What is PROPITIATION?

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Bingo! Well put, George.

Does this mean you still love me? You were pretty upset with me,,,

And it still make the IFFY part of salvation you and me... And that IF is our willingness to turn from evil and unto good, and then our willingness to follow Christ...

Arsenios

[RanRan]

Does this mean you still love me? You were pretty upset with me,,,

And it still make the IFFY part of salvation you and me... And that IF is our willingness to turn from evil and unto good, and then our willingness to follow Christ...

Arsenios

Of course, I still love you, George! I wanted to hear you lift Christ up. And, yes, that willingness to follow leads to Life itself. I don't have half the courage you have.

[Howie]

And by that reasoning, because Christ never uses the word "Trinity", that concept is suspect as well?

If we are to honestly consider ourselves Christians we must ask ourselves why it is that we place more importance on the intellectual constructs of men than on the words and teachings of Jesus. If the “Trinity” was such and important teaching, why did Jesus not preach it high and low? He taught us how to pray in Matthew 6 and did not indicate that we should pray to a trinity, but to “Our Father”. It is not whether the concept is questionable it is whether it is a vital understanding or it is a human intellectual simplification of a much more complex metaphysical truth.

[RanRan]

If we are to honestly consider ourselves Christians we must ask ourselves why it is that we place more importance on the intellectual constructs of men than on the words and teachings of Jesus. If the “Trinity” was such and important teaching, why did Jesus not preach it high and low? He taught us how to pray in Matthew 6 and did not indicate that we should pray to a trinity, but to “Our Father”. It is not whether the concept is questionable it is whether it is a vital understanding or it is a human intellectual simplification of a much more complex metaphysical truth.

I think that conclusion is being very uncharitable to the early work of Christ's Church on earth. The first 600 years being primarily concerned with Christology. Then you come along and question whether that work was 'vital'. Now you present your own construct and claim IT is vital. It's not vital - it's flat out arrogance.

[Howie]

Hi George,

Hope you are feeling better today. I got it together enough to get to service early.

It is your devious and dubious methods that leave me dabbing at mine eyes...

I fear you misjudge. Devious? I hope not. Dubious? Perhaps. I try to keep my words simple and my thoughts focused. I have found that often people prefer to pick at the edges of an issue rather than address the issue itself -- if you leave edges to be picked at. I try to limit those edges and present one simple clear thought that requests response.

You responded to my statement that

PROPITIATION assumes an offended or displeased or p****d off God[/QUOTE with a statement that basically said

Well, maybe...

And then you launch into a lengthy tract that strays from my simple thoughts and includes many assumptions. The bottom line of your tract is that man did something wrong in God’s eyes and God sent Jesus to fix it. You refrain from characterizing God’s reaction to man’s “wrong”, however, I do not think that you will disagree if I say that at minimum, God was not “pleased” – which is what I was basically saying with regard to PROPITIATION. It assumes a displeased God.

You then respond to my statement:

That concept of God is the antithesis of Jesus’ teaching of God.

And this being the idea that God is boiling mad and Christ is the asbestos suit of salvation and we better get in Him or get fried alive??
I agree... We are called to a moral change of heart, and without our willingness to change our heart, we cannot be a part of Christ... We certainly are not ABLE, on our own, to effect that change, and we are not even willing enough to do so, but we have to be willing 24/7/365/6... However feebly, to struggle, no matter what. If we do that, God will do the rest... And if we do not, we will have a lot of troubles and necessities, and we will die...

I used hyperbole to get my point across (a p****d off God) – a shortcoming perhaps, but your response does not address my thought that the concept of a displeased God is the antithesis of Jesus’ teachings.

To my statement:

Secondly, and this is a consistent thorn in the side for many things we simply assume to be truthful reflections of Jesus’ teachings, Jesus taught that God is within us. How does Jesus’ teachings about God reconcile with the concept of PROPITIATION?

You again respond with very interesting thoughts, but not on point. It may be that we have differing understandings of PROPITIATION and I am the one off point. Perhaps you can give a simple one or two sentence characterization of your understanding of PROPITIATION.

Again, as far as other subjects you bring up (and there are many of them), I prefer to complete the dialogue on this one (PROPITIATION) rather that create edges to be picked at. Blame my Jesuitical training.

All the best.

