Soteriology · 7 excerpts
For this reason the Lord endured handing over his flesh to corruption: that we might be cleansed by the forgiveness of sins, which is by the sprinkling of his blood.
For it is written concerning him — partly toward Israel, partly toward us — and it says: “He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; by his stripes we were healed. He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb silent before its shearer.”
If Jesus Christ counts me worthy through your prayers, and if it is his will, I will explain to you more carefully in a second booklet what I have begun about the plan that leads to the new man, Jesus Christ.
It concerns his faith and his love, his suffering and resurrection — especially if the Lord shows me that you all gather man by man in grace, in one faith and in Jesus Christ, who is of David’s line according to the flesh, Son of man and Son of God, so that you obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote against dying, so that we may live in Jesus Christ forever.
When our unrighteousness was fulfilled, and it was fully shown that its wages — punishment and death — were to be expected, then the time came which God had appointed to show his kindness and power.
He did not hate us or reject us or remember evil. He was patient. In mercy he took up our sins. He gave his own Son as a ransom for us — the holy for the lawless, the innocent for the wicked, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal.
The human being who was made was a self-determining living creature (αὐτεξούσιον) — not a ruling mind holding all things by thought and power, but a servant, with opposites present in him. Because he is self-determining, he generates evil, which comes about as an accident: it is nothing unless you do it. Evil is named in the willing and thinking of something bad; it was not from the beginning, but comes on later.
Because he is self-determining, a law was set by God — not in vain. If man did not have the power to will and not to will, why was a law set at all? Law is not laid down for an irrational animal — bit and whip are — but for a human being: command and penalty for doing what is ordered and for not doing it.
The rule of truth requires that we believe first of all in God the Father and Almighty Lord — the most perfect maker of all things.
The same rule of truth teaches us to believe, after the Father, also in the Son of God, Christ Jesus, our Lord and God — but the Son of God, that is, of that God who is both one and alone, the maker of all things.
Whoever does not have the Church as mother cannot have God as Father. If anyone could escape who was outside Noah’s ark, then someone who is outside the Church might escape as well.
There is one Lord, only of the Only, God of God, stamp and image of the Godhead, the active Word, Wisdom that holds together the constitution of all things, and Power that makes the whole creation; true Son of the true Father, Invisible of Invisible, Incorruptible of Incorruptible, Immortal of Immortal, Eternal of Eternal.