/lit/ - Literature

We don't explicitly need sacrifice. Fuck dogmatically needing sacrifice.

>>8720500

You must serve yourself more than others then.

>>8720496
You're thinking of sacrifice as an appeasement to a God, or deity, when this sacrifice is one of natural order.

The rule of Nature is death. Predator consuming prey. Might is right, the weak fear the strong, etc...

>>8720496

To humble themselves and remind them that their lives are in the place of death.

>>8720562

and the sacrifices death is in the place of their life.

>>8720521
That's the point.

Shedding blood is part of our fallen state. Cain killing Abel is not a sacrifice to God, it's a sacrifice to Cain. If the earth is being used as an alter, it's as an alter to Satan, not to the God of mercy.

Guy was a Freemason, and a Satanist, which isn't much better.

>>8720583

And the blood of the lamb? Sacrifice as atonement?

>>8720587
I'm Orthodox, we understand that very differently from Catholics.

This is the Catholic understanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_theory_of_atonement

This is ours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christus_Victor

From our perspective, Christ's death was about creating a paradox. Man is innately mortal (the pre-fall immortality was due to grace, not human nature), but God is innately immortal. So Christ's death engendered a paradox, which engendered the Resurrection. By partaking of Christ's Body and Blood, our bodies can partake of this paradox, which allows us to also partake of his Resurrection. Christ's death was to give us that gift. It had nothing to do with satisfying God's wrath or justice.

>>8720496
Sacrifice here betokens self-immolation, man is always giving himself to something.
Departing from maistre now, men naturally desire happiness, we obtain happiness by giving ourselves over to that which makes us happy. However, (back to maistre) man is naturally irrational and therefor does not know where his ultimate beatitude layeth nor how to approach it, and so some men see their happiness in war because they lack (at least in part) that unnatural intellect which is capable of seeing farther as to where ultimate happiness lies.
As for instance, the unnatural thinking man knows that war cannot make him happy except by self-delusion, because war is violence and direct exposure to violence atrophies moral character. The intellect says keep moral character, it tends to potentiality and by extension being, and being is convertible with good. The intellect has sight of metaphysical things, which the doctrine and tradition of the Catholic church nurtures as a way of overthrowing the dark instincts that maistre describes man as having innate from birth.

>>8720614
This, by the way, is why unlike the West, the Orthodox don't fixate on Christ's suffering on the cross. All our depictions of him on the cross, are in his death, not alive in agony. We don't meditate on his suffering, because for us, his death is completely about his resurrection, not about him being punished in our place.

>>8720624

Do we not only truly understand our evil in the suffering of others?

>>8720583
>Guy was a Freemason
Freemasonry wasn't at odds with Catholicism in maistre's time, at least not in france.
>And a Satanist
Well well, have something to say do we?

It's not sacrifice, it's comsumption and euxhaustion, humans seek to use the things the possess, including their own selves, the don't want to sit around frustrated.

>>8720624
But his suffering is the suffering of mankind, it's central to his person since we are all called to suffer in the same way that he did.

>>8720631
Pls, that's PETA's prerogative, Christ was not a victim for people to feel guilty about like slavery.

>>8720624
Also
>"The West"
Thank you for revealing the /pol/-tardation behind eastern orthoLARPers, Christ's church doesn't predicate itself on geographical or ethnic grounds.

>>8720631
Our evil is what causes it. In Orthodox, every time you sin, it's like pissing in the pool. Just by eating the fruit Adam condemned all to death; you similarly add to the burden with each sin, for everyone. This is why judging others is a problem.

>>8720657
>But his suffering is the suffering of mankind, it's central to his person since we are all called to suffer in the same way that he did.
In order to purge ourselves of the passions, those are what we must sacrifice. Our passions, our property, our sex life, we're called to sacrifice all this (if we are called, but the first generally for all). What this guy is talking about, is sacrifice purely in terms of blood, and he seems to see the killing as somehow necessary and the primary action, since he compares murder to the utility-killing of animals.

>>8720678
"Western Christianity" is an Orthodox term for the Christianity that evolved in Europe after the schism, including Catholicism and Protestantism.

