The Orthodox Church

[OBW]

ICA,

I must say that it is clear that the EO belief, though stated in terms sounding much like those of he LCM, is nothing like it. And it is probably easiest to see that, as intended, it is essentially true. But, like the LCM, it is the unique way of stating it that is the problem. The scripture really does not provide as statement that we obtain divinity, but rather that we become like him (Christ). Like. Not of similar essence or stature.

In other words, I am not sure but what the way the EO speaks of it may be obscuring the true intent and turning the focus.

But this one statement I do really like:

Sin is sickness, a self-perpetuating illness which distorts the whole human being and corrupts the image of God.

This is the truth of the purpose of man as the one bearing the image of God that is mostly ignored. It is understood as spiritually so and left at that. It is mostly ignored that the failure to live the image of God and not just claim eternally to have it is the purpose of man "from the beginning."

While God is present in the world, and it is possible to realize him from the created world, the real presence of God is in the people who claim to be his followers. The followers of Christ. But we to often do not follow Christ. We learn the best doctrines and can debate them with learned theologians. But how are we living before man? What is the God that is seen in the world?

We were not created to bear the image of God back to Himself. Rather we were created to bear the image of God to the world.

To borrow from a TV psychologist, "How's that workin'?"

And for the EO, it would seem that there is not much to say. They seem so consumed with being separate from the world around them. Hard to see any kind of image there. Lots of talk about being incarnated. But for what?

[InChristAlone]

Originally Posted by OBW

ICA, To borrow from a TV psychologist, "How's that workin'?"

And for the EO, it would seem that there is not much to say. They seem so consumed with being separate from the world around them. Hard to see any kind of image there. Lots of talk about being incarnated. But for what?

OBW,

The essence of Orthodox faith is not doctrines but spiritual life. Spirituality in the Orthodox Church means the everyday activity of life in communion with God -- through the Sacraments of the Church, reading the Bible, keeping the Gospel commandments (and not just the 10 commandments of Old Testament), through fasting, prayer (with attention, humility, repentance and reverence), and through spiritual warfare against our sins, passions, and sinful thoughts. This activity has always borne great fruits in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Orthodox monastics, ascetics and laymen of holy life became great saints, whose life was a vivid example of spiritual transformation, becoming Christ-like. Some of the saints could work miracles, instantly heal people through prayer or tell the past and future life of a man whom they for the first time.

One of the greatest saints of the 20-th century was St. John (Maximovich) Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco:

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/54575.htm

Anyway, working miracles is not that important to reveal a saint. Most of Orthodox saints tried to hide their supernatural abilities. Because in Orthodoxy, miracles don't speak for man's holiness. Unconditional love and humility are the signs of a true saint who lives in communion with God:

"God descends to the humble as waters flow down from the hills into the valleys".
-- St. John of Kronstadt

If, according to the example of Abraham and Job, we think that we are earth and ashes, then we shall never be robbed, but we will always have something to give to others: not gold and silver, but an example of humility, patience, and love toward God. May there be glory to Him forever. Amen.
-- Saints Barsanuphius & John, Guidance Toward Spiritual Life

Extirpate two thoughts within thyself: do not consider yourself worthy of anything great, and do not think that any other man is much lower than you in worthiness. Learn humility beforehand, which the Lord commanded in word and showed forth in deed. Hence, do not expect obedience from others, but be ready for obedience yourself.
-- Saint Basil the Great

This is the mark of Christianity--however much a man toils, and however many righteousnesses he performs, to feel that he has done nothing, and in fasting to say, "This is not fasting," and in praying, "This is not prayer," and in perseverance at prayer, "I have shown no perseverance; I am only just beginning to practice and to take pains"; and even if he is righteous before God, he should say, "I am not righteous, not I; I do not take pains, but only make a beginning every day.
-- St. Macarius the Great

Even if an angel should indeed appear to you, do not receive him but humble yourself, saying, 'I am not worthy to see an angel, for I am a sinner.'
-- St. Clement of Rome (d. 101 AD)

Repentance and humility are those virtues which allow the Lord to enter in our hearts.

