Mormonism And Orthodoxy

mfbukowski · July 17, 2015

I don't know as much as I would like on this topic so I thought I would start a thread. I know there are members of the various Orthodox branches who post regularly on this site, so perhaps it is an opportunity for them to compare and contrast their beliefs with ours.

I would also like to introduce an amazing individual I have discovered who is sometimes called "The Russian Da Vinci" and I think that is a justifiable characterization. His name is Pavel Florensky and he is truly extraordinary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Florensky

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=pavel+florensky&tag=mh0b-20&index=stripbooks&hvadid=3482499581&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_35ah765dza_e

He was a mystic and a Russian Orthodox priest who published in art circles, philosophy circles and in theology and I think his thought is highly relevant to Mormonism. Because he lived in the 20th century, his views are perhaps easier for us to understand than the views of earlier writers- he is essentially one of us in world view.

I know this forum's readership includes some who might find this interesting and not be aware of Florensky.

Also I think the link between Mormonism and Orthodoxy is important to explore because both churches claim to be the direct heir to Early Christian thought, and both churches think that the others have gone astray.

There are certainly unique beliefs in Orthodoxy which are also found- and only found outside of Orthodoxy- in Mormonism . The parallels are inescapable.

I think the parallels are found in theosis, the idea that we can become like God, a certain distrust for systematic theology I think is found in both churches, and placing the primacy of the individual's relationship with God on personal revelation. We would call it a "testimony" and they I think would call it a "mystical experience of unity with the Divine", but I could be wrong.

I have just discovered Florensky and plan to do a lot more reading about him.

So do the similarities between Mormonism and Orthodoxy point to a "common ancestor" in "true early Christianity" which has been lost by other Christian faiths?

That is I think an interesting question worth exploring.

And don't forget Florensky. I wish I spoke Russian.

Hillel2 · July 17, 2015

Hello. Some very interesting ideas there. If You are not aware, you might also check out Nikolai Fedorov and Vladimir Solovev...both philosophers deeply influnced by orthodox mysticism.

Per LDS theology, fedorov is interesting because he was a hylozoist and one of the first transhumanists of whom i'm aware...he theorized that via a kind of star trek transformer device it would become both possible and a matter of religious duty to resurrect the dead. Solovev was fascinated with the divine feminine...been a while since i read these gentlemen back in grad school but your query brought them to mind.

mfbukowski · July 17, 2015

Hello. Some very interesting ideas there. If You are not aware, you might also check out Nikolai Fedorov and Vladimir Solovev...both philosophers deeply influnced by orthodox mysticism.

Thanks for the tip- I will check them out.

I have also done grad work in art history along with philosophy and one of the reasons I like Florensky is his theory of art and his understanding of icons.

He saw religious icons and their similarity to "abstract art" as a return to a holistic view of a spiritualized universe, as a reaction to Enlightenment rationalism.

The importance of icons was not to "represent" God but to draw us into Him through mystical experience. So for him icons became a kind of mandala upon which to focus during meditation seeking mystical union with God.

Iconoclasts of course see them as "worshiping idols" which totally misses the point.

Just as the Enlightenment sought to "represent" reality and contemporary philosophy of his time was veering away from the idea of words "representing" reality (see the Deflationary Theory of Truth thread) art itself was becoming "non-represntational" divorcing itself from Cartesian "reality" and moving back to direct experience as the prime focus, forgetting about the unknowable "outside reality".

So the same thing was happening in philosophy and art at the same time- the move away from representation of a reality no one could experience directly.

That is why I have a Picasso self-portrait as an avatar, Picasso was inventing himself not as others saw him, but as he saw himself.

I would argue that is what Mormonism is about- each of us "organizing matter unorganized" and creating out own universes or "worlds".

I have found that artists have no problem understanding that language does not "represent" reality any more than a painting does. So for Florenzky theological language about God was no more "representational" of what God "really" is than an icon was representational of the appearance of God.

The only true path to direct unmediated experience of God was what we call "personal revelation" which parallels our own personal interpretation of our experiences.

Artistically horizontals give a peaceful feeling, which is why we call them "horizontals" because they are similar to seeing the "horizon" in a "beautiful" landscape. We like looking out over the ocean and call it "beautiful" for example.

Verticals can "elevate" the consciousness- hence the incredible beauty of Gothic cathedrals. The architecture alone induces a sense of awe and reverence. I understand there is a gothic synagogue in Prague I am looking forward to seeing.

Diagonals are dramatic and forceful and full of action, as explored in the Baroque period. Anyone with Art History 101 under her belt knows that!

The idea is that all of human activity including language and literature comes under the general category of "art" in the sense of "human creation". Just as we have direct, non-verbal, unmediated experience with art, the goal is to have direct unmediated experience with God, divorced from words.

Most people have a horrible time putting their feelings into words when looking at a piece of art. They do not have the words to discuss it. "Oh look at that one. It's so good. Look at the detail" is about all they can say and is about the lamest thing you CAN say!

Usually they are judging how well the picture "represents" reality. It has to have "detail" because that means it "represents" better and shows artistic skill.

When you look at non-representational art, it is a direct unmediated experience that sometimes may be shocking or confusing. Good. So is life! We struggle to put such a piece into context. Good! That is what we should be doing with every idea and thing we see that is unusual!

And that is also what we should be doing with spiritual experience which is direct and unmediated.

God has revealed himself to me- what does this MEAN? How do I fit this into my reality?? Was that "real"? How do I categorize what just happened??

THAT I think is what Florensky is about, but I am still learning.

mfbukowski · July 17, 2015

Where is volgadon when you need him?

Can we have a seance or something to summon him?

Mystery Meat · July 17, 2015

Hello. Some very interesting ideas there. If You are not aware, you might also check out Nikolai Fedorov and Vladimir Solovev...both philosophers deeply influnced by orthodox mysticism.
Per LDS theology, fedorov is interesting because he was a hylozoist and one of the first transhumanists of whom i'm aware...he theorized that via a kind of star trek transformer device it would become both possible and a matter of religious duty to resurrect the dead. Solovev was fascinated with the divine feminine...been a while since i read these gentlemen back in grad school but your query brought them to mind.

If you were wondering, Fedorov is pronounced "Fyoderov" and Solovev is pronounced "Salavyov".

mfbukowski · July 17, 2015

If you were wondering, Fedorov is pronounced "Fyoderov" and Solovev is pronounced "Salavyov".

Those dang slavs never know how to spell anything so it makes sense. Them Ruskis even have a funny alphabet just to keep their talk secret.

I mean look at my name- how are you supposed to pronounce "mfb" and keep your Wheaties in your mouth?

Edited July 17, 2015 by mfbukowski

Hillel2 · July 17, 2015

If you were wondering, Fedorov is pronounced "Fyoderov" and Solovev is pronounced "Salavyov".

Hillel2 · July 17, 2015

Spasibo bol'shoe za informatsiiu. Ya nositel' russkogo yazyka/, Vy i govorite po-russki tozhe?

Thank You, do You also speak Russian? Native? Returned missionary? :-)

I'm not lds but had passing acquaintances with some where i lived...a town called Saratov.

I was using one of the transcription systems favored by library of congress.

Native speakers dont typically write the double dots over the "yo". Before the Revolution it was always written with a simple "e".

But yes, those are the standard central dialect pronunciations.

Mystery Meat · July 17, 2015

Spasibo bol'shoe za informatsiiu. Ya nositel' russkogo yazyka/, Vy i govorite po-russki tozhe?
Thank You, do You also speak Russian? Native? Returned missionary? :-)
I'm not lds but had passing acquaintances with some where i lived...a town called Saratov.
I was using one of the transcription systems favored by library of congress.
Native speakers dont typically write the double dots over the "yo". Before the Revolution it was always written with a simple "e".
But yes, those are the standard central dialect pronunciations.

Da, govoryu. No davno ne govoril po russki.

And here I am lecturing you on how to speak Russian...

:mega_shok:

Hillel2 · July 17, 2015

Zdorovo.

Traela · July 18, 2015

I minored in Russian. Too bad I remember very little of it.

I also find Orthodoxy very interesting. If I ever lost faith in Mormonism, that is the direction I would go.

Spammer · July 18, 2015

Thanks for the tip- I will check them out.
I have also done grad work in art history along with philosophy and one of the reasons I like Florensky is his theory of art and his understanding of icons.
He saw religious icons and their similarity to "abstract art" as a return to a holistic view of a spiritualized universe, as a reaction to Enlightenment rationalism.
The importance of icons was not to "represent" God but to draw us into Him through mystical experience. So for him icons became a kind of mandala upon which to focus during meditation seeking mystical union with God.
Iconoclasts of course see them as "worshiping idols" which totally misses the point.
Just as the Enlightenment sought to "represent" reality and contemporary philosophy of his time was veering away from the idea of words "representing" reality (see the Deflationary Theory of Truth thread) art itself was becoming "non-represntational" divorcing itself from Cartesian "reality" and moving back to direct experience as the prime focus, forgetting about the unknowable "outside reality".
So the same thing was happening in philosophy and art at the same time- the move away from representation of a reality no one could experience directly.
That is why I have a Picasso self-portrait as an avatar, Picasso was inventing himself not as others saw him, but as he saw himself.
I would argue that is what Mormonism is about- each of us "organizing matter unorganized" and creating out own universes or "worlds".
I have found that artists have no problem understanding that language does not "represent" reality any more than a painting does. So for Florenzky theological language about God was no more "representational" of what God "really" is than an icon was representational of the appearance of God.
The only true path to direct unmediated experience of God was what we call "personal revelation" which parallels our own personal interpretation of our experiences.
Artistically horizontals give a peaceful feeling, which is why we call them "horizontals" because they are similar to seeing the "horizon" in a "beautiful" landscape. We like looking out over the ocean and call it "beautiful" for example.
Verticals can "elevate" the consciousness- hence the incredible beauty of Gothic cathedrals. The architecture alone induces a sense of awe and reverence. I understand there is a gothic synagogue in Prague I am looking forward to seeing.
Diagonals are dramatic and forceful and full of action, as explored in the Baroque period. Anyone with Art History 101 under her belt knows that!
The idea is that all of human activity including language and literature comes under the general category of "art" in the sense of "human creation". Just as we have direct, non-verbal, unmediated experience with art, the goal is to have direct unmediated experience with God, divorced from words.
Most people have a horrible time putting their feelings into words when looking at a piece of art. They do not have the words to discuss it. "Oh look at that one. It's so good. Look at the detail" is about all they can say and is about the lamest thing you CAN say!
Usually they are judging how well the picture "represents" reality. It has to have "detail" because that means it "represents" better and shows artistic skill.
When you look at non-representational art, it is a direct unmediated experience that sometimes may be shocking or confusing. Good. So is life! We struggle to put such a piece into context. Good! That is what we should be doing with every idea and thing we see that is unusual!
And that is also what we should be doing with spiritual experience which is direct and unmediated.
God has revealed himself to me- what does this MEAN? How do I fit this into my reality?? Was that "real"? How do I categorize what just happened??
THAT I think is what Florensky is about, but I am still learning.

