I reply to your reply above, with your replies quoted below, along with my answers.....
Other than what you have shared from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the rest is not answers but your opinion, which is wrong, especially in the case of the Covenant of God, which you do not know and keep presenting in the Calvinist fashion.
I have studied the Covenant of God for a long time, and while I am not an expert in it, I have a considerable knowledge about it. And you are wrong. The sad part is that you will not listen and appear to be unteachable at this point in your life.
I was born into Orthodoxy and I will also inform you that the Orthodox position with reference to Romans 2:13-16, does not infer salvation to none believers.
Which is why you are unteachable. You think that because you were born into Orthodoxy you know everything. A little humility would go a long way with you.
If you like, I could elaborate on another post in relation to Romans 2 and what it means in context, as I did for 1 Corinthians 3 for our friend.
There is no elaboration necessary. It is written plainly and clearly and only those who don't wish to believe in God's abundant mercy can take issue with it. You appear to prefer Latinist judgmental law over God's mercy.
Let's look at Romans 2, shall we?
Rom 2:13
(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
Rom 2:14
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
You see that, sir? Paul states that men can do by nature that which the law demands without ever once hearing of the Law or the Gospel. The next verse tells us why this is utterly possible.
Rom 2:15
Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.
I guess you would limit the work of the Holy Spirit to only those who are in the Orthodox Church. Not what Paul says.
Rom 2:16
In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
If you quote Jesus, then you need to quote Jesus and qualify the other place in scripture that refers to the idea that a person would not come out of punishment until the last farthing is paid. Bear in mind that Jesus was talking to the living and was referring to this lifetime and not an afterlife salvation scenario.
Mat 5:25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Mat 5:26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
The context of the verse surrounding this indicate the Judgment Day.
Highlight the words FATHER and RETURN. With reference to your previous replies which suggests that all will be saved, including those who are without God, meaning the Fatherless. A son must know the Father in this lifetime, as Jesus said no one comes to the Father, except through me, which is a pertinent requirement of a person identifying with the Father.
This is your interpretation entirely. You have nothing to prove that a man could not repent after death and ask to be adopted into the family of God, and as I mentioned in Romans 2, this seems completely possible.
It would be pointless for Jesus to teach a parable to the living, if the message was not of grave importance for people in this lifetime to make that decision to RETURN to the FATHER, before they die and leave this temporal life. If the message applied to people in the afterlife, then the urgency and vital importance to return to the Father before one perishes becomes mute and the parable is rendered ineffective as to highlight the urgency within this lifetime to return to the Father.
If it was of such "grave importance" to get this message, then how come Jesus didn't go to China with it, to Japan, to the Native Americans in the Americas, to the Russians and Slavic people? If it was so important that one MUST hear the message and be baptized into the Church to become a child of the Father, and if it is God's will that all be saved, then why did God not promote this message to certain groups of people for thousands of years? Is such the actions of a Father who loves His children and wishes them all to be saved, to keep the salvific message from the greater majority of them? What kind of salvation program is this that puts such a demand upon mankind and then does not do everything possible to fulfill the terms and conditions needed for salvation? Those are not the actions of a God who has said He wills the salvation of all mankind. They would be more in line with that of a tyrant (i.e. the "god" of Calvinism).
I was born into Orthodoxy.
Yeah. I know. I'm not impressed. Sometimes being born into something can terribly close one's mind to further examination of the truth.
Their Liturgy speaks volumes, that is.....
Let him that has not received baptism, depart.
Let him that has not received the sign of life, depart.
Let him that does not accept It
[the Holy Communion], depart.
Let the hearers go, and watch the doors.
Prayers of the Catechumens. I know them. You have taken them out of context of the salvation program we are discussing here. The catechumens were not allowed to stay and see the Holy Mysteries. You know this. You are being disingenuous here to try to mix this liturgical formula with God's salvation.
No, prayers never are a waste of breath. They comfort and embolden the believers to stay the course of faith. Liturgy never ventures into any form of purgation workings of the realm of the dead, their prayers are for the hope of a believer to migrate from this temporal life to eternal life with Christ. This is the sending off salute for Orthodox Christians and it does in no way declare that one is actually 100% saved, for it is just a sending off salute.
Now back to your contention about a covenant being a relationship as opposed to a contract. Well we can do the same thing by substituting
contract/relationship in place of
covenant, as follows.....
A contract is not a relationship. This is where you have run right off the rails.
Let's take an example of a contract. A young woman in a mini-skirt stands at a street corner. A man drives up and conversation ensues. Both have something the other wants. They make a verbal agreement (contract) and drive to the nearest seedy hotel, where the contract is worked out on a bed filled with bedbugs and DNA from previous attendants. Then they leave and go their ways.
That is a contract. No personal concern for each other, no giving of self to each other. It is an exchange of goods only, and when it is finished - that's it.
That is far, FAR different from a covenant, which is a relationship of self-giving love. This is how the Bible describes the Covenant of God. So intimate is it, even between God and Israel as nation, that God purposely uses the analogy of marriage in the Book of Hosea, and constantly refers to the nation as His cheating spouse. The spousal language continues in the New Covenant, with Jesus as the divine Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride of Christ. This is the language of deep intimacy, and is as far from a contract as black is from white.