I'm a convert living in America, I think know it's not predicated on ethnicity or geography.

>>8720724

Why did God order the bloodletting of animals in place of Israels sin?

>>8720738
He didn't, really. God forbade people to eat blood, starting with Noah (the same time he sanctions eating meat). The reason for this is that eating something blood with its flesh is communing with its life (which is reserved for Christ). Animals had to be drained of blood, because, well, since Noah, man is forbidden from eating blood. The NT also affirms it (something Orthodox, unlike Catholics and most Protestants, also affirm).

Now, as to why that drained blood was used to "purify" stuff, it's because of the use of it to mark the doors in Egypt during the first pass over. It's a ceremony saying, "God will spare what is marked here."

>>8720735
Hey watch it buddy, you almost make it sound like you're one of those people who think Catholicism "broke off" from orthoshitterdom and not the other way around.

>>8720766
Well, I mean, the filioque and Papal Supremacy *were* both innovated doctrines that arose in the West hundreds of years after Christ, and never in the East. Even the RCC agrees with that concerning Papal Supremacy: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2016/09/26/the-new-orthodox-catholic-agreement-is-a-landmark-but-theres-a-long-way-to-go/

If you ever care to read the Venerable Bede, you'll see the guy is clearly Orthodox, not Catholic. He talks about the Nativity Fast, fasting every Wednesday and Friday, and he made a massive fuss about using the right method to calculate Pascha, and the one he laid out was the one we use (always celebrating it *after* the day Passover falls on). In the letter he recorded by the Pope, it's clear the Pope had a different position back then, since he addresses other bishops as "fellow bishop" (echoing 1 Peter 5:1).

>>8720765

The animal was a subsitute though.

> "For the soul of the flesh is in the blood and I have assigned it for you upon the altar to provide atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that atones for the soul."

>>8720807
Though even today it would not be incorrect for the pope to address bishops in that way since he remains bishop of Rome. Though the supremacy of the bishop of Rome may have come later, it came for good reason nonetheless, one holding the apparent office of Peter -should- have that supremacy, and does by virtue of ordination.

>>8720819
That's not intended as a penal substitute, as in the animal being punished in your place.

>>8720839
Dogma isn't about what you think should be, it's about what was always the case in the Church. Now canons, those can be based on "should", but they can also be altered.

>>8720880
See, I don't agree; the operation of the Church should be altered to reflect the divine truth which was revealed to us in the Christ, not remain in an agrarian limbo of historical-critical traditions.
If the latter were the intended mode of all clerical establishments then Christ would not have bothered fulfilling the law, but would have said "it's already written down numnuts just follow it." and left it at that.
Regarding the creation of points of doctrine, the Catholic church grounds these in non-historical-critical interpretations of scripture as they correlate with rigorous (definitively thomistic ofc) philosophical logic and theological truths obtained by divine revelation, when this criteria is met, then the church has the blessing of the holy spirit to invoke papal infallibility.
This system is alive, it is academic, it is non-reactionary, it is universal, and contrary to (some) orthodox sentiment it is scriptural.
That's the torch which Christ has passed mankind, for the law to be written yet also among the hearts of men, so that by intreating unto the teachings of those that came before them with rigor and dynamism people may discover truths about God which were previously unknown, and enshrine them in literature. The most effective of whom may be called doctors of the church.

>>8720974
So you think you understand what Christ *really* meant, better than the Apostles?

Do you not see how this attitude lead to the Reformation? Both in Protestants being upset, and in them picking up this attitude of yours where someone comes along and says, they can tell you what Christ meant better than everyone else who came before?

>as they correlate with rigorous (definitively thomistic ofc) philosophical logic
How is this part of Apostolic theology?
Colossians 2:8

>>8720993
The Apostles were also teachers, many of the desert fathers and church fathers were direct students or students of students of the apostles, and those teachings are what charged the medieval/renaissance scholasticism which serves as the foundation for Catholic intellectual tradition.
The reformation happened because certain people who had been taught german lies in place of the afforementioned came to resent Catholicism because they perceived it as hollow higher-than-thou antics due to sheer lack of understanding and literacy.
In the case of the American revolution the results were not exactly disastrous, seeing as they went somewhere else to be heretics. But in france, Louis XVI is also partly to blame for playing nice with protestants and jacobins and jansenists, signing the edict of versailles etc, and was duly beheaded by the savage mob, a fate he didn't deserve but nonetheless also a grave he dug himself.

