bearpawss

 

Imagine, for a moment that I got caught up in a poker game with a cardshark. As the game continues, I manage to lose all my money, my house and end up owing money that I don't have. Now let's say I have a rich friend who loves me and sees the distress caused by the mess I got myself into playing poker with someone who is much better at it than me. My rich friend decides to help by getting into a poker game with the cardshark himself. My rich friend is not only wealthier than the cardshark, he is also infinitely better at poker than he is, and my friend ends up completely obliterating the cardshark, takes all his winnings, his house, and has him thrown into prison in debt. My friend then distributes the loot from the cardshark among all those he has cheated. Has my wealthy friend made "atonement"? The cardshark is the Death and the Devil, my rich friend is Christ who has redeemed me, not by paying my debt, but by deceiving the deceiver.

Orthodox Hymns for Good Friday:

Today hell cries out groaning: I should not have accepted the Man born of Mary (i.e. "I shouldn't have got into a poker game with Him"). He came and destroyed my power. He shattered the gates of brass. As God, He raised the souls that I had held captive. Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord.

Today, hell cries out groaning: My dominion has been shattered. I received a dead man as one of the dead, but against Him I could not prevail (i.e. "I was deceived"). From eternity I had ruled the dead, but behold, He raised all. Because of Him do I perish. Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord.

Today hell cries out groaning: My power has been trampled upon. The Shepherd is crucified and Adam is raised. I have been deprived of those whom I ruled. Those whom I swallowed in my strength I have given up. He Who was crucified has emptied the tombs (ie. "He has taken all my winnings and given them back to those I cheated"). The power of death has been vanquished. Glory to Thy cross and resurrection, O Lord.

 

"God becomes powerless before human freedom; He cannot violate it since it flows from His own omnipotence. Certainly man was created by the will of God alone; but he cannot be deified [made Holy] by it alone. A single will for creation, but two for deification. A single will to raise up the image, but two to make the image into a likeness. The love of God for man is so great that it cannot constrain; for there is no love without respect. Divine will always will submit itself to gropings, to detours, even to revolts of human will to bring it to a free consent."

 

Over the centuries a particular theory developed in the West as to why Christ had to die on the Cross for our salvation. It is now often referred to as the penal satisfaction theory, and it is traced back to St. Anselm of Canterbury (11th c.). As an early scholastic theologian, Anselm was trying to rationally explain the mystery of our redemption in Christ. The Orthodox theologian, Vladimir Lossky, critical of this theory, describes it thus in speaking of Anselm:

In his work Christian horizons are limited by the drama played between God, who is infinitely

offended by sin, and man, who is unable to satisfy the impossible demands of vindictive justice.

The drama finds its resolution in the death of Christ, the Son of God, who has become man in

order to substitute Himself for us and to pay our debt to divine justice.

This was later further distorted by many of the Protestant refomers who claimed that God was angry with us and that Christ had to "appease" or "propitiate" Him by His blood. Hence, Jonathon Edward's "sinners in the hands of an angry God." The rich imagery of the Scriptures is unfortunately narrowed down to a very legalistic understanding of redemption in Christ. As Lossky further probes this theory, he reveals its many shortcomings:

What becomes of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit here? His part is reduced to that of an

auxillary, an assistant in redemption, causing us to receive Christ's expiating merit. The final

goal of our union with God is, if not excluded altogether, at least shut out from our sight by

the stern vault of a theological conception built on the ideas of original guilt and its reparation.

There are further "casualties" in this narrowly-focused atonement theory, according to Lossky:

The price of our redemption having been paid in the death of Christ, the resurrection and the

ascension are only a glorious happy end of His work, a kind of apotheosis without direct

relationship to our human destiny. This redemptionist theology, placing all the emphasis

on the passion, seems to take no interest in the triumph of Christ over death. The very

work of the Christ-Redeemer, to which this theology is confined, seems to be truncated,

impoverished, reduced to a change of the divine attitude toward fallen men, unrelated to the

nature of humanity.

Too great a price to pay for a rationalistic theology! Only now, are both Roman Catholic and Protestants taking a serious and critical look at this particular theory of atonement.