[RanRan]

I used hyperbole to get my point across (a p****d off God) – a shortcoming perhaps, but your response does not address my thought that the concept of a displeased God is the antithesis of Jesus’ teachings.

I think it goes beyond antithesis - a word that suggests disunity. There's no lack of consensus in heaven. It has to do with ontology - reality itself - as seen EXCLUSIVELY by faith.
It is impossible to reconcile oneself to the propitiation of God - that is, the removal of His anger without first, admitting that it was and secondly, by believing Christ's work in fulfilling scripture, that it is no more.
The propitiation of God will be nothing more than a fairy tale unless one believes Christ in Matt 24:34. That generation was to suffer the stored up wrath of God. We can add 'exclusively' because it was all poured out there, and more importantly, then. He was not a false prophet nor a man with a loose tongue.
Now faith can go onto more faith. It can see clearly the accepted sacrifice of the cross as an accomplishment complete and eternal in the propitiation of God's anger. It no longer stumbles over the mention of God's wrath, because by faith, it understands. Faith in Christ brings it's own reward - rest. Those who do not believe His words remain in unrest and fear.

[Howie]

I think it goes beyond antithesis - a word that suggests disunity. There's no lack of consensus in heaven. It has to do with ontology - reality itself - as seen EXCLUSIVELY by faith.
It is impossible to reconcile oneself to the propitiation of God - that is, the removal of His anger without first, admitting that it was and secondly, by believing Christ's work in fulfilling scripture, that it is no more.
The propitiation of God will be nothing more than a fairy tale unless one believes Christ in Matt 24:34. That generation was to suffer the stored up wrath of God. We can add 'exclusively' because it was all poured out there, and more importantly, then. He was not a false prophet nor a man with a loose tongue.
Now faith can go onto more faith. It can see clearly the accepted sacrifice of the cross as an accomplishment complete and eternal in the propitiation of God's anger. It no longer stumbles over the mention of God's wrath, because by faith, it understands. Faith in Christ brings it's own reward - rest. Those who do not believe His words remain in unrest and fear.

Thank you for this second response. Your first response was troubling.

My query was simpler than your thoughts here. It seemed to me (and you have voiced it) that the concept of PROPITIATION requires an angry (at minimum displeased) God and that the concept of an “angry God” is not Jesus’ teaching of God. My emphasis is on the understanding of God that Jesus graced us with.

[RanRan]

that the concept of an “angry God” is not Jesus’ teaching of God. My emphasis is on the understanding of God that Jesus graced us with.

There are many words of Jesus warning that generation of an angry God - very angry. God has indeed graced you with an ignorance of them. I mean that as good thing.

I was not blessed like that. I struggled with a wrath-filled God most of life and He turned out to be a phantom because I was not believing Christ. I don't look at that struggle as wasted time, however. I believe there was purpose in it.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

Hi George,
Hope you are feeling better today. I got it together enough to get to service early.

Glory to God! I am glad you are all better!

I am still the same - Just in this cold-flue holding pattern, not at crisis levels, but wonderfully miserable. I live in the mission Church house, and this weekend was scheduled for reader's services, Great Vespers last night, and Reader's Orthros this morning, and we cancelled everything because nobody should be exposed to what I have... Best flu case I have seen in me for some 30 years!

I fear you misjudge. Devious? I hope not. Dubious? Perhaps.

I KNEW I should have put a smiley on that sentence! That was totally in jest! Please forgive me!

I try to keep my words simple and my thoughts focused. I have found that often people prefer to pick at the edges of an issue rather than address the issue itself -- if you leave edges to be picked at. I try to limit those edges and present one simple clear thought that requests response.

There certainly is a good sense in which we should attain unto a lazer focus... A person can burn right through a lot of rubbish with it and get straight to the heart of things... Yet it is the edges that comprise the the enviornment in which the matter under discussion actually lives. And there is both the immediate and the surrounding enviornment, and sometimes, as we keep refocusing our lens in our zeal to burn through to the core, we can lose sight of the whole...

And it is in this concern that I went to the edges, because I do not recognize what you are seeing in your focused center, and was casting about to come up with some kind of context wherein I might get it to somehow come into a focus that my eyes can discern...

I was not trying to pick at the edges, so much as establish common ground that we should proceed shoulder to shoulder, rather than across a ring...

