Saturday, June 12, 2010

Reading Group, 4g

To believe in Church means to believe that:

a. Jesus Christ reestablished the unity of human nature lost by man through the fall.

b. This unity is a living moral force.

c. This force always exists and earth and is the sole means through which God leads people to salvation.

d. People in the Church comprise one spiritual being. They so strengthen this unity that it
resembles the unity of the Divine Nature. Thus it fills each human personality with holiness.

e. The fullness of Divine gifts is preserved at all times in the culture of people for salvation.

f. The Church militant is designated to preserve unharmed the source of divine life and to transmit it both through teaching and prayer.

g. The task of each person wishing to be saved is to bring himself into accord with these holy dispositions of the Church.

h. The free accord with the life of the Church is a free obedience.

i. Life in the Church is encountered by the life of each individual. The Church must have certain defined external forms. The general bases which define this external order is the New Testament. These more particular aspects of Church order comprise an object of Holy Tradition.

j. All external conditions which define the Church are filled with the same spirit of love and holiness. The conditions are not external in the literal sense of this word, but in that they must somehow be visible in order to guide the life of souls.
  1. Has Metropolitan Anthony successfully defied the moral idea of the dogma of the Church? What was his argument, and how did it progress through the course of the essay?

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