Friday, November 08, 2013

Good theology

Interesting post I ran across today (not sure where I saw it) about a person who left the Anglican Communion to become Orthodox and then left it after 2 years. Here's the part that drew me, as I can strongly identify with it:
I was drawn to the Orthodox Faith because of it’s faithfulness to the ancient understandings of the Faith. My theology is very heavily informed by the theology of the Orthodox Church. I understand sin as bondage and sickness rather than as transgression. As a result, I have an Orthodox transformative understanding of salvation rather than a judicial one, meaning that the real object of salvation is God effecting an inner change in us. Again, the model of atonement I have is an Orthodox one of recapitulation, rather than appeasement. In other words, the need for the atonement was not to satisfy a need God had for punishment, but rather to recreate in us the image of God that we had lost, and to free us from the bondage of sin. I also share with the Orthodox church the focus on theosis – our participation in the divine life which changes us into the likeness of Christ. In that sense I see salvation not as a one time act, but as a growing relationship with God. I also am certain that the Orthodox church is right in their understanding of original sin, not as inherited guilt, but as our inheriting the consequences of living in a sinful world.
<idle musing>
Good stuff. I agree with these aspects of the Eastern Orthodox faith, but have a hard time with all the added stuff...probably the same reason I could never be a part of a "high" church—I'm too much a product of the Jesus Movement and house church culture of the early 1970s...
</idle musing>

1 comment:

That's my 2 cents! said...

I agree whole heartedly with what he says in the excerpt you've posted. I also agree with your reservations about "high" church. A great deal of my reluctance to joining ministry has always been, "where are we going with this?" I can't do "church" the way it's being done. It has to be about relationships. Not a lot of relationships happening in churches.