In the beginning, God… // Psalm 37:23-24
Joined August 2013
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They’ll never recover from this magnificent beat down.
We stand firm on the unchanging word of God. That word commands that we honor those who have gone before us by imitating their faith, not by misrepresenting their words and venerating a lifeless trinket.
Christianity is life in Christ, received through faith in the promises of God. It is a life more abundant than we could ever imagine.
And it doesn’t require the veneration of lifeless trinkets.
Orthobros think kissing blocks of painted wood is essential to the gospel.
Dyer couldn’t articulate the gospel if his life depended on it.
Oh wait. It does.
Could someone who has never heard of Christianity stumble upon a Bible, read it, believe the gospel, and become a true Christian?
Absolutely.
In fact, John tells us precisely why his Gospel was written:
“These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)
Now consider a second question.
Could that same person, having never encountered Christian tradition, read the Bible and arrive at Roman Catholicism?
Its papacy? Marian dogmas? Veneration of images? Treasury of merits?
Not a chance.
And therein lies the problem.
Rome has added to that gospel and then declared those additions essential to the Christian faith.
Mary sinned, and she had sex with her husband.
But the holy act of having sex with her husband wasn’t what made her a sinner.
What prevents me from calling this an icon of Jesus? And if I do, are the Orthodox obligated to venerate it?
They genuinely don’t have an answer for this. They cannot biblically explain how such a leap is warranted.
The saints in Heaven are described by Paul as “dead in Christ.”
They are physically dead and spiritually in Christ.
If I wish to commune with them, then I should commune with Christ because they are in him.
For anyone waiting for another temple to be built, you’re 2,000 years too late.
The body of Christ is God’s temple.
If a person sets up a lifeless image of son or dear one and thinks that person, though dead, is present, and through the lifeless image he imagines him, much more do [Christians] enjoy the communion of the saints through the divine Scriptures, having in them images not of their bodies but of their souls, the words spoken by them being of their very souls.
Watching Jay get humbled this Saturday will be a great birthday gift.
Thank you @Acts17David
