No*s
Captain Obvious
All right, I told Melody that I was going to post what I thought about salvation. Alas, the forum requires me to be brief.
I do not mean sin as some sort of guilt to be forgiven, so I must define my term, because many people on this list will not understand what I mean otherwise. Sin is imperfection. If I shoot an arrow and miss, I sin then I would translate that into Greek with the verb for sin (amartanw). Sin is, thus, an imperfection or missing of the mark.
From this imperfection, we fall out of union with God. From this fall, we suffer from death (Ro. 6.23). Naturally, since each child is born in the image of their parents, and those from their parents, and so on all the way back to Adam and Eve's flawed image of God, this problem persists from generation to generation.
On account of this, we cannot stand the presence of God. Our imperfection and corruption makes it impossible. Rather than experiencing God as the Divine Love that He is, we experience Him as a burning fire. Sin cannot stand in the presence of God. However, we cannot ascend and participate in God's life, because the image is broken, and if the image is broken, then we don't even have the capacity to be like God. God, therefore, cast us out of Eden lest we eat from the Tree of Life (Christ) and live.
It is for this reason that humanity is broken. God could not, however, allow humanity to perish and the Slanderer to destroy His creation. In order to restore the Image of God, God became man (John 1). Christ lived a human life, grew up, and then died. In so doing, He met humanity in Hades/Sheol where they were being held. Hades, however, could not contain Him, and He burst loose and broke the bonds of Death in the process. As a consequence, the souls of the dead burst forth from the tombs and walked among men
There ends, though, my definitions and my common ground. Here is where things become different.
In II Peter 1.4-5, we learn that Christians are "participents in the Divine Nature" and that we are called "unto His own glory and power" while "fleeing from the corruption of the world." Compare this with Christ's promise, which He repeatedly promises to give His followers the power to become "Sons of God." I do not believe this refers to just "adoption," but literally becoming.
Another, more potent, passage is John 20.34ff, in which we read Christ responding to accusations of blasphemy by saying, "Is it not written in your law, `I said, ``You are gods''? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, `You are blaspheming,' because I said, `I am the Son of God?'"
Compare this to the axiom repeated in the Early Church: "God became man so that men might become gods." This teaching didn't belong to the lunatic fringe, but to mainstream teachers. St. Athanasius taught it. Augustine taught it. Clement of Alexandria taught it. Many others taught it. Do not be suprised by it either. The very word "Christian" means "little Christ." People are called to be "godlike." We all use these terms, but few of us take them seriously.
Famous teacher C.S. Lewis even wrote:
Obviously, this is not an isolated teaching.
Now, also consider the number of people called "Christ" in the Old Testament. They range from David to the pagan king Cyrus. Just as Jesus referred to people being called "gods," so to do we have people being called "christs," or "annointed ones."
This is the promise of God. Paul admonished us that we should that we should not "be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of" our minds. Paul tells us that we view "as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Co. 3.18, emphasis mine). We are to look at ourselves in this process by looking in a mirror, and over time, we are to transformed into the very image of Christ.
The same Christ who said in John 10.30 "I and my Father are one" and "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father," also said prayed that members of His body may be one even as He and the Father are one Jn. 17.11. He even asserts in 17.22 that He is giving His glory to His Body (compare this with 2 Pet. 1.4-5).
In this way, the Church is literally the Body of Christ, and Christ can ask the persecutor of His people, Paul, why he was persecuting Him, not the Church (Acts 9.4). The Church is the very Temple of God (hence not only was the divider in the Holy of Holies torn down, but the very Temple itself was destroyed).
Christ promised in Jn. 6 that we needed to ingest His Body and His Blood to receive eternal life, and He didn't say "the bread and wine symbolizing My Body and Blood." He promised that whoever didn't wouldn't inherit Everlasting Life. That, in turn, is administered by the Church. St. Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John, taught clearly that it must be administered by a Bishop of the Church (so if somebody isn't a part of the original Church, they are not receiving the life-saving sacraments).
However, God is not limited by these norms. Baptism is normally a necessary part of salvation, but the thief on the cross got a special priveledge. God often works through exceptions and odd events. So also, God's grace is not limited. Jesus is the divine Logos, and every society has a portion of the Logos -- it literally means anything from "reason" to "word" to "story" to "argument." He is literally the Truth.
All peoples have a portion of it, but not the whole. I will not limit where God's grace is functioning. I will say where it is, though. Paul quoted from the Stoics, sometimes almost verbatim. The Zoroastrians have truth. The Greek philosophers also foreshadowed parts of Christianity. Christ is revealed everywhere truth is present, and those are numerous. However, there is only one place where we know He is incarnated: the Church. The rest of the world is perishing where some may or may not survive on account of Christ's sacrifice and their portion of the Truth. I cannot say how many, if any, will survive. I can only point to His Body.
