God and atonement

~Anastasia~

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I'm interested in the nuances here as well.

I've heard some priests get upset that the idea of sacrifice, atonement, propitiation, etc. are denied by the faithful, in a reaction against PSA.

I'm trying to get into the fine details myself, because Scripture DOES say those things. And I don't have my reading to hand, but iirc, doesn't the early Church affirm blood sacrifice, for example? But what she absolutely never said, and what we deny from PSA, is the concept of an ANGRY God, who won't be satisfied until He has inflicted pain on SOME, thus spending His wrath, and all the problems that leads to (disunity in the Trinity, lack of sufficiency and sovereignty of God, etc.)

And not only that, but if you were to assign values to what Christ accomplished in the Atonement, slicing it up like a pie chart, you'd end up with many slices, the largest among them being Christus Victor, and the idea of propitiation being a small sliver, perhaps, with various other size pieces being carved out as well.

Is this correct? I know no priest is infallible, of course, but this is what I've put together from listening to many of them. Fr. Thomas Hopko comes to mind since I can still hear his words in his own voice, but I know there were a number who led to this overall understanding.

Correction appreciated. Thank you, my brothers and sisters. :)
 
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Dec 16, 2011
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Please accept that I am not trying to be rude here, and I know that I am a visitor here, but honestly, what you just did looks like the same thing that Protestants do when they deny the Eucharist - take the plain meaning of words in a literal sense and deny that they mean what they literally mean.


So atonement really doesn't mean atonement? Okay, then kindly explain the metaphor because honestly, I can't figure out what it could stand for except atonement.

Same thing with propitiation.
For us, atonement means at-one-ment. It is a word that points to our mystical Communion with God the Holy Trinity, with God the Father, through God the Word, in God the Spirit. It is Love. Love is simply experienced, it is not a dead concept to be dealt with by abstract rational processes. I can't give it to you in words or concepts, or dogmatically defined soteriological mechanisms. That is why it is called the great mystery of our salvation. The salvation imagery of the Gospel merely points to but cannot define Salvation, because to be saved is to come to know Love in one's person.
 
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For us, atonement means at-one-ment. It is a word that points to our mystical Communion with God the Holy Trinity, with God the Father, through God the Word, in God the Spirit. It is Love. Love is simply experienced, it is not a dead concept to be dealt with by abstract rational processes. I can't give it to you in words or concepts, or dogmatically defined soteriological mechanisms. That is why it is called the great mystery of our salvation. The salvation imagery of the Gospel merely points to but cannot define Salvation, because to be saved is to come to know Love in one's person.

But to respond to the idea that the literal sense of the words are being avoided, what is really done by us, and by the fathers, is that the literal descriptions of Christ's salvific work are understood to be only providing partial views of the overall, mysterious work of Salvation. Anselm, on the other hand, took one single viewpoint and made it into the whole doctrine of salvation alone.
One of our contemporary theologians, John Meyendorff, explained this much better than I can seem to do while typing on a tablet that keeps automatically altering my words every five seconds.
 
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Lukaris

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I think we have to remember also that while we are not individually guilty of "original sin", collectively humanity is guilty of a multitude of sin against God. Since Cain slew Abel ( Genesis 4:1-16 ), humanity has killed each other in droves with enough bloodshed to fill an ocean. God does not will the death of a sinner ( Ezekiel 18:23 ). Centuries before the Incarnation, the prophet Isaiah relayed the will of the Trinity in the sending of the Son for our redemption ( Isaiah 48:16 ) The Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate as a sinless man, acting on the will of the Trinity for our salvation, shed His sinless blood for our salvation for the remission of our sins ( Matthew 26:26-30 ).
 
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