PS BTW, Orthodox Spirituality is different from Roman Catholic spirituality.

Reveal Your Saints and You Reveal Your Church

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/onbeh...l-your-church/

Why Orthodoxy is the True Faith

http://stjohndc.work/Russian/homilie...E/e_Osipov.htm

Originally Posted by OBW

The scripture really does not provide a statement that we obtain divinity, but rather that we become like him (Christ). Like. Not of similar essence or stature.

Oh, I beg to disagree, I think that there is, indeed, some Scripture to that effect. Undeniably so!

Ephesians 3:19 says, and I quote, "and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God"

...and...Ephesians 4:13 says, "till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"

Fr. Scott

[OBW]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Oh, I beg to disagree, I think that there is, indeed, some Scripture to that effect. Undeniably so!

Ephesians 3:19 says, and I quote, "and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God"

...and...Ephesians 4:13 says, "till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"

Fr. Scott

Sorry. But only if you force certain meaning into the words in those verses.

Being filled with the fullness of God does not make you God any more than being filled with Mexican food makes you into a taco.

And the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is a yardstick for spiritual growth, not a declaration of gaining divinity as being part of your being (as opposed to being God empowering you).

In both you are falling onto premises that Lee (and probably others) have declared to be true simply because they say so. Those verses do not say what you are declaring comes from them.

Not saying that they can't mean that. But there is nothing in them that makes it so. Only a possible understanding. And given so many other places where the descriptions are more clearly not about becoming deified in that manner, to insist upon it is to clearly go beyond what is written. It would have been too easy to be more direct if something that unexpected was intended. To make it so soft that you have to push only marginally plausible renderings together in one verse to create something the plain meaning just can't give is just not enough to say that "it is written."

[InChristAlone]

Originally Posted by OBW

Being filled with the fullness of God does not make you God any more than being filled with Mexican food makes you into a taco.

And the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is a yardstick for spiritual growth, not a declaration of gaining divinity as being part of your being (as opposed to being God empowering you)."

Mike, I like your metaphor but there is the ontological difference between the life-giving spirit and food.

Philippians 3:20-21
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.

1 Corinthians 15:52
in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

2 Peter 1:3 (KJV)
According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

1 John 3:2
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Man can't be of the same essence with God. We will always be the creature, and never the Creator. God will remain God, and we will remain His people. But I believe the fullness of Christ is much more than just spiritual growth. Becoming a partaker of our humanity, Christ opened the way for us to become partakers in His divinity. “For as He is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).

Romans 6:3-6
Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be raised together in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer be the slaves of sin.

The verses above say that we will one day inherit a new resurrection body, just like the body of the risen Christ. It will be spiritual, glorious, holy, imperishable, immortal, and not inclined to sin. Isn't it deification?

This is still a mystery for us but the Scriptures say:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

[InChristAlone]

Just want to share two of my favorite Orthodox blogs:

1 Fr Stephen Freeman's Glory to God for All Things.

Why did the Lord have to die on the Cross?

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory...rist-life-man/

Good News – Your Debt is Being Cancelled

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory...ebt-cancelled/

2 Orthodox Road. Rediscovering the beauty of ancient Christianity.

What Orthodoxy Is: http://www.orthodoxroad.com/what-orthodoxy-is/
What Orthodoxy Isn’t: http://www.orthodoxroad.com/what-orthodoxy-isnt/

My Journey into The Ancient Church, Part 1

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/my-journ...cient-faith-1/

My Journey into The Ancient Church, Part 2

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/my-journ...church-part-2/

Scripture vs. Tradition

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/scripture-vs-tradition/

Things I Wish I’d Known Before Attending. A guide for your first venture to an Eastern Orthodox Church

http://www.orthodoxroad.com/things-i...ore-attending/

[OBW]

Originally Posted by InChristAlone

Mike, I like your metaphor but there is the ontological difference between the life-giving spirit and food.

