As for understanding the redemption, the Greek Fathers could not escape their idealistic conception of man. Even the great Athanasius never considered “by what measure one weighed a sin.” They were all Pelagians; for them, as for Dostoevsky and the Russians, the sinner is at bottom a poor, sick person who needs to be healed by patient love and the heavenly medicine and not, as was the case for the Romans, a criminal and lawbreaker who needed correction and justification. . How is it possible for a person to understand the cross if he does not know who and what sent Christ to the cross? How can he understand the cross if he does not know with Paul Gerhardt that “I caused Thy grief and sighing by evils multiplying as countless as the sands. I caused the woes unnumbered with which Thy soul is cumbered, Thy sorrows raised by wicked hands”! . Lacking an understanding of the full dimensions of sin, the ancient church and the Eastern church never attained a theology of the cross. . Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors No. 18; October, 1951.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 23:02:46 +0000
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