Firstly, you have to understand that a covenant is a contract as opposed to a relationship.
I have shown you that you have utterly missed the boat here. When I bought my house in 1972 from Mrs. Lillian King, I never even met her. I signed the contract with a proxy because she was in a nursing home. I never met her, cared one second for her, or had a relationship with her. If you cannot see that this is far, far different from the marital relationship which the Bible uses to describe our relationship with Christ/God, then you are, as I said before, unwilling to learn. And I am wasting my time.
Lastly, once you gain the understanding that we are in contract with God,
Wrong again. You are making a habit of this. Speaking on a basis of covenant, we have no relationship with God. It is Jesus the Christ who has the covenant relationship with the Father. We know this because He is the Great High Priest of the New Covenant and acts as the Last Adam (1 Corin. 15:45) in representing us to God through His Blood.
We do not make covenant with God. We make covenant with Christ by being baptized into Him (Romans 6:3) He is the Bridegroom and we are the Bride. That is the language of the Bible. Through being in covenant with Christ Jesus (i.e. married to Him) we have a relationship with the Father. All our relationship with the Trinity comes by being in the covenant which is made with Jesus by baptism.
through a personal relationship with his Son
(Evangelical language. You are Orthodox. Stop it!!!)
Death discharges the legality of being subjects
SUBJECTS!!!!! That is so Calvinist language it is not funny. We are His BRIDE!!! You really need to learn covenant relationships.
A covenant is a contract and it is not between the Trinity, rather it is between God and man.
Nope. Before the foundation of the world, before Creation, God existed in a trinitarian covenant. And this is not me saying this. It is theologians far, far more brilliant than I could ever hope to be. The Trinity is an eternal covenant of existence - God IS - and mankind was created into it and invited to share in the love of the Trinity by growing into godlikeness.
You have strange ideas for someone who identifies as Orthodox. I'm sorry, but they sound like the Calvinism I came out of and not Orthodox at all.
(Yeah, I know....I know....You were born Orthodox. So sue me!)
Again I will reply to your reply above, by answering your quoted comments below....
Other than what you have shared from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the rest is not answers but your opinion, which is wrong, especially in the case of the Covenant of God, which you do not know and keep presenting in the Calvinist fashion.
I have studied the Covenant of God for a long time, and while I am not an expert in it, I have a considerable knowledge about it. And you are wrong. The sad part is that you will not listen and appear to be unteachable at this point in your life.
Sorry, Calvinist's didn't exist at the time of the Apostles and the understanding of the Orthodox view of what a covenant means. A contract has conditions and throughout scriptures God declares if you do this, then I will honour that and if you do that, then I will discharge to you my promises. Conditions which are tied to the hope of receiving the promises need to be complied with, in the same manner a subject needs to comply within the legalities of an agreed contract between two parties.
Which is why you are unteachable. You think that because you were born into Orthodoxy you know everything. A little humility would go a long way with you.
What has speaking truthly to do with having a little humility. I believe that I have been more than fair and truthful in presenting an unbiased Orthodox view, which Protestants happen to also hold, so what is wrong with that.
Mat 5:25 Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.
Mat 5:26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
The context of the verse surrounding this indicate the Judgment Day.
The emphasis of agreeing with thine adversary quickly has an urgent connotation to it, that obligates the person to agree before he meets the judge. Paul writes all men are destined to die once then judgement. Therefore agreeing would need to be done in this life and not the afterlife when a person comes face to face with the judge. You see how easy it is to desiminate the basics of before and after, which is taught at the very fundemental years in Kindergarten.
This is your interpretation entirely. You have nothing to prove that a man could not repent after death and ask to be adopted into the family of God, and as I mentioned in
Romans 2, this seems completely possible.
Well, you used Matthew 5:25-26 as scriptural evidence that requests a man to agree with his adversary and to repent, before he is brought before the judge.
If it was of such "grave importance" to get this message, then how come Jesus didn't go to China with it, to Japan, to the Native Americans in the Americas, to the Russians and Slavic people? If it was so important that one MUST hear the message and be baptized into the Church to become a child of the Father, and if it is God's will that all be saved, then why did God not promote this message to certain groups of people for thousands of years? Is such the actions of a Father who loves His children and wishes them all to be saved, to keep the salvific message from the greater majority of them? What kind of salvation program is this that puts such a demand upon mankind and then does not do everything possible to fulfill the terms and conditions needed for salvation? Those are not the actions of a God who has said He wills the salvation of all mankind. They would be more in line with that of a tyrant (i.e. the "god" of Calvinism).
Why? Why? Why? He asks.....ok very welll.....why don't you consider the parable of the workers in the vineyard...
1“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.
2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing.
4He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’
5So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing.
6About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7“ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
God has been hiring workmen throughout the Great Harvest and he calls the last ones first, to pay them first, which goes to show how fair the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel is.
Yeah. I know. I'm not impressed. Sometimes being born into something can terribly close one's mind to further examination of the truth.
Because I say that after death comes judgment as scripture declares it so, makes me closed minded?