>this attitude of yours where someone comes along and says, they can tell you what Christ meant better than everyone else who came before?
The Church will never create doctrine contrary to scripture, but scripture cannot interpret itself, even orthodoxy has its interpretation, which is just as easily disagreed upon between orthodox sects as between some protestant denominations.
The idea that as long as dogma remains strictly biblical-literal everything will be fine is an error, because even the simplest semantics are subject to interpretation. The difference is that the Catholic church knows this, and has a living authority within it who instantiates dogma, so that by refusing to acknowledge papal authority you also refuse to acknowledge church dogma and thus are cut off from the church by that fact alone. In the same way, should the pope commit heresy, he is automatically cut off from the church by that fact alone.
The church is all about the best of both worlds; not faith, not works, both. Not literal interpretation, not allegorical interpretation, but both, and its structure reflects that.

Colossians 2:8 I believe is referring to (as it says) worldly philosophy, including things like epistemology and what ever philosophies you typically find people believing here on /lit/ such as stoicism or epicureanism or some other marginal, perrenially incomplete world view.
But thomism and scholasticism in general are almost exclusively metaphysical and deal with immaterial things and how they relate to God.

>>8721212
Scholasticism was taken from Islamic theology.

Dogma the same across all Orthodox jurisdictions, which aren't "sects". The Bible is not a source of our dogma, Holy Tradition is. The Bible is venerated because it infallibly, albeit not comprehensively, witnesses Holy Tradition.

>>8720624
>not about him being punished in our place

The Catholic Church doesn't teach this. Penal Substitution is a product of the Reformation.

>>8721527
The Catholic Church teaches the Satisfaction Theory of Atonement.

>>8721535
Yes, but Satisfaction is not about Christ being punished in our stead.

>>8721541
What is being satisfied?

>>8721581
We owe God everything, but our sin gets in the way of that. We cannot redeem ourselves since we already owe God all of the honour we can give.

Christ is sacrificed in an act of loving obedience to the Father and out of his love for us. The Father gives his Son to ransom slaves out of his love for us. Because Christ did this as man and as God it honours God more than our sin could ever dishonour him and so reconciles man to God.

Now Reformed Protestants will say that Christ acted as a substitute for mankind where God's wrath was poured out on him rather than on humanity, but I think that's obscene.

>>8721652
You didn't really answer my question, unless you're saying God's demand for obedience is what was satisfied.

>>8721345
Scholasticism was also taken from pegan philosophy, its origins are proof of its validity, as for example Aquinas had seen the framework set up by the greeks, purified it, and added to it.
Also, Aquinas in particular was influenced in rather equal parts by Aristotle, Dionysius, Augustine, and of course avveroes because they were contemporaries, but avveroes was wrong about a number of things which is why Aquinas is typically depicted in art as standing over avveroes.
And Thomism is not in the bible, but is consistent with it in as much as it is true.

My point is that if your holy tradition refuses to be changed, then it cannot really be true except perhaps in an ambiguous and implicit way, employing poetic language and such to achieve its effect.
But truth requires extemporation, universals must be extrapolated out into particulars, that's the will of God, to give the truth a palpable and comprehensible existence in the world, to do in earth as it is in heaven.
And to say that the truth can only really exist in the beards of hermits at mount athos is bad Christianity, since what good is contemplation if it never becomes real, what good are seeds that don't grow, what good is a soul who is never born?
Even God existed forever in simplicity, and yet imparted himself and created everything, every substance, every atom, every unstable quantum vacuum field, this is truth.
It's just like speech, you want to impart some sort of logos, you move your vocal cords, and what leaves your mouth are fluctuations in air pressure, and yet this is the most perfect depiction of the thing which you wanted to say.