Great post! you hit the nail on the head regarding icons. They are not representations or stylized depictions, nor are they 'art'. They manifest and make present the persons depicted so we can interact with them. Icons are a point of contact between the earthly and heavenly world, the point at which the other world breaks through into ours. "When you look at non-representational art, it is a direct unmediated experience that sometimes may be shocking or confusing." Yes. The icon Is a means by which you can have a direct experience of the other world through prayer. Prayer is the key, not meditation. Meditation without prayer while focusing on an icon, in order to attain to divine union, is deemed heretical in Orthodoxy. Prayer and holiness, not meditation, is the path to union. "Just as we have direct, non-verbal, unmediated experience with art, the goal is to have direct unmediated experience with God, divorced from words." Precisely. Through prayer, the icon helps us on our journey to have this experience.

Expanding on that point, in Orthodox spirituality an icon can be something else besides a material object made of paint and wood. Anything that manifests heaven and heavenly beings is an icon. The bread and wine of the Eucharist are icons since they manifest Christ. The temple is an icon since it contains the sanctuary, which is the Holy of Holies with the altar behind the veil and is the place where God's throne is located. It is the place that's simultaneously in heaven and on earth. "On earth as it is in heaven." The cosmos is an icon, since it manifests the Creator. Even atheists have spiritual experiences in the outdoors, which they interpret as euphoria and awe, since they're standing in the presence of God. Human beings are the most important icon of all. Were created in the likeness and image of God. We are the God bearers. Christ manifests Himself in and through every Christian, each of whom is a member of His body. Think about the implication of that for a minute. When we sin, we are literally carrying Christ with us and making Him present as we commit the sin. In our Orthodox prayer life at home and in church, you'll hear us continually ask the Lord for mercy. Now you know why.

Florensky's writings are mostly highly regarded in the church for their exposition on Orthodox mystical theology. An exception is his 'Sophiology'. I've only read his biography of his spiritual father in Russia, Elder Isadore. His 'Pillar and Ground of Truth' is his most well known work. It's on my list.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Spammer

Spammer · July 18, 2015

Fr. Pavel Florensky was sent to the gulag several times for his refusal to support the cooperation of the Orthodox Church with the Soviet regime and was finally executed in 1937. Lord have mercy.

Edited July 18, 2015 by Spammer

Damien the Leper · July 19, 2015

Interesting thread. I'm reading books by Bishop Kallistos Ware. His teaching and insight are astounding.

mfbukowski · July 19, 2015

Great post! you hit the nail on the head regarding icons. They are not representations or stylized depictions, nor are they 'art'. They manifest and make present the persons depicted so we can interact with them. Icons are a point of contact between the earthly and heavenly world, the point at which the other world breaks through into ours. "When you look at non-representational art, it is a direct unmediated experience that sometimes may be shocking or confusing." Yes. The icon Is a means by which you can have a direct experience of the other world through prayer. Prayer is the key, not meditation. Meditation without prayer while focusing on an icon, in order to attain to divine union, is deemed heretical in Orthodoxy. Prayer and holiness, not meditation, is the path to union. "Just as we have direct, non-verbal, unmediated experience with art, the goal is to have direct unmediated experience with God, divorced from words." Precisely. Through prayer, the icon helps us on our journey to have this experience.
Expanding on that point, in Orthodox spirituality an icon can be something else besides a material object made of paint and wood. Anything that manifests heaven and heavenly beings is an icon. The bread and wine of the Eucharist are icons since they manifest Christ. The temple is an icon since it contains the sanctuary, which is the Holy of Holies with the altar behind the veil and is the place where God's throne is located. It is the place that's simultaneously in heaven and on earth. "On earth as it is in heaven." The cosmos is an icon, since it manifests the Creator. Even atheists have spiritual experiences in the outdoors, which they interpret as euphoria and awe, since they're standing in the presence of God. Human beings are the most important icon of all. Were created in the likeness and image of God. We are the God bearers. Christ manifests Himself in and through every Christian, each of whom is a member of His body. Think about the implication of that for a minute. When we sin, we are literally carrying Christ with us and making Him present as we commit the sin. In our Orthodox prayer life at home and in church, you'll hear us continually ask the Lord for mercy. Now you know why.
Florensky's writings are mostly highly regarded in the church for their exposition on Orthodox mystical theology. An exception is his 'Sophiology'. I've only read his biography of his spiritual father in Russia, Elder Isadore. His 'Pillar and Ground of Truth' is his most well known work. It's on my list.

Wonderful post, thanks so much for that and for letting me know that I am on the right track. "Pillar and Ground..." is also on my list now, maybe we can have further discussions on it as we work our way through it.

From my point of view of course there is no "other world" with which we need to be in contact- I see that as the principle difference between Mormonism and Orthodoxy, or at least this seems to be the crux of it as far as I can tell at this moment.

The Mormon God is immanent- He is part of this world and the Light of Christ is a yet undefined yet "material" force (in the sense perhaps of energy and material being one). Orthodoxy maintains the ancient dualism of "two worlds" the spiritual and the physical. That "Light" fills the universe and makes God "present" to us through unmediated human experience, or at least that is the way I see it. We can communicate directly with God as we can with other beings including humans -verbally or non-verbally. For us there is no need for an intermediary to "manifest" God because He is part of our world.

I am going to have to think a bit more about this one! Thanks again- I loved the point about making Christ "present" while we sin, truly a scary and dramatic way of thinking about sin.

Spammer · July 19, 2015

I'd like to clarify one point. Orthodoxy teaches that we live in a "one-storey universe". We're not "here" and God and heaven over "there", as if we occupy the bottom the floor of a house and heaven is upstairs (or on another world somewhere in the universe). The eternal world is right here with us, right now. We all live together in the same room. It's admittedly a crude metaphor, but hopefully it better communicates what I'm trying to describe. As you know, we believe God is everywhere present and fills all things. We also believe heaven is right here with us, we just can't experience it because of the Fall. So, when I say that heaven "breaks through", I only mean that at such points of contact heaven is manifested to us. We can experience it at such moments, which serves as a foretaste of what's to come when everything winds up and is transformed, when everything that exists is no longer latently divine because of the Fall, but manifestly so. That's the crux of our eschatology.

Edited July 19, 2015 by Spammer

mfbukowski · July 20, 2015

I'd like to clarify one point. Orthodoxy teaches that we live in a "one-storey universe". We're not "here" and God and heaven over "there", as if we occupy the bottom the floor of a house and heaven is upstairs (or on another world somewhere in the universe). The eternal world is right here with us, right now. We all live together in the same room. It's admittedly a crude metaphor, but hopefully it better communicates what I'm trying to describe. As you know, we believe God is everywhere present and fills all things. We also believe heaven is right here with us, we just can't experience it because of the Fall. So, when I say that heaven "breaks through", I only mean that at such points of contact heaven is manifested to us. We can experience it at such moments, which serves as a foretaste of what's to come when everything winds up and is transformed, when everything that exists is no longer latently divine because of the Fall, but manifestly so. That's the crux of our eschatology.

So more immanent than I thought I guess? Very interesting.

You bring up another point- the fall. Do you see that as necessary for agency?

For A&E to have choice and progress, sin is actually a necessary part of progression toward God, and then the atonement offsets that by sending a savior to fix the undesirable effects of sin.

So do you see the fall as part of the plan as Mormons do?

I think in terms of human growth- a fall from innocence is necessary in my opinion to "know good and evil" which is in turn necessary for spiritually meritorious behavior. In other words if we do not have a real choice to sin or not sin, we could not progress and become like God with the knowledge of good and evil.

If we were little robots who always were perfect and never sinned we could not merit anything for ourselves- we could not advance. All our goodness would be a result of our programming so all the glory would go to God. We as LDS quote satan's plan as being that "none would be lost" so therefore the fall was necessary to give us choice so we had agency and could merit glory or punishment. Of course that is without the atonement which is another thing.

So what's the Orthodox position on the fall?

Spammer · July 20, 2015

So more immanent than I thought I guess? Very interesting.
You bring up another point- the fall. Do you see that as necessary for agency?
For A&E to have choice and progress, sin is actually a necessary part of progression toward God, and then the atonement offsets that by sending a savior to fix the undesirable effects of sin.
So do you see the fall as part of the plan as Mormons do?
I think in terms of human growth- a fall from innocence is necessary in my opinion to "know good and evil" which is in turn necessary for spiritually meritorious behavior. In other words if we do not have a real choice to sin or not sin, we could not progress and become like God with the knowledge of good and evil.
If we were little robots who always were perfect and never sinned we could not merit anything for ourselves- we could not advance. All our goodness would be a result of our programming so all the glory would go to God. We as LDS quote satan's plan as being that "none would be lost" so therefore the fall was necessary to give us choice so we had agency and could merit glory or punishment. Of course that is without the atonement which is another thing.
So what's the Orthodox position on the fall?

