Thursday, June 10, 2010

Reading Group, 4e


More Particular Definitions of the Church

a. The Church is first of all that grace-filled and holy life which was established by Christ, and which will exist inviolably and unfaltering on earth up to His second coming, encompassed from without by certain forms and manifesting itself in the holy manifestations of faith.

b. The difference between the concept of the Church with the concept of human nature originally created by God consists in that the life of the human essence or of human nature in each person would be expressed directly and without impediment had there been no fall.

c.The instilling of a new nature (Grace) takes place first of all through a conscious assimilation of Christ’s life or of Christianity, and also through a mysterious penetration of the newly grace-filled nature of the Church into our personality.

d. When Christ and the Apostles speak of the rebirth or cleansing of our nature through the word of teaching, they mean the conscious penetration by the new life expounded in Divine teaching. There is also the unconscious and secret growth of the grace-filled seed on new nature in the soul of a believer.

e. The Church is a energy such as is contained and spread by a conscious principle.

f. The mission of the church is first of all to guard unharmed the conscious content of the newly grace-filled life; second, to spread divine teaching amidst unbelievers; and third to lead believers to complete permeation by this life.
  1. How does Metropolitan Anthony advance his argument in this section?
  2. How does Metropolitan Anthony fill the usual lacuna concerning the mission of the church?

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