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Ain't Zwinglian

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Gustav Aulen, though admittedly probably somewhat controversial, nevertheless was a Lutheran who was interested in bringing the language of ransom and recapitulation back into Western theological discourse, with his work Christus Victor.
Preaching a funeral sermon for departed saint with the NT vicarious satisfaction motif is simply unproductive. Normally, the Christus Victor motif of the atonement is used.... as it should be. Preaching the vicarious satisfaction motif at a funeral is for living. The dead is Christ have no need for the forgiveness of sins, as Christ's work has already done it's work.

Of the three major motifs of the Atonement (Christus Victor, Vicarious Satisfaction, and Mystical Union), Lutherans tend to say...the Atonement is Christus Victor and Mystical Union but mainly Vicarious Satisfaction. Whereas, some of my Orthodox friends would say....the Atonement is vicarious satisfaction but is mainly Christus Victor and Mystical Union. This places me at odds with some of the Orthodox ... as V.S. is overwhelming clear and by sheer weight of the evidence from Scripture pummels CV and MU.
 
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ViaCrucis

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Preaching a funeral sermon for departed saint with the NT vicarious satisfaction motif is simply unproductive. Normally, the Christus Victor motif of the atonement is used.... as it should be. Preaching the vicarious satisfaction motif at a funeral is for living. The dead is Christ have no need for the forgiveness of sins, as Christ's work has already done it's work.

Of the three major motifs of the Atonement (Christus Victor, Vicarious Satisfaction, and Mystical Union), Lutherans tend to say...the Atonement is Christus Victor and Mystical Union but mainly Vicarious Satisfaction. Whereas, some of my Orthodox friends would say....the Atonement is vicarious satisfaction but is mainly Christus Victor and Mystical Union. This places me at odds with some of the Orthodox ... as V.S. is overwhelming clear and by sheer weight of the evidence from Scripture pummels CV and MU.

And the case is true that, when we look at Luther's own writings, we see all of these motifs.

The Atonement is multi-faceted. Christ took our place in death, He made satisfaction where we could not, and He has defeated the powers and principalities, He has defeated sin, death, hell, and the devil and delivered us from captivity to freedom as children of God. By our union to Him, to His death and to His resurrection, we have adoption as sons, share in the life of God, are brought into the intimate life of the Holy Trinity--the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Justice is accounted, wrath is meted, forgiveness is secured, justification is declared, the ransom is paid, the captives are freed, the devil is defeated, death is slain, hell is overcome, new creation has come bursting forth out of the grave and there is no power, spiritual or temporal, that can stop it--God has won the day, He will set all things to rights, and His everlasting faithfulness to creation, to all His people, is true and invincible: All shall be as it should, according to the glorious goodness of God who made all things, who renews, heals, and restores all that is broken and dead.

God is good. Truth, beauty, love, freedom; all the good things that flow and come from the Creator are really real. They last, death shall cease, life is everlasting; things are ugly now; but God bears our ugliness, bears all the ugliness of this world, and makes out of the ugliness beauty; out of death life, out of sorrow rejoicing. The people of God shall laugh and dance and rejoice, even though we behold a tomb, the tombstone is rolled away, Christ is risen, Alleluia! Death is dead, hell is embittered, the devil is shackled, sin is forgiven. This is the Jubilee of our God, debts are erased, slaves are released, prisoners set free.

Because there was an ugly Friday afternoon, and a glorious Sunday morning. The Sabbath is forever, in the Messiah; the new day has dawned, there is new creation.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Clare73

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This is a dumbed-down and flawed understanding of justice.
It is the divine principle of justice.

(Divine) justice is plain and simple; i.e., giving everyone his due, what he has earned, what he is owed.
Justice is also forgiveness of sins.
Only when its penalty is paid is justice forgiveness of sin
That is why St. Paul says that God's justice is revealed in the Gospel. This is not the justice by which God punishes sins,
but the justice by which He justifies sinners.
Justice (giving everyone his due) and justifies (justification, i.e., declaration of not guilty because of faith) are not the same thing.

