| We are not a living body that contains a soul! We are a living soul that dwells within a living body! | June 2008 |
The American Orthodox Church
| We are not a living body that contains a soul! We are a living soul that dwells within a living body! | June 2008 |
The Orthodox Church is not a denomination, it is the living body of Christ.
The Word of God is not a book, It is a Person; Jesus the Christ.
The Prophets of the old and new covenant are those who have seen, heard and touched the Word of Life (He who was from the beginning, the one whom we have heard, and have seen
with our eyes, have touched with our hands, we declare to you is the Word
of Life,) I John 1:1
Congratulations to Brett DeSimon
on his High School Graduation.
We all wish him the best and a
great life.
Congratulations Brett!
Salvation, Worship in Vain.
Who is Jesus the Christ? (continued)
The Father!
Before we can even consider looking at Jesus and calling Him God; (which of course He is), it is necessary to understand the Father and
how Jesus even is in the first place. Now I don't pretend to be the expert on the Father, no, not even anyone close but I will tell you in
regards to the church teaching of the Father and keeping in mind that the
church is descended from Jesus the Christ by way of the Apostles and the
laying on of hands. You must first understand the authority that the church
has before you can begin to understand the church teaching. Without authority
there can be no teaching, who would care? This is a problem for some people,
independent free thinkers, who name the name of Jesus whilst all the while
refusing to actually bow to Him by completely denying the church and her authority or that Jesus even started a church in the first place;
1 Corinthians 4:1 This is the way you should consider us: as the servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
1 Corinthians 4:16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ.
This is the command, this is the scripture, the very scripture that free thinkers claim to follow and believe and yet ignore any, all and everything that
speaks contrary to their personal interpretation so that they can live the life they choose to live, here, and are only fooling themselves in the process, my issue with this is the fact that they are dragging others into Hell with them. Any free thinkers reading this right now will not even (generally)
have a clue that this paragraph is directed to them. The pride that they
have in their own mind will not allow them to see and understand unless
you point a finger directly at them and name them so that they can see.
Luke 9:5 And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.
Acts 15:1 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, [and
said], Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be
saved.
Acts 15:2 When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation
with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should
go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.
Acts 15:6 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.
This action in Acts 15:6 is the beginning of the church councils, although
not listed in the church canon as one of the Ecumenical councils because
of the time, (the Apostles were alive and they were the council), it is
still in my opinion a perfect representation that no one can make a decision
regarding church policy on his own, even St. Paul (in whom most preachers
make a living off of by proclaiming his writings to the world), himself
went to the church Elders and Apostles to bring the matter to their attention
so that they could make a ruling on it.
Again, here is the proof of the authority of the church, if you deny it
I will say again you very well may possibly find yourself standing on the
left hand of Jesus and not His right. I make no apology for that statement.
I don't care if you are a Pastor with 10,000 members of your congregation
or a Pastor of no one but yourself. If you are outside of the church, you
are outside of Jesus.
So with the authority of the church in mind let us now begin to look at
the church teaching of the Holy Trinity beginning with the Father and we
will get to the question which heads this article for the next few issues,
who is Jesus?
First, let us understand that the Church's teaching and its deepest experience is that there is only one God because there is only one Father.
In all of scripture anytime someone speaks of "God" (with very few exceptions) they are primarily using the word as a name for the Father. Thus, the Son is the "Son of God," and the Spirit is the "Spirit of God." The Son is born from the Father, (John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
(The following is my own personal and simple explanation of the Son as the Word of God since this seems to be such an issue with people who are taught only the fleshly 'life and being of Jesus' and cannot perceive anything spiritual in regards to Jesus and since I have a simple mind my mind acts and thinks
in simple ways I hope to be able to say things simply:
Isaiah 55:11 So shall my word be, which shall go forth from my mouth: it shall not return to me void, but it shall do whatsoever I please, and shall prosper in the things for which I sent it. (Isaiah answered his call to prophecy sometime around the year 742 BC. Jesus
was born sometime between 6 to 4 BC, so we have approximately 737 years
of time here from prophecy and birth.)
God will send out His Word, can you see that in the above verse? And it will do whatever God sends it to do and then it will return to Him. Can you see that in the verse above?
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. Can you see in this verse the fullfillment of the prophecy in the verse
of Isaiah above?
John 6:39 Now this is the will of the Father who sent me: that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing; but should raise it up again in the last day.
John 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father who sent me, he gave me commandment what I should say, and what I should speak.
Do the verses above demonstrate Jesus as the Word sent by the Father to do His will and then return back to Him, can you see that Jesus Himself declares these things? Do you see the fullfillment of these things from the verse in Isaiah above?
John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels hath he said at any time, Thou art my Son,
today have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?
Do the two verses above demonstrate that Jesus was in the bosom of the Father, where else would someone's word be? Is not the word that you speak who you are inside of yourself? Let's return to another church teaching;
and the Spirit proceeds from the Father -- both in the same timeless and eternal action of the Father's own being.
