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It is not my purpose to correct you just to inform whenever I can. If it appears to be doublespeak then let me say this in plainspeak
All who truthfully profess Jesus as their Lord are Christians
Because all who do this are Christians they are all connected to holy mother Church (the Catholic...
I see that the old straw men are out in force again brother Arsenios. I browsed through some of the posts written since my last post. I suspect that Lazarus will be a walking corpse soon, just to be sure that he didn't do anything to obey the command spoken by the Lord. Such is the ardour with...
In the first post for this thread I was thinking that I have met many people who look for simplicity and a faith that is reasonable but the odd thing is that in seeking those things and rejecting the things I mentioned in the first post one is left with reasonable and simple faith as the...
You have a bible, 66 books for many, more for others, less for a few.
You read it, interpret it, form views about what is true and what is not.
You may reject priests, and embrace simple title-less leadership where all are brethren (sisters too). Simple worship without images and without...
There's another command spoken by the voice of God, it is "Repent and believe the gospel".
Mark 1:14-15 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel."
The example of Lazarus is about the command "Lazarus come forth" which was spoken to a dead man in his tomb. It isn't about salvation. It is about the nature of God's commands and his call. I am not sure why you think it is about either salvation or about walking out of the tomb being a cause...
Nope, you got that wrong. The call is sufficient in and of itself to bring a sinner to repentance just like the Lord's call to Lazarus in his tomb was sufficient in and of itself to wake him from death with the response of coming out of the tomb as he was commanded.
A coin cannot exist without two side and faith cannot exist without repentance - in fact the gospel starts with a call to repent and believe the gospel of the kingdom of God.
No one can believe without God's call yet God calls all men everywhere to repent, said saint Paul to the Athenians. So the call need only be heard and as saint Paul wrote to the Roman Christians faith comes by hearing and hearing is hearing the word of Christ.
In Greek faith and belief are the same word, they both come from pistis (the Greek word for belief/faith). In English Faith is thought of as trust & belief mixed with emphasis on trust while belief is mainly seen as acceptance of a thing as true without necessarily implying trust. So when you...
I wrote "But is seems to me, stupid as I am, that human beings are God's creations and that the good works to which God calls the faithful are done in Christ Jesus." and you posted the above quote as your reply.
What I wrote is not condemned nor is it anathematised, it is in fact what Trent...
I explain the main matter this way. You can know about swimming but you do not know how to swim unless you swim. That is like, but not exactly like, life in Christ. And we say "outside the Church there is no salvation" by which we mean that without the life of God present within the Church you...
Human beings are God's creations and the good works to which God calls the faithful are done by human beings as God's creatures created in Christ Jesus.
Like James says, a man is saved by works and not by faith alone.
As jsimms435 wrote
James was talking about how faith is not enough if it is...
It seems to me, in my ignorance and stupidity, that you have contradicted yourself in the space of three lines because first you say
"Good works are the works of God done by God by using His creation to accomplish those good works."
and then you say
"As soon as humans are added, the works are...
Brother Arsenios, what you wrote is so Catholic that I am almost persuaded that you are a Catholic! ;)
(I do know that you probably call yourself an Orthodox Catholic Church member, I am just being a little playful with you just as you may already know that Catholics call themselves the...
Sometimes it take many blinks in the light before the eye adjusts to the brightness. I think it is that way with some graces from God. May God give courage and patience to those blinking as their eyes adjust - it is all to God's glory that the light is seen even when it take a little while to...
It is like the rain falling on the crops of the just and the unjust alike and the sun shining on both. The unjust can do good works, they can do things that are obedient to the commandments of God. They can love and be kind and that is a grace from God to them just like the rain and sunshine...