Fr. John Whiteford on Original Sin in Eastern Orthodoxy
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- #orthodox #catholic #originalsin
Michael Lofton and Elijah Yasi discuss Original Sin in Eastern Orthodoxy with Fr. John Whiteford (from Ancient Faith Radio).
Fr. John's blog: fatherjohn.blog...
Hey guys. Eastern Orthodox here. I appreciate you being open to dialogue, and a nice healthy discussion. Sadly, some of my guys on the internet can be a little arrogant. We also infight about this very issue publicly. Anyway, thank you for having a healthy/humble discussion about this. Father John really help clarify this for me.
I've been a Catholic, and I've been an atheist, and let me tell you... there is a difference.
God bless you bro
😂😂
It should be noted that "Limbo" is a theological theory for Roman Catholics; not a doctrine or dogma.
This was an outstanding discussion!
I agree with this Orthodox priest even though I am protestant. I don't believe in total depravity. This makes much more sense. That we have an inclination to sin but can choose to do right. We are all sinners but this teaching makes much more sense than the protestant teaching on original sin. Yes. God is merciful and it would go against God's character to send a baby to hell. I like this guy
The idea the infants would be sent to hell is foreign to the phronema of the early church, absolutely ridiculous.
Orthodoxy taught that at the Council of Jerusalem 1672. Did they lack the phronema?
@@ReasonandTheology The bible does not teach anywhere that infants in the womb are sent to hell.
It teaches the opposite.
@@ReasonandTheology I think we must interpret the section on baptism of infants in light of what was said previously in the decree on predestination: "But than to affirm that the Divine Will is thus solely and without cause the author of their condemnation, what greater defamation can be fixed upon God? and what greater injury and blasphemy can be offered to the Most High? We do know that the Deity is not tempted with evils, {cf. James 1:13} and that He equally wills the salvation of all, since there is no respect of persons with Him. we do confess that for those who through their own wicked choice, and their impenitent heart, have become vessels of dishonor, there is justly decreed condemnation. But of eternal punishment, of cruelty, of pitilessness, and of inhumanity, we never, never say God is the author, who tells us that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents. {Luke 15:7} Far be it from us, while we have our senses, to believe or to think this; and we do subject to an eternal anathema those who say and think such things, and esteem them to be worse than any infidels".
Infant need salvation i.e healing from the effects of the fall and are subject to eternal punishment..it is a danger that baptism is preventative medicine against but eternal punishment is not realized untill a person has actual mortal sin. In our baptism service for infants it is called a preventative medicine, indicating the condemnation has not occured yet. If babies are condemned through something of which they have zero control, how does that not contradict the decree on predestination I posted here and put one under its anathema? In this life, one is not saved without baptism but at death God can save the innocents who die and that is exactly what we believe happens. Otherwise, like I said, it would go against the foundation of the previous degree and the consensus of Orthodox theology on this topic.
@@ReasonandTheology Can you prove your accusation, where has the Council of 1672 taught this?
@@moontyk - Reasoned Theology is referring to the Confession of Dositheus (1672). It was written as a rebuttal to Calvinism. There is no rebuttal, if the view was the same to that of Calvinism. The English translations use the term original sin, whereas the Confession of Dositheus starts by mentioning ancestral sin. The translation does not differentiate between ancestral and original sin, whereas the sin of Adam in Orthodox tradition is regarded as ancestral sin, the inclination or propensity to sin. The fact that newborn infants are not baptised but baptising children begins at the age of 2 suggests that in effect the Orthodox Church considers newborn infants innocent. Baptism has the meaning of initiation into the body of the Church, beginning with the ability to understand speech and be able to speak, so as to parricipate in Christian life so that one may be saved from sin. Although the Confession of Dositheus is not clear on this point, the practice of baptism not at birth but at the age when children begin to understand speech is sufficient to clarify the Church's position.
I don't get the sense most Orthodox folks read Augustine's works. Augustine's works on free will are orthodox to the hilt. He nowhere denies the necessity of free will.
For genuinely interested readers, please read his "On the Problem of Free Choice." And no, his Retractationes doesn't overturn this work.
Hello. Hieromonk Seraphim Rose (1934-1982) has a book about St.Augustine ,,The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church'' (1983, first issued in the form of a series of articles in 1978 in ,,The Orthodox word'') where he clearly proves that St.Augustine did not reject the freedom of the will but only exaggerated the significance of God’s grace in the synergism between the two. For example, father Seraphim quotes from St.Augustine's interpretation of Psalm 103 where St.Augustine defends the significance of the free will:,,…Receive the cup of His saving Health, "who heals all thine infirmities"(verse 3); if you shall choose, you shall gain this Health.…‘‘. The exaggeration of God's grace derived from his polemics against the Pelagius. There is one place (which father Seraphim quotes) where St.Augustine clearly rejects the freedom of the will but at a later point he refutes those words of himself. As he did not deny the freedom of the will, he did not teach the predestination in the Calvinist sense but was later misunderstood which father Seraphim thoroughly explains - blessed Augustine taught the predestination according to God’s foreknowledge as it is revealed in Scripture (Romans 8:28-30).
Father Seraphim mentions that St.Augustine taught about the synergism of human free will with the prevenient grace - the grace according to the calling of which man comes to believe. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the book, since St.Augustine did not deny the freedom of the will and taught the synergism, he also did not teach the total depravity in the sense that man is unable to freely accept the calling of God’s grace, i.e. he did not teach the irresistable grace.
