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Updated: May 18, 2025
Let us now enquire into the part played by Epinoia, the Divine Thought, in the cosmic process, reserving the part played by her in the human drama to when we come to treat of the soteriology of Simon. We have evidently here a version of the great Sophia-mythus, which plays so important a part in all Gnostic systems.
Why don't you give us a touch, of learned discussion, such as the people hear every Sunday in the church of Reverend Doctor Heavyasbricks, when, with one eye on heaven and the other on the old man in the gallery, he speaks of the Tridentine theory of original sin, and Patristic Soteriology, Mediæval Trinitarianism, and Antiochian Anthropology?
The true object for religious thought is Christ, and His life and death. All religious truth flows from and is wrapped up in that: e.g. theology, or the nature of God; anthropology, or the nature of man; soteriology, morality, etc. All truth for the individual and for the race has its source in God's great redeeming act.
The tendency of the Antiochians, on the other hand, was to neglect the interests of Soteriology and to emphasize the ethical aspect of Christ's life and teaching. They put in the background the idea of the all-creating, all-sustaining Logos, who took man's nature upon Him and in His person deified humanity. Their thought centred on the historic Christ, the Christ of the evangelists.
This was the fate of the "Purgations" of the Soul, but the Soul itself when once it had passed from bodies of the lower kingdoms, to bodies in the man-stage, could not retrogress beyond the limits of that human kingdom. To pass on to the soteriology of Simon. The general concept of this presents no difficulty to the student of Eastern Religions.
Its initial purpose was to bring back the Church to the common faith of Christendom. Hence the Lutheran Confession is in its large outlines that of universal Christendom. Nevertheless, it received a distinctive trend from the problems of soteriology. The ancient Church had developed the doctrines of God and of Christ.
Such a Christ the latent monophysitism of our thinking hides from our view. The doctrines of Christ's person and of His work are intimately associated. What He did depended on what He was. Christology and Soteriology act and react upon each other. If Christology is crippled, Soteriology goes lame. Christ takes His stand in the centre of the cosmic process in virtue of His unique being.
The Reformers concentrated their criticism upon the anthropology and soteriology of the Church of Rome, and especially upon the discipline and worship connected therewith. They saw no need for recasting any of the more fundamental positions of pure theology.
The Catholic Christianity which emerged from the struggle between Adoptionism and the Logos Christology was a curious combination of both. In the strict sense of Christology, Adoptionism was completely abandoned. Jesus was regarded as the eternal Logos who became man, not as the inspired and perfect man who became God. But in the sphere of soteriology the legacy of Adoptionism can clearly be seen.
This brings us to a consideration of the teachings of Simon with regard to the Lesser World, the Microcosm, Man, and to the scheme of his soteriology. Evidently Simon taught the ancient, immemorial doctrine that the Microcosm Man was the Mirror and Potentiality of the Cosmos, the Macrocosm, as we have already seen above.
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