I quoted both Patriarch Dositheus and Metropolitan Kallistos yesterday to point out to my Orthodox brethren that some of them go to the other extreme from Saint Augustine and almost end up claiming that our free will was, at best, barely damaged. But, both an approved Orthodox confession and a current Metropolitan who is a world-renowned Orthodox theologian both state two thing. One, humans still had (and have) free will after the Fall. Two, that free will has some serious damage.
I need to make a couple of notes here. The Orthodox do not believe in the Western statement of original sin. That is, we do not believe in what we call “original guilt.” We do not believe that the result of Adam’s sin is to have us all born already guilty of sin. We do believe in a strong form of what was later called “Federal Theology.” That is, we really are united to Christ and really were/are united to Adam. But, we do not interpret that in such a way that it means that we inherit the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin. Metropolitan Kallistos says:
But although Orthodox maintain that man after the fall still possessed free will and was still capable of good actions, yet they certainly agree with the west in believing that man’s sin had set up between him and God a barrier, which man by his own efforts could never break down. Sin blocked the path to union with God. Since man could not come to God, God came to man.
The Incarnation is an act of God’s philanthropia, of His lovingkindness towards mankind. Many eastern writers, looking at the Incarnation from this point of view, have argued that even if man had never fallen, God in His love for humanity would still have become man: the Incarnation must be seen as part of the eternal purpose of God, and not simply as an answer to the fall. Such was the view of Maximus the Confessor and of Isaac the Syrian; such has also been the view of certain western writers, most notably Duns Scotus (1265-1308).
But because man fell, the Incarnation is not only an act of love but an act of salvation. Jesus Christ, by uniting man and God in His own person, reopened for man the path to union with God. In His own person Christ showed what the true ‘likeness of God’ is, and through His redeeming and victorious sacrifice He set that likeness once again within man’s reach. Christ, the Second Adam, came to earth and reversed the effects of the first Adam’s disobedience.
Though we do not believe that we inherit the guilt of Adam, nevertheless, we agree that we had a major barrier between us and God, so that our free will could not effectively unite us to God.
===MORE TO COME===
You know, the more I read and learn concerning Orthodox theology, the more I see an acceptance of paradox that even exceeds my native Lutheranism.
It is more like an acceptance of sheer unadulterated mystery. GRIN. But, see my post tomorrow.
The Mystery is the acceptance of paradox; the Paradox is that the acceptance of mystery. Hurray for circular reasoning 😀
Well, but that is not what I am saying. Our logical reasoning is based on several factors. Among them are access to knowledge and the ability to conceptualize our arguments in a valid fashion. That immediately runs us into a couple of problems. Among them are:
1. We are not omniscient, therefore we run out of the “raw data” we need in order to be able to correctly reason. Sometimes an apparent paradox is probably no paradox at all. By faith we believe that were we to have God’s level of knowledge, we would see that there is no contradiction.
2. But some other paradoxes are due to the limitations of human language. For instance, the famous question of can an omnipotent God create a stone which he cannot lift is such a question. The paradox in the question has more to do with the fact that it is possible for us to state propositions which are valid but not possible. Another example is to ask you to imagine a square circle. The sentence is valid, but since there is no such thing as a square circle, what we have is a language problem.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Mystery is when we acknowledge that we have arrived at the end of our knowledge and/or our language capability and/or some other limitation which prevents us from going any farther in our line of reasoning, and yet we know that something is true and we must say so.
I apologize for my words, Father. I was exaggerating, commenting on those to whom it seems such things are circular reasoning.
No offense taken, it actually help me say some helpful things that may come up in a future post.