Steve Petersen
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Creedal Christianity
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Language is difficult. Sadly many christians see heretics as worse than non-believers. The Nicene Creed is the litmus test for the core content of orthodox christian belief.
I am not at all sure what you were saying about the shekinah glory, however I suspect that it is quite possibly entirely in line with the prologue to St John's Gospel, especially in verse 14
Where what we translate as lived among us, could equally well be rendered pitched his tent in our midst or possibly even better as tabernacled in our midst. The allusion to the tabernacle accompanying the people of the Exodus, the journey from slavery into freedom, I am certain was not lost on the writer of the Fourth Gospel.
So welcome here. None of us gets everything right, even though we are bound to try, and some of our brothers and sisters will be keen to point out our errors quickly, and sometimes too quickly, which might be their error.
By the way, you cant be a heretic, if you are not a Christian. A heretic is a Christian whose beliefs are wrong at some point, often by overemphasis of one truth to the exception of others.
I am not at all sure what you were saying about the shekinah glory, however I suspect that it is quite possibly entirely in line with the prologue to St John's Gospel, especially in verse 14
John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Where what we translate as lived among us, could equally well be rendered pitched his tent in our midst or possibly even better as tabernacled in our midst. The allusion to the tabernacle accompanying the people of the Exodus, the journey from slavery into freedom, I am certain was not lost on the writer of the Fourth Gospel.
So welcome here. None of us gets everything right, even though we are bound to try, and some of our brothers and sisters will be keen to point out our errors quickly, and sometimes too quickly, which might be their error.
By the way, you cant be a heretic, if you are not a Christian. A heretic is a Christian whose beliefs are wrong at some point, often by overemphasis of one truth to the exception of others.
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dzheremi
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Not to rain on anyone's parade, and certainly not to direct this towards the OP (Lord have mercy! This does not apply to the OP or to any particular person here), but it bears repeating that there is historical precedent established for referring to ideas from outside of Christianity and/or the Church as heretical, and those who founded them or continue in them as heretics. St. Augustine, for instance, opens his work against the Manichaeans with the following words:
While the lines were perhaps not as clear at the beginning of these heresies as they would subsequently become (precisely because they both borrowed pretty heavily from Christianity, in some respects), I think we can probably all agree that Manichaeism and Islam did not originate from within Christianity itself, and yet it is not wrong to call them heresies and their believers heretics precisely because the essence of heresy is in the picking and choosing what is acceptable from the truth (e.g., Islam's stance that Jesus was born of a virgin, and taught correctly, and was a mighty figure, but was certainly not the Son of God as Christians would have it, is not part of the Holy Trinity, since that is just disguised polytheism, and is in fact an Islamic prophet of subordinate importance to Muhammad).
So I must disagree that a non-Christian cannot be a heretic, while obviously agreeing that simply being a non-Christian (or a Christian who may be in error, as we all could be on the individual level) is not in itself enough to justify calling someone a heretic, particularly if they were never a Christian, or otherwise never adopted anything from Christianity...like, I don't know...a lifelong Buddhist from Bhutan or something, some place where there are hardly any Christians...it is very unlikely that such a person could ever be called a heretic, as they have no real relation to Christianity in the first place; that's not comparable to Muhammad's learning Christianity from his Nestorian relatives and picking and choosing from it the things he personally found acceptable, and fashioning them together with heaping doses of paganism and other things to make a 'new' religion that he then proclaimed as the restored truth and forced on others.
Anyway, I hope this doesn't start an argument. I see the benefit and the truth in saying that non-Christians cannot be heretics (in a certain way, yes), but I don't think it's quite that simple, nor do I think that the word has changed since St. John's day. Perhaps it's best to say that heretics are usually Christians or former Christians, but that the word and concept itself has a wider application than that depending on the situation in which it is invoked. It is still not right at all that anyone who does not understand the Holy Trinity or struggles with the Creed should be called a heretic and mistreated on that account. Pastoral care in those situations ought to overrule such unthinking and heartless rigorist ideas, which is just as much outside of the Christian tradition (remember: Donatism is a heresy, too) as whatever else anyone may come up with in lieu of traditional Christian belief.
My prayer to the one true, almighty God, of whom, and through whom, and in whom are all things, has been, and is now, that in opposing and refuting the heresy of you Manichæans, as you may after all be heretics more from thoughtlessness than from malice, He would give me a mind calm and composed, and aiming at your recovery rather than at your discomfiture.
