Despre Herezia impotriva religiei ortodoxe

[patinina34]

[SIZE=+1]CONCERNING THE NEOPLATONIST HERESY
AGAINST ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY[/SIZE]
We will complete our discussion of the Patrick Barnes heresy concerning the nature of man with the following article. With this present material, we have presented sufficient proof from the holy fathers that the teaching which the Neo-Platonists in the Orthodox Church officially espouse (recently endorsed by Mr Patrick Barnes of the Orthodox Christian Information Center website, and which appears on that website), that the soul of man alone is the complete person, is a heresy against the expressed anthropology of the Orthodox Church. This heresy is based in Platonism and Gnosticism and is common to most of our modern Augustinian neo-Platonists, but is perhaps worse among the so-called "old calendarist" sects, where scholasticism is also rampant.
Following this present article, we will discuss the second major heresy of Neo-Platonism, and this one also involves Fr. Alexei Young. This grave error is the heresy of "natural immortality." The teaching that the soul is naturally immortal is a heresy, and it is also a sure pathway to pantheism. The teaching that the soul is is naturally immortal is rooted in both Platonism and Gnosticism, so it is not surprising to find it taught or implicated by followers of Augustine of Hippo, the Western neo-Platonist philosopher responsible for so many of the Western heresies.
We will also look briefly at the Orthodox Christian awareness of the intercessions of the saints and our prayers for the departed, so that no one will be left in doubt about our clear understanding of the efficacy and meaningfulness of both. We are presenting here also a letter which was written some years ago in response to an open letter from the late neo Gnostic philosopher, Fr Seraphim Rose.
We do not wish to repeat here the contents of our book, The Tale of Basil the New: Study of a Gnostic Document, which is an assessment of a primary source of the "tollhouse myth," however that book is available free of charge to anyone who requests it.

[patinina34]

"Man, with respect to his nature, is most truly said to be neither soul without body, nor, on the other hand, body without soul; but is composed of the union of body and soul into one form of the beautiful." (St. Methodios of Olympus).

Man was created both body and soul. The body alone, though it was created first, is not the human being, and though the soul gave life to the body, neither is it alone the human being. Man became a living human being when body and soul were united together. As our holy and God-bearing father Gregory Palamas says:
"When God is said to have made man according to His image, the word man means neither the soul by itself nor the body by itself, but the two together."
From love, God created the body and in love He bestowed upon it the soul as the force of life, that it might dwell in harmony with the body and function by means of the body, bearing not only His likeness and image, but man being himself like a type and image of the life of the Holy Church. For God created not without wisdom, but that His love and salvation might be made manifest.
The soul and the body, then, are not two separate entities; they are together a single psychophysical whole, mutually serving one another and mutually dependent upon one another for life and functions, as our holy father Ephraim the Syrian says:
"Behold how both the soul and the body look and attest to one another: even as the body must have the soul so as to live, so must the soul have the body to see and hear."
And St Anastasios of Sinai informs us likewise that:
"Accordingly, when the soul is separated from the entire body, it no longer is able to operate, because it operates through the members of the body...."
The soul is not the prisoner of the body, rather the two were created and composed together in a mutual life, each one harmoniously deriving functions and qualities of existence from the other. If the soul departs the body, the body dies. And the soul, when separated from the body is no longer able to function in any sensual, psychophysical manner, as our holy and God-bearing father Justin the Martyr says:
"For as in the case of a yoke of oxen, if one or other is loosed from the yoke, neither of them can effect anything, if they be unyoked from their communion....For what is man but the rational animal composed of body and soul? Is the soul by itself man? No; but [only] the soul of a man. Would the body be called man? No; but it is called the body of a man....then neither of these is by itself man, but that which is made up of the two together is called man ...."
Thus, the soul and body mutually depend upon, fulfil and provide life and functions to one another. It is sheer carelessness and a great error to misrepresent certain passages of Apostle Paul, using them out of context to establish an idea of a direct conflict between body and soul, and a need for the soul to be liberated from the body. When, for example, the Apostle says, "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death," he is referring not to the physical body, but to the power of sin lodged parasitically in the "flesh." To understand the Orthodox Christian anthropology in this respect, one must refer to the Scripture and understand Apostle Paul's teachings, not according to the idea and conceptions of pagan Greece, which made a sharp distinction between body and soul, but rather to the uniform concepts of the entire Old and New Testament in which "body and soul" denote the whole living person, and not at all independent parts of him. The Manicheans held the contrary view, and St Titus of Bostra, in refuting them, observes:
"When the living body is dissolved by death and we should look upon its dust or its bones, or wish to say something about the soul, we say that these things are of a man, but we do not say that they are the man."
And St Photios the Great, refuting Origenism, concurs:
"The name `man', according to the most truthful and natural expression, applies to neither the soul without [its] body, nor to the body without [its] soul, but to that composition of soul and body made into a unique form of beauty. But Origen says that the soul alone is the man, as did Plato."
In both Old Testament Scripture and general Hebrew thought, and in New Testament Scripture and Orthodox Christian thought in general, a living person is consistently regarded as a composite entity of body and soul. Death is an unnatural shattering of this psychophysical entity. As our holy father St Titus of Bostra says:
"But though the soul be immortal [by grace], yet it is not the person, and so the Apostle does not consider [death] to differ in any wise from destruction...."