So if your church doesn't have this attitude then it will never really advance, and if it never advances then maybe it won't be ready for the 2nd coming, and then there will also be stigma against scientific progress and stigma regarding politics as well, which explains why even the greatest monarchy of russia was resorting to propaganda and corruption to keep its power structure, because the clerical establishment was a joke, their ordinations were unfounded and as such there was no genuine authority, people began to resent the power structure and subsequently overthrew it and caused many years of mass bloodshed shortly afterwards, and they still will not learn, putin has his eye on constantinople and will probably start more wars in order to reestablish byzantium like the stereotypical russian he is.

>>8721660
Sorry, a debt to justice, this gives a rundown:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02055a.htm

Though don't get me wrong, I don't believe that atonement can be fully expressed in words.

>>8721674
>Scholasticism was also taken from pegan philosophy
Not sure how that's any more Apostolic than Islam

>if your holy tradition refuses to be changed, then it cannot really be true
Hm.

>So if your church doesn't have this attitude then it will never really advance
You're right, we're not interested in advancing on the understanding of the Apostles, we're interested strictly in preserving it, unaltered.

>then there will also be stigma against scientific progress
You're the ones who punished Galileo for heresy, we never did anything like that.

>>8721679
>Anselm's answer to the question is simply the need of satisfaction of sin. No sin, as he views the matter, can be forgiven without satisfaction. A debt to Divine justice has been incurred; and that debt must needs be paid.

>>8721703
Yes, but read a little farther down where is says that Christ's sacrifice was not one of "vicarious punishment."

>>8721710
Which is mincing words.

>>8721716
What's the problem with Anselm's theory?

>>8720500
I came here to post this.

>>8721731
>>8720614

>>8721702
>Not sure how that's any more Apostolic than Islam
Truth exists in the universe no matter where it came from. If a muslim told me 2 + 2 = 4 and I sad fuck you you're a muslim then I'd be a bad Christian, not because I hurt his feelings but because I did not prioritize truth.
You're probably thinking, wait, philosophy is a whole different order of knowledge with its own cultural baggage, but the same concept applies, if there are ideas about God developed by muslims and they are true, then I will incorporate it. Doesn't make me a muslim, and it doesn't make Christianity any less valid, on the contrary it makes it more valid.

>we're not interested in advancing on the understanding of the Apostles, we're interested strictly in preserving it, unaltered.
Which is exactly why orthodoxy is so backwards-looking and has so little effect on human institutions in the contemporary world.
Also, I think orthodoxy has not succeeded in preserving the teachings of the Apostles, because their teachings align more properly with Catholicism.

>You're the ones who punished Galileo for heresy
Well that's a bit of a common misunderstanding, the church didn't really do anything to galileo except tell him to wait a while before perpetuating his own books as if they were absolute truth, remember that back then we didn't have much of an institutional scientific community, all of the sudden one guy comes out and says the planets are arranged differently, you definitely want some deliberation involved before you reform your own church because of one dude.

>we never did anything like that.
Because you don't have the authority.

>>8721812
>Truth exists in the universe no matter where it came from
Christian dogma can't come from any source, it can only come from Christ. If someone else happens to affirm the same truth, then okay, but you can't add to it from other sources.

>Which is exactly why orthodoxy is so backwards-looking and has so little effect on human institutions in the contemporary world.
This wasn't something the Apostles were ever concerned about.

> the church didn't really do anything to galileo
They told him he was an heretic and would be punished if he didn't recant (which he did).

>Because you don't have the authority.
Because we didn't forge a document called "The Donation of Constantine".

>>8721827
>Because we didn't forge a document called "The Donation of Constantine."
YOU TAKE THAT BACK MOTHERFUCKER BEFORE I FORGE YOU A NEW ASSHOLE

>>8721827
It's incredibly ironic seeing a person whose religion is increasingly neoplatonic and/or russophilic arguing how something can be a dogma only from Christ, implying that thomism is a dogma (which it isn't) and that her religion is pure of filthy pagan influence (which is really just influence from other pagans).
You constantly pretend Orthodoxy is a single, non fractured church with a single, consistent doctrine. Spoilers, it's not, each Church will often have it's own interpretations, some will even be primarily nationalist imperialistic organizations like the Serbian Orthodox church.

de Maistre was a fucking lunatic.

I don't know how on Burke got lumped with him as a father of conservatism.

