llevronbelac

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did he ghost you or did he get trapped in a gorilla costume and no one would help him out?

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I thought it was hilarious when Redeemed Zoomer came out and said that he wasn't going to debate protestantism anymore because it was leading more people to Catholicism/Orthodoxy. Because his debate with Jay Dyer did indeed significantly pushed me towards Orthodoxy.

I'm finding Redeemed Zoomer increasingly irritating, but he's still coming up with some crackers.

In his most recent video (about when he visited a non-denominational church), he said "do you need to give people hearing damage in order to share the Gospel?" about non-denom churches having loud music.

And on Twitter:

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can't believe I really just came across someone saying "nono, the JEWS didn't kill jesus, the ZIONISTS killed jesus."

I'm literally laughing. This is histeric. It almost makes it hard to see these antisemites as a serious threat. Almost.

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Seven Theories of Atonement

While all Christians agree that, as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3), they've disagreed with each other about the specifics of it and come up with different theories about it. Hence, I'm going to describe seven theories of atonement in short. (Also, many people from the Protestant world are unaware of theories other than penal substitution, and I want to do a little to alter that).

Recapitulation Theory

"For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22)

First proposed by St. Irenaeus of Lyons in the late 2nd century, this posits that Christ atoned for us by leading a sinless life, hence succeeding where Adam failed and becoming the new head of the human race, taking away our guilt. While pretty much no-one holds this as their primary view of atonement anymore, it's become a component part of pretty much all views of atonement.

Ransom Theory

"For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

First proposed by Origen of Alexandria in the mid-3rd century, this posits that Christ was given to the Devil in exchange for the Devil relinquishing his hold on humanity, but the Devil could not claim Christ due to His sinlessness, and the Devil was left empty-handed. While almost extinct in the West, it's still popular among the Orthodox.

Satisfaction Theory

"In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)

First proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in the late 11th century, this posits that Christ's death was a sacrifice that gave infinite honour to God, and hence removed the dishonour of our sins. This became and remains the most common Roman Catholic view of atonement.

Moral Influence Theory

"...but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

First proposed by Peter Abelard in the early 12th century, this posits that Christ's death revealed to humans that God who was merciful and self-sacrificing rather than judgemental and angry, and hence moved us to repentance. This was condemned as heretical at the time, but was later adopted by theological liberals of all stripes and has become their standard theory of atonement.

Penal Substitutionary Theory

"For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

First proposed by Martin Luther in the early 16th century, this posits that Christ's death saved us because he was punished for our sins in lieu of us, fulfilling God's justice while allowing Him to be merciful. While there are some exceptions, this has become the standard view among Protestants, particularly ones of a Calvinistic tendency.

Governmental Theory

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit..." (1 Peter 3:18)

First proposed by Hugo Grotius in the early 17th century, this posits a variant of penal substitution, wherein Christ was punished as a demonstration of God's wrath, not for specific sins. This is the dominant view among Arminian Christians such as Methodists.

Christus Victor Theory

"He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him." (Colossians 2:15)

First proposed by Gustaf Aulen in the early 20th century, this posits a re-interpretation of ransom theory, wherein Christ saved us by defeating sin, the Devil and death - defeating sin by being accursed under the Law due to death on a cross despite being sinless and hence discrediting the Law, defeating the Devil by being sinless and so giving the Devil no claim on Him, and defeating death by resurrecting. While it doesn't have as many followers as the others due to being very recent, it's rapidly growing in popularity, particularly among Evangelicals and Anabaptists.

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(If you're not familiar with any of them, read this post).

Put your reasoning in the tags!

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The de-alcoholization of communion wine and the subsequent replacement with grape juice, which is all sweet with no bitter, parallels the modern church's lack of gravity with regard to the things of God and the desire for Christianity to be a nice and fun religion, send tweet.

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Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

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Could you explain the Orthodox view of original sin?

To explain it, I need to start with one of the basic East-West theological differences. The West primarily thinks about sin as a legal transgression which must be forgiven or punished, while the East primarily thinks about sin as a sickness that must be healed or cause harm. This, in turn, creates a difference between "sin", the force of sin and corruption in the world, and "sins", people's sinful actions - the same way there's a difference between the disease and the symptoms.