Father Seraphim says that the views of St.Augustine that man does not have any goodness and freedom in himself, and that all men are responsible for Adam’s sin, are one-sided exaggerations of the correct Orthodox teaching but does not say that they are un-Orthodox. (It must be noted that father Seraphim's assessment of the resposibility of all men for Adam's sin is as an exaggeration is disputable because the inherited guilt was never questioned until the early 20th century - I mean the inherited guilt in the sense that we are guitly for Adam's sin, whereby we became mortal like him, I do not mean the inherited guilt in the sense that the unbaptized infants will go to hell - they won't as St.Gregory Nazianzus who was quoted by father John Whiteford, says).
Father Seraphim mentions as a mistake of St.Augustine the Filioque and quotes St.Photious the Great who mentions that St.Augustine, St.Ambrose and St.Jerome have been wrong about that matter. But nevertheless St.Photios recognizes the authority of those holy fathers.
It is important to be said that father Seraphim Rose does not mention in his book anything about the legal understanding of the penal substituionary atonement as a satisfaction of God's wrath meaning God's justice because God is passionless, as something that is a false teaching invented by St.Augustine as some modernists claim. I am saying that because nowadays St.Augustine is blaimed by modernists for being supposedly the one that has invented it and to have mostly influenced Anselm of Canterburry in the affirmation of the doctrine on the West. But the doctrine is Orthodox because it was never condemned in the polemics of the Orthodox with the West through the centuries. It became being questioned in the 20th century.
It must be said that what Anselm taught about God being offended by sins, is taught also by the Orthodox Church because it is said in the Tome of the Local Council of Contantinople of 1157 which solved the issue of whether Christ offered His Sacrifice only to the Father and the Holy Spirit, or to Himself also, that God was offended by the transgression of the first man. The Council declared that Christ's offering was offered to the Holy Trinity.
The balanced Eastern accent on the innate inclination to sin accords more closely with Jewish teaching than the Augustinian view of innate guilt. For me, that point strengthens the case for the Eastern view. How about you?
The best part of St Augustine's writings is his work on predestination, after all he is the Doctor gratiae.
The Reformed divines do not really talk of "inherited guilt" in terms of Augustine's realism, but talk much more of "imputed guilt" based on the Federal headship of Adam, and based on his sin, guilt is imputed to the posterity because he is the representative of humanity.
If somebody does not engage Reformed theology as Covenant theology, he has missed the point. It cannot be adressed fairly with a mere TULIPism.
The Reformed also never taught that the imago Dei was lost after the Fall. The only one I know who taught that was the Lutheran Matthias Flacius Illyricus (imago Satanae), and it could be implied from Luther's On the Bondage of the Will, but even he nowhere taught it explicitly to my knowledge.
When the Baltic Orthodox countries fell to the Ottoman Turks, all of the theological schools were closed. People who wanted to study theology had to go to the West. These Orthodox theologians when they returned brought with them Western philosophical ideas that were before the 1600's completely foreign to Orthodoxy but unfortunately were introduced into our way of thinking. Many of the writings of Augustine were rebuked by Saint John Chrysostom including the notion that an unbaptized baby will go to hell. Augustine was not a trained theologian. He was a philosopher. There is a reason why although Augustine lived from 354-430 and was canonized as a saint about 1000 years later. His writings were not that influential when he wrote them. It is the Francs who made them popular because Augustine's definition of sin fit in with their political agenda.
When the Orthodox say that we inherit the sin of Adam and Eve, we do not mean the punishment, we mean the fallen condition. When Orthodox saints talk about sin, they never say this is an affront to God's sense of justice. Sin is always talked about giving in the the demonic temptations. The more you sin, the more demonic forces you put into your soul. That is why we lose our salvation.
@stevepa999 Hello. I am Orthodox. Yet the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) affirmed St.Augustine as a Holy Father of the Church:,,...We further declare that we hold fast to the decrees of the four Councils, and in every way follow the Holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Theophilus, John (Chrysostom) of Constantinople, Cyril, Augustine, Proclus, Leo and their writings on the true faith...''
Also St.Augustine was not wrong about the inherited guilt. There is a reference to the inherited guilt in Matthew 3.14:,,But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?'' The Holy Fathers interpret that verse as one referring to Adam's sin - St.Gregory the Theologian, Oration 39.15, Bede the Venerable in Homily 23 on Matthew, Blessed Theophylact in Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, St.Gregory Palamas in Homily 59. Although they do not mention guilt, the reference is to the inherited guilt because St.John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit yet in his mother’s womb (Luke 1.15) and always willfully co-operated with God’s uncreated grace, whereby not having any personal sins.
The rejection of the inherited guilt derives from the conviction that the idea that God is a Judge Who punishes supposedly contradicts His Love. St.Augustine is blaimed for supposedly introducing the legal view of the penal substitutionary atonement on the notion that he did not distinguish between God's essens and energy.
Although God's Justice is not His essence but it is one of His uncreated attributes as His uncreated energies (as for example St.Basil the Great explains in letter 234.1), if His eternal love which is also an uncreated energy contradicted his uncreated Justice, that would introduce dualism which is impossible. Therefore it is either that God's Justice demands punisment of the sinners without that contradicting His Love, or it is that God's Justice means something else instead of a meaning of an eternal judicial power that has a positive aspect of rewarding the righteous and a negative one of punishing the unrepented sinners. One of the two options is true. It is the first one - His Justice as a judicial power to reward or punish does not contradict His love because such a contradiction is what the gnostic dualist Marcion taught and which lead to dualism, and which was condemned by the Church (Canon 95 of the Ecumenical Council of Trullo, 692).
