{"id":3612,"date":"2016-01-31T10:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3612"},"modified":"2016-01-28T10:56:13","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T15:56:13","slug":"called-to-holiness-20160131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=3612","title":{"rendered":"CALLED TO HOLINESS — 20160131"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Call to Holiness <\/em>is an invitation by God to gain a proper perspective on the Eastern view of salvation. The Eastern Church has a distinctive anthropological outlook which has definite implications. In the main, Eastern anthropology looks forward to the renewing of the image<\/em> of God. The underlying anthropology is not necessarily more positive but, instead of operating mainly in guilt-concepts, it looks upward, so to speak, to the image of God to be fulfilled in mortal human beings. This sets the tone for the rest of our understanding of salvation.<\/p>\n

The view of the human being in the Christian East is based upon the notion of \u201cparticipation\u201d in God.\u201d This \u201cnatural\u201d participation, however, is not a static givenness; rather, it is a challenge, and the human being is called to grow in divine life. Divine life is a gift, but also a task which is to be accomplished by a free human effort.<\/p>\n

A person becomes the perfect image of God by discovering his or her likeness<\/em> to God, which is the perfection of the nature common to all human beings. The Greek term homoiousios, <\/em>which corresponds to likeness<\/em> in Genesis 1:26, means precisely that dynamic progress and growth in divine life and implies\u00a0\u00a0 human freedom. In Greek patristic thought there is no opposition between freedom (likeness<\/em>) and grace (God\u2019s image in human beings<\/em>): the presence in man of divine qualities, of a \u201cgrace\u201d (God\u2019s image<\/em>) which makes him fully man, \u201cneither destroys his freedom, nor limits the necessity for him to become fully himself by his own effort: rather it secures that cooperation, or synergy<\/em> between the divine will and human choice which makes possible the progress \u201cfrom glory to glory\u201d and the assimilation of man to the divine dignity for which he was created.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure whether this is all making more sense or not. I\u2019m also not sure whether my readers see the real difference between Western and Eastern spirituality. The way that the Eastern Church sees humans and the way that the Western Church does is considerably different.
\nThink about this! <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Call to Holiness is an invitation by God to gain a proper perspective on the Eastern view of salvation. The Eastern Church has a distinctive anthropological outlook which has definite implications. In the main, Eastern anthropology looks forward to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-called-to-holiness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3613,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions\/3613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}