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Shortest Book
80
pages
Longest Book
pages
Average book length in
2024
245
pages
Most Shelved
1,499,753
people
also shelved
Least Shelved
6
people
also shelved
Jeremy’s
average rating for
2024
4.3
4.3
Highest Rated on ŷ
it was amazing
5.00
average
Jeremy’s first review of the year
it was amazing
Quotes:
“Concerning the teachings of the Church, whether publicly proclaimed or reserved to members of the household of faith, we have received some from written sources [i.e., the New Testament], while others have been given to us secretly, through apostolic tradition. Both sources have equal force in true religion. No one would deny either source—no one, at any rate, who is even slightly familiar with the ordinances of the Church. If we attacked
Quotes:
“Concerning the teachings of the Church, whether publicly proclaimed or reserved to members of the household of faith, we have received some from written sources [i.e., the New Testament], while others have been given to us secretly, through apostolic tradition. Both sources have equal force in true religion. No one would deny either source—no one, at any rate, who is even slightly familiar with the ordinances of the Church. If we attacked unwritten customs, claiming them to be of little importance, we would fatally mutilate the Gospel, no matter what our intentions.� St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, ~374 AD
The practice of “asking Christ into your heart� non-sacramentally is not found in the New Testament and was unknown in the entire history of the Church until the rise of American Evangelicalism.
As a number of the Fathers taught, “God became man so that man could become God”—obviously not in the sense of ceasing to be a creature and becoming the Creator, but in the sense of partaking in the divine nature insofar as this is possible for creatures to do (see 2 Pet. 1:4). All that Christ is by nature, He shares with us by grace, so that He becomes the firstborn of many brothers (Rom. 8:29): He is the Son of God by nature; we become sons of God by grace. He is holy by nature; we become holy by grace. He is immortal by nature; we become immortal by grace. It is this entire process of theosis/divinization that is our goal; this is what the Orthodox understand by the word salvation. Salvation does not consist merely of being forgiven but of finally becoming entirely like Christ, our elder brother and Savior.
Unacknowledged impatience, anger, lust, resentment, or other sins lurking within us need to be acknowledged and removed before we can experience joy to the full. These sins are not so much debts we must pay off by suffering before God can bless us and admit us to heaven, as dark spots on the windows of our soul that must be removed before the divine light can fully flood into us.
It was the apostles themselves who regulated what was to be done at the assembly of the Christians early on Sunday morning. This being so, the Church recognized that it had no authority to alter something so fundamental that was set down by the apostolic founders. Certain things could be added—such as psalms sung after assembling, which were once sung on the way to church, or the Creed, or certain entrances into the altar area—but nothing set down by the apostles could be omitted or taken away. This apostolic structure and content still form the liturgical backbone of the Eucharist in the Orthodox Church to this day. Other services have been added (such as Vespers in the evening and Matins in the morning), but the main gathering of the Christians on Sunday morning is still that of the Eucharist.
The formality that attends this service is the result of the Christians knowing what they are doing—namely, eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Incarnate God. Such an awe-inspiring event precludes lighthearted levity and inculcates a degree of joyful solemnity. At the Eucharist the Christians rejoice, but they rejoice with trembling (see Ps. 2:11).
For Protestants, the command “This do in remembrance of Me� (Luke 22:19 KJV) is interpreted through a modern and unbiblical understanding of what a memorial is. In this modern misunderstanding, remembrance and memory are seen as functions of the mind� The [biblical] concept of “remembering� and “memorial� is that of doing something so that God may remember you—and when God remembers, He always takes action. When He remembered Israel because they made a memorial by blowing the trumpets in a time of war, He took action by saving them from their enemies� A memorial (Hebrew zakar, zikaron; Greek mneosunon, anamnesis) refers to something done so that God may remember and take action. This is what our Lord established at the Last Supper: eating bread and drinking wine at the gathering of His people served as an anamnesis of Him and His sacrifice. In Luke 22:19, He says that His disciples should do this eis ten emen anamnesin—“for My memorial.� It is this action that will cause God to remember Him and His sacrifice and bring it into their midst—not by way of repetition of the sacrifice but through anamnesis.
Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) asserted that “not as common bread and common drink do we receive these� but that the Eucharist “is the flesh and blood of Jesus who was made flesh� (Apology, ch. 66). Note once again: not “represents� or “symbolizes,� but “is.�
In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans [107 AD at the latest], St. Ignatius of Antioch again warns of the heretics and describes them as those who “abstain from Eucharist and prayer because they refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by His goodness raised up.� Again we see that the Eucharist not only represents the Savior’s flesh; it “is the flesh of our Savior.�
“We offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly, so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.� St. Irenaeus, ~180 AD
The Eucharist was so widespread and unanimous in the second-century Church because it was the teaching that all the churches received from the apostles. It is this tradition the Orthodox Church continues to preserve to this day.
The Church from its inception has steadfastly refused to commune those who are outside it. If one cannot properly belong to the Church because one cannot confess the Church’s Faith or accept the Church’s moral discipline, one cannot be communed, because communing would unite one to a body to which one cannot properly belong� Orthodoxy has a different eucharistic theology, and in this theology confining reception of Holy Communion to the members of the Orthodox family does not mean that Communion is “closed� to others but that it is organic—that Communion unites the communicant to the living body and the fullness of the Church. Holy Communion not only expresses gratitude for the death of Christ on the Cross; it also unites believers to other believers in the one body. The legitimacy of open Communion depends on an individualistic understanding of the Eucharist—an understanding foreign to the Orthodox Church.
Christ’s Church forever remains one Church, with its members united to one another and to God. It is incapable of substantial division, for it maintains the unity for which Christ prayed. Substantial division of His Church is therefore impossible: a group or individual could split from the Church, but the Church itself could not be split or divided. In the early Church, heresy and the consequent establishment of a rival altar constituted not a split within the Church but the setting up of a group apart from the Church. This is what is meant in the Creed by the confession that we believe in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.�
Given the problems afflicting the Western church in the medieval period following its schism from the Orthodox East, one understands the insistence of the Protestant Reformers that separation from the papal West was imperative. The early Reformers regarded the pope as the eschatological antichrist, and this could not help but make schism from the papal church an urgent necessity. Nonetheless, the ultimate result was the acceptance of schism as a defining feature of the Protestant churches� Protestantism gradually came to lose the primitive Christian horror of schism� The concept of schism has all but vanished from the theological glossary of Evangelicals: if one doesn’t like one’s church, one simply leaves and starts another one down the street. What the Fathers decried as schism is now regarded as normal church growth.
The Orthodox believe that they are the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church confessed in the Creed. Converts to Orthodoxy are invited not only to agree with its teaching but to join its family. In converting to Orthodoxy, they are not simply joining a different denomination but returning from schism. It should hardly need stating that all this does not mean that the Orthodox are better than others, or that there is no grace or salvation to be found outside the Church’s borders, or that the Orthodox have nothing to learn from other Christians. To err is human, and there is more than enough humanity in Orthodoxy to go around. The issue here is not one of merit but solely of the nature of the Church and of its unity.
[Regarding “Once saved, always saved,”] the New Testament is replete with warnings not to apostatize, which would not be necessary unless apostasy were really possible� We only warn about dangers that are real—such as apostasy. Judas Iscariot is one example that comes to mind: he certainly fell away to the point of damnation (see John 17:12; Mark 14:21), and he certainly was once saved (Matt. 19:27�28; Acts 1:17). If one of the Twelve could fall away, then anyone can. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to warn Christians against the possibility of such drifting away and apostasy� The trembling soul should not be given the false medicine of eternal security but the true medicine of the Eucharist. Salvation is not just a single experience; it is also an ongoing journey. On that journey one continually returns to God for renewal, forgiveness, and cleansing. Penitent reception of the Eucharist assures us that we will be saved if we continue along the faithful eucharistic path. ...more
鷡ѳ’S
2024
BOOKS
it was amazing
it was amazing
it was amazing
it was amazing
Jeremy’s last review of the year
it was amazing
"For a bunch of men trying not to starve to death while squabbling over patches of mud, they clung to surprisingly high-minded ideas."
"For a bunch of men trying not to starve to death while squabbling over patches of mud, they clung to surprisingly high-minded ideas." ...more
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