tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post3689087948442782049..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: The donum superadditum and the doctrine of man: a foundational difference between Protestants and Roman CatholicsRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-73445639578969303032012-02-08T20:51:27.923-05:002012-02-08T20:51:27.923-05:00I've not been a fan of Eastern Orthodoxy, gene...I've not been a fan of Eastern Orthodoxy, generally, and I really haven't got the time or the inclination to discuss it. Sorry.John Bugayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17728044301053738095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-83830531405610467492012-02-08T09:22:19.569-05:002012-02-08T09:22:19.569-05:00What do you think about this:
"We have seen ...What do you think about this:<br /><br />"We have seen that iun the East man’s relationship with God was understood as a communion of the human person with that which is above nature. “Nature,” therefore, designates that which is, in virtue of creation, distinct from God. But nature can and must be transcended; this is the privilege and the function of the free mind, made “according to God’s imge.”<br />Now, in Greek patristic thought, only this free, personal mind can commit sin and incur the concomitant “guilt” – a point made particularly clear by Maximus the Confessor in his distinction between “natural will” and “gnomic will.” Human nature, as God’s creature, always exercises its dynamic properties (which together constitute the “natureal will” – a created dynamism) in accordance with the divine will which created it. But when the human person, or hypostasis, by rebelling against both God and nature misuses its freedom, it can distort the “natural will” and thus corrupt nature itself. It is able to do so because it possesses freedom, or “gnomic will,” which is capable of orienting man toward the good and of “imitating God” (“God alone is good by nature,” writes Maximus, “and only God’s imitator is good by his gnome“); it is also capable of sin, because “our salvation depends on our will.” But sin is always a personal act, never an act of nature. Patriarch Photius even goes so far as to say, referring to Western doctrines, that the belief in a “sin of nature” is a heresy" (John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology). <br /><br />An Orthodox priest quoted it in a discussion we were having about the fall.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com