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Galatians 2:19-21New King James Version (NKJV)
19 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and thelife which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”
It is ridiculous for a forum poster to say "this is forgivable " and "he is forgiven". When we are talking about a Pope, it becomes stupid.
One last point:
If HH taught heresy, for denying theosis is a heresy, why didn't your Holy Synod do something about it? Do you understand the gravity of your position?
"It definitely did not mean that a layman has any authority to forgive a clergyman pre or post-mortem. Of course, if Mina meant the second interpretation, it becomes stupid."
Why does one need some sort of 'authority' to be able to forgive someone else?
minasoliman does certainly have a tone of a know-it-all and strongly sticks up for what he believes, which is certainly commendable, but I don't think in that particular case he came across as or even sounded as though he was of a higher rank than the ex-pope at all.. I believe this is just a case of misunderstanding of people zealously arguing their positions
oujai
O Lamb of God, who through Your sufferings have borne the sins of the world, blot out our iniquities through Your compassion.
O only-begotten of God, who through Your Blood have cleansed the filth of the world, cleanse the filth of our souls through Your mercies.
O Christ of God, who through Your death have slain death that had slain all, by Your power raise up the deadness of our souls.
O You who receive the offerings, who have offered Yourself in place of sinners, accept our repentance, we, who are sinners.
For without favor have we come forth into Your presence, knocking on the door of Your tender mercies. So, grant us, O You who are rich in mercies, healing out of the treasures of Your remedies.
Heal, O Compassionate One, our wretched souls by the emollient ointments of Your life-giving Mysteries.
Cleanse our bodies; wash aways our iniquities; make us worthy of the coming down of Your Holy Spirit upon our souls.
Enlighten our minds that we may behold Your praiseworthiness. Purify our thoughts and mingle us with Your glory.
Your love has brought You down to our lowliness; let Your grace raise us up to Your highness.
Your compassion has compelled You and You were incarnate in our flesh; and You have manifested Your hiddeness openly.
Manifest in the souls of Your servants the glory of Your life-giving Mysteries.
At the offering of the sacrifice upon the altar, sin shall cease from our members through Your grace.
When Your glory comes down upon Your Mysteries, we lift our minds up to behold Your splendor.
At the turning of the bread and wine into Your body and Blood, our souls shall be turned unto fellowship with Your glory, and our souls shall be united to Your divinity.
Create in us, O our Lord and our God, a pure heart, and let Your Spirit dwell within us.
Renew our senses by Your power and make us worthy of Your gift.
From the cup of Your Blood, we drink; grant us a spiritual taste that we may discern the taste of Your life-giving Mysteries.
We come forth into Your presence trusting in Your mercy, and You shall dwell in us with love.
Fill us with Your fear and inflame our hearts with desire for You.
Place Your grace in us; purify our senses through Your mercy.
Grant us pure tears and cleanse us from the filth of sin.
Make us a holy temple for Your dwelling and purified vessels for receiving You, that having tasted of Your Flesh, we may be made worthy to taste Your grace, and having drunk Your Blood, we may be made worthy of the sweetness of Your love.
You have granted us to eat Your Flesh openly, make us worthy to be united to You secretly (ie. mysteriously).
You have granted us to drink of the cup of Your Blood openly, make us worthy to mingle with Your purity secretly (ie. mysteriously).
And as You are one in Your Father and Your Holy Spirit, may we be one in You and You in Us, that Your saying may be fulfilled, “That they may all be one in Us.”
So that with boldness, we may call God Your Father, a Father to us, and say in an expressive voice,
Our Father...
Our Church banned the teaching because it is mixing up hinduism with Christian faith. No where in the Holy Bible does it support the idea of being dissolved, which is what the supporters of this western and pagan idea are teaching. Some of the supporters of this new teaching also deny the important teaching on Original Sin. Our Church has preserved the proper teaching and has not been influenced by the Western ideas.
For a proper Coptic teaching you should read Deification of Man part 1 and 2 and also listen to this sermon:http://smsv.ca/sermons/partakers-divine-nature
@coptic mission, Please do not call my father, St. Athanasius the Apostolic a hindu. And while there please also do not call my father St. Gregory the Theologian a "westerner"
Asking your prayers, everyone
I'm sorry, but I do not consider that priest a source of Coptic Orthodoxy
ForeverYours,
Theosis, or deification, or divinization, or theopoeisis are all the same thing, and are all the cornerstone of Orthodox soteriology. It is not just an EO concept. It is a Coptic concept.
Concerning this quote, Dr Stephen Davis writes in "The Early Coptic Papacy The Egyptian Church and Its Leadership in Late Antiquity" that:
For Cyril, it was this complete union of the divine and human in Christ that made it possible to call Mary the Mother of God. According to the “economy” of the Incarnation, what was attributable to Christ’s humanity was also attributable to his divinity, and vice versa.
The nature of this union also had profound implications for human salvation. Here, Cyril’s Christology relied heavily on Athanasius’ doctrine of the Incarnation. According to Athanasius, the life-giving Word, by uniting itself with a human body and by divinizing that body, salvifically transformed all of human nature. For Cyril as well as Athanasius, human access to salvation was made possible only by participation in the divine (or divinized) body of Christ.