,,...And the Manicheans, and Valentinians and Marcionites and all of similar heresies must give certificates and anathematize each his own heresy, and also Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Severus, and the other chiefs of such heresies, and those who think with them, and all the aforesaid heresies; and so they become partakers of the Holy Communion.''
Yet St. Irenaeus of Lyon explains and refutes Marcionism in Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 25:
… 2. Again, that they might remove the rebuking and judicial power from the Father, reckoning that as unworthy of God, and thinking that they had found out a God both without anger and [merely] good, they have alleged that one [God] judges, but that another saves, unconsciously taking away the intelligence and justice of both deities…
3. Marcion, therefore, himself, by dividing God into two, maintaining one to be good and the other judicial, does in fact, on both sides, put an end to deity. For he that is the judicial one, if he be not good, is not God, because he from whom goodness is absent is no God at all; and again, he who is good, if he has no judicial power, suffers the same [loss] as the former, by being deprived of his character of deity…“
@@johnnyd2383 Thank you for the reply. Yes, St. Augustine was not infallible but the problem with the general approach to St.Augstine today is that in addition to his real mistakes, there are non-existing mistakes that are attributed to him.
The other Holy Fathers were also not infallible. Although he is one of the Holy Fathers which are considered the greatest Holy Fathers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nyssa which you mentioned, had made a mistake regarding the fate of the righteous and unrighteous in eternity, although St.Photious the Great assumed that could be a result of a possible forgery by origenists.
Im learning about Orthodoxy after a lifetime (almost) of Protestantism. I am genuinely interested however one thing I can not understand (actually many things) - is why Orthodoxy always portray Protestantism with Calvanism? As soon as a comparison begins it's always "well Calvanists would say...". A huge part of Western Protestantism does not agree with Calvin! Even greats such as RC Sproul dont use TULIP. Nor did Luther! And Liturgical Lutherans have almost the same views as Orthodox Christians minus some of the obvious differences (Iconography/Marianism/Penal Substitution). I sometimes find that when Orthodox try and explain something - I get more confused. (This just may be me for now I confess). No matter the view, election is also a very significant portion of the teaching of the Bible (you can not escape the very clear teachings of the bible where it is actually spoken of...look up 'elected' or 'elected' in your concordances ) - and always points to "God is Sovereign" (Ps 115:3). He is also 100% righteous. No one can say "I dont think (x,y, z) would be right or fair". Finally, not one person can merit eternal life by being 'meritorious'. If they do they have not understood anything of the bible.
I think part of it has to do with a Patriarch of Constantinople writing a Calvinist letter(the legitimacy is still debated) which caused the doctrines of it as well as other Protestant doctrines to be condemned at the Council of Jerusalem of 1672. Although it tackled some Lutheran and others’ thought, it was mostly about Calvinism, so the doctrines still probably lead a particularly bad taste in the mouths of some Orthodox.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod_of_Jerusalem_(1672)
God bless.
There are two sides to election and predestination: corporate which is Divine election according to God's purpose and individual election which is according to foreknowledge. There is the corporate aspect which is actually primary. Christ is the elect. We are elect as individuals insofar as we are in him. It is the election of the Church in this sense. The church has a predestined future and this applies to all the members thereof who remain in Christ till the end. One can choose to be of the elect or defect from being of the elect. God is sovereign. He chose Christ and us in him and predestined this group to eternal glory and divinization i.e which is adoption as sons. The individual election is that God knows all who are ultimately his and he knows them from all eternity. It is election according to foreknowledge. This is a great mystery, for sure, and we leave it that way. The error of Calvinism is that they have read individualism into the passages about corporate election e.g Ephesians 1.
Instead of " in Christ we are chosen"...they have it as certain individuals "chosen to be in Christ". We are not chosen until we are in Christ and he was the elect from the foundation of the world. However on the individual side all the ones included in the realization of that destiny are already known by God. One must hold these two things together at once. Neither aspect cancels free will or means an individual has been pre selected for salvation and another person not pre- selected. Romans 9 is often used to support the U in tulip but when one looks up the old testament passages cited, they are corporate in nature not individualistic. You are right many protestants deny the individualistic predestination doctrine of Calvin and the synod of dort. I think of wesleyans, in particular. They teach prevenient grace and hold to something similar to what I have presented but most keep it on the individual level. Protestantism is individualism. However there are protestant voices that insist corporate election is primary as I believe as an Orthodox Christian.
@deebater5711 Hello. Meritoriousness is not our own. It Is God’s. It is by participation in God’s uncreated holiness which is an uncreated energy. Romans 1.20 say:,,For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:" Here His power refers to His uncreated energy/power/operation and His Godhead refers to His essence.
This is related to the theosis - becoming like God through participation in His holiness which is an uncreated energy. Salvation is not completed once one has come to believe. All believers are called to holiness (2 Peter 1.15-16, 1 Thes. 4.7-8). The theosis (becoming holy like God by grace) is through participation in His uncreated energy.
2 Peter 3.18 says:,,But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.'' Hebrews 12.10, 14 says:,,For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, *that* *we* *might* *be* *partakers* *of* *his* *holiness* . ...14 *Follow* peace with all men, *and* *holiness* , *without* *which* *no* *man* *shall* *see* *the* *Lord* :''; ,,Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.“ (1 Timothy 4.16).
The predestinate election is according to God’s foreknowledge (Romans 8.28-30), it is not an unconditional election. And that the calling is freely accepted or rejected is evident from Luke 7.29-30:,,And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. 30 But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him." Therefore grace is not irresistible. So even when one comes to believe, this is a result of synergy with God's grace. That synergy is with His grace in its sense of energy, operation, active power.