Justice = giving everyone his due, what he is owed, what he as earned

Justification = declaration of not guilty, sentence of acquittal because of saving faith.
 
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Clare73

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This is a dumbed-down and flawed understanding of justice.
Which can probably be said about the statement of all principles.

The statement is the divine principle of justice.

(Divine) justice is plain and simple; i.e., going everyone his due, what he is owed, what he has earned.
Justice is also forgiveness of sins.
Only when the penalty is paid is it justice to forgive sin.
That is why St. Paul says that God's justice is revealed in the Gospel. This is not the justice by which God punishes sins,
but the justice by which He justifies sinners.
Justice (giving everyone his due) and justfies (justification - declaration of not guilty because of faith) are not the same thing.
The problem, here, is that the idea of atonement has never meant the cross to the exclusion of everything else.
Scripture?

Keeping in mind that the OT sacrifices were the patterrn/type for atonement, (Lev 17:11), to the exclusion of everything else.

The cross is the crown jewel of the atonement, but Christians have always understood that the saving, redeeming, and reconciling work of God through Jesus is the entirety of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.
What Scripture actually states is the authority for truth.
 
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ViaCrucis

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It is the divine principle of justice.

(Divine) justice is plain and simple; i.e., giving everyone his due, what he has earned, what he is owed.

Only when its penalty is paid is justice forgiveness of sin

Justice (giving everyone his due) and justifies (justification, i.e., declaration of not guilty because of faith) are not the same thing.

Justice = giving everyone his due, what he is owed, what he as earned

Justification = declaration of not guilty, sentence of acquittal because of saving faith.

There is a man on the street corner who has no food, he hasn't eaten in three days. You give him food. Is that just?

In English justice and righteousness is the difference between Anglo-Saxon and Latin. In the Bible they are the same thing.

Replace "justice" with "righteousness", replace "just" with "right", replace "justified" with "set right". And you will properly understand what justice means.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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ViaCrucis

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Scripture?

Jesus "was delivered up for our trespasses, and raised up for our justification" -Romans 4:25

"Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment, so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him." - Hebrews 9:28

"But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord, half of my possessions I give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will repay fourfold.' Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.'" - Luke 19:9

Apart from the cross? No.

But these things are all true: Jesus was raised up for our justification, when Christ returns He brings salvation to those who eagerly await Him, and when He comes and dines with tax collectors and prostitutes, and their lives are transformed and forever changed, salvation has come to them--these are true children of Abraham who do not merely call Abraham their father, but whose father is truly Abraham because of faith.

Again, the Cross is the crown jewel; but it's the entire Person, the entire Work, of Jesus that is salvation. God became man, that means Adam--and all his progeny--now have God counted as one of them; and this Man, this Second Adam, undoes the disaster the first Adam brought and also takes hold of humanity and brings it into peace with God--through His life, His obedience, His suffering, His death, His resurrection. There is a Man seated on the Throne, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of Man--the Son of God. This is all 100% biblical language here.

We can't just take a pair of scissors, cut out a handful of proof texts, and then paste them around in different ways and then say, "Ah! I have a biblical theology now". The Bible doesn't work like that.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Ain't Zwinglian

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And the case is true that, when we look at Luther's own writings, we see all of these motifs.

The Atonement is multi-faceted. Christ took our place in death, He made satisfaction where we could not, and He has defeated the powers and principalities, He has defeated sin, death, hell, and the devil and delivered us from captivity to freedom as children of God. By our union to Him, to His death and to His resurrection, we have adoption as sons, share in the life of God, are brought into the intimate life of the Holy Trinity--the love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Justice is accounted, wrath is meted, forgiveness is secured, justification is declared, the ransom is paid, the captives are freed, the devil is defeated, death is slain, hell is overcome, new creation has come bursting forth out of the grave and there is no power, spiritual or temporal, that can stop it--God has won the day, He will set all things to rights, and His everlasting faithfulness to creation, to all His people, is true and invincible: All shall be as it should, according to the glorious goodness of God who made all things, who renews, heals, and restores all that is broken and dead.