This christological logic, so tied to soteriology (“the science of salvation”), helps explain what was at stake for Cyril in his opposition to Nestorius. Cyril complained that Nestorius’ doctrine divided Christ into two persons, or alternatively, that it merely suggested a loose conjunction of two persons in Christ. Cyril’s fundamental concern was, ultimately, that such a Christology might undermine the essential unity of Christ and thereby jeopardize human access to salvation.
"To this we say, ‘Indeed, the difference between the two statements is that the action of something upon its own essence is impossible. For if one thing grants to another thing its essence, in the sense that it is generous to it in its contact with it, it is not impossible for us to find many things that grant to other things their essences, just as in the case where fire is present in iron and is united with it, and the iron becomes alight through its union with the fire, and does what fire does in terms of heating and burning.
In the same way, the four properties—heat and cold, moisture and dryness— give to material bodies their essences by coming into union with them and by attaching themselves to them, so that the property particular to them has its origin in the material bodies with which they are composed. And in the same way, the things facing mirrors give their images to them, and the mirrors are ‘imaged’ by them. And those turning to the mirrors see the things facing them as images of these same things, and (they see) everything that happens to them with regard to movement and coming to rest.
The uncertainty of this contradiction is revealed especially in our subject, by the fact that we are clarifying how the union of the Creator (may he be exalted!) with humankind is possible. And we say, ‘Indeed, it is known that comprehends the Creator, and the meaning of his comprehension of him is that the mind of the human being is ‘imaged’ by the image of the Creator. The Creator is not disgusting and material, for his image is part of his essence—his image must (in fact) be his essence—and his essence is (identifiable with) the mind of the human being. For in reality the mind and that which is comprehended (by the mind) are actually one subject, [one in the subject (i.e. one in subjectivity)] just as Aristotle made clear: it is necessary that the human being, when he comprehends the Creator, be united with him...""
By Al-Mu’taman ibn al-Assal, which can be found in Dr Stephen Davis' "Coptic Christology in Practice: Incarnation and Divine Participation in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt"
Chapter Eight: God Granted Us Participation in the Body of Christ
"Then in his favour he added a confirmation. He willed to grant us participation in that holy body and a connection with it by a most excellent spiritual kinship that transcends the bodily kinship, to the extent that the eternal life which that body acquired becomes in us completely and rightly natural.
God gave to us first the Holy Spirit through baptism, the Spirit that he had extracted from Adam the day that he ate from the branch of disobedience. Through the Spirit he provided us with the second birth for our inheritance of the kingdom, just as he said, ‘Unless one has been born of the water and the spirit, he will not see the kingdom of God.’
Then, afterwards, he gave us an additional (sign of his) favour, over and above the state Adam was in before his error: he gave us his life-giving body. As he said, ‘I am the life-giving bread, which came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever!’ Then he told us what the bread is when he said, ‘The bread that I give is my body, which I offer up for the life of the world.’ Indeed, he even added to that another announcement, when he said, ‘If you have not eaten the body of the Son of Man, nor drunk his blood, there is no eternal life in you.’ His statement, ‘in you’, means that it (eternal life) comes to existence in your essential nature. It is not external to you, nor is it alien to you. He settled that matter and said, ‘Because my body is true food, and my blood is true drink, whoever has eaten my body and has drunk my blood remains in me, and I in him.’ As for his statement, ‘true food’, he said that because his divinity is united with his body. He has been united with the holy bread and has transformed it into his body in truth and not merely in likeness. Then he said the greatest thing, when he made the statement, ‘Just as the living Father sent me, and I have life on account of the
Father, so too whoever eats me lives on account of me.’ He did not need to say in this instance, ‘whoever eats my body’, because he already had established that in the preceding statement. He said first, ‘the living bread’, and informed us that that bread was truly his body. Then he said third, ‘whoever eats me’. He means by this that he is God incarnate, and his divinity is not differentiated from his humanity. Whoever partakes (of the Eucharist) in a worthy manner and with faith, God will reside in him and give him the life that he gave to the body united to him. The apostle said, ‘He is ready to change the body of our weakness and transform it into something resembling the body of his glory, as the work of his powerful hand to which everything is devoted in service. As for his statement, ‘the Father lives, and I live on account of the Father’, (its meaning is), just as was introduced earlier in the first part of this book, that he is perfection from perfection, and ‘light from light, life from life, true God from true God, begotten not made, equal to the Father in essence’.
Whoever does not have his share of faith in him, nor has received baptism, nor has participation in his living thrones, also does not truly have a share in the inheritance of eternal life, but rather is completely alien to it altogether, because ‘flesh and blood’ (as the Apostle Paul said) ‘does not inherit the kingdom of God, and the changeable does not inherit what does not change’. Indeed, there does not reside in a human being anything that is more exalted than him—that which is more exalted is the Holy Spirit and the living thrones that belong to God the Word who is their master and creator. Therefore, such a one has no share or inheritance in that eternal kingdom! Now as for the ones who died first, he came and saved their souls through his own sacrifice on their behalf, since they relied on the hope of the promise. As for the believers, he gave them his thrones on account of their (way of) life, as he testified, saying, ‘Whoever believes in me, if he dies, he will live. And whoever lives and believes in me, will never suffer death.’ In this statement, he gathered together the first and the last."
I know Iqbal and Fr. Peter Farrington very well. I have had numerous correspondences with them privately and publicly. They will agree with me on this issue (actually they also were concerned HH did not fully comprehend the Patristic dogma of deification). We partake of the divine nature because God became man. That much is true and is repeatedly confirmed by the Church fathers.