You responded to my statement that PROPITIATION assumes an offended or displeased or p****d off God with a statement that basically said

Well, maybe...

Yes, that's true.

In the first place, your presentation of the issue in this manner carries with it all the baggage of the Protestant and Western revision of Christianity that has landed it in the pickle in which it finds itself today. And I am not a part of that revision.

Secondly, the word PROPITIATION is very loaded, in that it does indeed, in the west, entail the understanding of a God who hates man for Adam's sin, and were in not for His sending and our killing His own Son under torture on the Cross, would burn us all alive unto eternity in his wrath. [This is the Protestant revision of understanding that is driving young people out of their churches, and into body-piercing parlors.]

But propitiation does not HAVE to mean this - It certainly does NOT mean it for the Orthodox Faith...

So how, with any integrity at all, can I answer yes or no? "Maybe" was my only choice...

And then you launch into a lengthy tract that strays from my simple thoughts and includes many assumptions.

Yes, casting about for some common ground. Can you now see how it is, from my perspective, that your simple thoughts of an Angry God needing Propitiation are not simple at all to me?

The bottom line of your tract is that man did something wrong in God’s eyes and God sent Jesus to fix it. You refrain from characterizing God’s reaction to man’s “wrong”, however, I do not think that you will disagree if I say that at minimum, God was not “pleased” – which is what I was basically saying with regard to PROPITIATION. It assumes a displeased God.

It assumes a dysfunctional relationahip of man to God, and this indeed is what we have after the fall, for Adam HID from God, and rather than confess his sin and seek repentance and forgiveness, he blamed the woman, and the One Who gave her to him... That is NOT the right way of relating to God. It is wrong relationship. And it is the fallen human way... For it is turned AWAY FROM God, and not toward Him in confession and supplication.

Now you can come in at this point, and say "Well, God must have been really ticked off with them!"... But that is not the point... They were dead already, and yet God graciously gave them coverings of skins, and gave them what they would need to endure, through their seed, to this day, laboring and in painsof childbirth. This is a loving thing that God did, as He began the long road of our redemption... In a world of pleasure and pain in the flesh which will give us both birth and death... To find our own way... Until God calls to us...

I mean, if God was that mad, He would have just let their death finish right there, and they would be no more... He did put the serpent on his belly on the ground... But did not kill him... For our redemption comes with our overcoming the serpent...

And then can we say that God was not pleased? Sure... But to what avail? I mean, was Adam pleased? Was Eve? Was the snake? Yes and no with the snake... But the essential feature of this event is that man lost his relationship with God by turning to the serpent in disobedience, and then did not confess and repent, but hid and then blamed... Adam, by turning away from God, and believing the serpent, cut himself off from the source of Life, and linked himself up with death, and had not the power to reverse his action...

You then respond to my statement:

I used hyperbole to get my point across (a p****d off God) – a shortcoming perhaps, but your response does not address my thought that the concept of a displeased God is the antithesis of Jesus’ teachings.

I am not sure, Howie... Jesus' teaching is that our God is a Loving God, who hates sin, and loves us, and wants the sinner to turn away from his sins and unto God... And He hates sin because of the death it brings, and because He wants us to live.

To my statement:You again respond with very interesting thoughts, but not on point. It may be that we have differing understandings of PROPITIATION and I am the one off point. Perhaps you can give a simple one or two sentence characterization of your understanding of PROPITIATION.

I am but trying to speak from the phronema of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and not from my own understanding. Pray for me that I not fail...

The fall of mankind was precipitated by the sin of Adam, and God gave Adam the life we now have in the flesh upon this earth. It is this fleshy life that needs transformation, and it is this fleshy life that cannot transform itself. All have sinned, you see... And sin God will not abide... Which is why Christ incarnated, and taught, and healed the sick, and at the end of it all, He ascended, of His own free will, the Cross, that in His suffering He should draw all men to Him, and all creation, and present it all, in His Holy Body, sinless before the throne of His Father... And this He did... And His sinless and now glorified and resurrected flesh now sits at the right hand of the Most High...

THAT is propitiation... THAT is an acceptable sacrifice, for it is pure and holy and without spot or blemish... And by means of it, Christ claimed His creation, and evil shall be no more... All fallen creation, in that action, is now reconciled to the Father, Our Father... In His Son...

