"I started reading the Lutheran Confessions anachronistically. I tried to convince myself that Lutheranism was Orthodoxy...just the Western version of it. A few Lutheran pastors I know, including my own, would tell me "that's not how we were taught to understand the Confessions" but I couldn't pretend to be Orthodox if I couldn't be allowed to read the Confessions in a particular light."I commented there, but thought it also worth mentioning here...it's hard also, when coming from the Southern Baptist Church to Orthodoxy, to let go of the idea (which is even less ancient than Lutheranism) of "Once Saved Always Saved," wherein God is either so loving that He lets you KNOW you're saved, or He's a sourpuss who nitpicks at every little work you do as you scrape together your own salvation.
As Fr. Thomas Hopko says, God is a God who, when He meets our sin, says, "You're not gonna get me to bless it, but you're not gonna get rid of Me, either." The possibility of choosing sin and death over Life remains, but the love never wanes--nevertheless, every now and again it gets hard not to paint a "Once Saved Always Saved" veneer over the somber faces on those icons...
They're somber for a reason.
They're somber 'cause they care.
2 comments:
--"Once Saved Always Saved," wherein God is either so loving that He lets you KNOW you're saved, or He's a sourpuss who nitpicks at every little work you do as you scrape together your own salvation.
>>Neither of which correctly characterises that doctrine...just sthg to think about.
Of course, yet this is the "pop culture" version the masses hear from the pulpit and is as far as most go, for better or worse...
The implications of the doctrine (which, as we both know, are often more pervasive and influential than the doctrine itself) are that to which I was referring--the doctrine of OSAS itself--which merely states that God will guide all true believers to ever-increasing and ultimately-salvific faith--is really an aspect of assurance within the mind of a believer that has no practical application or real way to be verified within the day-to-day life of the believer.
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