/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

I was writing a response and Chrome crashed soon before I was done… Give me a minute.

>In particular, just before the four minute mark he talks about the iconoclasms and then role of art in Orthodoxy. The priest goes on about how art has been an integral part of the Church since the ages, and then says iconography was the teaching tool of the pre-Bible-for-everyone era.

>Am I misinformed by things I have read on /christian/, I thought icons were "windows" into heaven? Much more than just "here's some educational art, illiterate swine." Am I wrong?

Does there need to be a difference? Icons are for the eyes that cannot read, what scriptures are for the eyes that can read. They are educative, and they are windows into Heaven, really showing us the Kingdom of God to the degree it can be shown through words and images.

>I was quite surprised to see him suggest that the altar is an assimilation from paganism. I thought you had to be protestant to know such things.

Constantine ordered for several ornate altars to be made, and the Dura-Europos church likely had an altar. I don't know why he says this, or how right he is.

>I've always preferred the Orthodox (over Cathbro) approach to topics like the the bread and wine – "we don't use words like transubstantiation … it's a mystery"

We do not doctrinally defend an Aristotlelian understanding of what happens during the Liturgy, but we definitely agree with Catholics on the real presence, and have even used "transubstantiation" occasionally in defense of Protestant arguments. There isn't a major difference in my opinion.

>and his emphasis on the unbloodied crucifix because "the focus is not on the crucifixion and that's what really sets us apart, our view of salvation is different".

This is a false distinction in my opinion. The "suffering Christ of the West" and the "victorious Christ of the East" are one and the same, and equally present in both traditions. It is true Catholic theology is more pessimistic than Orthodox theology on certain topics, but this isn't one of them in my opinion.

>He goes into this around the 18'20" mark and … wow, was his explanation massively divergent from what I understood … I thought he was going to simply reject the Mel Gibsonism of "all this bloody torture saves" [1], but no, he says Orthbroism apparently rejects redemptive salvation altogether. As he explains, in Orthodoxy it's more that we're a bunch of sick children and God is saying, "this way, children, this is the path of life", that the resurrection isn't about "here's the proofs Christ was God" but "this is the moment of salvation for this is the first man to be resurrected, just as all will be." NEVER heard this before. Is this common for all Orthbroism or just the Greek?

I think you are misunderstanding what he means. He does not say that his description of redemptive theology is untrue, but that Western understanding of it (that this description is the full thing) is untrue. His subsequent description of salvation attacks the notions that God is blood-thirsty and His justice is fulfilled when someone suffers to satisfy His wrath. Our salvation does not happen at the cross, but at the resurrection - when Jesus becomes the first born of many brethren.

Orthodox definitely love Christus Victor.

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WosgwLekgn8

Next I'll comment on some of the things the priest says.

Around 4:50, he says the Church didn't have Bibles for 1500 years, until the printing press. This isn't correct: Constantine requested for 100 Bibles to be written, and saints such as St. John Chrysostom have criticized their flock for not reading the Bible enough. Books were kept in churches and shared among the faithful (since there was no mass production obviously) but to say the word of God was conveyed only through oral teaching and artwork is wrong.

Around 6:30 he mentions that this is a cathedral. I'll add that, technically, every church is a cathedral, the seating church of the bishop. Eventually there wouldn't be as many bishops as churches anymore, therefore bishops would mostly stay in one church and travel to the different churches under their jurisdiction, but normally there should be one bishop and one church per city. As the video shows later, the bishop's throne in the sanctuary is there in every church, since every church under a bishop's jurisdiction is this bishop's see.

Around 16:00 - see what I said above about Bibles.

Around 17:15 - I'm not sure "consensus" is right. I think the Cheiti Document actually describes best where authority of the councils lies:

>From the First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea, 325) onwards, major questions regarding faith and canonical order in the Church were discussed and resolved by the ecumenical councils. Though the bishop of Rome was not personally present at any of those councils, in each case either he was represented by his legates or he agreed with the council’s conclusions post factum. The Church’s understanding of the criteria for the reception of a council as ecumenical developed over the course of the first millennium. For example, prompted by historical circumstances, the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787) gave a detailed description of the criteria as then understood: the agreement (symphonia) of the heads of the churches, the cooperation (synergeia) of the bishop of Rome, and the agreement of the other patriarchs (symphronountes). An ecumenical council must have its own proper number in the sequence of ecumenical councils, and its teaching must accord with that of previous councils. Reception by the Church as a whole has always been the ultimate criterion for the ecumenicity of a council.

