Catholics: Your commercials are way better than ours

This commercial is amazing...

here

(usual Orthodox grumblings)

God Didn't Create Hell...-Bishop Hilarion

Any person bears moral responsibility for his actions. And he will answer for the sins of his earthly life in the eternity. St. Isaac the Syrian writes that sinners in the hell are not deprived of God’s love. On the contrary, love is given equally to everyone: to the righteous in the Heavenly Kingdom and to the sinners in Gehenna. But for the righteous it becomes the source of joy and bliss while for sinners it is the source of torture.

Thus, God didn’t create the hell for sinners, they did it themselves. God doesn’t send sinners to the hell, but people who oppose God’s will and revolt against God choose the hell themselves. And this choice is made in their earthly life rather than in some distant eschatological prospect. It is right here on Earth that infernal tortures and “the Kingdom of God come with power” begin.

full article

Must Listen for EVERY MGOCSM-er

This podcast from Ancient Faith Radio pretty much covers the same handful of questions I've heard at every conference I've been to over the years. Bishop Kallistos explains the Sacramental Life

here

Grappling with Free Will 2

Did God knowingly create a man he knew would bring suffering and death upon himself? Well, in a sense it seems the answer is yes. God knew exactly that man would sin and die while at the same moment knowing exactly how mankind would be redeemed and restored. When Genesis states that “In the beginning God created…” the book shows that time itself was created by God; God stands outside of time while simultaneously transcending through all of existence from within and without. The point is that suffering as it is now is a temporary state existing as part of God’s healing plan.

Free will was given to man as part of being “in God’s image,” and man freely chose to turn away from God. The first sin led to man turning his focus away from God and others, and onto himself. Because of this self-centeredness, the free choices to sin only could multiply. The end result is that the true free will, which is man’s rising toward God, became a distorted free will in which one must deliberate before possibly choosing the good. As this has brought suffering into the world, it is also important to note that God Himself suffered with man, in the state that man was in, and as man rehabilitated his free will.

Given an a priori knowledge of man’s fall, God created us nonetheless. While free choice has brought suffering upon us, it has also brought something greater, goodness. We know that which is good because we are not machines, we have the option of choosing evil and do not. We can not be good merely passively, instead, true virtue is active. If we actively submit our own will to the Divine will, we can become good-even Holy.

-Steve K.

Grappling with Free Will

I’ve been struggling with this topic for some time now…

God created Adam exactly as Adam was supposed to be in Eden. Adam (and Eve) transgressed and were sent out from Eden. God did not create Man as evil; Man had the free will to choose dependency on God or himself. Because Man freely chooses disobedience, God sends Man out of Eden for his own sake. Otherwise Man would have dwelt in wickedness eternally. Through free will man sinned, through free will, Man redeemed Himself in Christ, the eternal Son of God became Man.

That’s the economy sized rundown of a lot of deep Patristic thought…now for the struggling part (thanks to my Sunday School kids for picking my brain about it).

If God has Divine foreknowledge (He really wouldn’t be God if He didn’t), does He

1) “Predestine” people to do exactly what they do

2) Knowingly create Man in such a way that he sins and bring suffering into His world

Well the answer to the first question I learned back in my OCF at UF days. If Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant are wide open behind the three point line, and someone passes the ball to them, we all know they’re going to make the three pointer. But, even if the crowd knows what is inevitable, knowledge itself does not and can not make it so.

God knew exactly what Adam would do, but did not make him do so. God does not violate free will. Far be it from me to say exactly what God does and does not do, however the most reasonable explanation given to me about man’s free will to sin has been that a coerced love is no true love at all. A real loving relationship is one in which the lovers can say no and do not.

I'll pick up on point 2 tomorrow!

-Steve K.

I don't have a problem with culture...

...in fact I'm very much pro-culture! But culture is a dynamic thing. I don't understand it completely in the abstract. It's everyone being what they are, where they are, when they are. I don't live according to a particular definition. I live as I see fit and leave it up to the historians to figure out what, exactly, me and 'everyone like me' were really like.
-Steve K.