. They made makeshift clothes from figs, but God apparently saw a reason to make them clothes from animal skins. The skin was taken from sacrificed animals not because "God can't stand to look at sin," but because Adam and Eve couldn't. It wasn't important to God initially, but it was important to them, so because God loved them he made an appropiate sacrifice.
Sacrifices are not required by an all-powerful God. In fact nothing is required by an all-powerful God. If he requires anything of us, it is for the (direct) good of someone other than himself. (Indirectly, he may love us and in that way our sacrifice, by helping us, helps him.) It is not the vassal who makes sacrifices to the Lord, but the Lord who makes sacrifices for the vassal. The vassal is the needy party. The Lord is the party who holds the resources required to meet that need.
So, why can't we see the Eden sacrifice and the sacrifice of Jesus as qualitatively the same? They are appeasement, not to an angry God, or angry devil, but to the very sinners for whom the sacrifice is given.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/12/2006 12:39 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Zach: Sacrifices are not required by an all-powerful God. In fact nothing is required by an all-powerful God.
Jeff: This is the question that is pertinent for deciding if Rom. 3 is true. There, Paul says that Christ's blood has a propitiatory role that renders God JUST as JUSTIFIER of him/her who believes. This seems to be saying that God cannot just forgive apart from propitiation. Otherwise, He would be UNJUST. If this is true, this is a limit on God's omnipotence. If it's not true, then either the verse is erroneous or I'm reading it wrong. But what would be another reading for it, in the latter case?
Also, there is the question of why do people have to repent to be saved? Why can't God, if omnipotent, just forgive people in the ressurection and save them apart from an act of repentance on their part? Wouldn't omnipotence entail that possiblity? And if so, why would perfect love act otherwise? Could perfect love just impart the divine nature to them and adopt them, in forgiveness? If not, why not?
Post Edited (jefscott) : 2/12/2006 11:56:03 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 2/12/2006 3:17 PM (GMT -6) | | |
jefscott said...
...then either the verse is erroneous or I'm reading it wrong. But what would be another reading for it, in the latter case?
 ... Try "expiation."
Chas. Spurgeon...
"I say this was always the idea of a sin-offering,—that of a perfect victim; without offense on its own account, taking the place of the offender; the transferrence of the offender's sin to that victim, and that expiation in the person of the victim for the sin done by another."
... Expiation does not have the punishement-based-on-wrath aspect that propitiation does. God did not beat up on God. Rather, Christ was the offering, the offered to and the offerer. He TOOK our sin and sickness upon himself.
propitiation (defn.) -- "...means the turning away of wrath by an offering. It is similar to expiation but expiation does not carry the nuances involving wrath."
Paul...
jefscott said...
Also, there is the question of why do people have to repent to be saved? Why can't God, if omnipotent, just forgive people in the ressurection and save them apart from an act of repentance on their part?
... Let me just quote from a recent post on this board:
Its ONE THING to be given eternal life. Its another to have that life being the kind one would want.
God’s glory is for all and will be communicated to all in “ever-being.” Those that have their hypostasis united with the logoi by constantly recapitulating these virtues in this life (by prayer, asceticism, and sacramentally in the Church), God’s glories are “ever-well being.” Likewise, those that choose not to practice these virtues, God’s glories are “ever-ill being.” Because the damned have not integrated their hypostasis with their natural virtue, it is God’s presence [as opposed to his absence] that is their misery.
http://www.energeticprocession.com/archives/Synergy%20in%20Christ%20According%20to%20Saint%20Maximus%20the%20Confessor.pdf
AND, your ONLY time to BECOME who you want to be is while you are eating, breathing, and walking around.
Lets not waste our lives. And lets "labor while it is yet day", as Jesus said.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/12/2006 2:51:00 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
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Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 2/12/2006 4:08 PM (GMT -6) | | | POW: Expiation does not have the punishement-based-on-wrath aspect that propitiation does. God did not beat up on God. Rather, Christ was the offering, the offered to and the offerer. He TOOK our sin and sickness upon himself.