So it is a relationship between the primate of the Church, the college of bishops, and the judgement of the laity.

17:50 - Some Eastern Catholics are considered schismatics (such as the Melkites, who, as of recently, have basically declared themselves to be Eastern Orthodox in eveything except their communion with the Pope) but most would be considered heretics because of the filioque, among other things.

20:30 - Jesus didn't die simply for the sake of melodrama… Jesus died so that, through Baptism, we could die with Him and therefore be resurrected with Him. Here I will quote my catechism:

<Q: Why was the Lord Jesus Christ crucified?

>A: The Lord voluntarily humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8) to save each man from death by purifying human nature with His Divine Blood. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28)

<Q: Why did the Son of God die on the cross?

>A: Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”. (Galatians 3:13) The apostle Paul quotes the book of the Old Testament to highlight the fact that Christ voluntarily took upon Himself the curse that is destined for every man. The innocent one suffered for the guilty. He lets His hands be pierced to heal the hands of the one who used them to reach for the forbidden fruit; He lets his feet be pierced to heal the feet of the one who used them to run and hide in a bush (Genesis 3:10); He lets himself wear a crown of thorns to correct the curse of the earth producing thorns and thistls (Genesis 3:17); He lets his side be pierced to heal the one who was taken from it and violated the commendmant first. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. (Ephesians 1:7) And also: You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you. (1 Peter 1:18-20)

<Q: What is redemption or ransom?

>Ransom is the payment by which slaves and captives obtained freedom, and by which criminals were spared from punishment. In the Old Testament, ransom designated an amount of money paid by the Jews for the first-born. Consequently, those children who were consecrated to the divine ministery in the Temple were exempt from serving in the Temple. Therefore, ransom is a payment to liberate those who are not able to obtain freedom by their own means.

>Following the original sin, man became a prisoner of the devil and suffered the punishment for his sins. Christ, being without sin and dying for us on the cross, liberates us from the consequences of original sin, including death, and destroys the power of the devil over man.

<Q: Why did John the Baptist call Jesus Christ "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29)?

>A: Because Christ took upon Himself the just punishmeent for our sins that was destined for us. The cross is the altar upon which Jesus Christ is sacrified according to His human nature, like a Lamb, and upon which He does the sacrifice according to His divine nature, as High Priest. This miracle is expressed in one of the liturgical prayers: "For You are the One Who both offers and is offered, the One Who is received and is distributed, O Christ our God . . ."

Note also that we are not saved merely through "His death" or "His resurrection", but through His incarnation, His teaching, His life, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension. Through His incarnation, Jesus unites the human nature and the divine nature. Through His teachings, Jesus shows us the path to take to reach the Kingdom of God. Through His life, and that of the saints, we know what behavior and sentiments to imitate and appropriate ourselves. For His death, see above. By His resurrection, we are saved and resurrected. Through His ascension, human nature now sits at the right hand of the Father, and we can be deified.

At the liturgy, the priest says:

>Remembering, therefore, this saving commandment and all that has been done for our sake: the Cross, the tomb, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the enthronement at the right hand, and the second and glorious coming again.

As for the Youtuber's outro, it is disheartening that what he got out of this is that we don't believe the Bible is inspired. On this, there is a post that was made here that I'll share.

>What is the status of the Old Testament in orthodoxy? Literal truth or stories that each reveal something about God? Something in between?

You are asking a very difficult question because we need to consider the meaning of the divine inspiration of the Scripture in the Orthodoxy. I pray that I don't slip in error.

If we analyse how the saints interpreted the Bible, we will observe two contradictory things. First, they obviously considered the text divine and without errors and God as its true author. Nothing in the text is without purpose, nothing should be neglected. And second, in order to make proper exegesis we need to know that are the concerns of the human authors, what were the problems they wanted to solve with the text they wrote. That is we approach the text almost as if it is not inspired but rather written by humans with limited knowledge. According to Chrysostom the epistles of St. Paul describe exactly the soul of this Apostle.

So who is the author of a biblical book? God? Yes. Human? Yes. How?

What is Jesus Christ? God? Yes. Human? Yes. How? The Church does not give answer to the questions "how". The answer is a mystery. The Church only refutes the wrong answers to this question.

So instead of trying to explain how exactly the Scripture is inspired, I will give some examples of how it is not inspired.