God is good. Truth, beauty, love, freedom; all the good things that flow and come from the Creator are really real. They last, death shall cease, life is everlasting; things are ugly now; but God bears our ugliness, bears all the ugliness of this world, and makes out of the ugliness beauty; out of death life, out of sorrow rejoicing. The people of God shall laugh and dance and rejoice, even though we behold a tomb, the tombstone is rolled away, Christ is risen, Alleluia! Death is dead, hell is embittered, the devil is shackled, sin is forgiven. This is the Jubilee of our God, debts are erased, slaves are released, prisoners set free.

Because there was an ugly Friday afternoon, and a glorious Sunday morning. The Sabbath is forever, in the Messiah; the new day has dawned, there is new creation.

-CryptoLutheran
If I could write like this....just beautiful.
 
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Clare73

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We do not deny this statement, but the idea that there existed discord between the Father and the Son concerning our status
Ya' lost me there. . .
is unacceptable as it presupposes a lack of concord between the divine wills of the three prosopa of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.
It turns the Holy and Undivided Trinity into a divided one, contradicts John 1 and John 10, and is, I would argue, an expression that can lead to people believing that Jesus Christ is a lesser entity than the Father, rather than a coequal person of the Trinity who is Himself fully God.
If you say Jesus Christ saved us from the wrath of God, you have literally said “God saved us from the wrath of God.”
Indeed!!!

God himself provided the remedy to satisfy his own justice, because we could not!

Kinda' like paying your bankrupt son's fine down at the Courthouse to keep him out of jail.

What great mercy!!!
It reflects a misunderstanding of what the nature of the wrath of God is and a rejection of the statements in Scripture that God is Love.
Is God not all his attributes, of which justice is just one?

Which is why his only Son had to die, because no other imperfect human could qualify as the sacrifice
to save us from God's wrath (Ro 5:9) on sin.

Keeping in mind, the OT blood sacrifices for atonement (Lev 17:11) were not just window dressing.
They were a forth-telling (pattern) of the true sacrifice to come which would actually pay for sin.
The theology of the early Church is that divine wrath is the experience of the consuming fire of divine love by someone who rejects that love and sets themselves into opposition with God, and therefore they experience His love as a torment.
I have no problem with Scripture's presentation of blood sacrifice (Lev 17:11, Ro 3:25) as the atonement for sin.
 
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Clare73

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Jesus "was delivered up for our trespasses, and raised up for our justification" -Romans 4:25
"Delivered up" was the cross for atonement of our sin.

The resurrection was for justification, not atonement.
"Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment, so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him." - Hebrews 9:28
"But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, 'Look, Lord, half of my possessions I give to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will repay fourfold.' Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.'" - Luke 19:9
Apart from the cross? No.
Salvation by the cross is from the wrath of God (Ro 5:9) on our sin, through faith
But these things are all true: Jesus was raised up for our justification,
Was crucified as our atonement (payment) for sin,
was raised up (resurrection) for our justification (declaration of not guilty, sentence of acquittal)
when Christ returns He brings salvation to those who eagerly await Him,
Salvation is used more than one way in the NT:
material and temporal deliverance (Ac 27:34, Php 1:9, Heb 11:7),
spiritual and eternal deliverance (Ac 4:12, Ro 10:10),
from bondage to sin (Php 2:12),
at the second coming (Ro 13:11, 1 Th 5:8-9),
etc, etc., etc.

and when He comes and dines with tax collectors and prostitutes, and their lives are transformed and forever changed, salvation has come to them--these are true children of Abraham who do not merely call Abraham their father, but whose father is truly Abraham because of faith.
Again, the Cross is the crown jewel; but it's the entire Person, the entire Work, of Jesus that is salvation.
Salvation, in terms of spiritual and eternal deliverance, is from the wrath of God (Ro 5:9) on sin at the Judgment, procured by the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
 
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The Liturgist

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Indeed!!!