No, we don't see the fall as part of the plan. We see it as unintended and unfortunate. Changing something you wrote up a bit, we believe that "for A&E to have choice and progress, [the potential for] sin is actually a necessary part of progression toward God." We don't believe that actual sin is a necessary part of that progression. The potential for sin necessarily follows from the creation of beings with free will. Actual sin does not. That depends on the choice of free agents. We don't believe in a pre-earth life and believe God created us exactly as He wanted us to be: beings capable of eternal communion with Him and already enjoying that communion at the moment of their creation. We were originally created already in full communion with God and able to "walk with Him" and "see His face", with humanity as the agent of effecting that communion throughout the cosmos. Humanity was created to be the priests of the cosmos. Remaining in communion would have resulted in an endless and unlimited process of growth into the divine likeness.

We see the fall as a tragic interruption of that process. God created human beings and said "You are free and I have bestowed my divinity upon you. You may choose to remain in communion with Me. The choice is yours". Our primordial ancestors chose otherwise and we fell, the cosmos along with us. Once self-will was indulged, they separated themselves from the source of divine life, the divine image was tarnished, they became enslaved by the passions, and subjected themselves and their progeny to death and enslavement. The intimate link between God and humanity was broken, and through that breaking the link between God and cosmos was also broken, with devastating effects that we see in a universe that tends toward disintegration and a return to a chaotic state. We believe we see these effects inside each of us and in human society. War, division, disease, death, environmental degradation, exploitation, poverty, etc, all of it is humanity's doing and is the result of the fall and enslavement to the passions. Orthodoxy does not view any of these consequences as punishments. Humanity expelled itself from the Garden state and from communion with God. The consequences of the fall are a self-inflicted wound, caused by our first parents and perpetuated by ourselves. Each of us is born into a community of humans enslaved by passions, brought up in a negative environment that makes it hard to do good. The effects of the fall are passed down to us through this mechanism, giving us the predisposition to similarly choose to focus on ourselves as the center and lose ourselves in self-indulgence through orientation toward the stream of sense data rather than God. The result is that we, too, become enslaved by the passions. The fall preceded us, but we perpetuate its effects through our own choices.

Humanity and the cosmos along with it were therefore in need of a Physician. Orthodox spirituality's sole purpose is to help us restrain the passions that dominate us and reorient ourselves toward God, reintegrating our fragmented inner selves. In our view, what Orthodoxy provides is the medicine prescribed by the Physician and the course of treatment. We thus view the atonement as the means whereby the Savior healed the self-inflicted wound and began the process of healing the cosmos through humanity restored to its original role as priests of the creation. Christians are those who have been restored to communion and have begun the process of polishing the tarnished divine image so it can once again reflect the ever-shining Divinity, through which we can once again reclaim our birthright as a species of beings in communion with God and intended to reflect divinity and become divine beings ourselves. Restoring us to the paradise state and communion with God is the first step in overcoming the fall's effects throughout the cosmos. As St. Athanasius taught, "God became man so that man could become God." This happens one human being at a time. This is what we believe about why the Son of God became incarnate. He came to heal and repair. Each human who unites himself or herself to Christ to obtain healing thus becomes part of the solution, an agent of the Divine Physician, in process of being divinized, and working in the world to effect further healing and divinization of everyone and everything else around him. "Acquire the Holy Spirit and a thousand souls around you will be saved". [st. Seraphim of Sarov]. Christians are islands of divinity whose mission is to reclaim the world and restore it to it's original state. I think Orthodoxy and Mormonism share much of the foregoing in common, but I think this idea of restoration to a prior state is one of the key differences between our traditions. We don't see the life in the Garden as a necessary stepping stone in a process of growing toward God. For us, the story of the fall and our redemption is about going back to what we once were and were created to be, not stages of growth from an embryonic state.

In sum, the Orthodox view the fall as unfortunate and our atonement metaphor is a hospital, not the courtroom metaphor of Western atonement theory, which is forensic and views the innocent Jesus' role as juridically paying a debt he did not incur or being punished in our place. We believe these Western theories developed by Augustine and Anselm turn God into a tyrant. Jesus didn't suffer, bleed, and die because a price had to be paid. He voluntarily submitted to these things because our self-inflicted wound caused us to suffer, bleed, and die and our healing required that God unite himself to the entirety of our fallen nature in order to heal it. "That which has not been assumed, has not been healed." [st. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen)] By dying, God destroyed death. Our iconography of Jesus thus depicts him as victorious, Christ Victor, destroying death by death. Orthodoxy doesn't depict Jesus as a suffering, bleeding victim.

By the way, Orthodoxy doesn't insist on a literal Adam and Eve. We view Adam as the Everyman and Eve as the Everywoman. However the primordial choice with cosmic effects came about isn't important. What's important is that it did come about. We are no longer in communion with God, but we can be thanks to the atonement. The Garden of Eden stories describe our fallen spiritual state and the gospel provides the solution.

[Edit to add:] Anticipating the question, you may ask why I talk about "our" self-inflicted wound. Do we somehow participate in the primordial sin of our ancestor(s)? Yes, but there's a key difference between the thought of the Greek fathers and Augustine and the rest of the Latin fathers on this point. The Greek fathers rejected Augustine's definition of original sin. There is no inherited guilt or taint passed down through propagation of the species. Rather, sin has effects external to us and creates and perpetuates an environment whereby sin is easier and choosing to good harder. Our sin affects not only ourselves, but other people, providing the grounds and making it easier for the other to sin, and through them yet more people, and so on and so on. The other's sin and its effects are therefore our responsibility. Our sin also affects the world around us and through the world the cosmos. Think chaos theory and the metaphor of butterfly wings causing bad weather elsewhere. Same idea. We are therefore mutually responsible for each other's sins, since when we sin we affect everything and everyone around us negatively. Once sin got going, it was a downward spiral from there and the moment we start to sin we add our own sins to the mass of accumulated sin over the millennia and become part of the problem. We join the downward spiral, caught up in the growing torrent, and the effects on us, since we were born within the torrent and add to it of our own volition, are our own doing. The effects are self-inflicted, both individually and collectively as a species. God stands outside the torrent wringing His hands [to use a crude, human metaphor], knows what must be done, and in His love and mercy enters it as man to heal and repair, saving us from ourselves. It follows that our notion of sin differs. We don't view sin as rule- or law-breaking. It's hamartia, 'missing the mark'. We participate in and contribute to the human tendency to always keep missing the mark, by choosing to always miss the mark ourselves. Any action that turns us toward self-gratification and indulgence of the passions, and away from God, is sin. We would say that trying to enumerate all of the various ways to sin and create a list misses the point entirely. That's yet another way Orthodoxy differs from Western Christianity.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Spammer

Spammer · July 20, 2015

Wonderful post, thanks so much for that and for letting me know that I am on the right track. "Pillar and Ground..." is also on my list now, maybe we can have further discussions on it as we work our way through it.

I'd like that. it's on order and should arrive by the end of the month. I'll let you know when it comes in.

mfbukowski · July 21, 2015

No, we don't see the fall as part of the plan. We see it as unintended and unfortunate. Changing something you wrote up a bit, we believe that "for A&E to have choice and progress, [the potential for] sin is actually a necessary part of progression toward God." We don't believe that actual sin is a necessary part of that progression. The potential for sin necessarily follows from the creation of beings with free will. Actual sin does not. That depends on the choice of free agents. We don't believe in a pre-earth life and believe God created us exactly as He wanted us to be: beings capable of eternal communion with Him and already enjoying that communion at the moment of their creation. We were originally created already in full communion with God and able to "walk with Him" and "see His face", with humanity as the agent of effecting that communion throughout the cosmos. Humanity was created to be the priests of the cosmos. Remaining in communion would have resulted in an endless and unlimited process of growth into the divine likeness.

We see the fall as a tragic interruption of that process. God created human beings and said "You are free and I have bestowed my divinity upon you. You may choose to remain in communion with Me. The choice is yours". Our primordial ancestors chose otherwise and we fell, the cosmos along with us. Once self-will was indulged, they separated themselves from the source of divine life, the divine image was tarnished, they became enslaved by the passions, and subjected themselves and their progeny to death and enslavement. The intimate link between God and humanity was broken, and through that breaking the link between God and cosmos was also broken, with devastating effects that we see in a universe that tends toward disintegration and a return to a chaotic state. We believe we see these effects inside each of us and in human society. War, division, disease, death, environmental degradation, exploitation, poverty, etc, all of it is humanity's doing and is the result of the fall and enslavement to the passions. Orthodoxy does not view any of these consequences as punishments. Humanity expelled itself from the Garden state and from communion with God. The consequences of the fall are a self-inflicted wound, caused by our first parents and perpetuated by ourselves. Each of us is born into a community of humans enslaved by passions, brought up in a negative environment that makes it hard to do good. The effects of the fall are passed down to us through this mechanism, giving us the predisposition to similarly choose to focus on ourselves as the center and lose ourselves in self-indulgence through orientation toward the stream of sense data rather than God. The result is that we, too, become enslaved by the passions. The fall preceded us, but we perpetuate its effects through our own choices.