(Again to demonstrate this we will look at the words of Jesus;
John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever.
John 14:26 But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.
John 15:26 But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall give testimony of me.
Can you see from the above verses that the Holy Spirit also comes from
God the Father and is from Him directly because He proceeds from the Father?
So how does the relationship work from a slightly different perspective?
Luke 1:35 The angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of the Highest will rest upon you; therefore the one who is to be born of you is holy, and he will be called the Son of God.
(So, my explanation to you, in the middle of this church teaching, based on the verses I have shown you is this; God, the Supreme Power and Creator, took His Word, sent it down and by the power of the Holy Spirit placed it into the womb of a virgin, and through the power of the most high God, the Creator of all life, His Word, having been placed in the womb of a woman, took on the form of flesh and was born as a man, never ever losing His authority or Godship as the Word of God but taking on the form of a man to live and be an example of how to live, teach the correct interpretation of the law or the spiritual side of the law and not just in the strictness of the letter of the law, and then to become the final sacrifice for all of mankind so that through His shed blood we might be saved.)
Let's return to the church teaching;
In this view, the Son and the Spirit are both one with God and in no way separated from Him. Thus, the Divine Unity consists of the Father, with His Son and His Spirit distinct from Himself and yet perfectly united together in Him.
What the Father is, the Son and the Spirit are also. This is the Church's teaching. The Son, born of the Father, and the Spirit, proceeding from Him, share the divine nature with God, being "of one essence" with Him.
Thus, as the Father is "ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same" (Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom), so the Son and the Spirit are exactly the same. Every attribute of divinity which belongs to God the Father -- life, love, wisdom, truth, blessedness, holiness, power, purity, joy -- belongs equally as well to the Son and the Holy Spirit. The being, nature, essence, existence and life of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are absolutely and identically one and the same.
Since the being of the Holy Trinity is one, whatever the Father wills, the Son and the Holy Spirit will also. What the Father does, the Son and the Holy Spirit do also. There is no will and no action of God the Father which is not at the same time the will and action of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
In Himself, in eternity, as well as towards the world in creation, revelation, incarnation, redemption, sanctification, and glorification
-- the will and action of the Trinity are one: from the divine Father, through the divine Son, in the divine Holy Spirit. Every action of God is the action of the Three. No one person of the Trinity acts independently of or in isolation from the others. The action of each is the action of all; the action of all is the action of each. And the divine action is essentially one.
This is the teaching of the church and is not my own creation, if you choose to disagree with me over this then remember that you are choosing to disagree with the church and with that in mind go back to your scriptures and remember what Jesus Himself personally said:
Luke 9:5 And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.
Ephesians 3: 10, To the intent that through the church the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the angels and powers which are in heaven,
11, Which is the wisdom he prepared in ages past and has carried out in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Remember that Jesus Christ gave us a church to guide us, not a book, the church in turn gave us a book made up of many books, the book itself is incomplete in as far as the teachings of Jesus the Christ are and is not the full authority. (see above; the Word of God is not a book, It is a
Person). If your church has been born from a Bible and not from the line of teachers since Christ, then your
church is in error and teaches a false doctrine. How do I know this? Well
let's see what Jesus said to the Apostles regarding the power and authority
of the church;
Matthew 18:18 Truly I say to you, Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,
and whatever you release on earth will be released in heaven. Jesus Christ.
So if you claim to follow God's Word:follow Jesus the Christ and in turn follow the church, if you do not follow the church, you do not follow Jesus, and in turn you do not follow God Almighty.
Let us pray;
Lord Jesus Christ, who did say to Your Apostles: peace I leave with you,
My peace I give unto you, look not upon my sins, but upon the faith of
Thy church; and vouchsafe unto her that peace and unity which is agreeable
to Thy will: who lives and reigns God forever and ever. Amen.
Monk Michael
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Teaching of the Church! | |||
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See also Orthodox Catechism by the Very Reverend Archimandrite Gregori
(Found in the Acts of the Ecumenical Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, in the Epistle of Eusebius of Cćsarea to his own Church, in the Epistle of St. Athanasius Ad Jovianum Imp., in the Ecclesiastical Histories of Theodoret and Socrates, and elsewhere, The variations in the text are absolutely without importance.)
The Synod at Nice set forth this Creed. This is the heading in the Acts of the IIId Council. Labbe, Conc., tom. iii., 671.
The Ecthesis of the Synod at Nice. This is the heading in the Acts of the IVth Council. Labbe, Conc., tom. iv., 339.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (?e??????ta), not made, being of one substance (?µ???s???, consubstantialem) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not (?? p?te ?te ??? ??), or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion. This word, in the Greek t?ept?? is translated in the Latin convertibilem, but see side note in Labbe.—all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.
Notes.
The Creed of Eusebius of Cćsarea, which he presented to the council, and which some suppose to have suggested the creed finally adopted.