>>8722202
That's because Burke is liberal trash, I wonder the same thing every time I think conservative.

>>8722225

Burke is plain ol' Anglo-Conservatism. Cuckservatism.

Maistre is the reactionary edgelord supreme who wanted Europe to be ruled by the Pope/etc.

>>8722233
And that's why Burke sucks and why de Maistre is so great.

>>8720496
>Why do humans need sacrifice?

To delay gratification for some future good.

Why do you think people go to university? It certainly isn't because they like sitting in a library for 12 hours, reading tiresome non-fiction in order to get a good grade on a test.

>>8722198
Saint John Chrysostom hated Plato, desu. And he is to us what Saint Augustine is to the West.

>>8722261
And yet, the mystical doctrines of Plotinus are the most defining element in the divide between West and East.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, but you draw a silly argument that pagan/muslim is something to be completely, a priori discarded, while participating in something so profoundly influenced by mystic ecstasy and orders of monks.

For someone who knows at least the very basics of church history and history of philosophy, this is strange.

>>8722277
The essence-energies distinction is clear in Basil: "We know our God in His energies. For although His energies descend to us, His essence remains inaccessible."

Pseudo-Dionysius might have been influenced by Plotinus, but that particular doctrine hardly originated with him.

>>8722255
Speak for yourself, m8.

>>8722292
So you think *every* part of going to university is all fun and games?

The whole point of sacrifice is delayed gratification. If my example wasn't good enough for you, I'm sure you can figure another one out that makes my point.

>>8722289
Huge fan of your orthodox dissertations, Constantine. Please stay forever.

>>8722301
Thank you! :p

I'm actually going to be leaving soon, though, the Nativity Fast is coming up, and most Orthodox who post on 4chan, don't post during that. I'm also hoping on becoming a monastic next year, so I'll probably be gone forever after that.

>>8722289
>Pseudo Dionysus might have been
Lol nigga he went on full neoplatonic Christian theology to the point platonism at times overshadowed his Christian beliefs

>>8722318
Yeah, but the Platonic aspects of his work, like all the intermediary angels, are not the parts that made it into official teachings. For something to be official teaching, it has to be affirmed somewhere in the Liturgy.

I won't deny some great Orthodox thinkers and mystics were influenced by Platonism, but this didn't ever dominate the Liturgy or officially teachings. For instance, you can readily spot Platonic-influenced mystics because they tend to talk in terms of the "nous," whereas Orthodox mystics not influenced by Platonism talk in terms of the "heart" (which is a big thing even in the OT). This really isn't a problem, since they tend to talk about the same thing and give wisdom that doesn't really conflict, but the point is that Orthodox theology wasn't really "influenced" by Platonism, it's just some thinkers got infatuated with the terms, but actual Platonic mysticism didn't influence Orthodox mysticism in any lasting way, even if it reigned in pockets of monastics from time to time.

>>8722348
When the great councils said that Christ is of the same substance as the father as a dogma, it was a clear instance of the truths of the faith being expressed in the language of philosophy.
Aquinas even had mystical visions of Christ in which he said that he spoke true of the Eucharist, that the substance is that of bread, but the essence of the body and blood Christ.
I mean you obviously speak of influences to end with "yeah but that wasn't real influence".

I mean I have no problems with any of this, Christianity wasn't handed down as a totality of rules and truths dictated by God to men.
Platonic influence as well as Aristotelian (including Muslim works in the tradition) help us deepen our understanding of the truths, otherwise no writings would have been necessary at all in the supremely rich literary, philosophical and theological traditions of Christianity.
We can use any tools really, as long as they don't implicitly or explicitly deny the truths of faith.

>>8722391
I don't know if saying Christ is one being with the Father (which is what the word "essence" comes from, a grammatical case of Greek word for "being"), is really purely philosophy in terminology. Christ says several times "I AM" to express he's God, and "AM" here is simply another grammatical case of "essence".

>that the substance is that of bread, but the essence of the body and blood Christ.
Substance is the Latin equivilant to Greek essence, pal. They're the exact same concept theologically.

to make space in our minds for creation.

>In the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns on open violence

Stopped reading there.