Kollyvas wrote:Christ is a personal God.
Whatever that means. Seriously. A megaton of bad 20th century theology has snuck in through that statement.
We don't as the protestants teach believe that salvation comes in an instant, nor do we believed in a created intermediary who grants grace to us and then disappeas but never allows us contact with Christ as the latin heretics teach.
And since neither of these statements (a) is accurate, or (b) has anything to do with the point at hand, then what?
This then is how we constitute the ONE Body, for we are partakers of that Divine Nature and it eternally unites us with the Father and leads us into leads us into perfection.
But you seem to believe that this perfection is in fact being approached now-- at least, approached enough that one make take for granted that the Orthodox Church body can be presumed to manifest Christ so well that the onlooker, the unbeliever, the heretic, all may look at the Orthodox Church and see Christ directly. And what we all do instead is test the Orthodox Church to see whether it does so manifest Christ.
A very large part of Paul's use of the "body" imagery is predicated on lecturing his readers (especially the "1st Corinthians") about how, if they are supposed to be members of the body of Christ, they sure aren't acting like it. His whole argument presupposes that you can look at these members and see, not Christ, but sin-- because Paul sees it, not mystically, but the same way everyone else sees it. Indeed, it seems that one of the worst ravages of anti-ecumenism is the gyrations of hypocrisy necessary to deny that the Church may not be put to judgement by heretics. If there are toll-houses, I am certain that many of them will be staffed by atheists and heretics who spoke out against sins committed in the church by those who presumed to speak for Christ.
You know that I am not Orthodox. And by now, you know that I do not trust you to speak for the fathers.