The early Church, following the Scriptures, emphasized the victory of Christ over sin, death and the devil in His Cross and Resurrection. He truly "trampled down death by death." The Church Fathers, beginning with St. Irenaeus of Lyons, were very expressive in their formulation of this aspect of our redemption. So you will not find the "satisfaction theory" in their writings. The language of Scripture is meant to provide a series of images and metaphors that help us understand our redemption in Christ without falling prey to a narrowly-focused rationalism or legalism. "Justification," "salvation," "atonement," "expiation," "ransom," "reconciliation," "sanctification," "glorification," "freedom" - these are the many terms borrowed from both the Old Testament and from the Graeco-Roman world to convey the great "mystery of piety." These images are the many sides of a beautiful diamond that must be viewed from different angles for its true beauty and brilliance to be appreciated.

Ransom is another term that can be misapplied if one is overly-literalistic, or again legalistic, in its application. The following passage from St. Gregory the Theologian is probably the "classic" Orthodox response to any misunderstanding about the use of "ransom" language when referring to the death of Christ. This passage demands a very careful reading, if not multiple readings, to draw out the rich insights of St. Gregory. Basically, he is making it clear that the "ransom" offered by Christ was "paid" neither to the devil nor to God the Father:

We must now consider a problem and a doctrine ofter passed over in silently, which, in my view,

nevertheless needs deep study. The blood shed for us, the most precious and glorious blood of

God, the blood of the Sacrificer and the Sacrifice - why was it shed and to whom was it offered?

We were under the reign of the devil, sold to sin, after we had gained corruption on account of

our sinful desire. If the price of our ransom is paid to him who has us in his power, I ask myself:

Why is such a price to be paid? If it is given to the devil, it is outrageous! The brigand receives

the price of redemption. Not only does he receive it from God, he receives God Himself. For his

violence he demands such a disproportionate ransom that it would be more just for him to set us

free without ransom. But if to the Father, why should that be done? It is not the Father who has

held us as His captives. Morever, why should the blood of His only Son be acceptable to the

Father, who did not wish to accept Isaac, when Abraham offered Him his son as a burnt-offering,

but replaced the human sacrifice with the sacrifice of a ram? Is it not evident that the Father

accepts the sacrifice not becaue He demanded it or had any need for it but by His dispensation?

It was necessary that man should be sanctified by the humanity of God; it was necessary that

He Himself should free us, triumphing over the tyrant by His own strength, and that He should

recall us to Himself by His Son who is the Mediator, who does all for the honor of the Father, to

whom He is obedient in all things. Let the rest of the mystery be venerated silently.

Lossky comments on this passage, thus:

What emerges from the passage we have just quoted is that, for St. Gregory, the idea

of redemption, far from implying the idea of a necessity imposed by vindictive justice, is

rather an expression of the dispensation, whose mystery cannot be adequately

clarified in a series of rational concepts.

The key concept here is the "dispensation" or "divine economy" (from the Gk. oikonomia or God's "household management"). The Son of God must offer His life as a sacrifice in fulfilment of the Father's will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in order for God's design or saving plan for us to be realized - the abolition of the power of sin and death over us. This is powerfully stated in the Epistle to the Hebrews:

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise

shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death,

that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject

to bondage. (HEB. 2:14-15)

We are not sinners in the hands of an angry God, but sinners in the hands of a loving God: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son ... (JN. 3:16) Yet, there is not a drop of sentimentality in this divine love for us. As St. Paul says: "For you were bought at a price," meaning the "cost" to God in willing His Son to die on our behalf. God's saving dispensation includes not only our forgivess of sins, but also our glorification with Christ in the Kingdom of Heaven. That is why we never really separate the Cross from the Resurrection and Ascension. There is one unified paschal mystery. Christ is vanquishing sin and death on the Cross: "I call Him King, because I see Him crucified" says St. John Chrysostom. Of course, our sins are forgiven on the Cross because God desired them to be wiped out. That is the true meaning of Christ as our "expiation." The Cross is the "Mercy Seat" (Gk. hilasterion) on which are sins are wiped away by God, thus revealing His righteousness by restoring us by His faifhfulness to His covenental love.

We know that we are "saved" by the death and resurrection of Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We have been "ransomed" back from slavery to sin and death, because He "paid the price" on our behalf. This fulfilled the love of God for us, and did satisfy a non-existent "wrath" that needed to be appeased. We accept this in faith, without trying to overly penetrate the "mystery of piety." Let us venerate the mystery in silence as St. Gregory teaches us.

 

The more the understanding of Christ's teaching was obscured, the more the miraculous was introduced into it; and the more the miraculous was introduced into it, the more the doctrine was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became; and the more it was strained from its meaning and the more obscure it became, the more strongly its infallibility had to be asserted, and the less comprehensible the doctrine became.

One can see by the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles how from the earliest times the non-comprehension of the doctrine called forth the need for proofs through the miraculous and incomprehensible.

