Metropolitan Isaiah falls all over himself to
apologize to some offended perverts, who
directly spoke to him and wrote to him,
after he commented on the legalization of
same sex marriage as a bad thing.
"As God is my witness, I have neither criticized nor
have I condemned anyone because of
their lifestyle. As a clergyman, and especially as a
Christian, I have no right to condemn anyone.
I have criticized the act, but never the person."
you can't separate the two. That is why
we need to REPENT to turn from stuff,
to have metanoia or change of heart
and mind. We are impure, we need to
become progressively purer.
If an individual is engaged in radical bad
stuff, it is the witness of Christ and St.
Paul and the canons of the church, to
denounce the individual publicly and
discipline or expell them.
"In attempting to serve God as faithfully as I can, I
have no right to condemn anyone. If God does not
condemn a sinner, neither do I have the right
to do so."
Since when does God not condemn a
sinner? He has in the past and warns He
will do so again. It is in the Bible and
supported by the words of The Fathers.
This modern position is false, and does
nothing but accomodate sin.
When someone is (or was, before the
developments of the past two or three
centuries) excommunicated, forced to not
enter the church but stand outside or in
the narthex only, back when there were
distinct places for baptized and in good
standing, catechumens, hearers, prostrators, and
unbeliever visitors, or deposed from being a bishop
or a priest or kicked out of church altogether, or
made to do penance for a number of years,
THIS IS DEFINITELY CONDEMNING THE
INDIVIDUAL.
the sinner is warned in Scripture, in Church canons,
in tradition, ship up or
you will be shipped out - out of the church
in this world, a possibly if you still will not
repent, out of the Kingdom of Heaven in
the next world.
"It is clear from Holy Scripture that, if God were
to condemn any person, He would be
condemning Himself, as every human being is made
in the image of God."
At this point, one should tear one's
outer garment somewhat and rush out
of the church crying "anathema!
anathema!" for here Metropolitan Isaiah
falls into a most important heresy.
Being made in God's image and likeness
is NOT being the same as God. Scripture
makes it clear, that God created the
universe out of nothing, and further created
things out of things already created.
Specifically, we were made out of mud.
Not out of God. out of mud.
Further, because of the Fall, we are no
longer as we were originally designed to
be. We are from Adam, and our flesh
and even soul material derives from him
(traducianism, but without traducianism
you still have the original sin aka ancestral
sin, a distinction without a difference).
We have the death and corruption in us
from conception on, and it takes many
forms, one of which is sexual perversion.
We are inclined to go wrong, and no one,
even those baptized at birth, fail to sin
to some extent. Yet as St. Symeon the
New Theologian points out in The Sin of
Adam, no one sins as Adam did, for he
sinned while in a condition of sinlessness
without congenital spiritual semi blindness
and bad inclination. We sin acting on our
corrupt nature, which came from Adam,
he having warped his nature by his sin,
before any of us were conceived.
Yes, St. Symeon teaches original sin very
clearly. Also atonement. the modern
denial of these is a deviation in Orthodoxy,
that is NOT from The Fathers, who acknowledged
them, and went on from there, taking them for
granted instead of dwelling on them. Their failure to
dwell on them and to dwell instead on the solution to
these problems, left them open to misuse as supposed
non teachers of such, but they DO mention them.
Back to Met. Isaiah, he commits here
the heresy of claiming we are consubstantial
with God.
The entire history of the Christological debates, puts
the lie to this.
For it is clear, that ONLY Christ Jesus
our Lord and Savior, ONLY HE AMONG
MEN IS CONSUBSTANTIAL WITH GOD.
He is consubstantial with God because
He is God, He is consubstantial with God
in His divinity. Then to that divinity without
altering or decreasing it, He added a human
nature, without merging and confusing
these two, their point of union lies in His
Person, not in some merged emulsified
point of juncture between them. This is
what monophysitism (humanity swallowed
up in divinity but still both human and divine but not really
human much) and miaphysitism (humanity and divinity
merged into a single nature instead of two
natures held by one Person, and they either in delusion
or deception claim that the two natures are united without
change or confusion, when to make a new nature
that is both human and divine, and single, you have to do
exactly that) fail to understand, partly
due to a confusion between person and nature, which
is why likely some or even a lot of mia-monophysites do
in fact have a chalcedonian Orthodox understanding, but
a lot can easily and probably easily do not.
The point is, WE ARE NOT CONSUBSTANTIAL
WITH GOD.
Only Christ is. He alone is the interface
point, between Creator and creation.
Therefore, when God condemns someone,
He does not condemn himself.
Here we see how this waffling and desperate
seeking of approval and to not offend the
offensive, and the blurry notion of love
and mishandling of the doctrines of
forgiveness and of not playing self exalting
games of being grand judge over others,
is compatible with heresy. For here,
Metropolitan Isaiah slips into heresy.
"However, God does
condemn wrongful behavior and sinful lifestyles."
http://www.denver.goarch.org/protocols/2009-Protocols/protocol-09-12.pdf
to Met. Isaiah's credit, by the grace of
God, he manages to cling to the standards
of the Church regarding behavior, and his
one open preaching of heresy may it is to
be hoped pass unnoticed and without
corrupting the faith of anyone, and be noticed
by and repented of by himself.
Justina
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