Humanity and the cosmos along with it were therefore in need of a Physician. Orthodox spirituality's sole purpose is to help us restrain the passions that dominate us and reorient ourselves toward God, reintegrating our fragmented inner selves. In our view, what Orthodoxy provides is the medicine prescribed by the Physician and the course of treatment. We thus view the atonement as the means whereby the Savior healed the self-inflicted wound and began the process of healing the cosmos through humanity restored to its original role as priests of the creation. Christians are those who have been restored to communion and have begun the process of polishing the tarnished divine image so it can once again reflect the ever-shining Divinity, through which we can once again reclaim our birthright as a species of beings in communion with God and intended to reflect divinity and become divine beings ourselves. Restoring us to the paradise state and communion with God is the first step in overcoming the fall's effects throughout the cosmos. As St. Athanasius taught, "God became man so that man could become God." This happens one human being at a time. This is what we believe about why the Son of God became incarnate. He came to heal and repair. Each human who unites himself or herself to Christ to obtain healing thus becomes part of the solution, an agent of the Divine Physician, in process of being divinized, and working in the world to effect further healing and divinization of everyone and everything else around him. "Acquire the Holy Spirit and a thousand souls around you will be saved". [st. Seraphim of Sarov]. Christians are islands of divinity whose mission is to reclaim the world and restore it to it's original state. I think Orthodoxy and Mormonism share much of the foregoing in common, but I think this idea of restoration to a prior state is one of the key differences between our traditions. We don't see the life in the Garden as a necessary stepping stone in a process of growing toward God. For us, the story of the fall and our redemption is about going back to what we once were and were created to be, not stages of growth from an embryonic state.
In sum, the Orthodox view the fall as unfortunate and our atonement metaphor is a hospital, not the courtroom metaphor of Western atonement theory, which is forensic and views the innocent Jesus' role as juridically paying a debt he did not incur or being punished in our place. We believe these Western theories developed by Augustine and Anselm turn God into a tyrant. Jesus didn't suffer, bleed, and die because a price had to be paid. He voluntarily submitted to these things because our self-inflicted wound caused us to suffer, bleed, and die and our healing required that God unite himself to the entirety of our fallen nature in order to heal it. "That which has not been assumed, has not been healed." [st. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen)] By dying, God destroyed death. Our iconography of Jesus thus depicts him as victorious, Christ Victor, destroying death by death. Orthodoxy doesn't depict Jesus as a suffering, bleeding victim.
By the way, Orthodoxy doesn't insist on a literal Adam and Eve. We view Adam as the Everyman and Eve as the Everywoman. However the primordial choice with cosmic effects came about isn't important. What's important is that it did come about. We are no longer in communion with God, but we can be thanks to the atonement. The Garden of Eden stories describe our fallen spiritual state and the gospel provides the solution.
[Edit to add:] Anticipating the question, you may ask why I talk about "our" self-inflicted wound. Do we somehow participate in the primordial sin of our ancestor(s)? Yes, but there's a key difference between the thought of the Greek fathers and Augustine and the rest of the Latin fathers on this point. The Greek fathers rejected Augustine's definition of original sin. There is no inherited guilt or taint passed down through propagation of the species. Rather, sin has effects external to us and creates and perpetuates an environment whereby sin is easier and choosing to good harder. Our sin affects not only ourselves, but other people, providing the grounds and making it easier for the other to sin, and through them yet more people, and so on and so on. The other's sin and its effects are therefore our responsibility. Our sin also affects the world around us and through the world the cosmos. Think chaos theory and the metaphor of butterfly wings causing bad weather elsewhere. Same idea. We are therefore mutually responsible for each other's sins, since when we sin we affect everything and everyone around us negatively. Once sin got going, it was a downward spiral from there and the moment we start to sin we add our own sins to the mass of accumulated sin over the millennia and become part of the problem. We join the downward spiral, caught up in the growing torrent, and the effects on us, since we were born within the torrent and add to it of our own volition, are our own doing. The effects are self-inflicted, both individually and collectively as a species. God stands outside the torrent wringing His hands [to use a crude, human metaphor], knows what must be done, and in His love and mercy enters it as man to heal and repair, saving us from ourselves. It follows that our notion of sin differs. We don't view sin as rule- or law-breaking. It's hamartia, 'missing the mark'. We participate in and contribute to the human tendency to always keep missing the mark, by choosing to always miss the mark ourselves. Any action that turns us toward self-gratification and indulgence of the passions, and away from God, is sin. We would say that trying to enumerate all of the various ways to sin and create a list misses the point entirely. That's yet another way Orthodoxy differs from Western Christianity.

This is a tough one and I think you see the problem already, though I am not sure I can put my finger on it exactly yet.

The consequences of the fall are a self-inflicted wound, caused by our first parents and perpetuated by ourselves. Each of us is born into a community of humans enslaved by passions, brought up in a negative environment that makes it hard to do good. The effects of the fall are passed down to us through this mechanism, giving us the predisposition to similarly choose to focus on ourselves as the center and lose ourselves in self-indulgence through orientation toward the stream of sense data rather than God. The result is that we, too, become enslaved by the passions. The fall preceded us, but we perpetuate its effects through our own choices.....
We see the fall as a tragic interruption of that process. God created human beings and said "You are free and I have bestowed my divinity upon you. You may choose to remain in communion with Me. The choice is yours". Our primordial ancestors chose otherwise and we fell, the cosmos along with us. Once self-will was indulged, they separated themselves from the source of divine life, the divine image was tarnished, they became enslaved by the passions, and subjected themselves and their progeny to death and enslavement.....
By the way, Orthodoxy doesn't insist on a literal Adam and Eve. We view Adam as the Everyman and Eve as the Everywoman. However the primordial choice with cosmic effects came about isn't important. What's important is that it did come about. We are no longer in communion with God, but we can be thanks to the atonement. The Garden of Eden stories describe our fallen spiritual state and the gospel provides the solution.....
We are therefore mutually responsible for each other's sins, since when we sin we affect everything and everyone around us negatively. Once sin got going, it was a downward spiral from there and the moment we start to sin we add our own sins to the mass of accumulated sin over the millennia and become part of the problem. We join the downward spiral, caught up in the growing torrent, and the effects on us, since we were born within the torrent and add to it of our own volition, are our own doing

I think it is hard to put this together in a consistent view keeping in mind an omniscient God who, it appears set it all up to fail and yet didn't want it to happen. It wasn't an "event" but we are "everyman" so each of us has a fall? I mean someone had to sin sometime and start the cascade- is it reasonable to suppose that in all of mankind no one would ever sin in all eternity? And he can see the end from the beginning? Something seems like it is missing.

I love the poetry of it and the idea that we are all involved in this whirling tornado of evil that we cannot escape- that works for me, but somehow this picture of God in relation to that evil doesn't come together.

I can see it in terms of a personal metaphor that each of us through pride chooses to disobey what we know within us is "right" just because we want to. That turning away from God to me is "sin". I can see the fall as a metaphor for our personal falls from innocence, and Christ as the healer taking away the effects of guilt and pain we experience from our own consequences from doing what we know we should not, by knowing that we are forgiven.

If we have "sin" we have to postulate some form of possible forgiveness or gosh that would be too depressing to even think about, knowing that sin could never be taken away. That right there would be enough to make one an atheist, I think- "This sin stuff- fergitabout it- I just can't deal with being perfect all the time". Without Christ there would be no hope in it all, so how could the paradigm heal anyone? It just doesn't work!

I know you are shooting from the hip here and you are trying to put 2000 years of theology into essentially "25 words or less" and I appreciate the tremendous effort, but I am having a hard time with it.

I will order that book too and look forward to talking with you about it!

Spammer · July 21, 2015

This is a tough one and I think you see the problem already, though I am not sure I can put my finger on it exactly yet.
I think it is hard to put this together in a consistent view keeping in mind an omniscient God who, it appears set it all up to fail and yet didn't want it to happen. It wasn't an "event" but we are "everyman" so each of us has a fall? I mean someone had to sin sometime and start the cascade- is it reasonable to suppose that in all of mankind no one would ever sin in all eternity? And he can see the end from the beginning? Something seems like it is missing.
I love the poetry of it and the idea that we are all involved in this whirling tornado of evil that we cannot escape- that works for me, but somehow this picture of God in relation to that evil doesn't come together.
I can see it in terms of a personal metaphor that each of us through pride chooses to disobey what we know within us is "right" just because we want to. That turning away from God to me is "sin". I can see the fall as a metaphor for our personal falls from innocence, and Christ as the healer taking away the effects of guilt and pain we experience from our own consequences from doing what we know we should not, by knowing that we are forgiven.
If we have "sin" we have to postulate some form of possible forgiveness or gosh that would be too depressing to even think about, knowing that sin could never be taken away. That right there would be enough to make one an atheist, I think- "This sin stuff- fergitabout it- I just can't deal with being perfect all the time". Without Christ there would be no hope in it all, so how could the paradigm heal anyone? It just doesn't work!
I know you are shooting from the hip here and you are trying to put 2000 years of theology into essentially "25 words or less" and I appreciate the tremendous effort, but I am having a hard time with it.
I will order that book too and look forward to talking with you about it!

Sounds great!

Regarding the fall, let me address the "event" vs "everyman" issue. We definitely believe it was a real "event". What's important to us is the event's occurrence and its consequences, not the historical details. We're not picky about whether the details of the story in Genesis match the actual history. The story is viewed more as myth than actual history, though we dogmatically assert that the myth is grounded on a primordial event that really happened. There was a choice made, with consequences. Choice implies a person or persons, so we might as well call the person(s) who made the choice Adam. As a mythological story cycle, the Adam of Genesis and his experience in a Garden with magic trees and a talking snake represents all of us and is thus an Everyman. If someone chooses to believe that the story in Genesis is actual history that occurred 6,000 years ago, that's fine. I personally don't believe this. Both views are Orthodox. I like C.S. Lewis' story, Perelandra, which similarly grounds a tale laden with symbolism on the primordial reality of the fall. The details of the story don't matter at the level of doctrine. The dogmatic assertion lies in the reality of the event's occurrence and it's effects on all of us. In the Liturgy throughout the year we experience the Genesis account as if we are Adam expelled from the Garden. The liturgical cycle takes us in and out of the Garden annually. We are created, we fall, are expelled from Paradise, and are redeemed in a cycle that ebbs and flows throughout the year. These Everyman components are what matter to us and the liturgy tells the points of the story that matter. Those points are embedded in scripture readings and prayers throughout the year, all of which are sung and chanted standing before the icons while the smoke of incense surrounds us. The historical details are of lesser importance. Does that clarify?

