Tag: Salvation

Christ’s Risen Life is Given to Us in the Church through Baptism

The fruit of Baptism, its true fulfillment, is a new life; not simply a better, more moral or even more pious life, but a life ontologically different from the “old” one. And this difference, the very content of this “newness,” is that it is life with Christ: “…if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom 6:8). It is His Risen Life “unto God” that is given to us and becomes our life and our resurrection. But his Life in us, our life in Him is precisely the Church, for she has no other being, no other purpose and no other life but to be Christ in us and we in Christ.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 120

Christ is Not Just the Divine King but the Human King

We often forget that Christ’s title as King—the title which He affirms when He makes His triumphant entrance into Jerusalem and is greeted as “the King that comes in the name of the Lord,” the title which He accepts when He stands before Pilate: “thou sayest that I am a king” (John 18:37)—is His human, and not only divine title. He is the King, and He manifests Himself as King because He is the New Adam, the Perfect Man—because He restores in Himself human nature in its ineffable glory and power.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 83

Christ elevates human nature to godhood

I adore one God, one Godhead but three Persons, God the Father, God the Son made flesh, and God the Holy Ghost, one God. I do not adore creation more than the Creator, but I adore the creature created as I am, adopting creation freely and spontaneously that He might elevate our nature and make us partakers of His divine nature.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part I

The Church’s teaching on angels and celestial bodies

This also is a part of the teaching of the Church, that there are certain angels of God, and certain good influences, which are His servants in accomplishing the salvation of men.  When these, however, were created, or of what nature they are, or how they exist, is not clearly stated.  Regarding the sun, moon, and stars, whether they are living beings or without life, there is no distinct deliverance.

Origen
On First Principles, Book I
Preface

Baptism is an essential part of the New Covenant

Here, then, those miscreants provoke questions. And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and is become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added to the sacrament, viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law.

Tertullian
On Baptism
Chapter XIII

God gave life to all things through water and through Baptism gives new life

After the world had been hereupon set in order through its elements, when inhabitants were given it, “the waters” were the first to receive the precept “to bring forth living creatures.” Water was the first to produce that which had life, that it might be no wonder in baptism if waters know how to give life.

… it is not to be doubted that God has made the material substance which He has disposed throughout all His products and works, obey Him also in His own peculiar sacraments; that the material substance which governs terrestrial life acts as agent likewise in the celestial.

Tertullian
On Baptism
Chapter III

Baptism is such a simple act but obtains eternal life

There is absolutely nothing which makes men’s minds more obdurate than the simplicity of the divine works which are visible in the act, when compared with the grandeur which is promised thereto in the effect; so that from the very fact, that with so great simplicity, without pomp, without any considerable novelty of preparation, finally, without expense, a man is dipped in water, and amid the utterance of some few words, is sprinkled, and then rises again, not much (or not at all) the cleaner, the consequent attainment of eternity is esteemed the more incredible.

Tertullian
On Baptism
Chapter II

Christians are reborn through water Baptism

Happy is our sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life!

But we, little fishes, after the example of our ΙΧΘΥΣ Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water; so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine, knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water!

Tertullian
On Baptism
Chapter I

Being both God and man united is what makes Christ the mediator between them

And so the flesh shall rise again, wholly in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity. Wherever it may be, it is in safe keeping in God’s presence, through that most faithful “Mediator between God and man, (the man) Jesus Christ,” who shall reconcile both God to man, and man to God; the spirit to the flesh, and the flesh to the spirit. Both natures has He already united in His own self; He has fitted them together as bride and bridegroom in the reciprocal bond of wedded life.

Tertullian 
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter LXIII