(Found in his Epistle to his diocese; vide: St. Athanasius and Theodoret.)
We believe in one only God, Father Almighty, Creator of
things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is
the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, life of life, his only
Son, the first-born of all creatures, begotten of the Father before all
time, by whom also everything was created, who became flesh for our
redemption, who lived and suffered amongst men, rose again the third
day, returned to the Father, and will come again one day in his glory
to judge the quick and the dead. We believe also in the Holy
Ghost. We believe that each of these three is and subsists; the
Father truly as Father, the Son truly as Son, the Holy Ghost truly as
Holy Ghost; as our Lord also said, when he sent his disciples to
preach: Go and teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Excursus on the Word Homousios. Our older English writers usually wrote this word “homoousion,” and thus spoke of the doctrine as “the doctrine of the homoousion.” For the Arian word they wrote “homoiousion.” Later writers have used the nominative masculine, “homoousios” and “homoiousios.” The great Latin writers did not thus transliterate the word, but, wrote “homousios,” and for the heretical word “homośsios” or “homśsios.” I have kept for the noun signifying the doctrine, our old English “Homoousion,” but for the adjective, I have used the ordinary latinized form “homousios,” in this copying Smith and Wace, Dict. Christian Antiquities
The Fathers of the Council at Nice were at one time ready to accede to the request of some of the bishops and use only scriptural expressions in their definitions. But, after several attempts, they found that all these were capable of being explained away. Athanasius describes with much wit and penetration how he saw them nodding and winking to each other when the orthodox proposed expressions which they had thought of a way of escaping from the force of. After a series of attempts of this sort it was found that something clearer and more unequivocal must be adopted if real unity of faith was to be attained; and accordingly the word homousios was adopted. Just what the Council intended this expression to mean is set forth by St. Athanasius as follows: “That the Son is not only like to the Father, but that, as his image, he is the same as the Father; that he is of the Father; and that the resemblance of the Son to the Father, and his immutability, are different from ours: for in us they are something acquired, and arise from our fulfilling the divine commands. Moreover, they wished to indicate by this that his generation is different from that of human nature; that the Son is not only like to the Father, but inseparable from the substance of the Father, that he and the Father are one and the same, as the Son himself said: ‘The Logos is always in the Father, and, the Father always in the Logos,’ as the sun and its splendour are inseparable.” Athanas., De Decret. Syn. Nic., c. xix., et seq.
The word homousios had not had, although frequently used before the Council of Nice, a very happy history. It was probably rejected by the Council of Antioch,5454 Vide Swainson, in Smith and Wace, Dict. Christ. Biog., sub voce Homousios, p. 134. and was suspected of being open to a Sabellian meaning. It was accepted by the heretic Paul of Samosata and this rendered it very offensive to many in the Asiatic Churches.
On the other hand the word is used four times by St. Irenćus, and Pamphilus the Martyr is quoted as asserting that Origen used the very word in the Nicene sense. Tertullian also uses the expression “of one substance” (unius substantić) in two places, and it would seem that more than half a century before the meeting of the Council of Nice, it was a common one among the Orthodox.
Vasquez treats this matter at some length in his Disputations, Vasquez, Disput. cix., cap. v. “Rightly doth the Church use the expression Homousios (that is Consubstantial) to express that the Father and the Son are of the same nature.” and points out how well the distinction is drawn by Epiphanius between Synousios and Homousios, “for synousios signifies such an unity of substance as allows of no distinction: wherefore the Sabellians would admit this word: but on the contrary homousios signifies the same nature and substance but with a distinction between persons one from the other. Rightly, therefore, has the Church adopted this word as the one best calculated to confute the Arian heresy.” Vasquez may also well be consulted on the expressions ??s?a, substantia, ?p?stas??, etc.
It may perhaps be well to note that these words are formed like ?µ?ß??? and ?µ???ß???, ?µ????µ?? and ?µ??????µ??, etc., etc.
The reader will find this whole doctrine treated at great length in all the bodies of divinity; and in Alexander Natalis (H. E. t. iv., Diss. xiv.); he is also referred to Pearson, On the Creed; Bull, Defence of the Nicene Creed; Forbes, An Explanation of the Nicene Creed; and especially to the little book, written in answer to the recent criticisms of Professor Harnack, by H. B. Swete, D.D., The Apostles’ Creed.
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From the pages of the American Orthodox Church/North American Orthodox Church
It is obvious that Jesus meant for the church to be one in Spirit and in teaching. There is only one truth.
There is only One God, One Lord Jesus Christ, One Holy Spirit, One Christian Church. It is plain and obvious that the Holy Spirit does work through those in many different denominations. God still uses those who are true to Jesus Christ. However, this does not change the truth of the teachings of the original Orthodox Church.
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Please give these things prayerful thought, meditate on these words, learn to be still and listen to the Holy Spirit in the quiet time.
This will continue next issue. See you then.
Monk Michael
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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
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