Some say that humans are the true authors of the Scripture. The Holy Spirit only guards them from making errors. This is a biblical arianism.

Others say that some portions in the Bible are divine, while others are of the human author. For example there is nothing divine in the advise to use wine in 1 Timothy 5:23. This is a biblical nestorianism.

Others say the humans are only instruments, tools, driven by the Holy Spirit. All words in the Scripture are dictated by the Holy Spirit. This is a biblical monophysitism.

The liberal protestants are biblical arians, the baptists are often biblical monophysites and the catholics are "light" monophysites. In the following I will quote some statements from the catholic encyclopedy and then I will try to indicate the errors there from Orthodox point of view.

>The Holy Ghost Himself, by His supernatural power, stirred up and impelled the Biblical writers to write. (Encycl. Provid. Deus, in Dena., 1952)

The Holy Ghost does not take away our freedom. He makes us free. He does not stir, he does not impel. The human authors cooperate with the Holy Ghost voluntarily.

>inspiration affects the will, the intelligence and all the executive faculties of the writer because without an impulsion given to the will of the writer, it cannot be conceived how God could still remain the principal cause of Scripture, for, in that case, the man would have taken the initiative.

The inspiration does not affect the will or the intelligence and there is no impulsion. The human author freely chooses to will what God wills and freely refuses to "take the initiative".

>Theologians discuss the question whether, in order to impart this motion, God moves the will of the writer directly or decides it by proposing motives of an intellectual order.

God does not move the will of the writer, nor are there motives of intellectual order. God enlightens, the human writes with his enlightened mind. The unity between God and man is not a weak unity based on exterior motives. It is a perfect unity in which the words are truly of the human and truly of God.

>If God can claim the Scripture as His own work, it is because He has brought even the intellect of the inspired writer under His command.

The inspired writer has immersed his intellect in the light of God.

What does all this mean? On one hand, we can approach the Bible with full trust, knowing that everything there is by God. Or, as Chrysostom puts it, we must not neglect even the shortest sentence, not even one syllable. But on the other hand, we should approach the Biblical text as any other ancient text – analysing the historical situation, the motives of the human writer, etc. Somewhat paradoxically, it also means that the methods of the secular low and high Biblical criticism are not necessarily contrary to the Orthodox teaching. For example Chrysostom was not afraid to suppose that in Dan. 2:1 there was a scribal error and the number is maybe 12 and not 2 (but, of course, this is only a "maybe" as anything that comes from scholarship and not from divine revelation). He also proposed that Ezra was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the books from various available fragments, which is not very different from the hypothesis of Wellhausen.

What are the specifics of the books of the Old Testament in comparison to the books in New Testament?

The main difference is that these books were written at time when a veil lay over the hearts of the Israelites because only when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. (2 Cor. 3:15-16) Because of this veil, the literal meaning of the books of the Old Testament is not as useful by itself as the literal meaning of the books of the New Testament. One reviewer in Amazon has written the following about the commentary of Genesis by Chrysostom: "I was disappointed with these homilies because they do not deal with the issues raised in Genesis (creation, the fall, etc) in any depth. Rather, he moralizes." The literal meaning is still important but mostly as a key in order to find the moral lesson and the spiritual meaning. When we use this key in order to unlock the hidden meaning in these books, we find that "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction". (Rom. 15:4) The spiritual meaning of the books of the Old Testament is not "less spiritual" than the meaning of the books of the New Testament, because the same Spirit is the author of these books.

>Am I a heretic from an Orthodox POV if I believe that the flood in genesis did not happen exactly as described or if I don't believe in Biblical chronology in general?

Chrysostom says the story about Eve made from the rib of Adam is not to be understood literally. This story is such because God considers the weakness of the ancient people. Instead of hard food, God feeds them with food for children. This is important, considering that Chrysostom is inclined to favour the more literalistic approach.

So not everything in Genesis is to be understood literally. But where do we draw the line? I don't know.

Sorry for the reddit spacing, I saved the post in a text file and I guess the formatting got messed up.

>>775725

Christus Victor is the theory of the atonement according to which, on the cross, Jesus killed death and defeated the demonic powers to which we were subjected.

It is closely tied to the ransom theory of atonement, according to which, on the cross, Jesus bought us back from our enslavement.

Since the Eucharist is this very sacrifice on the cross, it may be useful to listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYuTmEdbpZ4