Are You Going to Get Burned?

January 31, 2008

“What had caused the debate and disagreement between the Greeks and Latins in the conferences [at Florrence] on Purgatory was not the question of the middle state after death, but if there is punishment by fire in the middle state. The Latins argued that there is such punishment.” Constantine Tsirpanlis, Mark Eugenicus and the Council of Florence, 78.

“Mark refutes entirely punishment by [a created] fire in the middle state as opposed to and unattested by the Holy Scriptures and the tradition of the Church. The Latin argument from Scripture is of no avail because neither does the Book of Maccabees nor St. Matthew mention fire, and St. Paul in speaking of fire means, as St. John Chrysostom clearly shows [PG 61, 75-82, 361], the eternal fire of hell, not the temporary punishment of fire in Purgatory.” 79.

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18 Comments | Mark of Ephesus, Original Sin, Theosis/Deification | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

The handmaiden of the Devil

January 28, 2008

“Whence spring those “fables and endless genealogies,” and “unprofitable questions,” and “words which spread like a cancer? ” From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says, “See that no one beguile you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and contrary to the wisdom of the Holy Ghost.” He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers) become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth, whilst it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by the variety of its mutually repugnant sects. What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.” Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.”

-Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum c.7, 9

33 Comments | Dialectic and Theological Method | Permalink
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The Nestorian Bible?

January 26, 2008

“[I'he] whole of Scripture is the product of the divine activities which enter it, not by superseding the activities of the human authors, but by working confluently with them, so that the Scriptures are the joint product of divine and human activities, both of which penetrate them at every point, working harmoniously together to the production of a writing which is not divine here and human there, but at once divine and human in every part, every word and every particular.”

B.B. Warfield, “The Divine and Human in the Bible,” The Presbyterian Journal, May 3, 1894.

“[T]he organic nature of Scripture…implies the idea that the Holy Spirit, in the inscripturation of the Word of God, did not spurn anything human to serve as an organ of the divine. The revelation of God is not abstractly supernatural but has entered into the human fabric, into persons and states of being, into forms and usages, into history and life. It does not fly high above us but descends into our situation: it has become flesh and blood, like us in all things except sin. Divine revelation is now an ineradicable constituent of this cosmos in which we live and, effecting renewal and restoration, continues its operation. The human has become an instrument of the divine, the natural has become a revelation of the supernatural; the visible has become a sign and seal of the invisible. In the process of inspiration, use has been made of all the gifts and forces resident in human nature.”

Herman Bavink, Reformed Dogmatics I, 442-443

9 Comments | Biblical Exegesis, Calvinism, Christology, Protestant, Synergy | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Apostolic Hermeneutics

January 25, 2008

Peter Enns is an evangelical biblical scholar at Westminster Seminary. I am not usually disposed to post things from WTS, but this article will prove helpful to those wondering how the Orthodox Fathers exegete Scripture. While not, for obvious reasons, always consistent with Orthodoxy, he comes very close to it and has came to see the inadequacies of the grammatical-historical methodology that is so prized among Protestants.

http://peterennsonline.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/AposExegWTJ-fall%2003-final.pdf

16 Comments | Biblical Exegesis, Christology, Dialectic and Theological Method, Protestant, Scripture | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Essence and Energies in the Fathers

January 20, 2008

“Is it not ridiculous to say that the creative power is an essence, and similarly, that providence is an essence, and foreknowledge, simply taking every energy as essence?” Basil the Great, Contra Eunomius, I.8, PG 29, 528B

“The energies are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His energies, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence.  His energies come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.” Basil the Great, Epistle 234

“And if we may reckon that the Cause of our existence did not come to the creation of man out of necessity but by benevolent choice, once more we say that we have seen God in this way too, arriving at an understanding of his goodness, not of his being…He who is by nature invisible becomes visible in his operations, being seen in certain cases by the properties he possesses.” Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Beatitudes, VI.