And for those of us who are entered into the Body of Christ upon the earth, we are given an earnest of the life of the kingdom to come, if we follow Christ, as we are called to do, in self denial, in the agony of our cross, willingly and joyfully scorning the pleasures and pains of the flesh, that we receive the promise...

Again, as far as other subjects you bring up (and there are many of them), I prefer to complete the dialogue on this one (PROPITIATION) rather that create edges to be picked at. Blame my Jesuitical training.

The propitiation is Christ's offering of Himself, having walked a sinless and obedient life in the flesh upon the earth, to the Father, for the sake of His creation... It is iatric for us, thereby restoring to us right relationship with the Father by our being a part of the Body of the Son, and turned from sins and toward God, Willingly... Agonizingly... Gratefully... Because now, in Christ, we CAN resist sin unto blood, and overcome, because Christ is our Champion, and will not allow the forces of this world to overcome the love of God for us, if we are willing to turn from our evil ways...

It is the propitiation of Christ that established in power His Body upon the earth that we in it can overcome our sins... And live holy lives unto God, struggling against our sinfulness, dieing to our flesh, each and every day, rejoicing in sufferings, mortifying the flesh...

Christ's propitiation is that which brings to us who are in Him the Great Mercy... Unto the remission of our sins, unto the healing of our infirmities, unto the salvation of our souls... Unto repentance from dead works... Unto the Communion of Love...

Too many words?

Arsenios

[RanRan]

'Without the shedding of blood there is NO forgiveness.'

Why is that, George? Why does Paul spend so much time talking about God's justice as important to understanding His love?

[Rdr. Arsenios]

'Without the shedding of blood there is NO forgiveness.'

Why is that, George? Why does Paul spend so much time talking about God's justice as important to understanding His love?

Hebrews 9:22
And in blood are all things being almost purified under the Law.
And apart from the shedding of blood no release from sin is coming to be.
[My hyper-literal translation]

I have a feeling that Howie might be a better guy to ask about the meaning of blood in the OT Jewish Tradition. Howie??

Blood means Life, in that tradition.
Bloodshed is loss of life.

And Christians are called to hate their life and crucify it in self denial...
And thereby, in that repentance, purify their hearts...
And to live according to the Spirit, and not according to the world...

So that the OT sacrifices, while a type of the sacrifice to come, did indeed have an effect unto the release of sins, [almost, as 22a says], yet clearly, what is in view, is the life and death nature of release from sin, that death is required for release... And indeed, Christ's perfect sacrifice entailed His death, and our reception of His propitiation entails our own death.

And the death that we die is the death to this life of the flesh that is itself death, and by our denial of self, and by our taking up the agony of our own crosses, and by our struggling against sin unto our own blood, is the means that Christ affords us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven right here upon the earth OF WHICH we no longer are, but are dead to the flesh, yet alive in Christ...

Is this helpful? [I know you already are aware of Christ being the fulfillment of all these previous blood sacrifices.]

Arsenios

[Howie]

There are many words of Jesus warning that generation of an angry God - very angry.

Please give me chapter and verse for these words of Jesus. Also, which tranaslation you use.

Thank you.

All the best.

[Howie]

I KNEW I should have put a smiley on that sentence! That was totally in jest! Please forgive me!

I did not take it too seriously. Being an old-schooler I understand not using the “smiley faces”, etc. I dislike them myself – perhaps because I have a certain pride in word usage… with that said, using the smiley faces might be another wonderful humbling thing to do – and childlike as well!

There certainly is a good sense in which we should attain unto a lazer focus... A person can burn right through a lot of rubbish with it and get straight to the heart of things... Yet it is the edges that comprise the the enviornment in which the matter under discussion actually lives. And there is both the immediate and the surrounding enviornment, and sometimes, as we keep refocusing our lens in our zeal to burn through to the core, we can lose sight of the whole...

And it is in this concern that I went to the edges, because I do not recognize what you are seeing in your focused center, and was casting about to come up with some kind of context wherein I might get it to somehow come into a focus that my eyes can discern...

I was not trying to pick at the edges, so much as establish common ground that we should proceed shoulder to shoulder, rather than across a ring...

I fully understand – and agree. I think you do establish that common ground later in the post – and I salute you and thank you in advance.