Regarding the issue of whether God set it all up to fail, we believe that the omniscient God knew the fall would happen but set it all up anyway. As Timothy (Bishop Kallistos) Ware says, God decided it was still worth the risk. We believe God took the risk because the inner life of the Holy Trinity is love; God's nature is infinite love and, given that nature, God wanted to create more beings whom he could love eternally. Love breaks out and spreads its effects, it is not isolated and self-contained. That's what we believe about the motive for the creation. It also explains our freedom. True love is only possible if it's freely given. God created humans as free agents so he could love them and they could love Him. Granting creatures freedom means they can choose to not love the One who loves them and made them. God made the angels, gave them free will, and 1/3 of them also chose to go their own way. That was the first fall. God made us and then we fell, too. Like the fallen angels, the decision of humanity to turn from God was also freely chosen. Yet, God knew all of this would happen when he created other beings whom he could love. I knew before we even decided to have kids that when my kids became teenagers there would come a time when they would choose to do things I disapproved and at times I would be openly defied. It's kind of the same thing, in my mind. My knowledge of future events is based on inference; God's is based on foreknowledge. Either way, the knowledge preceded the choice and the choice to create was made anyway. My wife and I chose to have kids anyway, even though we knew it's wouldn't always be a bed of roses, even painful and heartbreaking sometimes, like last Friday evening. Ugh. Orthodox Christians view the creation similarly. We see no conflict between God's omniscience and human free agency. God is omniscient, he made us free. We accept both concepts as true and hold them together in our minds and incorporate them in our doctrine and practice.

Finally, let me restate and expand upon what we believe about the effects of the fall. Yea, I'm shooting from the hip and I want to make it better. As I've described, both humanity and the cosmos was affected. Sin begets sin, as the accumulated weight of human sin over the millenia bears down on us through society and we contribute to its cumulative effects on humanity and the cosmos through the sins we commit. None of the fall's effects (expulsion from Paradise, death) are punishments from God. It's self-inflicted harm that our primordial forebears brought on themselves and on us, their descendants, and that we perpetuate. Before I go on, I need to be more specific about what exactly was changed within the human person as a result of the fall. Orthodox anthropology views human beings as a composite of body (matter), soul (life force), and spirit (intellect). In a healthy human being, soul and spirit are united and dwell in God. The place of union is the 'eye of the soul' or nous. The nous is the faculty by which we apprehend God. It is also the place where God dwells within each person. We also call it the 'heart' and the Temple of the Holy Spirit within each of us. If the nous is cleansed and able to reflect Light, the Light will dwell there, uniting soul, spirit, and body in a unity. When soul and spirit are united, the body is filled with Light and is immortal. Break the unity, and the body begins to disintegrate. Separation from God at the fall darkened the nous, dividing soul and spirit and humans became subject to death. The intellect (spirit) became lost and enslaved to sense perception and pleasure seeking. Passions become the master whom we serve, and we now engage in an incessant search for objects to exploit to satisfy our cravings, using them up along the way, creating the need for yet more objects to dominate and use up. We will never be satisfied since we were created for God and we have an infinite thirst. Sense data and external objects can never truly satisfy. Failing to repent and return to the true Infinite means we will never find solace and will continue to use and exploit everyone and everything around us in our fruitless searching.

This enslavement to sense data and the passions became possible because the nous was darkened as a result of the fall. 'Adam' chose self over God, the link between spirit and soul was broken, his nous was darkened, and the spirit became enslaved by sense data and subject to the passions. Death was the result. Thereafter, Adam's descendants are born with the inability to apprehend God; the nous is darkened in each of us. The nous can only be filled with Light if it is first reunited to the Light so it can be cleansed. The cracked mirror must first be repaired before we can take it home so we can set about polishing it and placing it in a gilded frame. Repair of the nous can only be accomplished through divine action. That's where the atonement comes in; it fixed the problem of reintegration of the human person and destroyed death. Once repaired, it's up to us to cleanse the nous and keep it clean so the Holy Spirit will continue to dwell there and transform us from the inside out. Prayer and ascesis focus the spirit (intellect) on the heart and cleanse the inner temple/nous/heart so that God will once again dwell there at our invitation. The atonement wasn't intended to address personal feelings of guilt and pain due to sin, but to fix a concrete brokenness in the nature of the human that was passed down to us by the Adam who first made the choice to turn from God. The Son's union with human nature and his death defeated Satan and destroyed death Baptism erases the effects of Adam's sin (repairs the mirror or 'eye' of the soul); chrismation unites our spirit with the Holy Spirit and seals us with his presence; and the Eucharist unites us materially with Christ, who has both a divine and human nature, incorporating us into His body. Uniting with God so the darkened nous is cleansed enables us to labor so that God enters in and dwells there (theosis). These steps and this process returns each of us to the Paradise which was lost, even in this life in the midst of a still fallen world.

I hope I've better explained what I mean by the 'whirling tornado' of evil, the 'everyman' idea, and how we understand the 'event' of the fall. I'll end with something written by Fr. Thomas Hopko for a catechism used by the Orthodox Church of America (OCA). It captures what we believe is at stake because of the fall.

"[The] divine teaching has given rise to the understanding in the Orthodox Church that man cannot be truly human, truly himself, without the Spirit of God. Thus Saint Irenaeus (3rd c.) said in his well-known saying, often quoted by Orthodox authors, that “man is body, soul, and Holy Spirit.” This means that for man to fulfil himself as created in the image and likeness of God—that is, to be like Christ who is the perfect. divine, and uncreated Image of God—man must be the temple of God’s Spirit. If man is not the temple of God’s Spirit, then the only alternative is that he is the temple of the evil spirit. There is no middle way. Man is either in an unending process of life and growth in union with God by the Holy Spirit, or else he is an unending process of decomposition and death by returning to the dust of nothingness out of which he was formed, by the destructive power of the devil."

For a much better explanation of Orthodox anthropology and the therapeutic, healing effects of Orthodox spirituality and ascesis, see the following, if interested. Both are available on Amazon:

Fr. John Romanides, 'Patristic Theology' on Uncut Mountain Press

Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, 'Orthodox Spirituality: A Brief Introduction' from Birth of the Theotokos Monastery

Edited July 21, 2015 by Spammer

Spammer · July 21, 2015

If we have "sin" we have to postulate some form of possible forgiveness or gosh that would be too depressing to even think about, knowing that sin could never be taken away. That right there would be enough to make one an atheist, I think- "This sin stuff- fergitabout it- I just can't deal with being perfect all the time". Without Christ there would be no hope in it all, so how could the paradigm heal anyone? It just doesn't work!

I still need to address this. For us, it isn't about being perfect in a human sense. It's about being what Jesus is - a divine-human person, the "Everlasting Man". That's how we define perfection. To be such is to be fully human. Jesus became one of us so that we could become what we were always intended to be. Fallen human beings are less than human. The healing Jesus offers restores us to full humanity. For us, being perfect has nothing to do with 'keeping commandments'. Perfection isn't something you do, it's something you are. Orthodox spirituality is about ontology. Commandment keeping is ascesis. It's the pathway to union, not something we're supposed to do so God is happy with us and 'let's us into his Kingdom.' Orthodox spirituality has no checklists, no lists of rules that govern whether we'll be saved. Salvation comes solely through the divine union so that we can be transformed and remade in the divine image and likeness. We must be made capable of dwelling in the divine presence. There's nothing we can do cause that transformation. We can initiate it, but not complete it. God doesn't transform us because 'I, the Lord, am bound if you do what I say'. He transforms us because He loves us wants to transform us and we let him do it to us. Keeping commandments and striving for perfection isn't what's required before God agrees to act; starting out on the path of spiritual striving begins the process of cleansing so that God can act. God won't force Himself on us. He respects our freedom. Thus, we can only put ourselves in a position to receive theosis and then wait on the Lord to do the work. No transformation, no salvation. No repentance and spiritual striving, no nous-cleansing and subsequently no transformation. Commandment keeping and other ascetic practices (prayer, fasting) are the means through which we cleanse the nous and prepare the inner temple to receive the Holy Spirit, who will dwell there and begin the work of transformation. If we sin again, then we pick ourselves up and try again, confident that one day God will finish the work on His own timeline. There's no need for despair. Only remain in faith and hope and one day the time will come.

That lays the groundwork for how we understand forgiveness. We reject the Western notion of sin and forgiveness that enumerates the various ways to sin and what must be done to receive forgiveness. Western forensic, juridical theology doesn't apply. The atheist you mention operates from within that framework, but we don't. He's considering a God who requires perfection before we're accepted. That's not the Orthodox God. God forgives all: the Devil and his angels, and all of us. God will accept the devil and his angels, if only they will turn to Him for healing and repent. All of us are already forgiven. The image we go by is the father of the Prodigal Son. God's waiting for us to return so he can put his ring and robe on us and throw us a party. There's nothing we can do to merit that forgiveness. The Father already forgave us the moment we left home. He just wants us to return. The decision is up to us, however. He can't make us return. If we want divine union, it's true, we must be perfect, but there isn't a checklist of steps, do's, and don'ts we must memorize and abide by perfectly. The steps, do's, and don'ts are what we do to cleanse ourselves so that God can dwell within us and make us perfect. That's what repentance and a return to God mean. Commandment keeping isn't something we have to do before God accepts us and 'let's us in'. Sin isn't a stain or mark on the soul that appears each time we sin and has to be erased. It's not something that has to be forgiven every time we do it. We don't/can't make God mad. Sin doesn't earn us black marks and demerits, requiring that a price be paid before we can be 'accounted worthy' in God's eyes. We aren't justified in God's estimation, with righteous attributed to us through faith in Christ and the merits earned by his infinite atonement. All of this is Western and juridical. Instead, sin is a sign, cause, and result of our continued separation from God. We sin because we're separated. The separation is the result of a sickness. We suffer from a condition and sin is a symptom, not something we do that offends God. Because of the fall and that condition, we must be remade/healed/fixed/repaired. All of us - Christians, atheists, Buddhists, Zoroastrians - are all in the same boat. If we're not completely new creatures before we approach God, Christians included, we'll never be able to dwell in His presence. Thus, the atheist's concern about having to be perfect all the time is a non-starter. It's irrelevant. None of us could be perfect all the time, even if we tried. We're already forgiven. He knows we can't be perfect on our own steam. God understands the problem and provided the solution. We must be made perfect and the Father sent his Son as the solution. Christ is the healer, not the proxy victim who pays the required price before God lets us off the hook and accounts us worthy. Without Christ there is still hope. God desires for everyone to be perfected, theists and atheists alike. In this life, it just so happens the means for setting us on the path for our God-caused perfection are provided through Christ and his church. Those outside of the church can still be saved. We know that only in and through Christ we can be saved. We don't know that only those who know Christ and join his church will be saved. After this life, God will save whom he will save. It's His business, not ours. Whenever we try to classify and categorize people into who will and will not be saved based on a received list of approved actions and sins, we are usurping God, seeking to replace him, making ourselves the Judge and his business our business. This is blasphemy. God can perfect and will perfect whomever He wants to perfect, should they humbly desire it, even after they die. See the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. God desires the same reward for everyone and everything. This can happen even in the next life Orthodoxy thus has a strong universalist streak. In the end, everything will be made right and it will be as if the fall never happened. St. Isaac the Syrian is our Holy Father par excellence who wrote about the implications of the God who is love.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Spammer

mfbukowski · July 21, 2015

Let me say this. This is beautiful stuff but I don't understand the words in a logical way.

