Someone wants to convert to orthodoxy but they are superstitious about icons and won't go near any icons. Can they still convert?
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Ask an Orthodox Christian
- Thread starter Shiranui117
- Start date
well...I think that Catholics don't want to convert to Orthodoxy because they don't want to join a church which is practically identical to theirs.
:sarcastic
I don't know what Protestants think
Not a Catholic. I don't think that would be a conversion.
Hey, DanielR!Hi Shiranui
I still have to answer your PM! This is just a quick visit. Right now I'm in a spiritual crisis. I used to practice Vedanta for some time but have this urge to go back to OC. I cannot decide, yeah I know first world problems haha.
I pray that God grant you discernment in your spiritual journey. The Orthodox Church will always be here--we're not going anywhere.
I know this is just a Wikipedia article, but it would have been nice to have the full context of Lossky's quotation. Admittedly, that's one book I have yet to read.
But knowing what I do about Orthodox theology thanks to the writings of the eminent Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, I can say this: "to be manifested" in this case means "to be made capable of being known and experienced". As the Source of the Trinity, the Father is also therefore "the possessor of the attribute which is manifested", i.e. divinity and all its holy qualities, such as lovingkindness, justice, mercy, omnipotence, and omniscience, to name a few. The Son is the manifestation of the Father in that He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:18). The Holy Spirit is He Who manifests, in that it is through the Holy Spirit that the Son was made incarnate--we say in the Creed that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
Not quite. The "energies of God" is another way of saying the "actions and uncreated graces of God". The Son is a hypostasis of God, that is, He is a fully distinct Person within the Godhead. It would be more accurate to say that the Son is a substantive manifestation of the Essence of God, just as the Father and the Spirit are. The Son is a manifestation of God (that is, one of the three Persons of the Trinity) in the same exact way that the Father is a manifestation of God. As we say in the Liturgy: "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: The Trinity, one in essence and undivided."
The Son is a manifestation of God, again, in the sense that He is God (not just the grace of God, but one of the three Persons of God) made flesh.
No. God is within all things, but God is not all things. The Son is not everything around you, nor is the physical universe the Son. Otherwise the world would not be fallen, and suffering and sin would not exist.
In a way, we are all the energies of God, because we were all created by the activity of God. However, our capacity to sin and to die is proof that we are not God. It would be more accurate to say that we are made from the energies, i.e. actions, of God. We have a different essence/nature from God.
If you want the most ancient Orthodox mystics, you can look up the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Wüstenväternin German), St. John Climacus, and St. Antony the Great.
Elder Paisios and Fr. Seraphim Rose are two Orthodox mystics from the mid-late 20th century. Matta El Meskeen (Matthew the Poor) is another excellent modern-day mystic; he was a Coptic Orthodox monk and had close ties with Pope Shenouda III of thrice-blessed memory. You can find works by each of these three easily on Amazon.com. These three are the most recent, and Matthew the Poor is still alive. For people from the past several centuries, you can look up St. Nektarios of Aegina (lived up until the early 20th century), St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. John of Kronstadt, (both from the 1700's-1800's) and the Optina Elders to name a few.
Not a problem!
Hmm, not sure I understand what exactly what you mean. You can see my comments above. Could you clarify how you understand it?oh I get it now,
the godhead is manifested as jesus christ in the energies
Hmm, this gives me a thread idea...
You'll get a range of opinions. There are some Orthodox like me, one of my parish priests, and many of my friends who were former Catholics that converted to Orthodoxy. We all remain very fond of Catholicism and Catholics, and we are happy that there is still so much in common between us after a thousand years of separation, but we also acknowledge that there are differences between us. The cradle Orthodox in my own parish are friendly towards Catholics. I can't say I've ever met an Orthodox in the US who didn't have a good word to say about the Catholic Church--we absolutely LOVE Pope Francis, by the wa!
But there are others who are always suspicious of Catholics, calling them heretics, sheep-stealers, Papists and accusing them of wanting to forcibly subjugate us to the authority of the Pope. But
And I hope and pray that one day, our two churches will really be one again.