In the first place, your presentation of the issue in this manner carries with it all the baggage of the Protestant and Western revision of Christianity that has landed it in the pickle in which it finds itself today. And I am not a part of that revision.

Secondly, the word PROPITIATION is very loaded, in that it does indeed, in the west, entail the understanding of a God who hates man for Adam's sin, and were in not for His sending and our killing His own Son under torture on the Cross, would burn us all alive unto eternity in his wrath. This is the Protestant revision of understanding that is driving young people out of their churches, and into body-piercing parlors.

But propitiation does not HAVE to mean this - It certainly does NOT mean it for the Orthodox Faith...

So how, with any integrity at all, can I answer yes or no? "Maybe" was my only choice...

Yes, casting about for some common ground. Can you now see how it is, from my perspective, that your simple thoughts of an Angry God needing Propitiation are not simple at all to me?

Yes. Yet we move closer to accord.

It assumes a dysfunctional relationahip of man to God, and this indeed is what we have after the fall, for Adam HID from God, and rather than confess his sin and seek repentance and forgiveness, he blamed the woman, and the One Who gave her to him... That is NOT the right way of relating to God. It is wrong relationship. And it is the fallen human way... For it is turned AWAY FROM God, and not toward Him in confession and supplication.We are very close, however the terms “confession” and “supplication” again have very different meanings in the Easter Orthodox than in western Catholicism or Protestantism.

Now you can come in at this point, and say "Well, God must have been really ticked off with them!"... But that is not the point...

Fully agreed with.

They were dead already, and yet God graciously gave them coverings of skins, and gave them what they would need to endure, through their seed, to this day, laboring and in painsof childbirth. This is a loving thing that God did, as He began the long road of our redemption... In a world of pleasure and pain in the flesh which will give us both birth and death... To find our own way... Until God calls to us...

I mean, if God was that mad, He would have just let their death finish right there, and they would be no more... He did put the serpent on his belly on the ground... But did not kill him... For our redemption comes with our overcoming the serpent...

We agree if I understand your use of the word “death” as meaning disconnection in consciousness from God as a consequences of being in a state of sin.

And then can we say that God was not pleased? Sure... But to what avail? I mean, was Adam pleased? Was Eve? Was the snake? Yes and no with the snake... But the essential feature of this event is that man lost his relationship with God by turning to the serpent in disobedience, and then did not confess and repent, but hid and then blamed... Adam, by turning away from God, and believing the serpent, cut himself off from the source of Life, and linked himself up with death, and had not the power to reverse his action...

Fully agreed with.

I am not sure, Howie... Jesus' teaching is that our God is a Loving God, who hates sin, and loves us, and wants the sinner to turn away from his sins and unto God... And He hates sin because of the death it brings, and because He wants us to live.

And what was Adam’s sin? He ate the fruit from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man came to believe that there was another force in the universe: evil. This fundamental understanding of Man’s sin is crucial to understanding the teachings of Jesus. It is also essential to our understanding of the validity of the concept of PROPITIATION.

The ingesting of the fruit from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a sin because God looked at all he created and said it is good. This is something that we (especially in the west) lose track of. What a stunning statement! God looked at all he created and said it is good. God did not created evil; therefore evil does not exist -- except in the belief system (consciousness) of man. If we understand that Adam’s (and our) sin is the incorporating this concept of duality into his (our) belief system (consciousness), then repentance becomes the turning back to the consciousness of oneness with God that Jesus encourages us to do.

I ask you to try this simple experiment. Remove the concept of “duality” from your intellectual lexicon and then view the teachings of Jesus – referring as much to the Greek as needed. You may see a much simpler and clearer message.

That is all I think should be said at the moment. It may be too much. You will find much of what I say is not that distant from the early teachings of the Eastern Church.

I apologize if this is off topic. However when we bandy about concepts like “sin” and “God” and “propitiation” I think we owe it to ourselves to examine and improve our understandings of those words as best we can.

Too many words?

No, I understand the need. Imagine all the words I will have to write as people respond to this!

Feel better soon.

All the best.

[RanRan]

Please give me chapter and verse for these words of Jesus. Also, which tranaslation you use.

Thank you.

All the best.

"You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Luke 3:7 NIV

"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation." Matt 23

And to those who complained "Why US?" He told them:

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."

