GenX Christians have all too often come in for negative comments from far too many people. So, let me point you to a website, with an old post from 2007 where you can see some posters that express another side of GenX Christians, Emerging Grace. I think you will enjoy looking at the posters. But, more important, reflect on them and let them work on you. And, enjoy them.
In the Western churches, both Catholic and Protestant, sin, grace, and salvation are seen primarily in legal terms. God gave humans freedom, they misused it and broke God’s commandments, and now deserve punishment. God’s grace results in forgiveness of the transgression and freedom from bondage and punishment.
The Eastern churches see the matter in a different way. For Orthodox theologians, humans were created in the image of God and made to participate fully in the divine life. The full communion with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed meant complete freedom and true humanity, for humans are most human when they are completely united with God.
The result of sin, then, was a blurring of the image of God and a barrier between God and man. The situation in which mankind has been ever since is an unnatural, less human state, which ends in the most unnatural aspect: death. Salvation, then, is a process not of justification or legal pardon, but of reestablishing man’s communion with God. This process of repairing the unity of human and divine is sometimes called “deification.” This term does not mean that humans become gods but that humans join fully with God’s divine life.
Fr. Ernesto, quick question: What’s the source of the block quote above?
As a (marginal-)Protestant who is only a couple of steps away from Catholicism or Orthodoxy (from his current position of Anglo-Catholic), that quote above is something that I would not have agreed with a few years ago. Until I started reading the Fathers. And some books by Catholic authors. And some books by Orthodox authors. And some books on Orthodoxy in English. And listened to some glorious Orthodox chant. And… you get the picture.
The quote comes from http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/denominations/orthodoxy.htm. However, this is a very brief summary site that I would not use for serious extended information. But, it had that nice summary up above.
I’m not a Gen-Xer (since I was born in 61) but I can definitely resonate with what is written here. All that is why I chose to look at Orthodoxy and leave the Roman Catholic church.
What do the Easten Churches consider the “image of God”? There have been recent discussions on that elsewhere in trying to define it.
Probably most fundamentally, Rick, humanity created in the image of God is found in the fact that all human hypostases are persons (the terms are synonymous when speaking of both humanity and Deity) and in that the nature/essence of humanity is inherently communitarian.
That is helpful. Thanks!
I recently found the same website. I liked a lot of what I saw too. It shows that GenX isn’t a “lost” as some people seem to make it out to be.
Es una alegría verte `por lo menos por aquí, pero de vez en cuando tus mensajes que sean en castellano para que entendamos los que no sabemos ingles.
saludos a tu esposa y tus hijos