Philippians 3:20-21
But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body.

1 Corinthians 15:52
in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.

2 Peter 1:3 (KJV)
According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

I won't take on all the verses at this time. But from the ones I do, you should see how response might come your way if I did.

First, it is Paul who made such a valiant attempt to describe the nature of the resurrected body of man by reference to what was observable about the resurrected body of Christ. The one verse you provide in 1 Cor 15 is part of that discussion. By taking it in isolation, you might imply something that is not there. But in the context of the whole, it is clear that the discussion is about a resurrected human body. Nothing about the nature of God or being deity or deified.

Same for the verses in Philippians. Same comments with a little more brevity. Nothing specifically saying that we gain status as deity. (And what is deification except to become deity?)

As for 1 Peter, to partake is much like the example of the taco. Not exactly. But in no way clearly like gaining deity as an aspect of one's self. To be like is not the same a being.

You have to understand that the word "like," without qualifier, only refers to reasonable similarity in appearance. If our creation was to bear God's image (not to bear his essence), then becoming truly "like" Him means that we have achieved the full image. It does not confer anything else.

If we instead say that we are "exactly like Him in every possible way," then we have said something different that simply "like" Him. And it does not say that. And based on usage, it should not be presumed to include everything in all ways when it only says "like." It is a misrepresentation of the words actually written. It is "beyond what is written."

[InChristAlone]

Originally Posted by OBW

Nothing specifically saying that we gain status as deity. (And what is deification except to become deity?)

Mike, I think we understand the terminology differently. Probably, because for the Orthodox, God is not only essence but also His uncreated energies.

Deification is man’s union with God, wherein we participate in the uncreated energies of the Trinity.

The footnote commentary in the Orthodox Study Bible for 2 Peter 1:4 reads:

This [Theosis] does not mean we become divine by nature. If we participated in God’s essence, the distinction between God and man would be abolished. What this does mean is that we participate in God’s energy, described by a number of terms in scripture, such as glory, life, love, virtue, and power. We are to become like God by His grace and truly His adopted children, but never becoming God by nature.

BTW, here is how Calvin understood deification:

(1) How did Calvin understand 2 Peter 1:3-4? and (2) Did Calvin in fact believe in theosis? When we look at Institutes 3.25.10 we find something quite close to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. The only difference is that Calvin seems to understand the conferring of divine glory, power, and righteousness as future events that accompany the resurrection, not as blessings for the current age. Calvin writes:

Indeed, Peter declares that believers are called in this to become partakers of the divine nature [II Peter 1:4]. How is this? Because “he will be . . . glorified in all his saints, and will be marveled at in all who have believed” [II Thess. 1:10]. If the Lord will share his glory, power, and righteousness with the elect—nay, will give himself to be enjoyed by them and, what is more excellent, will somehow make them to become one with himself, let us remember that every sort of happiness is included under this benefit. (Institutes 3.25.10)

Did Calvin affirm theosis? Consider the following:

Let us then mark, that the end of the gospel is, to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us. (Commentary 2 Peter 1:4)

But as we read on we find Calvin qualifying his earlier statement:

But the word nature is not here essence but quality. The Manicheans formerly dreamt that we are a part of God, and that, after having run the race of life we shall at length revert to our original. There are also at this day fanatics who imagine that we thus pass over into the nature of God, so that his swallows up our nature. (Commentary 2 Peter 1:4)

Thus, Calvin’s concern that theosis not be understood as our sharing in God’s essence is identical to Orthodoxy’s.

So, what did theosis mean for Calvin? He writes:

They [the Apostles] only intended to say that when divested of all the vices of the flesh, we shall be partakers of divine and blessed immortality and glory, so as to be as it were one with God as far as our capacities will allow. (Commentary 2 Peter)

For Calvin theosis consists of our “reverting to our original” state, that is, a return to Adam’s original pre-Fall condition. It appears that Calvin did not give much thought to the possibility that our union with Christ the Second Adam may result in something rather different. In other words, Calvin underestimated the significance of the Incarnation for our salvation.