It depends on the parish. We have Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Bulgarian, Antiochian, Romanian, Albanian, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syriac, Carpatho-Russian, Ukrainian... the list of Orthodox jurisdictions in the US goes on. Each of these jurisdictions have their own traditional liturgical language that they brought with them from Eastern Europe, Asia, India and the Middle East. While many, many Orthodox parishes across the country use English, there are also many parishes that use Greek, various Slavic languages, Romanian, Arabic, Coptic, Syriac and Ethiopian. As time goes on, more and more parishes will start to use more and more English as the parishioners assimilate into American society and are no longer first- and second-generation immigrants.
Impressive artwork and nice craftsmanship, but even Catholics admit that it's all your statues are. Icons, on the other hand, have rich theology and symbolism behind them, and they can be used to teach the faith. They are also windows to Christ and the Saints in a way that I don't think Roman Catholic statuary is. We really wish you guys would bring icons back into usage. You had your own tradition of iconography, and it was a shame to see it go by the wayside.
As in, if you were born in Athens? Then yeah, I guess I'd be Catholic if I was born in Italy. Or I'd be Catholic if my family hadn't converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism a few generations ago.
Actually, I personally know many Catholics who have joined the Orthodox Church.
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Yes, this is correct. Sin is a deviation from our true calling, and a disease that needs to be cured, not something inherent to human nature.
Actually, homosexuality is not a sin in Orthodoxy. Homosexuality is an inclination, not a sin. Homosexual actions are sin, but not the condition of being homosexual.
No, they would not be able to partake in the Sacraments. I would give them kudos for respecting that the Church does not recognize their relationship, but entering into a homosexual relationship is still a sin according to the Church, regardless of if it's monogamous and faithful.
Yes, of course they can still convert. It's actually quite common for converts from Protestantism to have reservations about the veneration of icons, and I see people asking about this all the time on other Orthodox forums. Once one understands the Orthodox Church's teaching regarding the theology behind the icon, and what role and function they have, these concerns will go away.
I myself will actually knock on my icons once in a while as a reminder that they're just pieces of wood with some paint on them--when I venerate them, I don't venerate them, but I venerate Christ, and I venerate His Saints, through whom He has worked.
The similarities between the Eastern and the Oriental Orthodox are too many to count--we have the same theology, the same monastic practice, we speak the same theological language most of the time, the same view of the Church, of God, of the nature of mankind, of the nature of sin... I could go on and on. I honestly don't think that our two communions are different from one another. I believe we are all one Orthodox Church.Well an Orthodox Christian asks another Orthodox.
Can you explain the similarities and differences of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox?
As far as the differences go, we use different liturgical rites--the Eastern Orthodox all use the Byzantine Rite, while the Oriental Orthodox use several different rites, depending which Church you're in. The Coptic Orthodox use the Coptic Rite, the various Syriac Orthodox Churches (I'm counting the Syriac Orthodox in both the Middle East and in India) use the Eastern Syriac Rite, the Armenians have their own rite, as do the Ethiopians and Eritreans. This means that our Liturgies/Masses will be fleshed out differently from one another, and it also means that our Divine Hours services are different, as well as the exact content of our daily prayers. We have different Saints too.
Also, from what I gather, it seems that the Eastern Orthodox have a stronger connection to each other; the various Eastern Orthodox churches regularly meet with each other and carry out joint operations and dialogue, and there is a great degree of interaction across jurisdictional lines. But when I spoke with an Armenian Orthodox woman who visited our parish once, she said that the Armenians and Copts aren't in communion with each other, which really confused me, since both are Oriental Orthodox. I think the Orientals are generally more loosely bound together in terms of administration than us Easterners, though they share the same faith.
But what many would call our biggest difference is in our Christology:
The Eastern Orthodox are Chalcedonian, in that we accept the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon held in 451, which state that within the Person of Christ are united two natures--the human nature, assumed from Mary, and the Divine Nature. These two natures are united within the one Person of Christ, without either nature being absorbed into the other, mixed into the other, or divided from the other, and both natures retain what is proper to each. The Eastern Orthodox are dyophysites, i.e. we hold that Christ has two natures and is in two natures, but we condemn Nestorius and his teacher Theodore Mopsuestia as heretics. We also condemn the Three Chapters as heretical.
The Oriental Orthodox, on the other hand (and as you are Oriental Orthodox, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this) believe that the human and divine natures of Christ were united into, as St. Cyril of Alexandria put it, "one incarnate nature of God the Word". This compound nature is fully human and fully divine, with the properties of neither nature being changed, mixed, or dissolved. The Oriental Orthodox are miaphysites, that is, they believe that Christ is from two natures. As a disclaimer to anyone else reading this, the Oriental Orthodox are NOT Monophysites. Monophysitism (the teaching that Christ only has one divine nature, since His human nature was dissolved into the divine nature) is a condemned heresy in Oriental Orthodoxy, and Eutyches is also condemned as a heretic.