I know the Eastern mind seeks for union with God through paradox by stripping away reason and the Western mind wants to make everything logical. Maybe that's what's happening here but to me this last post especially seems full of paradox.

Yes, I am quoting some of this out of context- but my point is that in trying to get an overall perspective of the similarities and differences with Mormonism, I am seeing a lot of paradoxes I cannot reconcile in trying to get a concise picture.

Some examples that make my poor head spin:

For us, it isn't about being perfect in a human sense. It's about being what Jesus is - a divine-human person, the "Everlasting Man". That's how we define perfection. To be such is to be fully human. Jesus became one of us so that we could become what we were always intended to be. Fallen human beings are less than human. The healing Jesus offers restores us to full humanity

To be perfect in a human sense we cannot be human? Jesus was divine AND human- the same two natures Catholics talk about. Yet he is the "everlasting Man" who is not a man, but divine.

Yet to be both divine and human is to be "fully human", being human is not being fully human until we are like Christ was was not fully human but also divine.

Perhaps if we said "We reach our potential to be fully human by emulating Christ" that would work as a way of expressing it? But that is what Mormons believe as well. But for us humans ARE "divine" or at least have the spark of divinity. So for me, the Mormon expression is much more straightforward.

For us, being perfect has nothing to do with 'keeping commandments'. ...

Commandment keeping and other ascetic practices (prayer, fasting) are the means through which we cleanse the nous and prepare the inner temple to receive the Holy Spirit, who will dwell there and begin the work of transformation...

So it sounds like indeed commandment keeping DOES have a lot to do with being perfect- indeed it is the first step. "Cleanse the nous" is a phrase I understand but is very Neoplatonic and thus is based in a metaphysics which led to the apostasy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous so I am not seeing a whole lot of compatibility with Mormonism there.

I kind of prefer the phrase "keep the commandments and invite the spirit..." Simple, direct, no Greek metaphysics, no paradoxes.

We reject the Western notion of sin and forgiveness that enumerates the various ways to sin and what must be done to receive forgiveness....
God forgives all: the Devil and his angels, and all of us. God will accept the devil and his angels, if only they will turn to Him for healing and repent. All of us are already forgiven....

But we must "repent". So how does one "repent" without knowing what they have done wrong? How do you avoid the behavior if it is not defined?

If God forgives all, regardless or repentance, INCLUDING the Devil, "if they repent" how do they and us know if we have repented if they do not know what they did wrong? Just being a fallen soul is not a voluntary state so how do we know how to make up and repent for being a fallen soul?

And if God forgives all anyway, why repent at all?

There's nothing we can do to merit that forgiveness. The Father already forgave us the moment we left home. He just wants us to return. The decision is up to us, however. He can't make us return. If we want divine union, it's true, we must be perfect, but there isn't a checklist of steps, do's, and don'ts we must memorize and abide by perfectly....

Sigh. If there's nothing we can do, how do we repent and why is it necessary? And now we must be perfect? And that starts with living the commandments, but doesn't that itself generate a "list" of what we need to "repent" of to start being perfected?

But yet:

Commandment keeping isn't something we have to do before God accepts us and 'let's us in'. ..

How does that square with:

Commandment keeping and other ascetic practices (prayer, fasting) are the means through which we cleanse the nous and prepare the inner temple to receive the Holy Spirit, who will dwell there and begin the work of transformation...

??
And then we have something I don't understand here in what the purpose of the church is:

In this life, it just so happens the means for setting us on the path for our God-caused perfection are provided through Christ and his church. Those outside of the church can still be saved. We know that only in and through Christ we can be saved. We don't know that only those who know Christ and join his church will be saved. After this life, God will save whom he will save.
God desires the same reward for everyone and everything. This can happen even in the next life Orthodoxy thus has a strong universalist streak. In the end, everything will be made right and it will be as if the fall never happened.

So the church provides the path to perfection to Christ, but those without the church can still be saved.

So regardless of what we do, God will make it all right as if the fall never happened.

So why is He putting us all through all this stuff??? What's the purpose of it all???

For Mormons the purpose is so that we learn to live by faith and grow as human beings, and trying harder and being more valiant gets you a better reward. Yes, rather capitalistic I will confess, yet it makes sense! There is a purpose there!

I am not seeing that here.

Look- I know we all have a limited understanding of all this stuff and I don't want you to expect that you have to solve all the mysteries for me, and I know all about linguistic problems with language.

But indeed those problems with language are very apparent here! We don't need to solve them all, I know we both have other things in life to do rather than work all this out. But if the problem is the poetic Eastern mind contemplating the mystery of the universe meeting the Western logical and scientific mind, I can deal with it and leave it at that.

Essentially what we have there is the clash of two cultural paradigms in which each of us is "speaking a different language" almost literally! I can see how defining all this in Mormon terms solves all the "problems" and the rest becomes an issue of preference between speaking of God logically or poetically. If that's it, no problem!

Spammer · July 22, 2015

delete

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Edited July 22, 2015 by Spammer

Spammer · July 22, 2015

I'll address your last point first. I need to get better at the quote function. I hope I haven't mangled things.

Before I begin, I need to emphasize that everything I'm saying flows from our understanding of who and what God is. The culture clash and language problems flow from our incompatible beliefs about God. In everything I've said and am about to say, you have to keep the following in mind. Everything we believe about God's plans, our purpose, the fall, commandment keeping, the plan of salvation, Jesus' mission, our future, what it means to be like God - absolutely everything - flows from that starting point.

St. Anthony of Egypt succinctly captured what must always be kept in mind to understand what we Orthodox are talking about when we discuss God and his ‘plans’ and ‘purposes’ and all the rest:

“God is good, dispassionate, and unchangeable. But one who regards it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change may well wonder, therefore, how He rejoices over those who are good and turns away from the wicked; and grows angry with sinners but becomes merciful to those who honour Him. To these it must be stated that God neither rejoices nor grows angry. For to rejoice or to grieve is passion. Neither is He honoured by gifts for then He would be conquered by pleasure. The Divine neither benefits nor suffers because of human affairs. Thus, He is good and beneficent only and, being always the same, never harms anyone. So if we remain good, by this likeness to God we are joined to Him. And if we become wicked, by this unlikeness to Him we are estranged from God. It is not that He grows angry, but that our sins do not permit God to shine within us, and they bind us to the demons that torment us. But if we should gain the loosing of our sins through prayer and good works, it does not mean that we have honoured God and changed His mind toward us. Rather, through these actions and our return to the Divine, we have healed our wickedness and thus are able to enjoy the goodness of God again. Therefore, to say that God turns away from the wicked is the same as saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.” [We really do believe in a very different kind of God, don’t we?]

Whenever I say things like "God does this" or "God wants that" or "God desire's that", you have to refer back to the kind of God St. Anthony describes. You also have to reference our belief that God is Trinity and spirit, dwelling outside of time and inaccessible in what he is in his inner nature to our language and concepts. We use human language and project it onto God, but it's only a manner of speaking. Really, such terminology is only appropriate in reference to the Son of God, who entered time and became a man - a changeable being who has passions, desires and wants. You'll ask how can this all work? How can a changeless being change and become man? Yes, that's the God we worship. It's a Mystery! Yes, it's paradoxical. Yes, it makes no logical sense (assuming that the only thing that exists is matter, space, and time, which is the only domain where human logical categories exist and operate). We still worship that God, anyway. We start from different assumptions. We accept the paradox because we accept that God is both 'other' and man. We can do this because we don't believe, as Mormons and other Western materialists do, that nothing immaterial and timeless exists. To understand us you have to take all of this as axiomatic. Hence, the language problem.

With that out of the way.....

Look- I know we all have a limited understanding of all this stuff and I don't want you to expect that you have to solve all the mysteries for me, and I know all about linguistic problems with language.
But indeed those problems with language are very apparent here! We don't need to solve them all, I know we both have other things in life to do rather than work all this out. But if the problem is the poetic Eastern mind contemplating the mystery of the universe meeting the Western logical and scientific mind, I can deal with it and leave it at that.

Essentially what we have there is the clash of two cultural paradigms in which each of us is "speaking a different language" almost literally! I can see how defining all this in Mormon terms solves all the "problems" and the rest becomes an issue of preference between speaking of God logically or poetically. If that's it, no problem!

I know the Eastern mind seeks for union with God through paradox by stripping away reason and the Western mind wants to make everything logical.