Jeff: The point is, the verse indicates God is JUST because of Christ's offering whether or not it had to do with wrath or the ability to save from death ONLY. Hence, the idea that God's omnipotence is sufficient to enable God to forgive without "expiation" or repentance is begging the question. For we only KNOW that God has this power IF the verse in Rom. 3 is erroneous. See my point?
POW: AND, your ONLY time to BECOME who you want to be is while you are eating, breathing, and walking around.
Jeff: Again, is this because God is not ABLE to just lovingly forgive people post-mortem or some other reason? This is what I understood Zach to be addressing--the idea that omnipotence is unlimited with respect to forgiveness. But if so, would a Being who loves perfectly and omnipotently forgive all, unconditionally?
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 2/12/2006 5:05 PM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
POW: Expiation does not have the punishement-based-on-wrath aspect that propitiation does. God did not beat up on God. Rather, Christ was the offering, the offered to and the offerer. He TOOK our sin and sickness upon himself.
Jeff: The point is, the verse indicates God is JUST because of Christ's offering whether or not it had to do with wrath or the ability to save from death ONLY. Hence, the idea that God's omnipotence is sufficient to enable God to forgive without "expiation" or repentance is begging the question. For we only KNOW that God has this power IF the verse in Rom. 3 is erroneous. See my point?
Romans 3...
"all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus"
Doesn't it say here that justification comes throuth redemption? Redemption through Christ Jesus.
Then it says: "26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
On my old typewriter to "justify margins" meant to fix crooked margins and to MAKE them conform to the rule that made them correct.
Here in Romans I'm reading Paul to say two things -- that God is just (does not accept unjustified lives) AND that God does the fixing in Christ Jesus.
Then Paul writes: "27Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith."
"Boasting" is not due to our own creations. But the work of faith (not the works of the law) is the only sort of boasting that would be valid.
Paul finishes the chapter this way: "God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith."
POW: AND, your ONLY time to BECOME who you want to be is while you are eating, breathing, and walking around.
Jeff: Again, is this because God is not ABLE to just lovingly forgive people post-mortem or some other reason? This is what I understood Zach to be addressing--the idea that omnipotence is unlimited with respect to forgiveness. But if so, would a Being who loves perfectly and omnipotently forgive all, unconditionally?
No. That's not a limit in God. That is reality with us. Being "forgiven" would not solve the problems we have, or would have.
Forgiveness is easy. And being forgiven WITHOUT being justified (WHICH IS AN ONGOING PROCESS YOUR WHOLE LIFE!)
would lead to hellishness.
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/12/2006 4:13:08 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 2/12/2006 5:19 PM (GMT -6) | |
Jeff: Aye, bro, but post-mortem, we will partake of the divine nature, supposedly. That will solve the problem. And it would for all
Who says?
Go back to where you got that, and double check.
Are those not attached to the Vine partaking of the root?
So, are you sure of your comment? If so, why?
(o) Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 2/12/2006 4:28:31 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 2/23/2006 7:40 PM (GMT -6) | | |
02/18/2006
God: Loving Father or Absentee Landlord? |
David Bentley Hart
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 As a result of the various natural disasters especially last years tsunami in Indonesia, David Bentley Hart, prolific writer was asked to author a book on the Tsunami. What resulted was the Christian perspective on the overall existence of God in these difficult times. Be sure to join Fr. Chris and Emmy as they speak with him about this incredibly important subject that has caused heated discussions |
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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 3/5/2006 12:37 AM (GMT -6) | | Acolyte said...
Jee,
The Christus Victor Model is quite Augustinian since Augustine didn't believe in a penal or satisfaction model of the atonement. His Ransom theory is a species of the Christus Victor Model.
Hi Acolyte,
Thanks for the heads-up. I guess I misspoke. What I meant to say was my diversion from the typical Western view of the atonement, especially the Anselmic variations thereof. I referred to Auggie because he is the one usually referred to as major watershed of Western theology, since which East and West have steadily grown apart. Though I am not Eastern Orthodox, I have a great appreciation for the ante-Nicene fathers, especially the Eastern ones. In addition, being a free-will theist quite obviously means I tend to be rather allergic to Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin and all the "isms" that come down to us from them.
Blessings,
John
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