Now, the difference between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox on this matter is trivial, if there is a difference at all; hierarchs from both communions have agreed that we share the same Christology, even if the Greek of the Chalcedonian Eastern Orthodox and the Syriac of the non-Chalcedonian Oriental Orthodox leads to different nuances. Eastern and Oriental Orthodox alike hold to the same faith regarding the humanity and the divinity being united fully and truly within the one Person of Jesus Christ, and we agree that He is fully God and fully man. Both miaphysitism and dyophysitism reach the same implications and conclusions regarding the Person and actions of Christ, and there is no practical difference between the two, which is why members of both Churches have agreed that we both hold to one and the same Faith in this matter.
The below is a good sample--and a good ideal to strive for.
1: Wake up, say daily prayers in front of your icon corner, which can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes depending on what prayer rule you personally follow. The Russian prayer rule is insanely long to me--that's the 20-minute one.
2: Say mealtime prayers, eat, say post-mealtime prayers.
3: Throughout the day, do your best to pray while you work, relax, drive, etc.
4: Either as a part of your morning prayers or at any other point in the day, read the Scriptures for the day, and the hagiography of the Saint(s) commemorated on that day.
5: If you can, say noonday prayers. In front of your icon corner is good, but anywhere you are works just fine.
6: See #2 for lunch and dinner.
7: Say evening prayers in front of your icon corner and hit the hay once you've gotten a shower or whatever.
8: If you're really hardcore, say the Divine Hours when you get the chance--you can pick from Vespers (sunset) Compline (after-dinner) - also known as Apodeipnon, Midnight Office (12:00am) - also known as Mesonyktikon Orthros (sunrise) - also known as Matins First Hour (6:00am) Third Hour (9:00am) Sixth Hour (12:00pm) and Ninth Hour (3:00pm).
9: A good thing to mix into any of your prayers is to chant the Psalms--Psalm 50 is almost always chanted during morning prayers, but additional Psalms may be used. The Orthodox Study Bible will have a list of Psalms for each day of the week, and a layman's service book will also have suggestions.
I myself pray before and after meals, and I'll do my best to pray in the morning, but I always, always say a prayer when I lie down in bed. I still have a lot of work to go, though...
As far as Orthodox Christian conduct throughout the day, I'm sure you know what Christ instructs us to do in the Gospels.
Man, this is tough. I really like St. Ignatius of Antioch; he was a personal student of St. John the Apostle, and we still have his letters 1900 years later. I really like him because he gives us a glimpse into the early theology of the Church, and he was my confirmation Saint when I became Catholic nearly four and a half years ago. But I would have to say that St. John Chrysostom is my favorite; he's from the late 300's, he received an illustrious education under Libanius in rhetoric and philosophy before going into service for the Church, going on to formally study the Tradition and theology of the Church. When he was still just a reader, he was giving sermons instead of the priest because he was so eloquent and well-versed in the Scriptures! When he was elected to be Archbishop of Constantinople, they literally kidnapped him and brought him to Constantinople to be consecrated as the archbishop!
He was famous for denouncing the hedonism and materialism of the upper classes in Antioch and Constantinople, while encouraging everyone to read and study the Scriptures. He has hundreds and hundreds of sermons that we can still read today, and they form some of the best Biblical commentary you can possibly find in Christianity. Even the Reformers read and loved him, though many like John Calvin did deviate from what he taught. Whenever I have a question about the interpretation of a certain Biblical passage, the first thing I do is look for what St. John Chrysostom said.
This is very vague, so I'll answer it in a few different capacities.
Greek or Russian food? This is cruel and unusual. You're making me choose between Greek baklava and kuliva, and Russian pirohi and kolachki? Why, God, why?!? :sad4:
Which would I rather hang out with? Whichever one can speak the languages I do.
Which is better? Neither, but don't tell them that!
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I thank you for all your thorough and interesting answers. Very informative.
Icons are very beautiful. Did you know that Sicily was part of the Byzantine Empire, before it was invaded by the Muslims? Then it was freed by the Normans and so became Catholic. But it was Byzantine for several centuries. The Sicilian Icons were all destroyed during the Iconoclastic period.
