Deus Misereatur

Over the years I have discussed “Original Sin” with those from an Eastern Orthodox persuasion. Normally they cringe when they find out I’m a conscientious Calvinist. The first is because they misunderstand what we mean by “Total Depravity” (as do many Calvinists, I might add), and then because they assert that “guilt” is not “legal” passed on in Original Sin, just the curse of death. So here are a few quotations from 2 heroes of the earlier Church (Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus), and then a couple of quotations from John Calvin (all bold italics mine). “For seeing that man by the commission of the Divine blessing had been elevated to a lofty pre-eminence (for he was appointed king over the earth and all things on it; he was beautiful in his form, being created an image of the archetypal beauty; he was without passion in his nature, for he was an imitation of the unimpassioned; he was full of frankness, delighting in a face-to-face manifestation of the personal Deity...

St. Basil was a senior pastor in Christ’s Church during the 4th Century AD. During this stormy time he found himself beset by opponents on several fronts. During one of the conflicts he wrote a short little piece, “On the Holy Spirit”. In this work he strove to counter the pneumatomachoi (fighters against the Spirit). Their position was that the Son was less than the Father and came after Him in time, and that the Spirit was underneath the Father and the Son. While St. Basil was showing that the Father and the Son are “inseparably joined in name and nature” (34), he made a unexpected statement about tradition and Scripture. What is surprising is the position in which he puts tradition: “…therefore we offer the doxology to the Father with the Son. But we are not content simply because this is the tradition of the Fathers. What is important is that the Fathers followed the meaning of Scripture , beginning with the evidence which I have just extracted from the Scriptures and presented...

Origen addresses what has been a common problem through much of Christian history - how to read the Holy Scriptures. In Book 4 chapter 2 of De Principiis (On First Principles) he shows how Jews, heretical sects and the simple plainly miss the point. It is in this chapter that he lays out his own plan for interpreting Scripture, and the pattern he uses is his tripartite view of humanity: Flesh, Soul and Spirit. “One must therefore portray the meaning of the sacred writings in a threefold way upon one’s soul, so that the simple man may be edified by what we call the flesh of the scripture, this name being given to the obvious interpretation; while the man who has made progress may be edified by its soul, as it were; and the man who is perfect and like those mentioned by the apostle: ‘We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden...

Though Gnosticism seems like a distant thunder, no longer any real threat, or that maybe it is only analogous to some sort of New Age spiritualism, there are aspects that keep cropping up with the Church. Therefore, because there are Gnostic trends still infesting the modern Christian scene, it is important for leaders in the Church to take up and read how the ancient pastors/theologians handled this problem. Irenaeus, a late 2nd Century AD pastor, was the premiere defender against Gnosticism. His 5 volume work, Against the Heretics , is still a solid, substantive healing tonic for the Gnostic ailment. Elaine Pagels, a self identified modern Gnostic, spots four major aspects of what Irenaeus meant by calling the Gnostics’ system an “evil exegesis” (Beyond Belief 119-142). The first was that the Gnostics pushed the view of discovering the god within themselves, and themselves within god (119-122). Then Gnostics often added their own inventions, boldly revising John’s Gospel account wi...

Just take a leisurely stroll into the local book franchise, whether Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, or whatever you have down the street. Meander your way toward the religion section, and glance over the books. Chances are you will notice a growing segment of manuscripts there that are declaring an alternative ‘Christianity’ along with alternative gospels. One of the major players in this new wave of unconventionalism is Elaine Pagels. She has written a number of pieces over the years. So the reader wants to know what is at the heart of her writing. A good place to start is with her The Gnostic Gospels . One of the striking items in Pagels’ book The Gnostic Gospels , is that she lays out the liberal agenda running in much western Christianity, and chooses to find her authority for it in reworked Gnostic texts. For example, she validates the denial of Jesus’ bodily resurrection as coming from Gnostic sources that, in her mind at least, are on equal footing with orthodox sources (Ch...

Clement of Rome (1st Century A.D.) seems to have written as the voice of the (unified?) church in Rome, “The church of God, living in exile in Rome, to the church of God, exiled in Corinth, […]” (Richardson 43). He addressed the church in Corinth about an unhappy situation in which some from within the church have thrown off the legitimate leaders, replacing them with leaders to their own liking: “It is disgraceful, exceedingly disgraceful, and unworthy of your Christian upbringing, to have it reported that because of one or two individuals the solid and ancient Corinthian Church is in revolt against its presbyters. […] The result is that the Lord’s name is being blasphemed because of your stupidity, and you are exposing yourselves to danger” (65). As Clement addressed this problem, he gives readers an insider’s view of how the Church (at least the church in Rome and maybe Corinth) was shaping up. Specifically, how the Church understood itself in the world context, what ecclesiasti...

Athanasius hammers a recurring theme in his short little piece, On the Incarnation of the Word , which might seem a bit far-fetched to some 21st Century American minds. He repeatedly talks about demonic forces as being alive in his day and age, as well as how he saw them being quashed under Christ’s victorious reign. “For where Christ is named, and His faith, there all idolatry is deposed and all imposture of evil spirits is exposed, and any spirit is unable to endure even the name, nay even on barely hearing it flies and disappears” (Paragraph 30). And in another place, “[...] in like manner, the evil spirits formerly used to deceive men, investing themselves with God’s honour; but when the Word of God appeared in a body, and made known to us His own Father, then at length the deceit of the evil spirits is done away and stopped, while men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, are deserting the idols, and now coming to know the true God” (55). With this theme ...