Our sin nature

What are you trying to say? That Jesus was not a man? Or that he didn't have a sin nature? Or Both? You're not going to start mentioning diads or monads or Aeons or other such things are you? How about prospon? Just curious.

 

Here lies the issue. Protestants have this impression that when we are born we inherit the guilt of Adam. Per Genesis, what we inherit is death.

This has always been a stumbling block, due in large part of Augustine’s theology of Original Sin. Since the major Reformers were Catholic monks it would make sense that these errors transferred.

Per Catholic theology for instants, how was Jesus born, inheriting Adam’s guilt, but remained sinless? We’ll, we see the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, meaning God preserved Mary from Original Sin, and thus Jesus wasn’t tainted by Original Sin.

For the Protestants, we have numerous theories, which spare Christ this Original Sin. Christ became Divine after His birth. An egg of Mary was never used to being with; these two are popular in certain Protestant circles.

Per Orthodox theology, we are guilty of our own sin, not Adam’s sin, there is no Original Sin. When I was born I inherited a physical Death, but since we were born into a fallen world, my human nature has a tendency to submit to this fallen world and eventually I will sin and will need salvation.

Christ on the other hand was conceived fully God and fully man. Christ experienced all that we humans would experience. He hungered, thirsted, felt emotions, was tempted and He died a physical death. Christ remained sinless, because unlike us, He had a Divine Nature and His Human Nature submitted perfectly with His Divine Nature.

In XC
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I'm not Roman Catholic, I'm Orthodox Christian...Mary had a sin nature...re-read my post.

In XC
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You also believe in dormition is that right? Also, off point, Orthodox I have spoken to speak about bodies not becoming corrupt in death for the holy. One guy even told me a particular priest smelled like roses in his death. Do you believe this as well?

 

So, golfjack are you going to start mentioning the things I mentioned above? I am curiouis because I don't know what you believe with regards to the incarnation. And Angus Dei is correct about protestants holding to Augustinian thought with regard to sin nature which also makes an interesting thought with regards to substitutionary attonement.

 

Yes, Dormition simply means to fall asleep in a biblical sense or in laymen terms...to die.

I have no reason not to, it's well documented. But, I don't lose sleep over dwelling about it.

In XC
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So do you believe in the two natures of Christ? Total Divine totally Man? Do you believe Jesus was homoosious with the Father? (of the same substance?)

 

Yes but the second part of that believe is that Mary was raised from the dead and was assumed into heaven already receiving the promise of the second resurection? is that right?

And if I were to go to that priest sarcophagus I would smell roses and he would not have degenerated from the time of his death?

 

Yes...and guilt, according to Romans...

Rom 5:19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Note that this is in the passive tense: we did not have to contribute to our guilt; we were "made" sinners through Adam.

Once again, picking and choosing the Church fathers you wish to follow, and the traditions you want to adhere: oh, wait, you didn't choose it: your ecclesiastical "masters" chose them for you.

God said He would visit the iniquity of the father: not the mother. Jesus' father was sinless (obviously). Also, God can do whatever He wants. The Bible calls Jesus the "second Adam", meaning God made him from nothing (only Jesus and Adam were made "from nothing". Every other person ever born, including Eve, was made from the existing DNA/flesh of an existing person). Mary was just a vessel.

In fact, we know this is true scientifically. Babies in the womb are protected from all kinds of diseases and contaminants that the mother comes into contact with.

Yeah, we just accept what the scriptures say, and explain possible ways God might have done it. MUCH better than using our "scissors of tradition" to remove inconvenient verses.

You know, this view was condemned by the church, LONG before split between East and West...

Christ was born without a sin nature, unlike us. The Scriptures say that ALL are guilty of the sin of Adam> not just adults.

 

Obviously you know we celebrate in the Orthodox Church the Feast of the Dormition or the falling asleep of Mary...that's it, there is no second part of the Feast. It's believed by the Church as a "legend" or "story" that once Mary died (fell asleep "Dormition") the Apostles were gathered together to pay their respects, all but one made it...I believe it was St. Thomas that didn't make it in time. Once St. Thomas made it, he went to pay his respects and her body was gone...that's it. It's not dogma that Mary was assumed into heaven, but yes, the Church generally believes she was, but its not celebrated as a Feast.

I'm not familiar the priest sarcophagus, but there's one way to find out...make a trip out and see for yourself.

In XC
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Jesus was not God in merely a human body; he added full humanity to his deity.