Much later, and perhaps more uncontroversially acceptable as a figure (in the sense that some of St. Augustine's theological pondering is rejected by the EO and OO, and also by some in the Western traditions), we have a man like St. John of Damascus in the 7th century, who writes about Islam in the following terms:
There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist. They are descended from Ishmael, [who] was born to Abraham of Agar, and for this reason they are called both Agarenes and Ishmaelites. They are also called Saracens, which is derived from Sarras kenoi, or destitute of Sara, because of what Agar said to the angel: ‘Sara hath sent me away destitute.’ These used to be idolaters and worshiped the morning star and Aphrodite, whom in their own language they called Khabár, which means great. And so down to the time of Heraclius they were very great idolaters. From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.
While the lines were perhaps not as clear at the beginning of these heresies as they would subsequently become (precisely because they both borrowed pretty heavily from Christianity, in some respects), I think we can probably all agree that Manichaeism and Islam did not originate from within Christianity itself, and yet it is not wrong to call them heresies and their believers heretics precisely because the essence of heresy is in the picking and choosing what is acceptable from the truth (e.g., Islam's stance that Jesus was born of a virgin, and taught correctly, and was a mighty figure, but was certainly not the Son of God as Christians would have it, is not part of the Holy Trinity, since that is just disguised polytheism, and is in fact an Islamic prophet of subordinate importance to Muhammad).
So I must disagree that a non-Christian cannot be a heretic, while obviously agreeing that simply being a non-Christian (or a Christian who may be in error, as we all could be on the individual level) is not in itself enough to justify calling someone a heretic, particularly if they were never a Christian, or otherwise never adopted anything from Christianity...like, I don't know...a lifelong Buddhist from Bhutan or something, some place where there are hardly any Christians...it is very unlikely that such a person could ever be called a heretic, as they have no real relation to Christianity in the first place; that's not comparable to Muhammad's learning Christianity from his Nestorian relatives and picking and choosing from it the things he personally found acceptable, and fashioning them together with heaping doses of paganism and other things to make a 'new' religion that he then proclaimed as the restored truth and forced on others.
Anyway, I hope this doesn't start an argument. I see the benefit and the truth in saying that non-Christians cannot be heretics (in a certain way, yes), but I don't think it's quite that simple, nor do I think that the word has changed since St. John's day. Perhaps it's best to say that heretics are usually Christians or former Christians, but that the word and concept itself has a wider application than that depending on the situation in which it is invoked. It is still not right at all that anyone who does not understand the Holy Trinity or struggles with the Creed should be called a heretic and mistreated on that account. Pastoral care in those situations ought to overrule such unthinking and heartless rigorist ideas, which is just as much outside of the Christian tradition (remember: Donatism is a heresy, too) as whatever else anyone may come up with in lieu of traditional Christian belief.
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dzheremi
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To balance what could be seen as a negative or overly argumentative post (above), I present to you all for your consideration the words of HH Pope Timothy II, the direct successor to the exiled and reviled (by the Chalcedonians, that is) Pope Dioscorus of Alexandria, who said concerning the theological disputes of his day (he ruled 457-477, so directly after Chalcedon) and what we should expect of the average person in such an environment:
“If, therefore, an ordinary, simple person comes to you, confessing the holy faith of the consubstantial Trinity, and desirous of being in communion with you who acknowledge our Lord’s fleshly consubstantiality with us – I entreat you, not to constrain those who hold such views as these at all with other words, nor require from them additional verbal subtleties, but leave such people to praise God and bless the Lord in the simplicity and innocence of their hearts….Anyone who does not abuse the saints touching this declaration: ‘I confess that our Lord is our brother and that he was of the same fleshly stock as us for the sake of our salvation’, accept such an one in our Lord.”
(Some historical background, as to why he specifies Christ's fleshly humanity: At this time, HH Pope Timothy II was dealing with conflicts with a certain group of heretics in Constantinople who sought an alliance with him under the false belief that the Alexandrians denied Christ's humanity in favor of the theology of Eutyches, who taught that Christ's divinity "absorbed" His humanity "like a drop of vinegar in the ocean". This was the common charge leveled by the Chalcedonians against those who had rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, as the Alexandrian church had, so to clarify that this is not in fact what the Church of Alexandria teaches -- in other words, that we do in fact believe that Christ was fully human as we are -- HH stresses belief in Christ's humanity as a precondition for accepting a confessing Christian to communion.)
You do not need to be a tremendously deep or well-studied person. Even if you reject the words of HH Pope Timothy II (I dunno why you would, in this case...because you're a Chalcedonian and have been taught that he and his party is eeeeeevil, maybe?
), it remains the case that the Holy Scriptures themselves advocate that we be as children (Matthew 18:2-4) -- not ignorant, but humble -- and there is nothing humble about casting out a person who is looking to explain themselves and dialogue with others. Helping them is better than shunning them.