According to the sola fide concept we are saved the moment we come to believe and the works are only a manifestation of that faith. Which does not mean that salvation cannot be lost, except probably in the view of some Reformers. So one must only preserve the faith he has received by grace. In that view works are considered unnecessary for salvation because they are considered to be ours and so an addition to what Christ did for us once and for all.
But the mistake of Sola fide is that it has a view of the works of faith that is contrary to Scripture. The concept misinterprets the works to be ours which is not true. The works by which we are justified, except by faith, that St.James refers to (James 2.24) are synergetical works that are impossible to do without God's grace (1 Corinthians 15.10 in relation with John 15.5), so they are not our works. If they are our works, they would be an addition to Christ deed done for us once and for all. It is God Who does the works through His grace whose coming is a fruit of Christ’s Sacrifice (John 7.37-39) and so it is Him Who justifies us by His uncreated grace working in us. That is related to the freedom of the will. Philippians 2.12-13 says:
,,Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.'' (Philippians 2.12-13). This is by synergy which does not violate our free will. Grace by which faith comes is not irresistible (Luke 7.28-30).
Coming to believe is also by synergy with God's grace (Acts 18.27 in relation with John 6:44).
The necessity of the synergetical works for salvation is expressed in John 15.2:,,Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.'' The fruits refer to the good works of faith (Colossians 1:10). John 15:2 does not mean that the lack of works is a manifestation of the loss of faith, wherefore one is not saved for not having faith because James 4.17 clearly shows that one could have faith and still not have works:,,Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.“ (James 4.17).
There is a difference with the Roman Catholic teaching because according to it grace as an energy is created which is wrong - in relation with Acts 18.27 and John 6.44, 2 Timothy 1.9 refers to the grace by which we are called as eternal.
Ephesians 2.8-10 which says apart from works means apart from works as a condition for the reception of faith and not works of faith after one coming to believe because if it denied any works as necessary for salvation, that would reject that God is the One Who does the works through us. Apostle Paul explains in his epistles that the grace is free for the Gentiles and not conditioned by the works of the Law (unlike what some of the Judaizers thought) which is the meaning of Eph. 2.8-10. That is the meaning of Ephesians 2.8-10 which is clarified by the next verses. Ephesians 2.11-13 refer to the Gentiles.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (John 15:26) and where He is there cannot be false teachings. But the falsehood of sola fide shows that the Holy Spirit Who is the Spirit of Truth is not received just by belief but through the prayer of the priesthood with apostolic succession (Acts 8.14-17). So He dwells in the historical Church which is now only the Orthodox Church.
Gehenna was and is an area right outside of Jerusalem. It’s a this world place where lots of bad things happened, ie 70AD.
Maybe consider the inclination to sin as trying to cover ourselves from our nakedness which includes our impending physical death and this tends us to illicit means, ie Caine's line as against Seth who sought more the waiting on the Lord for his clothing. Since the image has been tarnished but not destroyed and Christ enlightens every man that comes into the world, man can be encouraged to the heavenly.
My observation from reading the Greek text of the Confession of Dositheos is that it first refers to the ancestral sin, then to the original sin in relation to baptism. I am not sure whether a differentiation was intended. It does not appear so to me but perhaps an expert scholar may be able to clarify that. Both terms, ancestral and original sin, are translated as original sin in the English translations. Even if the two terms are used interchangeably within the Confession, it is still the tradition in the Orthodox Church that what is inherited is not Adam's sin but the propensity for sin.
In any case, the Confession recommends baptism for infants. I understand as a practising Orthodox, that baptism is an initiation into the body of the Church and that it is through the Church, i.e. through Christ, that one is saved from sin. In other words, baptism is not some kind of magical spell that erases sin. It still requires the fulfillment of the Great Commandment, including "good works". Although the text of the Confession at two points may suggest that baptism is automatic remission from sin, the references to St Paul's Epistles and the Gospel of St Matthew are in my understanding references to baptism as a rite of membership in the Church. Should one not be in the Christian Church and die in childhood or early adulthood before being baptised as an adult, then they will likely not have the opportunity of salvation from sin through the Church. Besides, the practice of baptising infants at the age of 2 would suggest that the common understanding in the Orthodox Church is that newborn infants, having not committed a sin by their own will, are born innocent.
I heard somewhere that before the 1600's the Orthodox church did not hold the view that infants would go to hell before baptism. With the fall of Orthodox lands to the Ottomans all theological schools were closed in the Ottoman Empire. Subsequently, all Orthodox who wanted to study theology had to go to the West. Unbeknownst to them, these theologians brought this concept back to the East.
@@stevepa999 - You are likely correct about this. Sometimes you hear views being expressed in more modern times that are closer to Protestantism or Catholicism than to Orthodoxy.
@@nikolaosaggelopoulos8113 Hello. There is a reference to the inherited guilt in Matthew 3.14:,,But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?'' The Holy Fathers interpret that verse as one referring to Adam's sin - St.Gregory the Theologian, Oration 39.15, Bede the Venerable in Homily 23 on Matthew, Blessed Theophylact in Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, St.Gregory Palamas in Homily 59. The reference is not to the propensity to sin because St.John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit yet in his mother’s womb (Luke 1.15) and always willfully co-operated with God’s uncreated grace, whereby not having any personal sins as the Holy Tradition of the Church holds, so the propensity to sin never manifested in him and was nullified due to that cosntant co-operation with His uncreated grace. So the reference of matthew 3.14 is to the inherited guilt for Adam's sin.