It is a mystery as to how Jesus was fully human but did not have a sin nature, but that is why it's a mystery. Attempts to explain it do violence to the text of the Bible and one ends up denying or undermining his full humanity or his birth from Mary (using her eggs, yes). He was called the Son of David and he is/came from the "seed" of woman, as prophesied in Gen. 3.

 

How about get off the Protestant kick. The Reformers (former Catholics), and then Protestants came along in the 16th Century. There were Christians before then--not Catholics, and not Orhodox. BTW to which of the Reformers do you attribute Baptists to: Calvin, Knox, Luther, etc.? None of the above. They were before the Reformers and fall outside the realm of so-called "Protestantism."
Nevertheless, you believe in a heresy that far pre-dates Augustine--the heresy of Pelaginiasm:
Man is a sinner because he sins; not because he is a sinner; and that is heresy. It is not the "orthodox" teaching of the Bible and never was. Scripture plainly teaches against it--Genesis 3:15; Romans 5:12; 5:19, etc. There are many Scriptures that teach that man inherits a sin nature. But if you prefer to believe tradition over the Bible that is your choice.

This has nothing to do with Augustine. That is an untruth you seem to delight in spreading. Bible-believing Christians pre-dating Augustine believed in the inherited sin nature of man long before Augustine wrote about it. Perhaps Augustine plagiarized, and didn't give credit to where credit is due--the Bible.

Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and thus did not inherit man's sin nature. The doctrine of the immaculate conception is a man-made doctrine--extra-biblical, and quite frankly not worth a garbage can to put into.

Christ always was deity, is deity, always will be deity, never, never, not even for one nanosecond of his life gave up his deity. To say otherwise is heresy. He did not become divine; he was divine; always was divine; never gave up his divinity. The sin nature comes through the seed of a man. Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, thus avoiding the sin nature.

Here is your espousal of Pelagian heresy again. The Unitarians love it. Even Charles Finney preached it. But it is heresy. It is true that we sin and are responsible for that sin. It is true that we sin because we want to sin. But it is also true that we sin because we have a sin nature. You cannot deny that fact. Finney did. That led him to the belief of entire sanctification, and a possibility of a community of sanctified (sinless) believers on earth (in his time). A heaven on earth so to speak. Of course it was impossible for we are all sinners with a sin nature--inherited; born that way.
You inherited a physical death because of the sin nature you inherited. It is the sin that causes death. It is the sin that works death in you. Your body will deterioriate and eventually die--all because of sin. Infants have a sin nature--they have it the day that they are conceived in their mother's womb.

He always was divine or deity. And from the moment he entered this earth he was human--without sin. He was totally man and totally God--the God-man.

 

Pelagius is regarded as a heretic in the East (as is the case in the West). He elevated the human will at the expense of divine grace. The problem—to the Orthodox perspective that is—is that both Pelagius and Augustine set the categories in the extreme—freedom of the will with nothing left for God versus complete sovereignty of God, with nothing left to human will. The Fathers argued instead for “synergy,” a mystery of God’s grace being given with the cooperation of the human heart.

In XC
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Of course, this is refuted by the writings of the apostle Paul, where he explicitly states God has mercy on whom He chooses, and chooses before the babies have even been conceived; how the "human will" fits into that, would indeed be a mystery!

 

You deny that man has an iinherited sin nature and you are denying the grace of God. What is a person saved from. One sin? Two sins? Three? How many? Just each one you repent of? What if you forget one? That one that you forgot; will it condemn you to Hell forever?

What's the difference (if you don't believe in a sin nature) between salvation and reformation? There is none. You just correct your wrong and move on. Why even have God in the picture in the first place. You are inherently good anyway--no sin nature.
It really doesn't matter what the Bible says:

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

But you only have a deceitfuly heart if you deliberately deceive. Is that right? Because you don't have an inherited sin nature.

 

Here's some of my old notes from Catechesis Class concerning what the Orthodox Church believes concerning sin in regard to Adam and Eve and our humanity...enjoy...

The Early Fathers of the Church have always used the term: Ancestral sin which has a specific meaning. The Greek word for sin in this case, amartema, refers to an individual act indicating that the Eastern Fathers assigned full responsibility for the sin in the Garden to Adam and Eve alone. The word amartia, the more familiar term for sin which literally means “missing the mark”, is used to refer to the condition common to all humanity.