It could also be that I’m just rambling and not making any sense but, yes, Orthodoxy is very critical of the Western tendency to use logic and philosophy to describe God. The reason is because of what we believe about God. See St. Anthony of Egypt. We also agree with St. Evagrius of Pontus when he says that “if God could be grasped by the mind, he would cease to be God”. We believe God can’t be adequately classified or described. He is the one besides whom there is no other. Our words and concepts can only give us hints. They’re pointers to a reality beyond language and concept and, yes, we believe that transcendent reality is really there and we can really know it in an unmediated way, but only if that Reality reveals himself to us, but it’s an experience and revelation of something from beyond, something that transcends reason, logic, words, language, philosophy. We believe some people have had this experience and all of them end up saying that silence is the only adequate response to a subsequent request to describe what God is like. Joseph Smith had a revelation of God and found that the Father is a man just like us. He’s part of our universe, belongs to it, and we can therefore conceptualize the Father and use language to describe what he’s like. None of this works in Orthodoxy. For us, what God is like can never be described since words and definitions are delimiting. God is infinite, endless, and unlimited. Our brains, words, and concepts are puny and finite by comparison. We would say that we can only use language to describe the Incarnate Son – Jesus, not God the Holy Trinity as God is in himself. The Son of God became what we are – material, finite, and limited – so we can describe him. The Holy Trinity dwells beyond and outside. God the Holy Trinity is other. He is not one of us, though he became one of us in the person of the Son. We can intellectually grasp God in his human nature, but not in his divine nature. Human reason and logic are inapplicable in principle when applied to his divine nature. That’s the basis for the Eastern critique of Western attempts to describe God. Yes, I know, more words, but I’m doing my best to capture the difference between us. We really do believe that kind of God exists. The Western, logical mind can’t accept something that isn’t susceptible to classification and categorization. This is because it doesn't accept that something not subject to classification and categorization exists. It can’t accept that something immaterial really does exist. The refusal to accept these two propositions that for us are axiomatic isn't based on observation or experiment. It's a metaphysical assumption; our axioms are no different. It’s a double whammy that leads Westerners to atheism if they can’t accept a God who is like us: a finite, material being who evolved to be what he is now. So, yes, what we have here is clashing paradigms and different languages. We do think poetry is better suited to trying to understand God than reason and logic, but the Western, logical mind still wants categorization and logic. So.....

I’m going to avoid poetry (I’m terrible at it!) and continue to try to describe what we believe and why prosaically. I’ll likely fail. That won't be a surprise. In the end, Orthodoxy doesn't "make sense" except from the inside. Orthodoxy is less something you believe than something you do. God is to be experienced, not 'grasped'. The Western mind doesn't like this, but for us the proof is in the pudding. That makes us more Eastern than Western. Good! We think the West suffers from a sickness and the symptom is the desacralization of nature. Mormonism is an exception, given the teaching that the Light of Christ holds together and interconnects everything. The Mormon mind is still very Western in every other respect, though.

I said: For us, it isn't about being perfect in a human sense. It's about being what Jesus is - a divine-human person, the "Everlasting Man". That's how we define perfection. To be such is to be fully human. Jesus became one of us so that we could become what we were always intended to be. Fallen human beings are less than human. The healing Jesus offers restores us to full humanity

To be perfect in a human sense we cannot be human? Jesus was divine AND human- the same two natures Catholics talk about. Yet he is the "everlasting Man" who is not a man, but divine. Yet to be both divine and human is to be "fully human", being human is not being fully human until we are like Christ was was not fully human but also divine.

You have to keep in mind what we believe about human anthropology and the nature of Garden state before the fall. God is spirit and so are the angels. Only human beings are both matter and spirit. We were created already in communion with God, able to apprehend Him and enjoy His presence. Spirit and soul were united and centered on God, who dwelt in the heart. In that state, humans lived the spiritual life of the angels, only they were material, infused with life and light. Only humans enjoyed this kind of life, material creatures illuminated by the spiritual, divine light. They were the priests of the material creation, beings comprised of both matter and immaterial spirit and their job was to receive the creation, care for it, organize it, bring it into communion with the spiritual order, and offer it back to God in thanksgiving. Unlike the angels, who are immaterial spirit, they lived in both worlds in the Garden state. They were the microcosm. That’s what human beings were created and always intended to be. After the fall, they were lesser beings. They had expelled themselves from Paradise and there was enmity between humans and the rest of creation. They were still human at the level of DNA, but less than human in the sense that they were no longer in the angelic state and the creation no longer responded to their call. Their communion with God was broken. As a result, they moved closer to being what the animals are – material beings who are not spiritual.

Thus, for now only Christ is fully human. We believe what the Catholics believe. Fully God became fully human and remained fully God while remaining fully human. We are fallen humanity. Human beings were created to be in communion with God, infused with divine light (divinized). We’re human at the level of DNA, but we’re currently lacking something that we had before the fall and lost. Only Jesus, the God-Man, the Everlasting Man (that was Chesterton’s coinage, btw), is fully human. When we’re divinized, we’ll be restored to full humanity (divinized humanity) because of that divinization. The return to the Garden state will restore us to what we once were. We will not be fully God. Only God is fully God and there is only one God. There cannot be more than one God. We will be fully human because we will be divinized, gods with a small ‘g’, through participation in the life of the only One who is fully God. The life of theosis is what we were created to be.

Perhaps if we said "We reach our potential to be fully human by emulating Christ" that would work as a way of expressing it? But that is what Mormons believe as well. But for us humans ARE "divine" or at least have the spark of divinity. So for me, the Mormon expression is much more straightforward.

Yes, I think that language captures what we believe, except that Mormons don’t accept our belief that God is ‘other’ and there can only be one God. We believe God and humans are of a different ‘species’. The reason we use the language we use is because we always seek to maintain this critical distinction in our discourse. We are not like God and never will be, although God made Himself to be like us in Jesus.

I said: For us, being perfect has nothing to do with 'keeping commandments'. ...

Commandment keeping and other ascetic practices (prayer, fasting) are the means through which we cleanse the nous and prepare the inner temple to receive the Holy Spirit, who will dwell there and begin the work of transformation...

So it sounds like indeed commandment keeping DOES have a lot to do with being perfect- indeed it is the first step. "Cleanse the nous" is a phrase I understand but is very Neoplatonic and thus is based in a metaphysics which led to the apostasy. https://en.wikipedia....org/wiki/Nous
So I am not seeing a whole lot of compatibility with Mormonism there. I kind of prefer the phrase "keep the commandments and invite the spirit..." Simple, direct, no Greek metaphysics, no paradoxes.

Yes, it’s very different (though, of course, we reject the Apostasy claim). I’m fine with saying that commandment keeping does have a lot to do with being perfect, so long as it’s understood that we view commandment keeping as a purification process, not something we have to do to win God’s approval. It’s a subtle, but important distinction. For us, we have to get rid of all notions that God ‘approves’ or ‘disapproves’ behavior and that sin ‘offends’, ‘angers’, or ‘upsets’ God and the spirit. We would never say that sin ‘offends’ the Holy Spirit and the Spirit withdraws. Instead, sin makes us incapable of uniting with the Spirit. The Spirit is always “just there”. He doesn’t approach and withdraw from us because of sin; we approach and withdraw from Him.

I said: We reject the Western notion of sin and forgiveness that enumerates the various ways to sin and what must be done to receive forgiveness....
God forgives all: the Devil and his angels, and all of us. God will accept the devil and his angels, if only they will turn to Him for healing and repent. All of us are already forgiven....

But we must "repent". So how does one "repent" without knowing what they have done wrong? How do you avoid the behavior if it is not defined?

Like Jesus, we keep it simple. “Love God with your heart, might, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.” Any thought or action that puts yourself before God and your neighbor is sinful. Examine yourself to identify those thoughts and behaviors and eliminate them. That’s repentance. No list is required.

If God forgives all, regardless or repentance, INCLUDING the Devil, "if they repent" how do they and us know if we have repented if they do not know what they did wrong? Just being a fallen soul is not a voluntary state so how do we know how to make up and repent for being a fallen soul?
And if God forgives all anyway, why repent at all?

Repentance is a process of purification. Reference St. Anthony's statement about what God is like, that he is changeless, passionless, 'good and beneficent only'. Those who by doing good acquire his likeness are joined to him. Only those who purify themselves such that they put God and their neighbor before themselves in every thought and action are capable of being changed so they can draw near to dwell comfortably in the presence of God. This has nothing to do with ‘worthiness’ or whether God ‘let’s us in’. It’s about ontology; what we are. We have to become something else, something that is Christ-like by nature, instead of by imitation. Emulation leads to transformation, but without transformation there is no salvation. Nothing else will suffice, and God is the agent of transformation, not us. But to be clear, it's not that God 'decides' to change us. The imitation and the image is first, then the transformation and the likeness. We are changed by drawing near and it is ever-closer proximity to God that is transformative, contingent on our humility and effort. We draw closer through emulation and as we draw closer we're slowly changed, but only if we approach in humility and repentance throughout the journey. Those who keep the commandments, pray, and fast without humility and a recognition of personal sinfulness and unworthiness relative to God and their neighbor will find that nothing changes at all. Only the truly Christ-like can dwell comfortably in God’s presence. Everything else is hell. The devil and his angels can repent if they so choose, but that entails becoming what I just described: humbling yourself and repenting so that God can begin to shine within you and transform you with your cooperation. I’d say good luck. C.S. Lewis once said (paraphrasing) that with every decision we make, however small, we make ourselves more of an angel or a devil and the more of a devil we are, the harder it will be to know what we really are becoming and the harder it will be to turn and repent. Each small decision in an angelic or devlish direction accumulates turning us into one or the other. Given enough time and acquiescence to a small, insignificant sin, then another, and then another, a saint can gradually become a devil. How long has the devil been at being devlish? It seems that the devil has reached the point of no return. That's why we must not wait to repent. There's an eternity ahead of us and plenty of time to become angelic or devlish. The sooner we begin the process of transformation, the easier it will be to humble ourselves and change and the sooner we’ll be able to enjoy God’s presence, rather than suffer in it. The longer we wait to change ourselves, putting it off because we know in the end 'God accepts us anyway', the harder and harder it will become. We definitely don't want to wait so long that we make ourselves incapable of repentance, even when we're dwelling in the presence of God - like the devil and his angels. Are there people living who have already made themselves incapable of seeing themselves as what they really are? People who are wholly evil, yet think there's nothing wrong with them? Probably. That's why we don't wait to repent, even knowing that God is love and wills everyone's salvation. God won't force himself on anyone. Only those who desire repentance and turn to God in humility, knowing themselves to be what they really are, are capable of drawing near to acquire salvation. To understand where I'm coming from, you really have to drop the juridical idea of a God that sees or hears us say "I'm sorry" and stop committing the sin, and then grants us forgiveness and absolution, striking the sin from the record book. All of that is very Western. Asking "if God's just going to forgive us anyway, what's the point of repentance?" just misses the point. We're already forgiven, but that doesn't mean we're ready to dwell in God's presence. Yes, we're forgiven, but are we holy yet? That's the key. "Holy things for the holy", as we say in our liturgy. For us, there is no record book, no log or list of merits and demerits. No gate or door that God locks, no kingdoms to which people are assigned as a reward or punishment. There is only God and God is everywhere present and fills all things. There is no place in the cosmos where God is not. We will all be brought into his presence. The wicked will gladly seek to lock themselves in hell, hoping to escape His presence, and will find that, even in Hell, God is present. Hell isn't a place, therefore. It's a condition of a soul, a state of being. More ontology. The righteous will enjoy God's presence and will experience it as heaven.