The rejection of the inherited guilt derives from the conviction that the idea that God is a Judge Who punishes supposedly contradicts His Love. St.Augustine is blaimed for supposedly introducing the legal view of the penal substitutionary atonement on the notion that he did not distinguish between God's essens and energy.
Although God's Justice is not His essence but it is one of His uncreated attributes as His uncreated energies (as for example St.Basil the Great explains in letter 234.1), if His eternal love which is also an uncreated energy contradicted his uncreated Justice, that would introduce dualism which is impossible. Therefore it is either that God's Justice demands punisment of the sinners without that contradicting His Love, or it is that God's Justice means something else instead of a meaning of an eternal judicial power that has a positive aspect of rewarding the righteous and a negative one of punishing the unrepented sinners. One of the two options is true. It is the first one - His Justice as a judicial power to reward or punish does not contradict His love because such a contradiction is what the gnostic dualist Marcion taught and which lead to dualism, and which was condemned by the Church (Canon 95 of the Ecumenical Council of Trullo, 692).
,,...And the Manicheans, and Valentinians and Marcionites and all of similar heresies must give certificates and anathematize each his own heresy, and also Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Severus, and the other chiefs of such heresies, and those who think with them, and all the aforesaid heresies; and so they become partakers of the Holy Communion.''
Yet St. Irenaeus of Lyon explains and refutes Marcionism in Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 25:
… 2. Again, that they might remove the rebuking and judicial power from the Father, reckoning that as unworthy of God, and thinking that they had found out a God both without anger and [merely] good, they have alleged that one [God] judges, but that another saves, unconsciously taking away the intelligence and justice of both deities…
3. Marcion, therefore, himself, by dividing God into two, maintaining one to be good and the other judicial, does in fact, on both sides, put an end to deity. For he that is the judicial one, if he be not good, is not God, because he from whom goodness is absent is no God at all; and again, he who is good, if he has no judicial power, suffers the same [loss] as the former, by being deprived of his character of deity…“
Modernistic anti-legalism (starting from the 20th century) considers justification only in the sense of theosis which is indeed one of its meanings of justification - becoming righteous like God by grace through sharing in His uncreated righteousness and holiness. But it also means our legal acquittal for our sins by God. Romans 5.18 refers to justification in its legal sense:,,Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.“ Not all men will reach theosis because not all will be saved but justification is of all because Jesus pays the debt of all.
Rejection of inherited guilt is based on the justice of God that he does not condemn for what one had no opportunity or ability to have done otherwise. Babies cannot help the disordering of their nature...therefore they are not condemned for it until they neglect the remedies provided by God and act on it with intent. Jesus sacrifice is perfect satisfaction objectively for the sins of the world so in that sense he justified the world. However on the personal level, It is pardon given upon repentant faith, not acquittal. He doesn't declare the guilty not guilty but rather declares the guilty forgiven and pardoned and set free and changes them interiorly by his grace and treats them as righteous, not counting their sins against them. The perfect satisfaction shows God as the Lord of all to be just in pardoning sinners as the Apostle Paul teaches in Romans 3. In Romans 4, Our faith is counted to us as righteousness or as Knox renders it our faith is counted as virtue in us instead of our sins being held against us. So this is the legal aspect but not like human acquittal. God does not acquit the guilty Nahum 1:3. But makes a just man of the sinner through the inner workings of his grace and in this pardons them and sets them free( gives them remission) of their sins.
@@Yasen.Dobrev - Adam's sin still need not be inherited as sin but only as a propensity to sin. There are no recommendations in the scriptures or elsewhere for the baptism of infants (although the Confession of Dositheos seems to recommend it). However, if Adam's sin was inherited in the sense that infants are being born not innocent, then the Church would have established since antiquity a baptism of the newborn infant, which has not been the case.
Regarding theosis and your related discussion, I cannot follow your argument but that is my own fault for not having thought much along those lines. Nonetheless, for me as an ordinary person in the body of the Church, Christianity is more about a life of compassion and charity. The legalistic arguments and the term "commandment", used in the Great Commandment and elsewhere, originate in the Old Testament and are not always the best way to think about Christianity. Christianity grew away from the legalism of parts of the Old Testament into a faith in compassion, forgiveness and human equality. That transformation is economia/oikonomia and has nothing to do with Marcionist dualism.
No hereditary guilt. Fallen human nature. Justification is restoration of fallen human nature so that we can pass through the hole that Christ drilled with the cross. Justification is not a legal status, (ie. being straight with the law) it is a status of spiritual posture. Stand up, and carry your cross in a straight path. Justification IS standing up straight and walking the straight path, so Justification is not "by" works, it IS works.
@mertonhirsch734 Hello. I am Orthodox. There is a reference to the inherited guilt in Matthew 3.14:,,But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?'' The Holy Fathers interpret that verse as one referring to Adam's sin - St.Gregory the Theologian, Oration 39.15, Bede the Venerable in Homily 23 on Matthew, Blessed Theophylact in Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, St.Gregory Palamas in Homily 59. Although they do not mention guilt, the reference is to the inherited guilt because St.John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit yet in his mother’s womb (Luke 1.15) and always willfully co-operated with God’s uncreated grace, whereby not having any personal sins.
The rejection of the inherited guilt derives from the conviction that the idea that God is a Judge Who punishes supposedly contradicts His Love. St.Augustine is blaimed for supposedly introducing the legal view of the penal substitutionary atonement on the notion that he did not distinguish between God's essens and energy.