And that's what lies behind our view of original sin - we have original sin, not original sins. We are born with souls that have an inclination towards sin and bodies racked by death and corruption, but we do not inherit the guilt of Adam; we are guilty only for our own sins (by the way, this means that we think unbaptised babies go to Heaven). Because the idea of "original sin" is heavily associated with the idea of guilt in many people's minds, English-speaking Orthodox Christians usually say "ancestral sin" rather than "original sin".

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"That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me."

John 17:21-23, English Standard Version

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Also, the purpose of prophecy in the Bible is to inspire change in those hearing the prophecy so as to avoid it. Prophecy is a warning of coming judgements that can be avoided by changing your actions.

Take for example Jonah and Nineveh. In 40 days Nineveh would be destroyed, but because they heard this prophecy they repented and the city was not destroyed.

God lays out the purpose of prophecy in Jeremiah 18. When He declares that He will bring destruction on a rebellious nation, if they repent of their evil, He too will repent of the destruction He declared would take place; and if He declares to bless an obedient nation and they turn towards evil, He will repent of the good He promised to bestow upon them.

Prophecy in the Bible is not a prediction of future settled events, but a call to repentance from a loving God who desires for none to perish and all to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Tumblr is like "isn't it weird that Christians never think about this fairly obvious implication of their own theology?", then proceeds to independently re-invent an eight-hundred-year-old heresy that caused three separate wars.

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It's crazy to me how my core political belief is "don't kill people" and this really pisses people off from every corner of the political spectrum.

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Theosis

"The Son of God became Son of Man, so that the sons of men could become sons of God." - Calvin (paraphrase of ICR 2:12.2)

"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." Athanasius (On the Incarnation)

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: Though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich." Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 8:9)

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I know we love to call things Gnostic around here (for good reason) but may I introduce some nuance/other related heresies that may add specificity to your burns:

Gnostic: group of ideas involving a complex cosmology with many lesser creating beings (aeons) emanating from the true God, the last of which created the material world because he was so stupid. Called "Gnosticism" because it was all about gnosis, or knowledge: you need secret knowledge of the aeons to set you free from materiality (which they do see as evil, but it doesn't directly impact their practice; they were often described as sexually promiscuous and greedy for gain). I recommend calling things Gnostic only if and when they imply you need secret knowledge to get to a level of insight into the world higher than normal people have—the denial of the goodness of matter is more distinctive for the following heresies:

Manichean: a form of Gnosticism that emphasizes the strict dualism between matter and spirit, where the material world is evil and not created by God, while the spiritual world is good and salvation comes from ascent out of the world to God. The noun is Manichaeism. Augustine used to be this. I recommend calling things Manichean when their major error is just thinking the material world is inherently bad and we need to escape it, and similarly when they (explicitly or implicitly) deny that creation is inherently good insofar as it is created by and a reflection of God.

Docetic: Docetism is the Christological heresy that says Jesus didn't have a real material body, but was kind of like a ghost or made out of soul-matter and just pretended to eat and walk and suffer like us. Obviously this is influenced by Gnosticism/Manichaeism, but its unique application of the view of matter as evil to Christ, and consequent denial that He was truly human like us, qualified it as a distinct heresy. I recommend calling things Docetic when their main error is denying God's meaningful engagement with and presence in the material world, and of course when they specifically deny that Christ had true physical humanity with needs and senses like ours.

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Thank you for the resources.

Original Sin

You, I, and your reformed source seem to be in agreement that sin is not a part of human nature. This is why I reject original sin, because we are not created in the womb already guilty of sin just like Christ, who was fully human, was not created in the womb already guilty of sin. All the answers that protestants and catholics come up with for why Jesus wasn't a sinner even though all human beings are born sinners can simply be answered by the historic Orthodox understanding that a person is only guilty of the sins they commit not their father's sin nor their greatest grandfather's sin.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Does metaphoricalizing what is understood of God the Father's wrath, separation, and damnation of God the Son, not remove all weight from the PSA argument? So Christ didn't actually experience any of the punishments that we deserved; where is the penal substitution there? Would you rebuke those who do hold to PSA as a literal forsaking of Christ on the cross? In all honesty, I just see no reason to hold to a new and novel atonement model when there already are the Christus victor, recapitulation, restored icon, ransom, and moral influence models to explain the work of Christ that Christians have believed in for millennia before PSA was formulated.

