- Dec 25, 2015
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In parallel with trying to explain traditional Reformed soteriology I’ve been thinking about my own.
Glory to God!
Here are some preliminary conclusions:
* I believe the idea that faith is following Jesus may be misleading. Looking at Rom 4, where Paul’s definition seems clearest, he seems to use it for trust in God. Jesus doesn’t talk about faith as much as Paul does, but in using children, he seems also to be pointing at trust. That’s particularly explicit in Rom 4:5.
I think he is pointing to their simplicity of utterly living poised in the present moment...
* When Paul says that God justifies the ungodly, the context seems to be clear that he is reckoning them as forgiven, not in some way fixing their ungodliness.
We are all ungodly prior to our turning away from evil and toward God... And all who turn to Him in repentance He will justify, as he did the Publican Tax Collector...
* In what sense does justification depend upon faith? In Rom 4:5 Paul says that our trust in God’s forgiveness independent of works is reckoned as righteousness. I’m not convinced that Paul is setting up some test that replaces works, that our forgiveness depends upon God detecting some specific kind of belief. I think what he’s saying is that those who realize God’s forgiveness doesn’t depend upon anything they’ve done are right are accepted on that basis, but I’m not convinced that Paul thinks his opponents are damned. They’re just wrong.
The very effort of turning from the Old Man towards God IF done in a genuine and repentant and humbled and sincere manner brings one nigh unto God already - The prodigal 'came to himself' and remembered what he had forgotten and lost, and decided to return to his father as but a servant, rather than serve those who hated him and would not even let him eat with the pigs.... And his Father saw him coming from a long way off, and rushed to meet him and take him into His arms... You see... Yet full Justification comes when we become members of the Body of Christ... We are baptized INTO Christ, as Scripture makes utterly clear...
I’m actually not convinced that Paul even intended to be giving us a full soteriology here. Rather, he’s dealing with a specific misunderstanding, and saying that God’s forgiveness doesn’t depend upon circumcision or any other specific action, including moral living.
Hear O Israel... I the Lord thy God am a jealous God...
You cannot love sin and God...
God will depart from you...
Moral living is departing from sin...
Pulling back from Paul, I would say roughly the following:
* God loves everyone and has called us all to be part of his people. We start out accepted by God. I’m not sure about Orthodoxy, but almost all Western Christians believe that all infants and children are accepted. This is explicit in baptism, where’s God’s claim on us is made visible.
The Call of God is to the prodigal, not to the other Son... In Orthodoxy, we baptize infants into Christ and rear them as servants of God...
* We are expected to respond to this call, and will be held accountable for our response. This doesn’t mean that if we don’t meet some moral standard God rejects us. You can hold someone accountable without rejecting them.
* I do think some people are fundamentally opposed to God. It’s not that God is checking off good deeds and bad deeds and counting which predominate. But some people don’t accept his standards, and don’t care how they treat others and how they relate to God. Those people are in danger of being condemned in God’s judgement. This is often characterized as unrepentant sin.
Yes, there is Good AND evil in the world...
I don’t want to turn repentance into another legalistic system. If God is sitting there with a list of everything we’ve ever done wrong and checking off whether we’ve repented of each one, we’re in trouble.
It is profoundly a God-quest of Love and courage and truth at any cost whatsoever... It is a journey of healing for the prodigal soul returning to his or her home and source and father, the profound cleansing of the heart from any evil that might (and will) be found lurking therein, with no regard to self, in service to God and God's Love for all mankind, to become one with God in Spirit and in Truth... This is what the discipling of the Church does for man... It is what gave Christians the power to overcome the world...
* But at least among Christians, that should be rare. Short of this kind of fundamental opposition to God, we are forgiven, and when we disobey we are disobedient children, not strangers.
If you look at Jesus’ teaching on judgement, where he talks about people being rejected it’s people who have spend their lives abusing others or those who reject him and what he teaches.
Those latter do not do well in eternity... They have signed their own tickets to the quality of resurrected life they will find there by way of the manner of life they have lived here on earth... Which is true for all of us, and the greater our Gifts, the greater the judgement...
What man DOES with whatever he finds himself able to do here on earth matters to God... Man has the power to turn toward evil and to turn toward Good... The results of that turning are in God's Holy Hands... But the turning itself is for us to embrace or or reject... And the God-Quest is simultaneously a reality-quest... One divinized human soul is worth more that the whole of fallen creation...
Arsenios
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