Although God's Justice is not His essence but it is one of His uncreated attributes as His uncreated energies (as for example St.Basil the Great explains in letter 234.1), if His eternal love which is also an uncreated energy contradicted his uncreated Justice, that would introduce dualism which is impossible. Therefore it is either that God's Justice demands punisment of the sinners without that contradicting His Love, or it is that God's Justice means something else instead of a meaning of an eternal judicial power that has a positive aspect of rewarding the righteous and a negative one of punishing the unrepented sinners. One of the two options is true. It is the first one - His Justice as a judicial power to reward or punish does not contradict His love because such a contradiction is what the gnostic dualist Marcion taught and which lead to dualism, and which was condemned by the Church (Canon 95 of the Ecumenical Council of Trullo, 692).
,,...And the Manicheans, and Valentinians and Marcionites and all of similar heresies must give certificates and anathematize each his own heresy, and also Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Severus, and the other chiefs of such heresies, and those who think with them, and all the aforesaid heresies; and so they become partakers of the Holy Communion.''
Yet St. Irenaeus of Lyon explains and refutes Marcionism in Against Heresies, Book III, Chapter 25:
… 2. Again, that they might remove the rebuking and judicial power from the Father, reckoning that as unworthy of God, and thinking that they had found out a God both without anger and [merely] good, they have alleged that one [God] judges, but that another saves, unconsciously taking away the intelligence and justice of both deities…
3. Marcion, therefore, himself, by dividing God into two, maintaining one to be good and the other judicial, does in fact, on both sides, put an end to deity. For he that is the judicial one, if he be not good, is not God, because he from whom goodness is absent is no God at all; and again, he who is good, if he has no judicial power, suffers the same [loss] as the former, by being deprived of his character of deity…“
Modernistic anti-legalism (starting from the 20th century) considers justification only in the sense of theosis which is indeed one of its meanings of justification - becoming righteous like God by grace through sharing in His uncreated righteousness and holiness. But it also means our legal acquittal for our sins by God. Romans 5.18 refers to justification in its legal sense:,,Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.“ Not all men will reach theosis because not all will be saved but justification is of all because Jesus pays the debt of all.
@@Yasen.Dobrev OK, yes, but legal justice in this world are only flawed analogies of the divine relationship of God to man. Paul et al are taking a heavenly dynamic and trying to put it into terms of the earthly/fallen dynamic. God's justice isn't in the image of human courts, human courts are an imperfect image of God's.
So we can't take earthly courts and terminology and project it on God. We say for example that someone's debt is covered in an earthly court and it has connotations of literally paying a monetary price, but covering of a monetary debt is not an archetype that God's covering of our sins is "like" rather God covering our fallne human nature with the blood of Christ to create a Passover from death to life is the archetypal "covering" that covering a monetary debt is subordinate to.
We also have the concept of sin as missing the mark and it is clear that we all miss the mark because of fallen human nature which is the result of Adam's sin, so for sure 100% all sin because of the consequences of Adam's sin, so why would it even matter if we are deemed guilty of Adam's actual sin.
@@mertonhirsch4734 Thank you for the asnwer. You said:,,So we can't take earthly courts and terminology and project it on God.''
Yes but it is not a projection of human legal terminology on God because God has revealed to us what His Justice means when Marcionism was condemned (Canon 96, Trullo). Not only St.Irenaeus refutes Marcionism and affirms God's judicial power to bestow rewards for the righteous and punishment for the wicked. St. Hippolytus of Rome explains in his Refutation of all heresies, Book 7, chapters 18 and 19, that Marcion was heavily influenced by the ancient philosopher Empedocles (5th century BC) who thought that there were two unbegotten principles in opposition to each other - Friendship and Discord, i.e. this is absolute dualism. St.Basil the Great refers to Marcionism as a heresy in his First Canon.
Starting from 12:05 how is this conception Western, in the sense of Latin patristics, aren't this later scholastic distinctions like sanctifying grace and the Beatific vision?
15:58 the connection of Predestination with Manichaeism is absurd beyond the pale, there is no excuse for that. Augustine wrote treatises against the Manichaeans, and he certainly had a better discernment on Manichaeism than modern people who probably never read any primary source on Manichaeism. Even serious Augustinian scholarship doesn't make any connection there. Augustine refutes this accusation excellently in his treatise Against Julian. In Manichaeism who does the Predestination, the Good or Evil principle?
Fr. John Whiteford
"Grace and the Will According to Augustine - Lenka Karfikova" is a thorough work on that issue.
I read Chrysostom, and he didn't have first hand knowledge of Manichaeism to my knowledge. Augustine had, just because they used they same verses as Augustine doesn't prove anything, correlation is not causation. Still, I challenge people to provide primary sources of Manichaean exegesis and theology.
There are multiple conceptions of Free Will. Augustine's was much more Ciceronian than anything else, "Good and Bad Will."
Augustine came to his understanding of Grace and Free Will by reading the Epistle to the Romans around 395/96 before the Pelagian controversy in correspondence with Simplicianus of Milan. Read his Retractations. Otherwise you would have to say that he was a pathological liar, if he himself lays out his own changes in theology.
My objection still stands; Who does the Predestination (there is not One God) in Manichaeism?
Fr. John Whiteford
Chrysostom is not infallible, what if I judge Chrysostom based on Augustine?
But let us look what Chrysostom says:
Homilies on St. John, Homily XLVI.
-Ver. 44 "No man can come unto Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw Him."
The Manichaens spring upon these words, saying, "that nothing lies in our own power"; yet the expression showeth that we are masters of our will. "For if a man cometh to Him," saith some one, "what need is there of drawing?" But the words do not take away our free will, but show that we greatly need assistance. And He implieth not an unwilling comer, but one enjoying much succor. Then He showeth also the manner in which He draweth, for that men may not, again, form any material idea of God, He addeth,
Ver. 46. "Not that any man hath seen God, save He which is of God, He hath seen the Father."