Second time Jesus appears for people, is as their judge.
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrew speaking 9:28)
Paul writes that before he is to be executed.......
Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:8)
Saint Stephan in Acts 7:55 also beheld the Lord's appearing, when his time came to depart from this temporal life.
In Orthdoxy prayer for the dead, we say such and such has migrated from this temporal life, to eternal life, to be present with the Lord.
Death presents the subjects of the blood contract before their maker for judgment of the works of faith done in the earthly body.
Prayers of the Catechumens. I know them. You have taken them out of context of the salvation program we are discussing here. The catechumens were not allowed to stay and see the Holy Mysteries. You know this. You are being disingenuous here to try to mix this liturgical formula with God's salvation.
I disagree with your opinion.
A contract is not a relationship. This is where you have run right off the rails.
Let's take an example of a contract. A young woman in a mini-skirt stands at a street corner. A man drives up and conversation ensues. Both have something the other wants. They make a verbal agreement (contract) and drive to the nearest seedy hotel, where the contract is worked out on a bed filled with bedbugs and DNA from previous attendants. Then they leave and go their ways.
That is a contract. No personal concern for each other, no giving of self to each other. It is an exchange of goods only, and when it is finished - that's it.
That is far, FAR different from a covenant, which is a relationship of self-giving love. This is how the Bible describes the Covenant of God. So intimate is it, even between God and Israel as nation, that God purposely uses the analogy of marriage in the Book of Hosea, and constantly refers to the nation as His cheating spouse. The spousal language continues in the New Covenant, with Jesus as the divine Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride of Christ. This is the language of deep intimacy, and is as far from a contract as black is from white.
A contract is a conditional agreement between two parties, who is God and man. Throughout scripture God declares the conditions of his contract/covenant, as follows.....
If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time,
21then my covenant with David my servant—and
my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me—can be broken and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne. (Jeremiah 33:20-21)
It is a contract between God and man and there is a ransom that was paid in full, in initiating the new contract which is made legal in the blood of the Lamb of God. Within this contract, it includes a real and intangible relationship with the Son.....
Kiss his son, or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:12)
I have shown you that you have utterly missed the boat here. When I bought my house in 1972 from Mrs. Lillian King, I never even met her. I signed the contract with a proxy because she was in a nursing home. I never met her, cared one second for her, or had a relationship with her. If you cannot see that this is far, far different from the marital relationship which the Bible uses to describe our relationship with Christ/God, then you are, as I said before, unwilling to learn. And I am wasting my time.
Again, you never seen the Father, but it is the Father that Christians are in contract with, for God the Father said....
"This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."
The caring, loving obedience to the Father is through His only begotten Son, that he is well pleased in. So no one can say that they have made a contract with a person, they know not, because Jesus said if you have seen me, you have also seen the Father and that you may only come to the Father through me.
You cannot plead ignorance in not knowing the other party, whom you are in contract with. This is where your statement above is a fallacy.
Wrong again. You are making a habit of this. Speaking on a basis of covenant, we have no relationship with God. It is Jesus the Christ who has the covenant relationship with the Father. We know this because He is the Great High Priest of the New Covenant and acts as the Last Adam (1 Corin. 15:45) in representing us to God through His Blood.
We do not make covenant with God. We make covenant with Christ by being baptized into Him (
Romans 6:3) He is the Bridegroom and we are the Bride. That is the language of the Bible. Through being in covenant with Christ Jesus (i.e. married to Him) we have a relationship with the Father. All our relationship with the Trinity comes by being in the covenant which is made with Jesus by baptism.
The covenant is not within the Trinity between God the Father and God the Son as you claim, rather the contract is between God the Father and man, through the Son and the Holy Ghost (John 3:5). We are in contract with the other party, who is the one Triune God.
(Evangelical language. You are Orthodox. Stop it!!!)
Really! Is that all you have to say about all that I have laboriously explained to you and others?
SUBJECTS!!!!! That is so Calvinist language it is not funny. We are His BRIDE!!! You really need to learn covenant relationships.
We are Christ's subjects within the conditions of the blood contract, until Christ delivers all those who are written in the book of life to God the Father, then he also becomes subject to the Father. We are Christ's bride, but Paul also writes that we are his prisoners who need to abide in him, as would a bride need to abide in her husband. The act of a marriage in Jewish framework is a contract in itself.
Nope. Before the foundation of the world, before Creation, God existed in a trinitarian covenant. And this is not me saying this. It is theologians far, far more brilliant than I could ever hope to be. The Trinity is an eternal covenant of existence - God IS - and mankind was created into it and invited to share in the love of the Trinity by growing into godlikeness.
You have strange ideas for someone who identifies as Orthodox. I'm sorry, but they sound like the Calvinism I came out of and not Orthodox at all.
(Yeah, I know....I know....You were born Orthodox. So sue me!)
The covenant was not from the beginning, the Word was from the beginning and the Word is God. When man was created, then we had the Adamic Covenant, Abrahmic covenant, the Mosaic Old Covenant, Davidic Covenant, the Christ Covenant.
All these covenants were between the Creator and his Creatures and never a covenant within the Trinity.