“REPENTANCE OF THE HEART, PURE AND TRUE”, FUNDAMENTAL TEACHING IN ANTHIM THE IBERIAN’S WORK
“REPENTANCE OF THE HEART, PURE AND TRUE”, FUNDAMENTAL TEACHING IN ANTHIM THE IBERIAN’S WORK

Summary/Abstract: The hierarch since whose death 300 years have elapsed sees spiritual blindness as a serious illness which grinds the society, feeling entitled to take action and sound alarm signals as explicit as possible.The teaching about repentance permeates most of the sermons and the teaching words of the great bishop. The power of repentance is precisely the resurrection of the sinner's dead soul, opening, in heaven, doors that had been closed by sin. This gift of repentance is great, since it is only for people that God has ordained it and this is because for angels there can be no repentance "because good angels can do no wrong and no mistakes and so they need no repentance"; also for devils one can not speak of repentance since they "are out of their own will hardened in deceit"; and also for animals one can not speak of repentance, because "they have no mind, no word, ever working without mistake as their nature teaches them."And Saint Anthim insists that God has given only to us, Christians, this great gift, namely repentance, because although they, too, sin, namely "the Jews, and the Turks, however repentance is not useful or helpful in any way to them, because they are outside the law".

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