[patinina34]

It was clearly understood in Old Testament Scripture that that which survived in death maintained a continuity of identity and, since Christ had not yet trampled down the bonds of death and appeared in the state of the reposed ("hades" not "hell"), it was conceived of as existing in a state of wordless, sightless repose. The soul evidently had some consciousness of future destiny, some active hope, and thus it was neither dead nor devoid of some sort of spiritual awareness, by grace.
Old Testament anthropology, like that of the New Testament, never conceived of a naturally immortal soul inhabiting a mortal body from which it might be liberated, but always conceived of a simple, non-dualistic anthropology of a single, psychophysical organism. An active, intellectual life or functioning of the soul alone could never be conceived in either Old or New Testament thought. For the soul to function, its restoration with the body as the "whole person" would be absolutely necessary.
sharp conflict between these two concepts: the Scriptural and the Hellenic, was clearly brought forth in the reaction to Paul's sermon to the Greeks, on the resurrection, found at Acts 17:16-34. Apart from the Stoics and a few others, few of the Greeks would have questioned a concept of the soul continuing to exist, and even being rewarded after death, but the idea of a bodily resurrection astounded them. Their astonishment was logical. In general, with some exceptions, they conceived that the soul was a prisoner of the body and escaped, or was liberated from the body by death, and that it gained its highest knowledge and awareness only then. Why, therefore, would anyone want to have the soul reunited with the body in a resurrection.
By contrast, there is a parable in the Talmud (the Hebrew commentaries on the "Old Testament") which gives a good example of the Old Testament understanding of the subject. This parable was given to explain the matter to the simple Jewish people. In it we read:
"There was a ruler who had an orchard. When he saw that the choice first-fruits were ripening, he set two watchmen over the orchard gate. The one was crippled in his legs, and the other was blind. The cripple, seeing the ripe and choice first-fruits, submitted to temptation. He said to the blind man: take me on your shoulders, I will guide you, and we will go to the best tree and take of the first-fruits and eat them. This they did. When the ruler came and saw that the choice first-fruits were gone, he questioned the two watchmen. The blind one replied, `Have I eyes that I could see to take the fruit?' The cripple replied, `Have I legs that I could go and get the fruit?' The ruler, perceiving the matter, made the cripple to sit on the shoulder of the blind man, and he judged the two as one. Even so shall the Holy-One, blessed be He, do on the last day. He will cast the soul back into its body, and He will judge the two as one."
The fathers of the Church have taught the same thing, telling us precisely that the soul cannot receive its reward without the body, as St Ambrose of Milan makes clear, saying:
"And this is the course and ground of justice, that since the actions of body and soul are common to both (for what the soul has conceived, the body has carried out), each should come into judgment...for it would seem almost inconsistent that...the mind guilty of a fault shared by another should be subjected to penalty, and the flesh, the author of the evil, should enjoy rest: and that that alone should suffer which had not sinned alone, or should attain to glory not having fought alone, with the help of grace."
St Irenae of Lyons is like-minded when he says:
"For it is just that in the very same condition in which they (the body and the soul) toiled or were afflicted, being proved in every way by suffering, they should receive the reward of their suffering...."
St Titus of Bostra, rebuking the Manicheans, confirms this thought in words quoted by St John the Damascene:
"For the soul cannot enjoy anything, or possess, or do anything, or suffer, except it be together with the body, being the same as it was created in the beginning, and thus it enjoys that which is proper to it. This state is lost in death through the disobedience of Adam, and again through the obedience of the one Christ, through hope it receives (in the resurrection) again the state of being a person."

[wertygo]

Un parinte de la Athos numea pe greci chineji, chinezi chiar daca stie mai bine ca orice roman greaca, asa ca daca e ceva de folos poate traduce cineva doar ce e mai important. Tot aceluiasi parinte cand i-a zis cineva ca trebuie sa invete sa citeasca prinre randuri a raspuns ca printre randuri nu scrie nimic , e spatiu gol.