God himself provided the remedy to satisfy his own justice, because we could not!

Kinda' like paying your bankrupt son's fine down at the Courthouse to keep him out of jail.

What great mercy!!!

Except that’s inaccurate. God saved us from the self-imposed consequences of our sin, which alienates us from Him, which is not His will. Since God is love, His wrath is the experience of His love by those people who do not love Him, and are thus hurt by his love. When someone loves us, and we cannot accept that love, that hurts us, and God loves us infinitely, which becomes a problem for those of us who are not prepared to accept His love. Although even here He is merciful - the Orthodox believe the Outer Darkness is a mercy, since forcing anyone who does not repent to live in close proximity to God would be a horrible torment. The torment of those in the Outer Darkness is the realization of what they are missing out on, but the tragedy is that anyone who is still in opposition to God by that point will not change - as CS Lewis wrote, “the gates of Hell are locked on the inside.”

All actions of God are done with love towards us in mind.

Ya' lost me there. . .

I don’t see what’s so hard to understand. There is no discord between the Father and the Son, no lack of unity of purpose or intention. It is not a question of obedience, although this exists, but rather of alignment of intent. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are coequal and coeternal.
 
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Clare73

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It is not just one action, but steps you go through, which means it is a process one of those steps is the atonement sacrifice be offered up
Totally irrelevant to atonement.
Lev. 5 has a bag of flour can be used.
If he could not afford two doves or two young pigeons, which flour was then offered on top of the blood offerings (Lev 5:12).
The blood is needed to cleanse everything before hand and can be part of the atonement sacrifice.
 
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timothyu

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Infants are faithless...therefore they clearly transgress the First Commandment. This is real sin. All of Adams descendants lack his original righteousness, and born in sin infants like heathen adults...
Which they would have been even had Eve and Adam not disobeyed God. Neither Adam or Eve were born as infants and they knew God from their beginnings. Not so their children. They were taught, but prior to that point of teaching, their instincts for survival had already kicked in and made them selfish, thus putting their will ahead of the will of God. Natural born sinners unlike their parents who knowingly put their will ahead of God's and created original sin in doing so. For their descendants that original sin comes naturally by birth and teaching does not help any longer as it becomes a life of discernments to find God's truth amongst the garbage that man calls good. See how garbled that all sounds?
 
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Clare73

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In the sense that each and every one of us is under wrath because of our sin; since God is good and holy. Jesus doesn't save us from God;
Are you denying God's justice; i.e., giving everyone what he has earned, his due, what he is owed?

Jesus saves us from God's justice/wrath (Ro 5:29), which justice necessarily required payment for sin,
the same God who sentences to eternal damnation all who do not believe in his Son and his atoning work for their redemption from damnation.
but does make satisfaction of the Law by His obedience to the Law.
Are you denying Jesus' atonement for sin (Ro 3:25), made effective to one through faith in him (Eph 2:8-9)?
 
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bling

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God is offering His free gift of Eternal Life to anyone who will believe in Jesus, it is that simple. The problem is many know or have read this in The Bible, but they do not believe this.

And knowing is not believing.
I know it is stated that man has been to the moon by the government, scientist, television, nasa, etc.. but i do not believe this.
I agree that believing in Jesus is the big issue, but it is not because they know Jesus exists. We cannot wait until we have knowledge, since faith is the requirement. I am saying it is faith in the Love of God and Christ to believe They will forgive them.
 
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d taylor

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I agree that believing in Jesus is the big issue, but it is not because they know Jesus exists. We cannot wait until we have knowledge, since faith is the requirement. I am saying it is faith in the Love of God and Christ to believe They will forgive them.
-
I did not say, believing that Jesus exist, is what believing in Jesus means
-----------------.
Believing in Jesus, means Jesus is who He says He is. The Son of God/The Messiah, the resurrection and the life and that because Jesus is The Son of God. the resurrection and the life and no one else is.
A person must believe in Jesus the resurrection and life if they want Eternal Life.


Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”


No where in The Bible does it say a person receives God's free gift of Eternal Life salvation. Because they believe Jesus exist or was a real person.
 
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ViaCrucis

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Are you denying Jesus' atonement for sin (Ro 3:25),

Obviously not.

made effective to one through faith in him (Eph 2:8-9)?

That expression is foreign to me. My faith doesn't make Christ's atonement effective; Christ suffered and died, the just for the unjust. That happened. Period. Full Stop.

Faith receives the already efficacious and finished work. The Cross stands where it stands, the One who bled and died for every single sinner, without exception.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Valletta

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Not sufficiently, which is why your church felt the need to develop the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which would be superfluous from an Orthodox perspective, since it is not the process of conception that causes one to inherit the sinful condition. We are conceived in sin, but are not corrupted by original sin as a result of our conception, but rather because the condition of hereditary sin applies in general and would be unavoidable.

Furthermore, the idea that all conceptions except for that of the Theotokos are unclean contradicts the Scriptural statement that the marriage bed is undefiled. Conception, whether due to concupiscence or some other aspect of human reproduction, is not the means by which we inherit original sin.

Thus the Orthodox believe the Theotokos was conceived in the same way as everyone else, which furthermore protects the full humanity of Jesus Christ - she also required salvation from her Son, just like everyone else, despite not, according to our faith, ever having committed an intentional act of sin (or having sinned through negligence or omission), but rather, she was saved by her Son, because of original sin.

Indeed, that she was taken up to heaven bodily at the Dormition (called the Assumption by the Oriental Orthodox) and there revived after her death (which she would not have experienced had she not been born into original sin) contradicts the Immaculate Conception.

The problem with the Immaculate Conception dogma is that it has caused some Catholics to deny that the Theotokos died at the incarnation (and the dogmatic definition of Pope Pius XII on the issue did not bring clarity to the issue, but rather seems to have been written to accomodate both views), and this in turn has led to groups like the Fifth Dogma people who advocate for the Theotokos to be declared “Co-Redemptrix” which would be an extreme and intolerable soteriological, Mariological, Christological and eschatological error (fortunately, they are a minority, and their case is not helped by the fact that it is connected to the spurious apparitions seen by Ida Peerdeman, which were deemed by the CDF to be unworthy of belief, in which Ida Peerdeman was visited by “The Lady who was once Mary”, a title used by no apparition of the Theotokos regarded as genuine by the CDF, and who behaved in a threatening manner which is behavior unrecorded in the Bible and accepted Hagiopgraphic material and hymnody of the ancient church, and can thus be regarded as behavior not expected from Our Glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, who lovingly points us to her Son our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and therefore despite some efforts at promoting it by a recent Archbishop of Amsterdam in a dangerous attempt to promote his local church without considering adverse theological implications, is not widely accepted), however, all of this aside, it is worth nothing that there would be no “Fifth Dogma” initiative if it had not been for the Immaculate Conception, which in turn would not have been an issue had it not been for Vatican I and Papal Infallibility.

I would also note that insofar as it apparently took a dogmatic definition from Pope Pius XII to make the Assumption official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, the RCC does not appear to follow the principle of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, considering that the Assumption had been celebrated liturgically since antiquity and was regarded as dogma in the Orthodox church since antiquity.

Nothing celebrated in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox churches lacks dogmatic or doctrinal standing - indeed, those parts of scripture read liturgically are regarded as more important than those which aren’t, and the more frequently something is read, or the more prominent its use, the more important it is (thus the seven Resurrection Gospels read at Matins, the Beatitudes, and certain Psalms such as 102, 103, 106, 94, and 95 (LXX) are among the most important liturgical texts for us, and John 1:1-14, which is read at the end of the Divine Liturgy in the Armenian Apostolic Church, is one of the most important liturgical texts for them (this was a Latinization, but a good one; I think one of the worst changes in the Novus Ordo Missae was deleting the Last Gospel, and I strongly advocate for its use in all Western Rite churches during all Solemn Masses with a deacon; likewise most of the Western Rite Orthodox use it).