They knew what He was talking about and it wasn't about unfortunate accidents. It had simply come time for this wrath to fall.

And about 30 years after He spoke those words it did come on them.

[Rdr. Arsenios]

smiley faces might be another wonderful humbling thing to do – and childlike as well!

Rambunctious batch, yes??

We agree if I understand your use of the word “death” as meaning disconnection in consciousness from God as a consequences of being in a state of sin.

I simply meant it as the contidition of anyone who is "unplugged" [so to speak] form the Source of Life. I mean, Adam's 'consciousness' was still 'connected' to God in that he was aware of God, he talked with God, and he I think worshipped God, and taught that worship to Cain and Able... I guess I am just a tad uneasy with the consciousness part of it...

And what was Adam’s sin? He ate the fruit from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Man came to believe that there was another force in the universe: evil. This fundamental understanding of Man’s sin is crucial to understanding the teachings of Jesus. It is also essential to our understanding of the validity of the concept of PROPITIATION.

The ingesting of the fruit from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was a sin because God looked at all he created and said it is good. This is something that we (especially in the west) lose track of. What a stunning statement! God looked at all he created and said it is good. God did not created evil; therefore evil does not exist -- except in the belief system (consciousness) of man. If we understand that Adam’s (and our) sin is the incorporating this concept of duality into his (our) belief system (consciousness), then repentance becomes the turning back to the consciousness of oneness with God that Jesus encourages us to do.

One fly in the ointment here is that the tree, with its fruit, of the knowledge of good AND evil was planted smack dab plumb dead CENTER in the Garden, together with the Tree of Life. And it was a beautiful tree, with pleasant fruit. Man [Adam] had no way to discern that its ingestion would kill him. And that is why God instructed him not to eat of it, and why... That was the serpent's tree, placed there with the serpent, so as to shame the serpent, by his seeing God's new creation, Man, and seeing the favor Man found with God. For the serpent had fallen greatly... And needed repentance too... And in his anger at his humiliation, he attacked man, and brought him willingly into his subjugation, through the tempting of Eve...

There was a problem in the heavens before the creation of man, in the fall of Lucifer, and God created man to correct that problem, because Lucifer freely fell in his pride... And God made man free to fall, and now freely, in his continuing freedom, will save him...

Evil is the absence of good, and this happens when one turns away from God, Who is the Source of all Good... The belief systems we cling to are not what is evil, but our being turned from God, and that is why repentance is salvific...

Adam's eyes indeed WERE opened upon eating of that tree, and he indeed DID know good and evil, and this knowing is the same knowing that signifies his sexual relations with Eve, and involves a unity of being with the thing known... So that man now knew evil, for he now had evil within him, and was disconnected from God... And connected to the serpent...

But God did not let the serpent have the victory, and the way of redemption was to have God the Son become man, a part of creation, but without sin, and thereby destroy the power of death that held mankind in its grasp. So that in this, mankind who turns from evil to good freely will find salvation in the Body of the Son, which was sacrificed for them...

I ask you to try this simple experiment. Remove the concept of “duality” from your intellectual lexicon and then view the teachings of Jesus – referring as much to the Greek as needed. You may see a much simpler and clearer message.

We live in duality, and we are to scorn the flesh, and embrace the cross of suffering, that we live triumphantly in the Heavenly Kingdom on earth... We are called to affirm our duality in this life, and embrace the good, indeed the Good!

That is all I think should be said at the moment. It may be too much. You will find much of what I say is not that distant from the early teachings of the Eastern Church.

The eastern Church does not begin with the philosophical concept of duality, being established in the Garden, and to be rejected in the flesh, but instead teaches us to embrace suffering in the flesh, and tribulation in the world, that we enter the heavenly kingdom here, and in the life of the Age to come...

I apologize if this is off topic. However when we bandy about concepts like “sin” and “God” and “propitiation” I think we owe it to ourselves to examine and improve our understandings of those words as best we can.

Goodness! Are we off topic? Isn't this my thread?? Isn't it about propitiation? Have I forgotten something important again??

Lord have Mercy!!

Imagine all the words I will have to write as people respond to this!

I have found on T-Web that there are not as many responders to this kind of an exchange as you would expect.

Feel better soon.

Thanks, I'm a sorry case!

Arsenios

All the best.[/QUOTE]