The first example in the book of Acts is the assembly which gathered together in Jerusalem to decide the question which had arisen, whether to baptize or not the uncircumcised and those who had eaten of food sacrificed to idols.

The very fact of this question being raised showed that those who discussed it did not understand the teaching of Christ, who rejected all outward observances--ablutions, purifications, fasts, and sabbaths. It was plainly said, "Not that which goeth into a man's mouth, but that which cometh out of a man's mouth, defileth him," and therefore the question of baptizing the uncircumcised could only have arisen among men who, though they loved their Master and dimly felt the grandeur of his teaching, still did not understand the teaching itself very clearly. And this was the fact.

Just in proportion to the failure of the members of the assembly to understand the doctrine was their need of external confirmation of their incomplete interpretation of it. And then to settle this question, the very asking of which proved their misunderstanding of the doctrine, there was uttered in this assembly, as is described in the Acts, that strange phrase, which was for the first time found necessary to give external confirmation to certain assertions, and which has been productive of so much evil.

That is, it was asserted that the correctness of what they had decided was guaranteed by the miraculous participation of the Holy Ghost, that is, of God, in their decision. But the assertion that the Holy Ghost, that is, God, spoke through the Apostles, in its turn wanted proof. And thus it was necessary, to confirm this, that the Holy Ghost should descend at Pentecost in tongues of fire upon those who made this assertion. (In the account of it, the descent of the Holy Ghost precedes the assembly, but the book of Acts was written much later than both events.) But the descent of the Holy Ghost too had to be proved for those who had not seen the tongues of fire (though it is not easy to understand why a tongue of fire burning above a man's head should prove that what that man is going to say will be infallibly the truth). And so arose the necessity for still more miracles and changes, raisings of the dead to life, and strikings of the living dead, and all those marvels which have been a stumbling-block to men, of which the Acts is full, and which, far from ever convincing one of the truth of the Christian doctrine, can only repel men from it. The result of such a means of confirming the truth was that the more these confirmations of truth by tales of miracles were heaped up one after another, the more the doctrine was distorted from its original meaning, aid the more incomprehensible it became.

Thus it was from the earliest times, and so it went on, constantly increasing, till it reached in our day the logical climax of the dogmas of transubstantiation and the infallibility of the Pope, or of the bishops, or of Scripture, and of requiring a blind faith rendered incomprehensible and utterly meaningless, not in God, but in Christ, not in a doctrine, but in a person, as in Catholicism, or in persons, as in Greek Orthodoxy, or in a book, as in Protestantism. The more widely Christianity was diffused, and the greater the number of people unprepared for it who were brought under its sway, the less it was understood, the more absolutely was its infallibility insisted on, and the less possible it became to understand the true meaning of the doctrine. In the times of Constantine the whole interpretation of the doctrine had been already reduced to a RÉSUMÉ--supported by the temporal authority-- of the disputes that had taken place in the Council--to a creed which reckoned off--I believe in so and so, and so and so, and so and so to the end--to one holy, Apostolic Church, which means the infallibility of those persons who call themselves the Church. So that it all amounts to a man no longer believing in God nor Christ, as they are revealed to him, but believing in what the Church orders him to believe in.

But the Church is holy; the Church was founded by Christ. God could not leave men to interpret his teaching at random--therefore he founded the Church. All those statements are so utterly untrue and unfounded that one is ashamed to refute them. Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what Churchmen understand by the Church. In the Gospels there is a warning against the Church, as it is an external authority, a warning most clear and obvious in the passage where it is said that Christ's followers should "call no man master." But nowhere is anything said of the foundation of what Churchmen call the Church.

The word church is used twice in the Gospels--once in the sense of an assembly of men to decide a dispute, the other time in connection with the obscure utterance about a stone--Peter, and the gates of hell. From these two passages in which the word church is used, in the signification merely of an assembly, has been deduced all that we now understand by the Church.

But Christ could not have founded the Church, that is, what we now understand by that word. For nothing like the idea of the Church as we know it now, with its sacraments, miracles, and above all its claim to infallibility, is to be found either in Christ's words or in the ideas of the men of that time.

The fact that men called what was formed afterward by the same word as Christ used for something totally different, does not give them the right to assert that Christ founded the one, true Church.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_of_God_is_Within_You/Chapter_III

It gets better later when he compare catechisms of different "original, only true" churches of Rome, Greece, Russia, and Protestants, every one of them happily condemning others, putting them in "grave errors" which results in "eternal damnation"...