So Eastern Orthodoxy does not accept the Athanasian Creed? That's really interesting!
Yup! It was made up by the Western Church long after St. Athanasius died. It contains the Filioque, which is a condemned heresy in our church, so we would never accept the Creed. The (pseudo-)Athanasian Creed was never used in the East anyway.
Yeah. Imagine my surprise when I finished unlearning everything, thinking back to a conversation you and I had held a few years ago on here, and thinking, "Hmmm, how would that conversation pan out now..."
Let me just start by saying that we never actually use the words, "apotheosis" or "theosis," so I'm not sure either one of them accurately explains our doctrine.
Haha yeah, I imagine you guys wouldn't have too much interest in using Greek words to encapsulate your doctrine.
Rather, we believe that God and men are essentially the same species. Genesis 21:21, 24-25 (KJV) states, "And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. In the very next verse, we read, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Since we are referred to elsewhere in the scriptures as His "offspring," we take this to mean that we, having been created in His kind, have the potential to someday "outgrow our humanity" as you put it. This does not mean that we will ever be equal to God or that we will ever cease to worship Him as our only God.
And this is where Mormonism and Orthodoxy part ways. We are icons of God, made in His image, but that does not mean that we are the same "species" as God. If we were the same "species" as God, then we would not be created by God, but rather begotten. Orthodoxy teaches that only Christ is begotten of the Father; we are creations of the Trinity. We reflect the image of God--His freedom of choice, and His capacity for holiness, love and communion. But we do not innately reflect His likeness--that is, the actual quality of holiness and the state of being in communion and relationship. We have to grow into that likeness. None of the three Persons in the Trinity require such a growth period--they just
are. As I quoted above, God is "ever-existing yet ever the same". We are not ever-existing; we were created in time. We are not ever the same; we are mutable and subject to change and growth.
See this is where you're losing me. His human will said "No!" and His divine will said, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." You have Him referring to "two different wills" and bowing to His Father's will, because of His deep devotion and obedience. Had it been possible for Him to complete His mission in some less horrific way, He would have preferred to do so, but given that this was not possible, He said, "Thy will be done."
I read it differently. His human will was what said, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." Christ in His divine will would not have even needed to pray this; He as God is impassible, and thus is not subject to such emotion as God. But as man, He does truly experience these emotions and feels anxiety and fear over what He has already resolved to do. (Maybe throwing in the example about the mother-in-law gave too extreme a picture of how much Jesus in His humanity was fearful of what He was going to do...)
I don't think that we ever even seriously consider this question, because we know that Jesus would never have gone against His Father's will. But I have heard it said that Jesus died willingly and that He had the power to come down from the cross at any time. Of course, had He done that, the entire course of human history would have been changed, and this was something He absolutely would not have wanted to happen. He had a mission to fulfill and was determined not to fail in that.
For us Orthodox, the example would be an immediate "no". His divine will is not just in concert with the Father's divine will; Christ's divine will
is the Father's divine will, since that is whence Christ has His divine will. The Son and the Spirit both will what the Father wills, yet all three Persons remain distinct. I haven't watched Star Trek, so I don't understand what the Borg is, but from what I can gather it's different from what we Orthodox believe about the divine will.
Thanks! That's a good way to do it.
We would agree that all three "share the same Divine Essence" -- provided what you recognize that the term "divine essence" is more or less absent from our theology. We would probably say that they share the same divine "attributes" or "nature." I'm afraid it doesn't make logical sense to me, though, the Father could beget the Son if the Son was always present. Fathers who beget sons always precede them, and we believe this to be true in the case of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. That said, we believe that they both (and the Holy Ghost/Holy Spirit) all existed prior to the time the Bible describes as "the beginning."
Yes, that is the way that things work in nature. But God does not operate according to those rules. If the Son were to be begotten in time after the Father, then He would not be God at all, but something lesser, and likewise there would be a time in which God the Father was not "Father". This was the heresy of Arius--"There was a time when the Son was not."
We would agree that all three are "God." But just as we believe there most certainly
was a time where our sun wasn't radiating heat and light -- that time being before God created the sun, moon and stars (the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night), we believe that
"the Father existed prior to the Son and the Holy Ghost and is the source of their divinity." From the human frame of reference, however, it would be accurate to say that they were all there "in the beginning," the beginning being the time that the clock started ticking, so to speak.
This is definitely something with which we would disagree. Yes, the Son and the Spirit definitely receive their Divine Nature from the Father, but they did not come into being after the Father. This Sunday in Orthodoxy was the Sunday of the Fathers of the First Six Ecumenical Councils (or the Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, depending on your jurisdiction). We sang the following at Vespers on Saturday:
"I glorify the power of the Father, magnify the power of the Son, and praise the might of the Holy Spirit, one Godhead, indivisible, uncreated, consubstantial Trinity, reigning through all eternity."
"Let us extol today those mystical trumpets of the Spirit, namely the God-mantled Fathers, who, speaking of divine things, sang in the midst of the Church a hymn of unified tones, teaching that the Trinity is One, not differing in Substance or Godhead, refuting Arius and contending for Orthodoxy, who doth ever intercede with the Lord to have mercy on our souls.
Both now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
O Lady of exceeding honor, how can we but wonder at thee giving birth to incarnate God? For thou, O all-blameless, not knowing a man, didst give birth in the flesh to a Son without father, who before eternity was begotten of the Father without mother, the property and essence of each substance remaining intact. Wherefore, O virgin Mother, beseech Him to save the souls of those who assent and confess, with true belief, that thou art the Theotokos.
The best way I can think to answer this is to say that we believe their unity of will, purpose, mind and heart to be perfect and absolute. This is, however, by choice. There is absolutely nothing that the Father wants that the Son and the Holy Ghost do not also want and are not also working towards. They are NEVER at odds with each other. I've never actually heard it said that "grace comes from the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit," but I really like that way of putting it and it ties in nicely with what we Latter-day Saints believe.
Yeah, that last formulation there is something I think was expressed by St. Augustine, or maybe it was one of the Cappadocian Fathers of the mid- to late 300's. As stated above, however, we Orthodox would find issue with how you conceive of the unity of the three Persons as being three separate individuals who decide to enter into a pact with one another. This to me sounds like three separate gods who decide to work together, like on Mt. Olympus or in Asgard.
So, how'd I do? If my answers didn't make sense, please let me know. I actually think we agree on more than we disagree on. But you may disagree with me there.
I think you did great. We do have many similarities, and on the face of it our positions are indeed quite close. But there are a few key differences that I'm noticing.
Thats interesting. I can see the link then between Man possibly becoming God at least in terms of authority as Christians will reign with Christ on God's throne. (Romans 8)
Man was originally called to tend the Garden of Eden, and we were made stewards over all creation. As you rightly point out, we are co-heirs with Christ as adopted children. We become like God, and we become gods (i.e. rulers who become ever more like God in holiness and virtue), but not Gods. 2 Corinthians 3:18, 1 Corinthians 15:35-49 and 2 Peter 1:4 illustrate this beautifully.
Absolutely. But that does not mean that we will become a part of what most Christians think of as "the Trinity." We will not somehow be assimilated within a single "substance" or "essence" that is now the God we worship. We will always be distinct from God Almighty.
Agreed. We will always remain created humans, but we are drawn into communion with the Persons of the Trinity, and we are made like them--not in our nature, but by the grace of the Eternal Godhead.
