Ancient Christian Witness

"It was my devotion to the pursuit of religious knowledge
that led me to undertake the embassy to the man I have mentioned, who was held
in the highest esteem by his own citizens and by others both for his virtue and
his majesty and who had in his possession documents of the highest value to the
Jews in his own country and in foreign lands for the interpretation of the
divine law, for their 4 laws are written on leather parchments in Jewish
characters. This embassy then I undertook with enthusiasm, having first of all
found an opportunity of pleading with the king on behalf of the Jewish captives
who had been transported from Judea to Egypt by the king's father, when he first
obtained possession of this city and conquered the land of Egypt. It is worth
while that I should tell"

"magnificence and technical skill. The following is a copy
of the memorial.

The Memorial of Demetrius to the great king. 'Since you
have given me instructions, O king, that the books which are needed to complete
your library should be collected together, and that those which are defective
should be repaired, I have devoted myself with the utmost care to the fulfilment
of your wishes, 30 and I now have the following proposal to lay before you. The
books of the law of the Jews (with some few others) are absent from the library.
They are written in the Hebrew characters and language and have been carelessly
interpreted, and do not represent the original text as I am 31 informed by those
who know; for they have never had a king's care to protect them. It is necessary
that these should be made accurate for your library since the law which they
contain, in as much as it is of divine origin, is full of wisdom and free from
all blemish. For this reason literary men and poets and the mass of historical
writers have held aloof from referring to these books and the men who have lived
and are living in accordance with them, because their 32 conception of life is
so sacred and religious, as Hecataeus of Abdera says. If it please you, O king,
a letter shall be written to the High Priest in Jerusalem, asking him to send
six elders out of every tribe - men who have lived the noblest life and are most
skilled in their law - that we may find out the points in which the majority of
them are in agreement, and so having obtained an accurate translation may place
it in a conspicuous place in a manner worthy of the work itself and your
purpose. May continual prosperity be yours!'"

" When the work was completed, Demetrius collected together
the Jewish population in the place where the translation had been made, and read
it over to all, in the presence of the translators, who met with a great
reception also from the people, because of the great benefits which they had 309
conferred upon them. They bestowed warm praise upon Demetrius, too, and urged
him to have the whole law transcribed and present a copy to their
leaders."

"For those of you who don’t know there has been a
controversy among the Reformed (like, when isn’t there some new dire threat to
“the gospel?” among the Reformed) surrounding OT professor at Westminster
Seminary Peter Enns. It seems the axe is laid at the root in terms of his stay
there unfortunately.

Enn’s bookis in part concerning how to think about
the inspiration of the Bible, particularly the OT using Christology as a grid.
Enns maintains that the proper relationship between the divine and the human in
the OT is not one of a subordinating relationship. This has obvious cross-over
significance to much of what we write about here concerning St. Maximus and his
refutation of Monotheletism and Monoenergism. And for those of you thinking
about the relation of the OT accounts and surrounding cultures and inspiration,
Enns I think is on the right track and worth reading. Even if I don’t agree with
everything he has to say, the progromatic nature of his book and the project
itself is worthwhile and helpful.

I have been contributing to a largely
Reformed discussion of Enns over at Green Baggins. Some of Enns’ responses to
various critics can be seen here, here, hereand here.


Lane G. Lipton
defends what he takes to be the tradtional Reformed view of inspiration where
the humanity of Christ is given via the Spirit “created graces” giving the
relation between divine and human not noly a pnuematological structure but an
extrinsic and subordinating gloss. Note what he writes for example,

The
divine and human in the God-man, therefore, are not equally ultimate, existing
in some sort of parity with one another. The divine is primary; the human, while
real, is subordinate. (Emphasis his)

Uh, I don’t think so. Needless to
say I think Lane’s account of Chalcedon is an exercise in misunderstanding, not
to mention the obvious lack of biblical support for the notion of “created
graces.” (I have to wonder if he is even aware of the history of such a notion
coming out as it does from the medieval Catholicism that Calvinists love to
detest. How ironic.)

Other critics like Paul Helm and John Frame have
chimed in. (At this point after reading all of the reviews, the critics just
seem to be feeding off each other.) Enn’s reply to Helm is here. I think Helm
simply at best picks at the edges and doesn’t really get to the heart of the
matter, specifically because he ignores the obvious Christological import. What
is occuring here is a confrontation between two rival Christologies and to put
it in Van Tillian terms, Helm failed to “press the antithesis.”"

quote:
"what's the difference between christian, baptist,
lutheran and all the different types?

Quote from: TruthSeeker
Are both the CLASSSIC and
JURIDICAL view of the atonement present in orthodoxy?


I understand
that orthodoxy emphases the "classical" view of the atonement .....that Christs
incarnation, life, death and resurrection is a victory over sin and
DEATH.....Christs death paid a ransom to death and in a way to it's prince,
Lucifer.

This is great news for me as I heard some but not much of this
in my western churching(non catholic)

BUT surely the "juridical" view of
the atonement is also present in orthodoxy, because it surely is part of the
atonement .
There is "an element" of Christ paying the penalty for human
sin. After all Jesus was the lamb without spot that was foreshawdowed in old
testament times. The entire hebrew religious system was based on the idea of
blood atonement for sin and Jesus was the fulfillment.

So I am hoping
that orthodoxy has room for both views of the atonement and has not closed it's
mind to the juridical view.

Quote from: TruthSeeker
What about this then that I just
dug up from the orthodox information site.

"Though the idea of
substutionary Atonement is not wrong per se and can indeed be found in Orthodox
writings, the emphasis given to it by Protestants is completely
unbalanced."