Here is a large group of Coptic Orthodox people in Egypt gathered for a demonstration, publicly reciting the Nicene Creed in Arabic. It is music to the soul, whether they all have theology degrees or not. (Spoiler: They probably don't. The Church is mostly poor farmers and other lower-status people in Egypt, as the highest concentrations of Coptic people are in the underdeveloped Sa'id/southern region. Sa'idi people are stereotyped as bumpkins by other Egyptians, for their rough and rustic ways, but such people have long been the lifeblood of native Egyptian Christianity. HH Pope Shenouda III of thrice-blessed memory was a Sa'idi person, for instance. And it's not just the Coptic Orthodox, either: the majority of Roman Catholics are poor and humble people, as I would guess the majority of Eastern Orthodox probably are, since not everyone can live in Moscow or Belgrade or whatever, and there are tons of little villages all over these places where life is still built around the local church.)
“If, therefore, an ordinary, simple person comes to you, confessing the holy faith of the consubstantial Trinity, and desirous of being in communion with you who acknowledge our Lord’s fleshly consubstantiality with us – I entreat you, not to constrain those who hold such views as these at all with other words, nor require from them additional verbal subtleties, but leave such people to praise God and bless the Lord in the simplicity and innocence of their hearts….Anyone who does not abuse the saints touching this declaration: ‘I confess that our Lord is our brother and that he was of the same fleshly stock as us for the sake of our salvation’, accept such an one in our Lord.”
(Some historical background, as to why he specifies Christ's fleshly humanity: At this time, HH Pope Timothy II was dealing with conflicts with a certain group of heretics in Constantinople who sought an alliance with him under the false belief that the Alexandrians denied Christ's humanity in favor of the theology of Eutyches, who taught that Christ's divinity "absorbed" His humanity "like a drop of vinegar in the ocean". This was the common charge leveled by the Chalcedonians against those who had rejected the Council of Chalcedon in 451, as the Alexandrian church had, so to clarify that this is not in fact what the Church of Alexandria teaches -- in other words, that we do in fact believe that Christ was fully human as we are -- HH stresses belief in Christ's humanity as a precondition for accepting a confessing Christian to communion.)
You do not need to be a tremendously deep or well-studied person. Even if you reject the words of HH Pope Timothy II (I dunno why you would, in this case...because you're a Chalcedonian and have been taught that he and his party is eeeeeevil, maybe?
), it remains the case that the Holy Scriptures themselves advocate that we be as children (Matthew 18:2-4) -- not ignorant, but humble -- and there is nothing humble about casting out a person who is looking to explain themselves and dialogue with others. Helping them is better than shunning them.Here is a large group of Coptic Orthodox people in Egypt gathered for a demonstration, publicly reciting the Nicene Creed in Arabic. It is music to the soul, whether they all have theology degrees or not. (Spoiler: They probably don't. The Church is mostly poor farmers and other lower-status people in Egypt, as the highest concentrations of Coptic people are in the underdeveloped Sa'id/southern region. Sa'idi people are stereotyped as bumpkins by other Egyptians, for their rough and rustic ways, but such people have long been the lifeblood of native Egyptian Christianity. HH Pope Shenouda III of thrice-blessed memory was a Sa'idi person, for instance. And it's not just the Coptic Orthodox, either: the majority of Roman Catholics are poor and humble people, as I would guess the majority of Eastern Orthodox probably are, since not everyone can live in Moscow or Belgrade or whatever, and there are tons of little villages all over these places where life is still built around the local church.)
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DeaconDean
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To me, Calvinists can be very correct in most parts of biblical theology but except for the concept of predestination.
That said. The Bible is for humans to get to their salvation. It's not a book to completely understand every single bit of who God is. an analogy is that the Bible is for the ants to get saved by humans but not for the ants to understand the anatomy of a human simply because they can't.
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DeaconDean
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Why so?
"Predestination" is really very simple. Unless one just takes for granted what is said about "Calvinists" position.
Let me make this as simple as can be.
"Predestination" sets the goal, never the path.
According to Rom. 8:29, the "goal" of "predestination" is "to be conformed to the image of the Son".
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Till all are one.
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There's a reason why the debate last for centuries. What makes you think that a simple matter can result in such a lasting debate?
To me, we are predestined to show (for the purpose of witnessing) who we are. Predestination is needed simply because we only have a short life time on earth. God thus predestined us in the various situations for us to make our decisions thus showing clearly who we are, that is what faith do we have in order to be saved in accordance to the New Covenant.
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DeaconDean
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Hello, and welcome!
The right answer would be "yes." I'm not quite sure why you were unable to say "yes." Surely it's the most fundamental of Christian beliefs?
No, it's very, very definitely a "yes." Read John 1.
Well, that was quick. Goodbye, and may God bless you!
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DeaconDean
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You are funny.