IN fact a church is still called Santa Panagia in my town (Holy Panaghia).
and the quarters have still Greek denominations: Neapolis, Epipolis, Tychi...
and I don't like the term Church. the term ekklisia is more exact, because there is no difference between a political assembly and a religious assembly.
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Susanpalli,JW
Member
Shiruani, how does your religion view the book of Revelation? It's a book that has always fascinated me. Thanks.
No, we do not. You can argue that our doctrine of theosis (the process of becoming more and more like God through walking with Christ and following the commandments of God, repenting of our sins and acting righteously, and most importantly loving God and others) is similar to the Gnostic concept of gnosis, and that our view of Heaven (a state where we are in communion with God after the Last Judgement, and reciprocate God's love for us, experiencing joy and peace) is similar to the Gnostic eschatology where one ascends to the Pleroma. However, it must be strongly emphasized that the cosmology of Orthodox Christianity is completely different from that of Gnosticism, and thus there isn't much of a common foundation between the two religions. Gnosticism has always been considered a heresy by Orthodox Christianity.
In the West, sin is viewed as a crime that is committed. In Orthodoxy, it is viewed as a failing to do God's commandments, and is also a disease that plagues mankind.
In the West, when man fell, he became depraved, either in whole or in part (this is especially true of Protestant denominations, and somewhat true in Catholicism). Man's sin also incurred a debt that needed to be paid back to God, a debt that no man could pay. In Orthodoxy, the fall of man placed us under the dominion of sin and death, and we became susceptible to things like suffering, disease, increased tendencies to sin, and death. However, man did not become depraved, even if the image of God within him was now covered with the dirt of sin, so to speak. Man did not incur a debt to God or His wrath as in the West, but rather became estranged from God and was in need of being reconciled to Him. We were now slaves to sin and death, but we owe no debt to God.
These different understandings of sin and the fall of mankind led to a whole host of differences between Eastern and Western Christianity.
In the West, for instance, Anselm of Canterbury completely invented a new way of understanding the atonement of Christ on the Cross around the year 1100. This newfangled theory was based off of English Common Law, and proposed that mankind's sin offended God, and since God is infinite, the degree to which God was offended by our sin was also infinite. But, even if God were to punish every man in the world, we could only give a finite satisfaction--therefore, we couldn't pay the debt we owed to God. So God had to send His Son Jesus Christ, Who is also God, to suffer and die for us, in order to fully satisfy God's offense.
And then, during the 1500's in the West, John Calvin, who was a lawyer by trade, took Anselm's theory (which had long since became the accepted atonement theory in the West, replacing the ancient and original Church teaching on why Christ had to die on the cross) to its natural conclusion. John Calvin said that our sins actually angered God, and the only way for God's wrath to be satisfied was to punish and torture Jesus in our place. This is the prevalent theory of atonement in all of Protestantism.
In both Western theories, God is a courtroom judge that has to punish His Son before He is able to forgive us. Thus, in Protestantism, salvation consists of God saying "Alright, this guy paid your fines, you're good to go"--in other words, salvation is merely a business contract. Catholicism, at least, has not abandoned the Orthodox idea that salvation is a process. But many denominations in the Protestant world assert that salvation cannot be lost; you go up, do the altar call, and once you're saved, nothing you can possibly do will cause you to lose your salvation.
Now, in Orthodoxy, we still hold to the atonement theories of the Early Church from the first four centuries of Christianity. Our set of theories runs a little something like this: since we are enslaved to sin and death, and estranged from God, Christ had to solve both of these problems. Since our sin had created a rift between us and God, this rift needed to be bridged. And to do that, Jesus (Who is perfectly and fully God) became incarnate of the Virgin Mary as a man. Now, He was fully God, and fully man, uniting both human and divine natures and wills within His one Person. He united humanity to God at a fundamental level. But in order to fully redeem humanity, He also had to live as us, and go through all the same trials and temptations that we do--and that includes death. Through all this, He never sinned once, and thereby broke the power of sin over humanity. And so He lived for thirty years as a peasant and then a wandering teacher. Eventually, He was crucified, and thus experienced what was at that point the last stop of the human road, going down into the realm of death, where the souls of all those who had previously died now dwelled as shades.