Melody, I hope this clarifies things a bit *big grin*.
I do not mean sin as some sort of guilt to be forgiven, so I must define my term, because many people on this list will not understand what I mean otherwise. Sin is imperfection. If I shoot an arrow and miss, I sin then I would translate that into Greek with the verb for sin (amartanw). Sin is, thus, an imperfection or missing of the mark.
From this imperfection, we fall out of union with God. From this fall, we suffer from death (Ro. 6.23). Naturally, since each child is born in the image of their parents, and those from their parents, and so on all the way back to Adam and Eve's flawed image of God, this problem persists from generation to generation.
On account of this, we cannot stand the presence of God. Our imperfection and corruption makes it impossible. Rather than experiencing God as the Divine Love that He is, we experience Him as a burning fire. Sin cannot stand in the presence of God. However, we cannot ascend and participate in God's life, because the image is broken, and if the image is broken, then we don't even have the capacity to be like God. God, therefore, cast us out of Eden lest we eat from the Tree of Life (Christ) and live.
It is for this reason that humanity is broken. God could not, however, allow humanity to perish and the Slanderer to destroy His creation. In order to restore the Image of God, God became man (John 1). Christ lived a human life, grew up, and then died. In so doing, He met humanity in Hades/Sheol where they were being held. Hades, however, could not contain Him, and He burst loose and broke the bonds of Death in the process. As a consequence, the souls of the dead burst forth from the tombs and walked among men
There ends, though, my definitions and my common ground. Here is where things become different.
In II Peter 1.4-5, we learn that Christians are "participents in the Divine Nature" and that we are called "unto His own glory and power" while "fleeing from the corruption of the world." Compare this with Christ's promise, which He repeatedly promises to give His followers the power to become "Sons of God." I do not believe this refers to just "adoption," but literally becoming.
Another, more potent, passage is John 20.34ff, in which we read Christ responding to accusations of blasphemy by saying, "Is it not written in your law, `I said, ``You are gods''? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, `You are blaspheming,' because I said, `I am the Son of God?'"
Compare this to the axiom repeated in the Early Church: "God became man so that men might become gods." This teaching didn't belong to the lunatic fringe, but to mainstream teachers. St. Athanasius taught it. Augustine taught it. Clement of Alexandria taught it. Many others taught it. Do not be suprised by it either. The very word "Christian" means "little Christ." People are called to be "godlike." We all use these terms, but few of us take them seriously.
Famous teacher C.S. Lewis even wrote:
Obviously, this is not an isolated teaching.
Now, also consider the number of people called "Christ" in the Old Testament. They range from David to the pagan king Cyrus. Just as Jesus referred to people being called "gods," so to do we have people being called "christs," or "annointed ones."
This is the promise of God. Paul admonished us that we should that we should not "be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of" our minds. Paul tells us that we view "as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Co. 3.18, emphasis mine). We are to look at ourselves in this process by looking in a mirror, and over time, we are to transformed into the very image of Christ.
The same Christ who said in John 10.30 "I and my Father are one" and "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father," also said prayed that members of His body may be one even as He and the Father are one Jn. 17.11. He even asserts in 17.22 that He is giving His glory to His Body (compare this with 2 Pet. 1.4-5).
In this way, the Church is literally the Body of Christ, and Christ can ask the persecutor of His people, Paul, why he was persecuting Him, not the Church (Acts 9.4). The Church is the very Temple of God (hence not only was the divider in the Holy of Holies torn down, but the very Temple itself was destroyed).
Christ promised in Jn. 6 that we needed to ingest His Body and His Blood to receive eternal life, and He didn't say "the bread and wine symbolizing My Body and Blood." He promised that whoever didn't wouldn't inherit Everlasting Life. That, in turn, is administered by the Church. St. Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostle John, taught clearly that it must be administered by a Bishop of the Church (so if somebody isn't a part of the original Church, they are not receiving the life-saving sacraments).
However, God is not limited by these norms. Baptism is normally a necessary part of salvation, but the thief on the cross got a special priveledge. God often works through exceptions and odd events. So also, God's grace is not limited. Jesus is the divine Logos, and every society has a portion of the Logos -- it literally means anything from "reason" to "word" to "story" to "argument." He is literally the Truth.
All peoples have a portion of it, but not the whole. I will not limit where God's grace is functioning. I will say where it is, though. Paul quoted from the Stoics, sometimes almost verbatim. The Zoroastrians have truth. The Greek philosophers also foreshadowed parts of Christianity. Christ is revealed everywhere truth is present, and those are numerous. However, there is only one place where we know He is incarnated: the Church. The rest of the world is perishing where some may or may not survive on account of Christ's sacrifice and their portion of the Truth. I cannot say how many, if any, will survive. I can only point to His Body.
Melody, I hope this clarifies things a bit *big grin*.