Furthermore, while the Roman Catholic Church heavily edited the liturgies of the Sui Juris churches that were set up to compete with the Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East such as the Coptic Catholics, Syriac Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, Syro-Malabar Catholics, Malankara Catholics and Ethiopian Catholics under the assumption, later shown to be inaccurate by Pope Benedict XVI during his tenure, that those churches were heretical, in the case of the Greek Catholics, the Byzantine Rite Catholics, while some Latinization did occur, it was less severe and less pervasive than in most other Eastern Catholic churches. This has led to some contradictions - for example, the Eastern Catholics celebrate the second Sunday of Lent as the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, who is not venerated in the Western church and who taught things which contradicted Thomas Aquinas. Additionally most Eastern Catholic Churches do not use the filioque, although this is less of a contradiction than it might seem - Rome did declare that the filioque would be misleading if expressed in Greek, and while the vast majority of Greek Catholics are not Greek (indeed the Byzantine Catholic Church in Greece has just four parishes and 6,000 members and is smaller than even the Russian Greek Catholic Church (which has 13 parishes in Russia in addition to some abroad, for example, there is one in Los Angeles), it seems reasonable that since so much Greek theology is preserved in the Greek Catholic / Byzantine Rite churches, that to introduce the filioque would cause confusion therein.
You have some misconceptions. Rather than "develop" dogma, some truths as are not as timely "revealed" in their entirety to the Church as others. As to the Assumption becoming dogma it was indeed the principle that the Church as a whole (the bishops were polled and just a tiny number disagreed, as I recall it was in the single digits) believed in the Assumption that the pope declared it as dogma.
 
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fhansen

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You have some misconceptions. Rather than "develop" dogma, some truths as are not as timely "revealed" in their entirety to the Church as others. As to the Assumption becoming dogma it was indeed the principle that the Church as a whole (the bishops were polled and just a tiny number disagreed, as I recall it was in the single digits) believed in the Assumption that the pope declared it as dogma.
Or maybe not misconceptions so much as assumptions.

forgive me...
 
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fhansen

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Not sufficiently, which is why your church felt the need to develop the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which would be superfluous from an Orthodox perspective, since it is not the process of conception that causes one to inherit the sinful condition. We are conceived in sin, but are not corrupted by original sin as a result of our conception, but rather because the condition of hereditary sin applies in general and would be unavoidable.

Furthermore, the idea that all conceptions except for that of the Theotokos are unclean contradicts the Scriptural statement that the marriage bed is undefiled. Conception, whether due to concupiscence or some other aspect of human reproduction, is not the means by which we inherit original sin.

Thus the Orthodox believe the Theotokos was conceived in the same way as everyone else, which furthermore protects the full humanity of Jesus Christ - she also required salvation from her Son, just like everyone else, despite not, according to our faith, ever having committed an intentional act of sin (or having sinned through negligence or omission), but rather, she was saved by her Son, because of original sin.

Indeed, that she was taken up to heaven bodily at the Dormition (called the Assumption by the Oriental Orthodox) and there revived after her death (which she would not have experienced had she not been born into original sin) contradicts the Immaculate Conception.

The problem with the Immaculate Conception dogma is that it has caused some Catholics to deny that the Theotokos died at the incarnation (and the dogmatic definition of Pope Pius XII on the issue did not bring clarity to the issue, but rather seems to have been written to accomodate both views), and this in turn has led to groups like the Fifth Dogma people who advocate for the Theotokos to be declared “Co-Redemptrix” which would be an extreme and intolerable soteriological, Mariological, Christological and eschatological error (fortunately, they are a minority, and their case is not helped by the fact that it is connected to the spurious apparitions seen by Ida Peerdeman, which were deemed by the CDF to be unworthy of belief, in which Ida Peerdeman was visited by “The Lady who was once Mary”, a title used by no apparition of the Theotokos regarded as genuine by the CDF, and who behaved in a threatening manner which is behavior unrecorded in the Bible and accepted Hagiopgraphic material and hymnody of the ancient church, and can thus be regarded as behavior not expected from Our Glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, who lovingly points us to her Son our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and therefore despite some efforts at promoting it by a recent Archbishop of Amsterdam in a dangerous attempt to promote his local church without considering adverse theological implications, is not widely accepted), however, all of this aside, it is worth nothing that there would be no “Fifth Dogma” initiative if it had not been for the Immaculate Conception, which in turn would not have been an issue had it not been for Vatican I and Papal Infallibility.

