The Reasons Why We Love Kenosis Theology
According to Kenosis Theology, one must “utterly and completely subdue” oneself to the Lord in order to fully participate in the workings of the divine will and the saving of mankind. It is not enough that you submit to Christ and accept Him as Lord. You must be absorbed wholly in Him. At the very core of your being is your will, which contains within it all the attributes and functions of a person made in the image and likeness of God. When this will is in perfect conjunction with the divine will of the Creator, then only will you be capable of saving your fellow man. Under the influence of evil and darkness, this will is hindered and in turn, destroyed.
Therefore, as per the teachings of Kenosis Theology, when you submit to Christ, you become completely in submission to Him and totally absorbed in Him. Consequently, there is no place for fear and self-deception. The obvious dilemma arises, then, for those who profess the Christian faith, since they are quite unable to subdue the internal will of their will to be Christ. They remain in their former state of sin and suffering. In fact, even when they are saved by the grace of the Redeemer, they retain and in fact, intensify their original sin.
This, according to Kenosis Theology, is what the second advent entails for Christians. Those who have accepted Christ as Lord but continue in their sin are condemned to an eternity of suffering. There will be everlasting punishment for unrepentant people. However, those who accept Christ as Lord and remain in Him are cleansed and receive the kingdom of heaven.
This, according to Kenosis Theology, is how the modern age came into being. It is through the coming of Christ that we enter the Kingdom of God. Through His life, we experience a supernatural and intellectual stature. When we die, we return to the image of God. Through His death, there is a simultaneous defeat of the antichrist. This defeat of the antichrist, the secret enemy of the Christian faith, unites with the coming of Christ and the end of his earthly life.
As John the Baptist states: “The Holy Spirit is given me to heal the wounds of Christ, to bind up him and to deliver him to you.” This healing of the wounds of Christ is accomplished through continual epiklesis, which means “to give.” Through our constant application of the Beatitudes to our daily lives, we come to realize that the Kingdom of God dwells in us and that we have possession of it. This is the secret reason why the unorthodox fathers of the church, Origen and Clement of Alexandria, wrote that Christ is with us. They maintained that we possess the kingdom of God but that we need Christ to become fully incorporated into it.
The unorthodox fathers did not teach that we possess the kingdom of God but that we need Christ to become part of it. They maintained that by the grace of the Crucifix we are saved from sin and then we go on to be purified by water. The idea is that if Christ was not with us in our humiliation, in our suffering, then we would have continued to be guilty and condemned until the coming of the risen Lord. Through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ we are made clean and upright and then we obtain mercy, forgiveness and eternal life.
In contrast, the Orthodox Church insists that Christ is within us; that He is actually within all believers, that He intercedes for us on the cross, that He raises up the dead, and that His presence is with His church even though the church loses Him at the Cross. Christ's presence is therefore seen as an outside presence – a certain kind ofosis – which means that while the physical body of Christ was raised from the dead, we also remain in union with His essence. This is done through theosis – whereby we have an image of Christ's body while at the same time retaining the attributes of Christ.
Theosis can be seen as theosis – self-made light that comes from Christ's presence in the light of God – whereas kenosis can be seen as self-forgetting, whereby we do not accept Christ as Savior but rather choose Him because of certain emotional factors. It is this choice that the author denies, thereby effectively denying the possibility of a saved humanity in the sense of knowing Christ as the Son of God. However, I believe the author goes too far in this passage when he suggests that a saved humanity cannot participate in the divine beatitude. This is a strange suggestion, and one that tends to complicate matters for Orthodox Christians.
Therefore, as per the teachings of Kenosis Theology, when you submit to Christ, you become completely in submission to Him and totally absorbed in Him. Consequently, there is no place for fear and self-deception. The obvious dilemma arises, then, for those who profess the Christian faith, since they are quite unable to subdue the internal will of their will to be Christ. They remain in their former state of sin and suffering. In fact, even when they are saved by the grace of the Redeemer, they retain and in fact, intensify their original sin.
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| Kenosis – Wikipedia – kenosis theology | kenosis theology |
This, according to Kenosis Theology, is how the modern age came into being. It is through the coming of Christ that we enter the Kingdom of God. Through His life, we experience a supernatural and intellectual stature. When we die, we return to the image of God. Through His death, there is a simultaneous defeat of the antichrist. This defeat of the antichrist, the secret enemy of the Christian faith, unites with the coming of Christ and the end of his earthly life.
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| What Does Kenosis Solve and Not Solve? Part 5 The Island Parson – kenosis theology | kenosis theology |
The unorthodox fathers did not teach that we possess the kingdom of God but that we need Christ to become part of it. They maintained that by the grace of the Crucifix we are saved from sin and then we go on to be purified by water. The idea is that if Christ was not with us in our humiliation, in our suffering, then we would have continued to be guilty and condemned until the coming of the risen Lord. Through the suffering and death of Jesus Christ we are made clean and upright and then we obtain mercy, forgiveness and eternal life.
In contrast, the Orthodox Church insists that Christ is within us; that He is actually within all believers, that He intercedes for us on the cross, that He raises up the dead, and that His presence is with His church even though the church loses Him at the Cross. Christ's presence is therefore seen as an outside presence – a certain kind ofosis – which means that while the physical body of Christ was raised from the dead, we also remain in union with His essence. This is done through theosis – whereby we have an image of Christ's body while at the same time retaining the attributes of Christ.
Theosis can be seen as theosis – self-made light that comes from Christ's presence in the light of God – whereas kenosis can be seen as self-forgetting, whereby we do not accept Christ as Savior but rather choose Him because of certain emotional factors. It is this choice that the author denies, thereby effectively denying the possibility of a saved humanity in the sense of knowing Christ as the Son of God. However, I believe the author goes too far in this passage when he suggests that a saved humanity cannot participate in the divine beatitude. This is a strange suggestion, and one that tends to complicate matters for Orthodox Christians.
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