"How then," saith some one, "doth the Father draw?" This is the Prophet explained of old, when he proclaimed beforehand and said,
Ver. 45. "They shall all be taught of God“
(Isa. VII. 13.)
Seest thou the dignity of faith, and that not of men nor by man, but by God Himself they shall learn this? And to make this assertion credible, He referred them to their prophets. "If then 'all shall be taught of God,' how is that some shall not believe?" Because the words are spoken of the greater number. Besides, the prophecy meaneth not absolutely all, but all that have the will. For the teacher sitterh ready to impart what he hath to all, and pouring his instruction unto all. ...
Note Chrysostom mentioning those who have will (well who are those who have the will?), and that goes beautifully with what Augustine taught, that man have Free Will but that it needs assistance, the assistance of grace to believe and to will, positively, we may say. Chrysostom said at the beginning here, that the will needs assistance, that doesn't mesh with Pelagian libertarian Free Will.
It still doesn't give us the actual Manichaean exegesis and overall theology, so still the burden of proof is on you, to provide primary sources of Manichaeans.
Still, I refered to you the most systematic treatment published by Brill on Augustine's doctrine of Grace and the Will.
My objection still stands, Who does the Predestination in Manichaeism? The Good or Evil God? Both are ultimate. None can, as in all Non-Augustinian systems they reduce predestination to an absurdity. Yet, the Apostle triumphantly preached Predestination.
@@Acek-ok9dp Hello. St.Augustine is misunderstood in some aspects due in part to the revisionist mosdernistic theology of some writers like primrily, for example, Protopresbyter John Romanides (who was mentioned by Father John Whiteford) who attacks blessed Augsutine in his fundamental work ,,The Ancestral sin'' (1957). The translator of his book Dr.George S.Gabriel says in the preface of the first edition in English the following:,,...It was his request that Augustine of Hippo not be called Blessed or Saint in the English edition...'' (p.11). These are frightening words because, for example, Patriarch Gennadius Scholarius of Constantinople (1400-1473), the disciple of St. Mark of Ephesus (1392-1444), says:,,If anyone does not believe and call Augustine saint and blessed, he is anathema.“ (Oeuvres, Volume 3, p.59). Nevertheless, today St.Augustine is still venerated here in the Orthodox Church as a great Holy Father and a saint regardless of the modernistic attacks against him which are in fact indirect attacks against Orthodoxy because he is a pre-schismatic Holy Father.
Hieromonk Seraphim Rose (1934-1982) has a book about St.Augustine ,,The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church'' (1983, first issued in the form of a series of articles in 1978 in ,,The Orthodox word'') where he clearly proves that St.Augustine did not reject the freedom of the will but only exaggerated the significance of God’s grace in the synergism between the two. For example, father Seraphim quotes from St.Augustine's interpretation of Psalm 103 where St.Augustine defends the significance of the free will:,,…Receive the cup of His saving Health, "who heals all thine infirmities"(verse 3); if you shall choose, you shall gain this Health.…‘‘. The exaggeration of God's grace derived from his polemics against the Pelagius. There is one place (which father Seraphim quotes) where St.Augustine clearly rejects the freedom of the will but at a later point he refutes those words of himself. As he did not deny the freedom of the will, he did not teach the predestination in the Calvinist sense but was later misunderstood which father Seraphim thoroughly explains - blessed Augustine taught the predestination according to God’s foreknowledge as it is revealed in Scripture (Romans 8:28-30).
Father Seraphim mentions that St.Augustine taught about the synergism of human free will with the prevenient grace - the grace according to the calling of which man comes to believe. Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the book, since St.Augustine did not deny the freedom of the will and taught the synergism, he also did not teach the total depravity in the sense that man is unable to freely accept the calling of God’s grace, i.e. he did not teach the irresistable grace.
Father Seraphim says that the views of St.Augustine that man does not have any goodness and freedom in himself, and that all men are responsible for Adam’s sin, are one-sided exaggerations of the correct Orthodox teaching but does not say that they are un-Orthodox. (It must be noted that father Seraphim's assessment of the resposibility of all men for Adam's sin is as an exaggeration is disputable because the inherited guilt was never questioned until the early 20th century - I mean the inherited guilt in the sense that we are guilty for Adam's sin, whereby we are mortal like him, I do not mean the inherited guilt in the sense that the unbaptized infants will go to hell - they won't as St.Gregory Nazianzus who was quoted by father John Whiteford, says).
Father Seraphim mentions as a mistake of St.Augustine the Filioque and quotes St.Photious the Great who mentions that St.Augustine, St.Ambrose and St.Jerome have been wrong about that matter. But nevertheless St.Photios recognizes the authority of those Holy Fathers.
It is important to be said that father Seraphim Rose does not mention in his book anything about the legal understanding of the penal substituionary atonement as a satisfaction of God's wrath meaning God's justice as God is passionless, as something that is a false teaching invented by St.Augustine as some modernists claim. I am saying that because nowadays St.Augustine is blaimed by modernists for being supposedly the one that has invented it and to have mostly influenced Anselm of Canterburry in the affirmation of the doctrine on the West. But the doctrine is Orthodox because it was never condemned in the polemics of the Orthodox with the West through the centuries. It became being questioned in the 20th century.
It must be said that what Anselm taught about God being offended by sins, is taught also by the Orthodox Church because it is said in the Tome of the Local Council of Contantinople of 1157 which solved the issue of whether Christ offered His Sacrifice only to the Father and the Holy Spirit, or to Himself also, that God was offended by the transgression of the first man. The Council declared that Christ's offering was offered to the Holy Trinity.
