That's ex opere operato.
Sounds like you're arguing for a kind of Federalism. I am not opposed to Federalist theology, I'm just not convinced that it extends to the ordinances of the New Covenant.
Yes
I don't view it as an exercise in individual theological debate. I mean, I'm not strictly opposed to that characterization because it happens to apply in this case, but it stems from internal Protestant debate, which we don't have. It's just not my individual position, it's the position of the Orthodox Church since the First Millennium.
I would encourage you to look into the basics of Orthodox dogma, as it's hard to summarize in a post, but its teachings cohere within a very beautiful phronema. I frequently notice that serious Protestants start to formulate teachings that almost seem to approach Orthodoxy, and instead of me agreeing or disagreeing (I'm not blessed by my priest to take a teaching position), I think you'll find that there are plenty of teachings that have been articulated by sensible Protestant theologians at one point or another, and much holy wisdom beyond that.
Undoubtedly, I think.
I've just been thinking lately about how heritage Americans are Ina similar situation in our time. Almost everyone in Latin America is Christian, as are large numbers of African and Asian immigrants. Even the immigrants who are not Christian could be converted. So, does it really matter that heritage America is well on the way to disappearing. That's what I wonder.
I think the Reformer closest to Orthodox soteriology would probably be John Wesley. I was a Wesleyan Protestant before I became Orthodox and subsequently avoided a lot of the hurdles and obstacles that Calvinist converts have to deal with.
That, and, which I have heard a lot about in Orthodox circles, Aulén's Christus Victor theology, which avoids Calvinist forensic reductionism in Soteriology. I haven't yet read that myself though.
Oh, and before anyone complains:
This isn't off-topic, as forensic reductionism (a term I used earlier in the Orthodox forum) is often argued using St. Augustine's writings as well.
What I mean is the idea that penal substitution is one-sidedly understood to be a payment for sin, at the cost of its significance as a cooperative, energetic regeneration of man's fallen state.
Plot twist: all the migrants who the Jews moved in turn out to be Christian Nationalists, who then will kick the Jews out.
Augustine observing the fall of Rome speaks a lot to our time. It is why he wrote the City of God, as he understood that the Church is too big of a concept to be fixed in the temporal alone.
I have spent the last several weeks reading almost nothing but Augustine, and today his basic approach finally clicked for me: He just wanted to understand what he already believed. He looked at the dogmas of the faith, the liturgical rites, and the tradition he'd received from his predecessors and - rather than simply believing with no investigation - wanted to construct an intellectual understanding that made his beliefs make sense. For example he looked at the rite of infant baptism, which contains pronouncements about the remission of sins along with an exorcism and exsufflation for the infant just like it does for adults (since these are the exact same service), and tried to make sense of what "sin" is being remitted along with how the infant came under the influence of the devil in the first place. He took the entirety of the faith as true and truly God-inspired, believing it with his whole heart, and wanted to understand it as well with his whole mind - to whatever small degree that's actually possible for our limited rationality. I think this is one of the things that made him such a rarity not just in the Christian world, but in the history of mankind as a whole.
I don't really have any dogs in the St Augustine debates that seem to rage among the Orthodox. But I enjoyed this video, it is well researched, and I learned a lot. I would love to see more videos in this style about St. Augustine or any other topics in Orthodoxy