Calvin assumes that theosis is accomplished through a process of the removing of the “vices of the flesh.” This is consistent with the moral or juridical understanding of salvation but to share in immortality and divine glory has ontological implications that Calvin seems reticent to pursue. Prof. J. Todd Billings in a 2005 Harvard Theological Review article examined Calvin’s understanding of deification and found that although Calvin interacted with the early church fathers his understanding of deification is “distinctive” (p. 334). Rather than follow in the hermeneutical tradition of the early church fathers, Calvin here is venturing off in his own direction with a new interpretation.

http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthod...ion-in-christ/

[InChristAlone]

Aron, thank you for your comment! Orthodox theology is very different from those of Calvin and Luther. It's up to you to decide which theology is more correct. I for one choose Orthodoxy because they interpret the Bible through the lens of the Holy Fathers. Indeed, the Fathers could be wrong. (St Augustine, for example). But in Orthodoxy, criterion of truth is not one man's opinion but the consensus of the Fathers.

BTW, I came back from Germany last month. I have been 3 times there but only this time I have visited Rothenburg. What a town! If I had a choice, I would move to Rothenburg: beautiful, peaceful, and medieval. Well, that's from a tourist point of view.

[HERn]

Originally Posted by InChristAlone

Mike, I think we understand the terminology differently. Probably, because for the Orthodox, God is not only essence but also His uncreated energies....

How does the Orthodox view of theosis differ from that proffered by Lee and the LSM teaching brothers? Is there a significant difference?

[aron]

Originally Posted by OBW

Not saying that they can't mean that. But there is nothing in them that makes it so. Only a possible understanding. And given so many other places where the descriptions are more clearly not about becoming deified in that manner, to insist upon it is to clearly go beyond what is written. It would have been too easy to be more direct if something that unexpected was intended. To make it so soft that you have to push only marginally plausible renderings together in one verse to create something the plain meaning just can't give is just not enough to say that "it is written."

I like what OBW says here about "soft" readings. You see some word like "glory" or "image" or "fulness" and think it supports your reading. Like he says, there is nothing there that makes it so, or not so.

But where I have looked around, I see other readings that make it not so. Thus the idea, for example, of "shared glory" leading to special god-like status. Jesus said that eventually the Son is coming with the Father and the angels in glory, but the angels are not deified (although Origen, the early proponent of the idea, thought they were). See readings in Luke 9:26, "the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."; also Mark 8:38, Matthew 16:27.

Oh, but the angels' glory is reflected glory - It's not intrinsic glory! Or some such... then the qualifications and parsings come out to support your reading, and to dismiss any other. Nah. I don't buy it. Like OBW says, if something so important was there, it would be clearly spelled out where we don't have to remonstrate over our ideas.

Did Jesus rise on the third day? Yep. Clearly spelled out by the written testimonies. Okay. Fine. But exegetical readings that need whipsawing through scripture don't have the same standing. And certainly not centrality or 'high peak' standing.

But I don't dismiss EO writings out of hand. They are part of the conversation. I hold them as equally important as Calvin and Luther. I spent years of my formative youth in California, where "Hey, man" was the universal greeting and anything goes was the universal ethos. Today I live in rigorous, cold and logical Germany and I love it. But I always remember my California Dreamin' days. Everyone was exactly who they were supposed to be at that moment in time. Everyone got received as they were. That's how Witness Lee got a following. Eventually he mesmerized his followers to listen to no one but him.

Today I try to listen to everyone, especially those who can shed light. The Orthodox Church is one. The Jews are another. Calvinists with their "I am always right" attitude not so much. But I respect them because that's where I was born. Paul taught, "Wherever you were when God called you, in this situation remain. Don't try to flee. Accept God's sovereign arrangement."

Peace out, Man. (and woman).