“Essence and energy are not identical.” Cyril of Alexandria Thesaurus 18, PG 75:312c

“The man divinized by grace will be everything that God is, apart from identity of essence.” Maximus the Confessor Ad Thalassium 22, PG 90:320a

“But He Who is beyond every name is not identical with what He is named; for the essence and energy of God are not identical.” Gregory Palamas Triads, p. 97

“Nor does indeed everything predicated of him denote the substance, for relation is predicated of him, which is relative and refers to relationships with another but is not indicative of substance. Such also is the divine energy in God, for it is neither substance nor accident, even though it is called a quasi-accident by some theologians who are indicating solely that it is in God but is not the substance.” Gregory Palamas Capita 127

“God also possess that which is not substance. Yet it is not the case that because it is not a substance it is an accident. For that which not only does not pass away but also admits or effects no increase or diminution whatever cold not possibly be numbered among accidents. Gregory Palamas Capita 135,

“Nature and energy are not identical.” Gregory Palamas Capita 143

41 Comments | Absolute Divine Simplicity, Church Fathers, Essence/Energies, Maximus, Palamas | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Saint Mark of Ephesus on False Union and the Filioque

January 16, 2008

“To those who have ensnared us in an evil captivity and desire to lead us away into Babylon of Latin rites and dogmas could not, of course completely accomplish this seeing immediately that there is little chance of it, in fact that it was simply impossible but having stopped somewhere in the middle, both they and those who followed after them, they neither remained any longer what they were, nor became anything else. For having quit Jerusalem, a firm and unwavering faith, but being in no condition and not wishing to become and to be called Babylonians, they thus called themselves, as if by right, ‘Greco-Latins,’ and among the people are called ‘Latinizers.’ And so these split people, like the mythical centaurs, confess together with the Latins that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son and has the Son as Cause of His existence, and yet together with us confess that He proceeds from the Father. And they say together with them that the addition to the Creed was done canonically and with blessing, and yet together with us do not permit it to be uttered. (Besides, who would turn away from what was canonical and blessed?) And they say together with them that the unleavened bread is the Body of Christ, and yet together with us do not dare accept it. Is this not sufficient to reveal their spirit, and how that it was not in quest of the Truth (which having in their hands, they betrayed) that they came together with the Latins, but from a desire to enrich themselves and to conclude not a true, but a false union.

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45 Comments | Church Fathers, Essence/Energies, Filioque, Maximus, Thomas Aquinas, Trinity | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Happy New Year

January 15, 2008

http://www.ansamed.info/en/news/ME03.YAM17364.html

2 Comments | Causes | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

A Grace Unworthy of the Name

January 13, 2008

“Sanctifying grace, or the grace of the just, is not a mere extrinsic favor of God but a permanent created gift inhering in the soul. It can be defined as a formal principle of justification. A form is a kind of quality, an accident that modifies the substance in which it inheres. Thus redness qualifies a book and makes the book red; it is an accident inhering in the substance, and it is hence an intrinsic accidental form. Similarly, grace is a form inhering in the soul; it modifies the soul and reders it ’such.’

Obviously, when man receives grace, it is not God who changes; it is man who is qualified, who receives a new mode of existence. Sanctifying grace is not Uncreated. It is distinct from the Holy Spirit, who is also given to the soul, but not distinct in a manner excluding relationship to the Holy Spirit. There is an intrinsic and essential connection between the presence of sanctifying grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit. God, when He indwells, confers sanctifying grace, grace is the result of this inhabitation and is at the same time its condition.”

R. W. Gleason, S.J., Grace

85 Comments | Essence/Energies, Theosis/Deification | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Norman Russell on Theosis

January 12, 2008

http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/Russell_partakers.html

Comments Off | Essence/Energies, Maximus, Origen, Palamas, Theosis/Deification | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Free but not Good or Good but not Free

January 12, 2008

“The disciples of Pythagoras, too, and of Plato, although they appear to hold the incorruptibility of the world, yet fall into similar errors.  For as the planets, after certain definite cycles, assume the same positions, and hold the same relations to one another, all things on earth will, they assert, be like what they were at the time when the same state of planetary relations existed in the world.  From this view it necessarily follows, that when, after the lapse of a lengthened cycle, the planets come to occupy towards each other the same relations which they occupied in the time of Socrates, Socrates will again be born of the same parents, and suffer the same treatment, being accused by Anytus and Melitus, and condemned by the Council of Areopagus!  The learned among the Egyptians, moreover, hold similar views, and yet they are treated with respect, and do not incur the ridicule of Celsus and such as he; while we, who maintain that all things are administered by God in proportion to the relation of the free-will of each individual, and are ever being brought into a better condition, so far as they admit of being so, and who know that the nature of our free-will admits of the occurrence of contingent events (for it is incapable of receiving the wholly unchangeable character of God), yet do not appear to say anything worthy of a testing examination.”

Origen, Contra Celsus V, 21

Comments Off | Absolute Divine Simplicity, Dialectic and Theological Method, Origen, Predestination | Permalink
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