There is thus no system of ascribing righteous and holiness to us because "we've tried really hard to be good!" There's no threshold or tipping point of relative holiness, with an acceptable amount of imperfection, beyond which God decides we're 'worthy'. God is Holy. God is Other. God is "there". The only ones who 'move' is us. Just like some folks once thought the sun revolves around the earth, only to learn that the sun is stationary and it's the earth that moves, we Orthodox think the West needs to learn that it isn't God who approaches and withdraws from us because he's offended and gets mad; no, God is love and we approach and withdraw from Him. We make ourselves blind and unable to 'see' him because of our sinfulness. We distance ourselves through sin, the Spirit doesn't withdraw from us. Only the holy can dwell in God's presence without experiencing it as hell. We cannot make ourselves holy through adherence to a list of commandments defined as do's and don'ts. Holiness is acquired through humility and practicing putting God and our neighbor before ourselves. It's spiritual exercise, with prayer, fasting and Eucharist as spiritual aids. Think of a holy man in a cave filled with light whose presence is blinding and painful to us. It's not the holy man's doing that we can't draw near. He doesn't decide to lock the door because he found out we did something he doesn't like. Doing something he doesn't like tarnishes us and makes us incapable of entering the cave without being blinded. It's our own fault. We have to make ourselves capable of entering the cave and withstanding the light. We must cleanse ourselves and be transfigured. We begin the process through the conscious decision to unite ourselves with God by placing ourselves on the path toward transformation. This is what we mean by sin, repentance, and forgiveness. That's our eschatology. We don't mean what Westerners mean when we use the exact same words. Any idea of a God who is out there observing us, watching us labor, finally determining that we've endured to the end and worked hard enough, and makes the decision to 'let us in', has to be thrown out the window if you want to understand what the Orthodox believe. Again, the differences are subtle, but important, and they follow from what we believe about who and what God is. We must be holy to enter the heavenly temple but we cannot make ourselves holy except through divine union and that union is effected through commandment keeping (defined as putting God and your neighbor first in thought and deed), prayer, fasting, and Eucharist. If a commandment isn't kept with with the sincere prayer of the Publican on your lips ("Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner) and an eye single to God's glory and the salvation and benefit of your neighbor, then it comes from ego. Lists of commandments, do's, and don'ts lend themselves to that kind of self-centered spirituality. It's the way of the pharisee. By all means, make a list, define things in the Western way, just be aware of the danger. It's easier and more efficient to just examine yourself to see which thoughts and actions aren't God- or neighbor-centered. The Church helps by providing a supportive community; the example and help of the Saints who have already won the race; the ascetic practices of prayer and fasting, which are spiritual exercises to help us tone up and ‘lose ourselves in God and our neighbor’ over time; and most importantly, the Eucharist, through which God unites himself materially with us to help us from the inside out. It's a lifelong journey and a process that will continue in the next world.

I said: There's nothing we can do to merit that forgiveness. The Father already forgave us the moment we left home. He just wants us to return. The decision is up to us, however. He can't make us return. If we want divine union, it's true, we must be perfect, but there isn't a checklist of steps, do's, and don'ts we must memorize and abide by perfectly....

Sigh. If there's nothing we can do, how do we repent and why is it necessary? And now we must be perfect? And that starts with living the commandments, but doesn't that itself generate a "list" of what we need to "repent" of to start being perfected?

See above. Hopefully I’ve addressed this in a way so you at least understand why we don't make such lists.

But yet:

I said:
Commandment keeping isn't something we have to do before God accepts us and 'let's us in'. ..

How does that square with:

I said: Commandment keeping and other ascetic practices (prayer, fasting) are the means through which we cleanse the nous and prepare the inner temple to receive the Holy Spirit, who will dwell there and begin the work of transformation...

As I said, it isn’t a question of God accepting us and letting us in. Commandment keeping is something we have to do to purify ourselves so we became capable of dwelling in God’s presence. The door is already open. We’re already accepted. It’s not a question of God letting us into heaven. We just need to make the decision to go home. Purifying yourself through commandment keeping is how you go home. Commandment keeping is the path we travel. There isn't a barred gate at the end with a guard who will check to see if we were 'good enough'. The door is wide open. All we have to do is walk through. Commandment keeping and ascetic practices are the path we must take to get to the open door. It isn't easy. We need help and that help is afforded us in the church. Again, it’s a subtle but, important, distinction that results from what we believe about God’s nature.

??
And then we have something I don't understand here in what the purpose of the church is:

I said: In this life, it just so happens the means for setting us on the path for our God-caused perfection are provided through Christ and his church. Those outside of the church can still be saved. We know that only in and through Christ we can be saved. We don't know that only those who know Christ and join his church will be saved. After this life, God will save whom he will save.

God desires the same reward for everyone and everything. This can happen even in the next life Orthodoxy thus has a strong universalist streak. In the end, everything will be made right and it will be as if the fall never happened.

So the church provides the path to perfection to Christ, but those without the church can still be saved.
So regardless of what we do, God will make it all right as if the fall never happened.

So why is He putting us all through all this stuff??? What's the purpose of it all???

You have to keep in mind what St. Anthony of Egypt said about God's nature if you want to understand what we mean by God's 'plans' and 'purposes'. God isn’t putting us through anything. We don’t believe in a pre-earth life and there is no pre-earthly plan for developing ‘gods in embryo’. We were created exactly what God intended us to be at the moment of the creation. We were created fully-formed and developed. Humanity chose to turn away from God and become something else, something lesser, which is why we’re making a mess of things and have been ever since. God didn’t set up and plan for the fall, didn’t expel Adam from the Garden, doesn’t punish, ‘teach lessons’, send people challenges, or anything of the kind. He only invites us to return and provided the means.

Salvation isn’t a matter of God changing his mind and ‘saving’ anyone. The reason we’re not ‘saved’ is because we’ve made ourselves incapable of dwelling in and enjoying his presence. We ‘save ourselves’ through purification (prayer and fasting, commandment keeping), by making us capable of allowing God to shine within us – which is how we define the notion of ‘receiving God’s help’. We also ‘receive God’s help’ in the Eucharist. At the moment of consecration, God becomes, ‘shines within’, the bread and wine. Receiving the Eucharist is the most direct and important means by which we can participate in the divine life right now. We materially unite with that shining presence when we partake. In the next life, those outside of the church will still need to go through the same process whereby they purify themselves, making themselves capable of loving God and their neighbor through concerted effort by practicing putting both God and their neighbor before themselves. We don’t know the precise means (though it will still entail help from the community of saints who surround them), but we believe that anyone in the next life who chooses and wants to be healed and turns to God in repentance and humility, even the devil and his angels, can be saved. It’s what God wants. Recall the hospital metaphor we use. The fall of the angels and humanity’s fall are cosmic tragedies that God desires to rectify. God became man to effect that reconciliation. Death was destroyed and the gulf between God and man healed. God will put everything right, making it as if the fall never happened, but it will only be right for those who cooperate with God in putting in right. For those who have made themselves incapable of dwelling in God's presence in joy and light, the glorified and divinized cosmos will be hellish. They will be in God's presence and will also be in hell. Heaven and hell are the same. It all depends on what you are in process of becoming and have become. I mentioned St. Isaac the Syrian before. You might enjoy reading about him and familiarizing yourself with his eschatology. He best captures what we believe about what it means to be 'saved' in the context of who and what we believe God is.

For Mormons the purpose is so that we learn to live by faith and grow as human beings, and trying harder and being more valiant gets you a better reward. Yes, rather capitalistic I will confess, yet it makes sense! There is a purpose there!
I am not seeing that here.

Yes, that’s another difference. For us, there’s only one reward. God himself. God is the reward. There’s isn’t a sliding scale of rewards that we earn or merit, with a system in place that determines where we end up based on how hard we work. The purpose is to acquire God himself. We can have just as much of God as we want. It’s up to us. Like Mormons, we believe in 'degrees of glory', but what we mean by that is very different. Mormons think about kingdoms to which they're assigned. We think about where we end up placing ourselves in the next world relative to God. We attain proximity to God based on our degree of holiness. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata used the metaphor of chairs in a banquet hall to explain the Orthodox concept of degrees of glory. Saints and sinners alike are invited to the banquet with the Heavenly King and will be there whether they want to or not. The banquet hall is the next world. The wicked will see the King seated on the throne and his blazing Presence will cause them pain. They will seek to flee and they won't be able to. They'll flee out the door only to find themselves still in the banquet hall and in the King's presence. Every door they try yields the same result. For eternity. There's nowhere to run where the King is not. Their suffering is not the King's doing. He wants them at the banquet. The wicked have made themselves incapable of enjoying the banquet but since the King is everywhere present and fills all things, there is no where where they will be able to hide. Scary stuff. It's a lot scarier than any vision Dante conjured up. It also reminds me of a Book of Mormon passage, something about wanting mountains to fall down on top of you.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Spammer

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