Please consult: "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Edited by: Gerhard Kittel, Translated by: Geoffery W. Bromiley, Vol. V, "proopizw", p. 456, K. L. Schmidt commenting.
I also suggest you consult Romans 8:29, Eph 1:5,11
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I suggest you to realize the fact that the topic predestination remains controversial for centuries yet you tried to say that it's a simple topic.
It's you who failed to face the reality. I recommend you to first google Calvinism to have a basic understanding on why it is not a simple topic as you comprehend and suggested.
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DeaconDean
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If you read what scriptures actually say, it is simple.
Rom. 8:29: predestinated "to be conformed to the image of the Son"
Eph 1:5 Predestinated "unto adoption"
Eph 1:11 Predestinated "according to purpose."
It really is simple. No where does the scriptures teach us that when a man reaches a fork in the road, whichever direction he turns, God "predestined" that.
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No, @DeaconDean does not need to "google Calvinism."
He is a man of considerable theological knowledge (even if I don't always agree with him) and it was rude and offensive to say what you did.
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DeaconDean
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DeaconDean
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Several years ago I wrote:
"People have this delusional mind-set, like most Catholics that the doctrine of predestination makes people robots. That they cannot act in any manner contrary to what God has ordained to happen. And that simply isn't true.
Predestination sets the goal, not the path."
Posted 8/6/2011
My position has not changed.
Kittles Theological Dictionary of the New Testament defines "predestinate" as:
"This comparatively rare and late word is used in the Greek Bible only six times in the NT in the sense to foreordain to predestinate. Since God is eternal and has ordained everything before time, proopizein is a stronger form of opizein (to set bounds to). The synonyms and textual history show that the reference in proginwskien is the same. Rom. 8:29; ouv proginw kai prowpisen summorfouv tnv eikonov tou niou autou, Rom. 8:30; ous...prowpisen (A: proegnw) toutov kai ekalesen. The omniscient God has determined everything in advance, both persons and things in salvation history, with Jesus Christ as the goal. When Herod and Pilate work together with the Gentiles and the mob against Christ, it may be said: h boulh [sou] prowrisen genesqai, Acts 4:28. Herein lies the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery, hn prowrisen o qeoV pro twn aiwnwn eiV doxan hmwn, 1 Cor. 2:7, cf. IV, 819. The goal of our predestination is divine sonship through Jesus Christ: proorisaV hmaV eiV uioqesian dia ihsou cristou , Eph. 1:5. That we have our inheritance in Christ rests in the fact that we are proopisqentev kata proqesin tou ta panta energountov, Eph. 1:11."
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Edited by: Gerhard Kittel, Translated by: Geoffery W. Bromiley, Vol. V, proopizw, p. 456, K. L. Schmidt.
Posted 4/9/2016
And to be even more precise:
Posted 9/2/2007
My position has not changed!
My position is exactly what the scriptures say.
God Bless
Till all are one.
"People have this delusional mind-set, like most Catholics that the doctrine of predestination makes people robots. That they cannot act in any manner contrary to what God has ordained to happen. And that simply isn't true.
Predestination sets the goal, not the path."
Posted 8/6/2011
My position has not changed.
Kittles Theological Dictionary of the New Testament defines "predestinate" as:
"This comparatively rare and late word is used in the Greek Bible only six times in the NT in the sense to foreordain to predestinate. Since God is eternal and has ordained everything before time, proopizein is a stronger form of opizein (to set bounds to). The synonyms and textual history show that the reference in proginwskien is the same. Rom. 8:29; ouv proginw kai prowpisen summorfouv tnv eikonov tou niou autou, Rom. 8:30; ous...prowpisen (A: proegnw) toutov kai ekalesen. The omniscient God has determined everything in advance, both persons and things in salvation history, with Jesus Christ as the goal. When Herod and Pilate work together with the Gentiles and the mob against Christ, it may be said: h boulh [sou] prowrisen genesqai, Acts 4:28. Herein lies the hidden wisdom of God in a mystery, hn prowrisen o qeoV pro twn aiwnwn eiV doxan hmwn, 1 Cor. 2:7, cf. IV, 819. The goal of our predestination is divine sonship through Jesus Christ: proorisaV hmaV eiV uioqesian dia ihsou cristou , Eph. 1:5. That we have our inheritance in Christ rests in the fact that we are proopisqentev kata proqesin tou ta panta energountov, Eph. 1:11."
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Edited by: Gerhard Kittel, Translated by: Geoffery W. Bromiley, Vol. V, proopizw, p. 456, K. L. Schmidt.
Posted 4/9/2016
And to be even more precise:
Posted 9/2/2007
My position has not changed!
My position is exactly what the scriptures say.
God Bless
Till all are one.
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