Eternal Conscious Torment

Absolutely none of those verses cited prove the immortality of the soul for unbelievers. They all speak of believers being gifted eternal life by God. This is my position, these are my proof texts.

Here is something I wrote a couple years ago about this commonly cited proof text.

Matthew 25:46: 

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

In Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. This is an eschatological parable that speaks of Jesus’s return at the end of time to judge the world in which the saved and unsaved will be separated. The saved going to experience eternal life and the unsaved going to experience eternal punishment. 

There are two arguments the ET view gives regarding this text. First, the eternal nature of the punishment must require that the act of carrying out the punishment be similarly eternal. Second, the parallel nature of the eternalities must be equal. Since the eternal life given to the righteous results in their ongoing enjoyment of said life forever, then the eternal punishment given to the unrighteous must likewise result in an ongoing act of punishing forever.

There are six instances in the New Testament where the word eternal is used to describe nouns that signify actions: Matthew 25:46 (eternal punishment), Mark 3:29 (eternal sin), Hebrews 5:9 (eternal salvation), Hebrews 6:2 (eternal judgement), Hebrews 9:12 (eternal redemption), and 2 Thessalonians 1:9 (eternal destruction). If one was to be consistent, to interpret Matthew 25:46 to mean that the punishment must be an ongoing act of punishing for it to be eternal, then the redemption, salvation, and judgement spoken of in Hebrews must likewise be an ongoing act of redeeming, saving, and judging in order to be eternal. The CI view would contend that it is not the continuous nature of the action noun that is eternal but rather the nature of the result coming from a single action of the noun. Hebrews 9:12 says, “He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.” The eternal nature of the redemption obtained by Christ describes its finality and lasting effect, not the ongoing action of redeeming. Likewise, the eternal nature of the punishment described in Matthew 25:46 is final and everlasting: death.

Regarding the second point, death is the more logical opposite but equal parallel to the eternal life given to the saved. Other parallels given throughout the New Testament of the fate of the saved versus that of the unsaved contrast death and life. John 3:16 famously says “...whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life,” and Romans 6:23 says, “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ our Lord.” In both these verses perishing and death are contrasted against eternal life just as Matthew 25:46 contrasts eternal punishment with eternal life. The eternal punishment spoken of in Matthew 25:46 is most comprehensively and consistently interpreted as death: an eternal, final, irrevocable cessation of life, not as an ongoing act of being and experiencing punishment."

The Philosophical Arguments

Eternal

The eternal deprivation of life, ie Death, fulfills the demands of an eternal infinite punishment. It fulfills it to an even greater extent because there is no future hope of redemption for those who had both body and soul destroyed in hell. The infinite justice of God is truly, purely meted out. There is no ongoing sinning that acquires more debt that requires more wrath in a never ending cycle of sin never truly being punished. God's Justice supports my view.

Torment

The transcendent holiness of God who is truly, purely holy, unable to tolerate anything or anyone that is unholy, decided to immortalize sin and sinners in His eschaton so as to ensure that sin and sinners exist for all eternity to continue to sin against Him? Would not the thrice Holy God who cannot even look upon sin more likely want to eradicate it from existence? God's Holiness supports my view.

Conscious

The punishment that Christ bore on the cross was death.

Thank you so much for the response. You obviously don't have to continue to dialogue if you don't want to. Something though that I would really love to know is whether you would affirm someone who didn't believe in these doctrines as a fellow brother or sister in Christ or whether affirming these doctrines are necessary to be saved?

I reject original sin because it is Anti Christ

I reject penal substitutionary atonement because it's Anti Trinity

I reject eternal conscious torment because it's Anti Scriptural

I do not reject these doctrines because I have a heart issue preventing me from affirming biblical truth. It is precisely because I desire to conform myself to the Truth of Scripture that I deny these doctrines.