The Eastern Church, unlike its Western counterpart, never speaks of guilt being passed from Adam and Eve to their progeny, as did the Western father Augustine. Instead, it is posited that each person bears the guilt of his or her own sin. The question becomes, “What then is the inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt?” The Orthodox Fathers answer as one: death. (I Corinthians 15:21). Our nature, teaches Cyril of Alexandria, became “diseased…through the sin of one” (Migne, 1857-1866a). It is not guilt that is passed on, for the Orthodox fathers; it is a condition, it is a disease.

In Orthodox thought Adam and Eve were created with a vocation: to become one with God gradually increasing in their capacity to share in His divine life—deification. Theophilus of Antioch (2nd Century) posits that Adam and Eve were created neither immortal nor mortal. They were created with the potential to become either through obedience or disobedience.

The freedom to obey or disobey belonged to our first parents. To embrace their God-given vocation would bring life, to reject it would bring death. Adam and Eve failed to obey the commandment not to eat from the forbidden tree thus rejecting God and their vocation to manifest the fullness of human existence. Death and corruption began to reign over the creation. “Sin reigned through death.” (Romans 5:21) In this view death and corruption do not originate with God; he neither created nor intended them. God cannot be the Author of evil. Death is the natural result of turning aside from God.

Adam and Eve were overcome with the same temptation that afflicts all humanity: to be autonomous, to go their own way, to realize the fullness of human existence without God. According to the Orthodox fathers, sin is not a violation of an impersonal law or code of behavior, but a rejection of the life offered by God. This is the mark, to which the word amartia refers. Fallen human life is above all else the failure to realize the God-given potential of human existence, which is, as St. Peter writes, to “become partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). St. Basil writes: “Humanity is an animal who has received the vocation to become God” (Clement, 1993, p. 76).

In Orthodox thought God did not threaten Adam and Eve with punishment nor was He angered or offended by their sin; He was moved to compassion. The expulsion from the Garden and from the Tree of Life was an act of love and not vengeance so that humanity would not become immortal in sin. Thus began the preparation for the Incarnation of the Son of God and the solution that alone could rectify the situation: the destruction of the enemies of humanity and God, death (I Corinthians 15:26, 56), sin, corruption and the devil.

It is important to note that salvation as deification is not pantheism because the Orthodox Fathers insist on the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Human beings, along with all created things, have come into being from nothing. Created beings will always remain created and God will always remain Uncreated. The Son of God in the Incarnation crossed the unbridgeable chasm between them. Orthodox hymnography frequently speaks of the paradox of the Uncreated and created uniting without mixture or confusion in the wondrous hypostatic union. The Nativity of Christ, for example, is interpreted as “a secret re-creation, by which human nature was assumed and restored to its original state” (Clement, 1993, p. 41). God and human nature, separated by the Fall, are reunited in the Person of the Incarnate Christ and redeemed through His victory on the Cross and in the Resurrection by which death is destroyed (I Corinthians 15:54-55). In this way the Second Adam fulfills the original vocation and reverses the tragedy of the fallen First Adam opening the way of salvation for all.

The Fall could not destroy the image of God; the great gift given to humanity remained intact, but damaged. While the work of salvation was accomplished by God through Jesus Christ the removal of the debris that hides the image in us calls for free and voluntary cooperation. St. Paul uses the word synergy, or “co-workers”, (I Corinthians 3:9) to describe the cooperation between Divine Grace and human freedom. For the Orthodox Fathers this means asceticism (prayer, fasting, charity and keeping vigil) relating to St. Paul’s image of the spiritual athlete (I Corinthians 9:24-27). This is the working out of salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). Salvation is a process involving faith, freedom and personal effort to fulfill the commandment of Christ to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

The great Orthodox hymn of Holy Pascha (Easter) captures in a few words the essence of the Orthodox understanding of the Atonement: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs bestowing life” (The Liturgikon, Paschal services, 1989). Because of the victory of Christ on the Cross and in the Tomb humanity has been set free, the curse of the law has been broken, death is slain, life has dawned for all. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 662) writes that “Christ’s death on the Cross is the judgment of judgment” (Clement, 1993, p. 49) and because of this we can rejoice in the conclusion stated so beautifully by Olivier Clement: “In the crucified Christ forgiveness is offered and life is given. For humanity it is no longer a matter of fearing judgment or of meriting salvation, but of welcoming love in trust and humility” (Clement, 1993, p. 49).

In XC
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