Re: christian schools and doctrinal issues (was: Death penalty)

On Tue, 9 Nov 2010, Mike Findlay wrote:

> > FWIW, the Orthodox place a strong emphasis on Mary's purity etc. too, 
> > but not to the extreme of having a doctrine of "immaculate 
> > conception".
>
> Do Orthodox believe Mary remained a virgin? 

Yes, though that's a somewhat distinct belief.  If the question concerns 
Mary's *sinlessness*, the Orthodox and the Catholics seem to have rather 
different takes on that, I think -- and the difference is largely due to 
the respective churches' different beliefs about sin itself.

For example, whenever I hear Catholics talk about immaculate conception, 
they tend to say it was something that needed to happen in order for Jesus 
to be conceived without sin -- as though Jesus were the one at risk here. 
But the Orthodox emphasis, as I've encountered it, has always been on the 
fact that *Mary* was at risk for coming into such incredibly close contact 
with the divine -- indeed, becoming "one flesh" with it, as it were.

That's *my* way of putting it, BTW; I don't believe I've heard anyone else 
say that Jesus was "one flesh" with Mary.  "One flesh" is a term that we 
normally associate with sex and/or marriage, not with mothers and 
children.  And yet, the basic fact of the matter is that children *take* 
flesh from their mothers, yes?  And there's a give-and-take between 
mothers and fetuses in terms of blood supply, etc.

So for us, at least, the idea is not that Mary needed to be sinless in 
order for Jesus to be sinless, but that Mary needed to be purified, at the 
very least, and in an extremely cleansing way, before she bore God himself 
within her womb.  The Bible has stories about people who died because they 
touched the Ark of the Covenant and similar holy objects, even though they 
were touching it in a *helpful* way; how much more deadly could such close 
intimate contact with the very embodiment of Holiness itself have been.

It is for reasons like this, BTW, that we believe Mary remained a virgin. 
Once she had been "one flesh" with God himself, in a mother-child sort of 
way, how could she become "one flesh" with anyone else, in a wife-husband 
sort of way?  What Jew of that era would have dared to go there?

> How do you view teh quality of your education at the Pentecostal 
> school?

Poorly, but that's partly because I was in their very first graduating 
class and we were basically the guinea pigs.  I hear things have gotten a 
heck of a lot better in the 23 years since then.

> And I'm assuming not just any foreign language satisfies the tongues 
> requirement - it would have to be something no one understands?  You 
> could bone up on your Elvish and see if that flies.  Alternatively, and 
> not that you would do it given the dishonesty of it, how do they know if 
> someone is speaking in tongues and not just spouting gibberish in order 
> to fake it?

No idea, but then, I'm not Pentecostal.  My parents were involved in the 
charismatic movement in the early '70s, though.

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