A rather simplistic view of "Jansenism".
So, his professor was Dennis Bradford. Hmmmmmmmm, as long as it wasn't Dennis Earl Bradford.
The doctrine of original sin is not biblical. This is a false teaching.
Hello. It is biblical. Sinfulness entered the world through Adam when he sinned:,,Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned-" (Romans 5:12, Orthodox Study Bible). Death spread to all men through the sin of Adam, all men became mortal when he became mortal which is also expressed in 1 Corinthians 15:22:,,For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." (Orthodox Study Bible).
As Adam's sin is the cause of mortality and all of his descedants became mortal when Adam became mortal, that ,,death spread to all men because all sinned'' (Romans 5:12) means that all sinned in Adam, that all sinned in him when he sinned, i.e. all humanity was contained in Adam when he sinned, he was the head of humanity. That is why when he fell, all men fell. And so all became sinners from Adam when he sinned and became a sinner.
@@Yasen.Dobrev Are you saying that babies in the womb are sinful or have a sinful nature?
@@timothyseals3791 I must say that I do not mean that infants will be damned eternally. As Father John Whiteford said quoting St.Gregory the Theologian's Oration 40 - On Baptism, they will neither be punished, nor rewarded.
When you distinguish being ,,sinful’’ and having a ,,sinful nature’’, you probably mean that being sinful refers to having participation in Adam’s sin and the sinful nature refers to the inclination to sin. Actually usually both expressions are used to refer to the sinfulness, i.e. to the inclination to sin. But if you ask about the participation in Adam’s sin in the sense of whether we are guilty of his sin, hence the infants, too, that is also true.
St.Cyprian of Carthage (200-256) says "If, in the case of the worst sinners and those who formerly sinned much against God, when afterwards they believe, the remission of their sins is granted and no one is held back from baptism and grace, how much more, then, should an infant not be held back, who, having but recently been born, has done no sin, except that, born of the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of that old death from his first being born. For this very reason does he [an infant] approach more easily to receive the remission of sins: because the sins forgiven him are not his own but those of another" (Letters, 64:5, c.253 CE).
St.Gennadius of (458-471), Patriarch of Constantinople says:,,…Everyone in the following of Adam has died, because they have all inherited their nature from him. But some have died because they themselves have sinned, while others have died only because of Adam’s condemnation-for example, children.“ (Pauline Commentary from the Greek Church, New Testament Abstracts 15:362).
The Council of Carthage (419) that Father John Whiteford mentioned, says in Canon 110 that infants are baptized for the true remission of sins:
,,Likewise it seemed good that whosoever denies that infants newly from their mother's wombs should be baptized, or says that baptism is for remission of sins, but that they derive from Adam no original sin, which needs to be removed by the laver of regeneration, from whence the conclusion follows, that in them the form of baptism for the remission of sins, is to be understood as false and not true, let him be anathema.
For no otherwise can be understood what the Apostle says, By one man sin has come into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed upon all men in that all have sinned, than the Catholic Church everywhere diffused has always understood it. For on account of this rule of faith (regulam fidei) even infants, who could have committed as yet no sin themselves, therefore are truly baptized for the remission of sins, in order that what in them is the result of generation may be cleansed by regeneration.‘‘
As they do not have any personal sins, they are truly remitted for the original sin which is thee same as what St.Cyprian who was quoted, says in his Letter 64.
@@Yasen.Dobrev No that is not what I mean.
It is a simple question. Are babies in the womb sinful in any way, or do they have any type of sinful nature?
@@timothyseals3791 They have the same sinful nature like all humans after Adam - a nature with an inclination to sin. That is why they are mortal. But the sinfulness, the deparivity of nature, i.e. the inclination of the fallen nature to sin, its inclination to evil rather than good, although it has preserved its capability of doing good as the God's image in man after the after is tarnished but not destroyed, is not a created property of nature. If it was a created property of the nature after the fall, that would mean that God is the one responsible for the sinfulness because He creates the whole nature with all its properties. But that would be a huge blasphemy. The inclination to sin is a state which is not created but is a result of the lack of divine grace which Adam lost due to his sin and as all humans inherit his nature after the fall, they inherit that lack, that absence of God's grace.
St.Irenaeus of Lyon (130-202) , says in ,,Against Heresies" (Book III, Chapter 23):
,,…He, however, adopted a dress conformable to his disobedience, being awed by the fear of God; and resisting the erring, the lustful propensity of his flesh (since he had lost his natural disposition and child-like mind , and had come to the knowledge of evil things), he girded a bridle of continence upon himself and his wife, fearing God, and waiting for His coming, and indicating, as it were, some such thing [as follows]: Inasmuch as, he says, I have by disobedience lost that robe of sanctity which I had from the Spirit, I do now also acknowledge that I am deserving of a covering of this nature, which affords no gratification, but which gnaws and frets the body. …“
St.Symeon the New Theologian (949 - 1022) says in his Homily 37, 3:
,,But in this is expressed that mystery of our Faith, that human nature is sinful from its very conception. God did not create man sinful, but pure and holy. But since the first-created Adam lost this garment of sanctity, not from any other sin than pride alone, and became corruptible and mortal, all people also who came from the seed of Adam are participants of the ancestral sin from their very conception and birth. He who has been born in this way, even though he has not yet performed any sin, is already sinful through this ancestral sin.‘‘
St.Symeon also points to the losing of the garment of sanctity by Adam as a result of his sin.