Now in the realm of Hades (or Sheol as it's known in Hebrew), Christ could deal with the second problem of humanity--our enslavement to death. And this is where Death and Satan were overthrown. Jesus died as a man, but as God, He could not possibly be contained or bound by death. And so He burst free of Hades, thereby giving all of humanity a way out of death. When He ascended into Heaven, He reopened the gates of Paradise that had been shut since the Garden of Eden. The gap of estrangement between God and Man was completely bridged, and the cross and Resurrection of Christ is the bridge. As Christ had shared in our human life, He has now opened the opportunity to share in His divine Life.
So according to Orthodoxy, we have to walk with Christ and follow Him to be saved; salvation doesn't consist of a legal contract, but a process of transformation, a process of slowly wiping the dirt off the image of God within us, and living as Christ does. We have to let the Holy Spirit transform us and shape us, and abide in Christ to avoid returning to the captivity of sin. Quite simply, we believed in having a personal relationship with Jesus and walking with Him waaayyyyy before it was cool.
As some further notes, we do not believe that one goes to Heaven or Hell immediately after death. Rather, we must all wait for the Final Judgement, and in the meantime receive a foretaste of what our Judgement might be. We do not, however, believe in Purgatory as Catholics do; the idea of Purgatory is based on the idea that our sins incur a debt that needs to be paid, which is rejected by Orthodoxy. Both Heaven and Hell are experienced right here on Earth after we are resurrected and reunited with our old bodies.
We also do not believe in the idea of "merits" or "indulgences".
We don't pay a whole lot of attention to it, honestly; it wasn't even accepted into our Biblical canon until around the 500's, because there's a lot in it that frankly isn't very helpful for spiritual development, and as the dime-a-dozen conspiracy theorists and end-times predictors can attest, you can interpret it any which way. I've come to notice that those who obsess over Revelation and whether or not we're in the end times are often some very spiritually unhealthy individuals.
In fact, we never even read from Revelation in church during our services. By the time we got around to accepting it into our canon, we had already written our lectionary (the calendar of Scripture readings for every service of the year).
All I can tell you for sure is that we do NOT believe in the Rapture; that was a doctrine invented in the 1800's. We believe that the main point of Revelation is that, when the going gets tough, hang in there and keep the faith, and you will be saved. Because at the end of the world, everyone will be resurrected and judged, and there will be no more suffering, death or sadness--but the wicked and unrepentant will suffer in the Lake of Fire forever.
Draupadi
Active Member
No, we do not. You can argue that our doctrine of theosis (the process of becoming more and more like God through walking with Christ and following the commandments of God, repenting of our sins and acting righteously, and most importantly loving God and others) is similar to the Gnostic concept of gnosis, and that our view of Heaven (a state where we are in communion with God after the Last Judgement, and reciprocate God's love for us, experiencing joy and peace) is similar to the Gnostic eschatology where one ascends to the Pleroma. However, it must be strongly emphasized that the cosmology of Orthodox Christianity is completely different from that of Gnosticism, and thus there isn't much of a common foundation between the two religions. Gnosticism has always been considered a heresy by Orthodox Christianity.
In the West, sin is viewed as a crime that is committed. In Orthodoxy, it is viewed as a failing to do God's commandments, and is also a disease that plagues mankind.
In the West, when man fell, he became depraved, either in whole or in part (this is especially true of Protestant denominations, and somewhat true in Catholicism). Man's sin also incurred a debt that needed to be paid back to God, a debt that no man could pay. In Orthodoxy, the fall of man placed us under the dominion of sin and death, and we became susceptible to things like suffering, disease, increased tendencies to sin, and death. However, man did not become depraved, even if the image of God within him was now covered with the dirt of sin, so to speak. Man did not incur a debt to God or His wrath as in the West, but rather became estranged from God and was in need of being reconciled to Him. We were now slaves to sin and death, but we owe no debt to God.
These different understandings of sin and the fall of mankind led to a whole host of differences between Eastern and Western Christianity.
In the West, for instance, Anselm of Canterbury completely invented a new way of understanding the atonement of Christ on the Cross around the year 1100. This newfangled theory was based off of English Common Law, and proposed that mankind's sin offended God, and since God is infinite, the degree to which God was offended by our sin was also infinite. But, even if God were to punish every man in the world, we could only give a finite satisfaction--therefore, we couldn't pay the debt we owed to God. So God had to send His Son Jesus Christ, Who is also God, to suffer and die for us, in order to fully satisfy God's offense.