I would also note that insofar as it apparently took a dogmatic definition from Pope Pius XII to make the Assumption official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, the RCC does not appear to follow the principle of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, considering that the Assumption had been celebrated liturgically since antiquity and was regarded as dogma in the Orthodox church since antiquity.

Nothing celebrated in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox churches lacks dogmatic or doctrinal standing - indeed, those parts of scripture read liturgically are regarded as more important than those which aren’t, and the more frequently something is read, or the more prominent its use, the more important it is (thus the seven Resurrection Gospels read at Matins, the Beatitudes, and certain Psalms such as 102, 103, 106, 94, and 95 (LXX) are among the most important liturgical texts for us, and John 1:1-14, which is read at the end of the Divine Liturgy in the Armenian Apostolic Church, is one of the most important liturgical texts for them (this was a Latinization, but a good one; I think one of the worst changes in the Novus Ordo Missae was deleting the Last Gospel, and I strongly advocate for its use in all Western Rite churches during all Solemn Masses with a deacon; likewise most of the Western Rite Orthodox use it).

Furthermore, while the Roman Catholic Church heavily edited the liturgies of the Sui Juris churches that were set up to compete with the Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East such as the Coptic Catholics, Syriac Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, Syro-Malabar Catholics, Malankara Catholics and Ethiopian Catholics under the assumption, later shown to be inaccurate by Pope Benedict XVI during his tenure, that those churches were heretical, in the case of the Greek Catholics, the Byzantine Rite Catholics, while some Latinization did occur, it was less severe and less pervasive than in most other Eastern Catholic churches. This has led to some contradictions - for example, the Eastern Catholics celebrate the second Sunday of Lent as the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, who is not venerated in the Western church and who taught things which contradicted Thomas Aquinas. Additionally most Eastern Catholic Churches do not use the filioque, although this is less of a contradiction than it might seem - Rome did declare that the filioque would be misleading if expressed in Greek, and while the vast majority of Greek Catholics are not Greek (indeed the Byzantine Catholic Church in Greece has just four parishes and 6,000 members and is smaller than even the Russian Greek Catholic Church (which has 13 parishes in Russia in addition to some abroad, for example, there is one in Los Angeles), it seems reasonable that since so much Greek theology is preserved in the Greek Catholic / Byzantine Rite churches, that to introduce the filioque would cause confusion therein.
Well… lots of words, all aimed at denying a very simple truth-that Catholicism rejected Augustine’s idea that original sin was passed down generation to generation due to concupiscence- to lust-being intrinsic to the conjugal act of fallen man. Aquinas acknowledged that propagation was somehow involved in the transmission of OS, since all humans apparently inherit it, but had no commentary on the mechanism itself; this transmission has nothing to do with concupiscence in any case. IOW, “the condition of hereditary sin applies in general and would be unavoidable”.

And, for one, the immaculate conception has nothing to do with concupiscence or sex either, but simply means that Mary was free from original sin from the time of her conception-that freedom is what her “immaculateness” consisted of- and her conception took place in the usual way. In Catholic theology all such justification, whether of OT figures or after, can only happen due to the merits of Christ’s sacrificial act. And the EO, as well, believe that Mary remained sinless so I’m not so sure that making a distinction here points to a truly significant difference. Mary was specially graced, of course, but either way no human can overcome sin if in a state of original sin, which is the unjust state of alienation from God, with a will no longer subject to Him.
 
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