And then, during the 1500's in the West, John Calvin, who was a lawyer by trade, took Anselm's theory (which had long since became the accepted atonement theory in the West, replacing the ancient and original Church teaching on why Christ had to die on the cross) to its natural conclusion. John Calvin said that our sins actually angered God, and the only way for God's wrath to be satisfied was to punish and torture Jesus in our place. This is the prevalent theory of atonement in all of Protestantism.
In both Western theories, God is a courtroom judge that has to punish His Son before He is able to forgive us. Thus, in Protestantism, salvation consists of God saying "Alright, this guy paid your fines, you're good to go"--in other words, salvation is merely a business contract. Catholicism, at least, has not abandoned the Orthodox idea that salvation is a process. But many denominations in the Protestant world assert that salvation cannot be lost; you go up, do the altar call, and once you're saved, nothing you can possibly do will cause you to lose your salvation.
Now, in Orthodoxy, we still hold to the atonement theories of the Early Church from the first four centuries of Christianity. Our set of theories runs a little something like this: since we are enslaved to sin and death, and estranged from God, Christ had to solve both of these problems. Since our sin had created a rift between us and God, this rift needed to be bridged. And to do that, Jesus (Who is perfectly and fully God) became incarnate of the Virgin Mary as a man. Now, He was fully God, and fully man, uniting both human and divine natures and wills within His one Person. He united humanity to God at a fundamental level. But in order to fully redeem humanity, He also had to live as us, and go through all the same trials and temptations that we do--and that includes death. Through all this, He never sinned once, and thereby broke the power of sin over humanity. And so He lived for thirty years as a peasant and then a wandering teacher. Eventually, He was crucified, and thus experienced what was at that point the last stop of the human road, going down into the realm of death, where the souls of all those who had previously died now dwelled as shades.
Now in the realm of Hades (or Sheol as it's known in Hebrew), Christ could deal with the second problem of humanity--our enslavement to death. And this is where Death and Satan were overthrown. Jesus died as a man, but as God, He could not possibly be contained or bound by death. And so He burst free of Hades, thereby giving all of humanity a way out of death. When He ascended into Heaven, He reopened the gates of Paradise that had been shut since the Garden of Eden. The gap of estrangement between God and Man was completely bridged, and the cross and Resurrection of Christ is the bridge. As Christ had shared in our human life, He has now opened the opportunity to share in His divine Life.
So according to Orthodoxy, we have to walk with Christ and follow Him to be saved; salvation doesn't consist of a legal contract, but a process of transformation, a process of slowly wiping the dirt off the image of God within us, and living as Christ does. We have to let the Holy Spirit transform us and shape us, and abide in Christ to avoid returning to the captivity of sin. Quite simply, we believed in having a personal relationship with Jesus and walking with Him waaayyyyy before it was cool.
As some further notes, we do not believe that one goes to Heaven or Hell immediately after death. Rather, we must all wait for the Final Judgement, and in the meantime receive a foretaste of what our Judgement might be. We do not, however, believe in Purgatory as Catholics do; the idea of Purgatory is based on the idea that our sins incur a debt that needs to be paid, which is rejected by Orthodoxy. Both Heaven and Hell are experienced right here on Earth after we are resurrected and reunited with our old bodies.
We also do not believe in the idea of "merits" or "indulgences".
Hold on Jesus can only conquer death by dying Himself? If that is the case then why do people die?
I wouldn't say that Jesus could "only" conquer Death by dying Himself; He could just as easily have snapped His fingers and freed us from everything. But in order to show His great love for us, He went through this process of suffering, uniting our nature to His, and going through everything as we do. Remember, Jesus said "There is no greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends." (John 15:13). And Jesus always practices what He preaches, and leads by example.
We die because we sin, and the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:13). We follow after Adam, and so we share Adam's fate to die bodily (Romans 5:12-18). But, the state of death is no longer permanent--it was the permanence of death that Christ immediately abolished. When Jesus rose from the dead, it gave us a way out of death. We will all still die because of our sins, but instead of being a sledgehammer that destroys the computer, now death is only a quick reset. And why do you reset? To fix whatever problems you had when you were still running last time. Christ is the way to salvation, and just as He imitated us in dying for us, we must imitate Him and die and be risen from the dead in order to be healed of even the physical consequences of our sins.
