| Besides, this too has to be inquired into, whether, if the good angels made their own will good, they did so with or without will? If without, then it was not their doing. If with, was the will good or bad? If bad, how could a bad will give birth to a good one? If good, then already they had a good will. And who made this will, which already they had, but He who created them with a good will, or with that chaste love by which they cleaved to Him, in one and the same act creating their nature, and endowing it with grace? And thus we are driven to believe that the holy angels never existed without a good will or the love of God. But the angels who, though created good, are yet evil now, became so by their own will. And this will was not made evil by their good nature, unless by its voluntary defection from good; for good is not the cause of evil, but a defection from good is. These angels, therefore, either received less of the grace of the divine love than those who persevered in the same; or if both were created equally good, then, while the one fell by their evil will, the others were more abundantly assisted, and attained to that pitch of blessedness at which they became certain they should never fall from it – as we have already shown in the preceding book. We must therefore acknowledge, with the praise due to the Creator, that not only of holy men, but also of the holy angels, it can be said that the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto them. Romans 5:5 And that not only of men, but primarily and principally of angels it is true, as it is written, It is good to draw near to God. And those who have this good in common, have, both with Him to whom they draw near, and with one another, a holy fellowship, and form one city of God – His living sacrifice, and His living temple. And I see that, as I have now spoken of the rise of this city among the angels, it is time to speak of the origin of that part of it which is hereafter to be united to the immortal angels, and which at present is being gathered from among mortal men, and is either sojourning on earth, or, in the persons of those who have passed through death, is resting in the secret receptacles and abodes of disembodied spirits. For from one man, whom God created as the first, the whole human race descended, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, which deservedly is of wonderful authority among all nations throughout the world; since, among its other true statements, it predicted, by its divine foresight, that all nations would give credit to it. |
| These are the basic intuitions which determined the social and individual ethics of the Byzantine Christians. Actually, one can hardly find, in the entire religious literature of Byzantium, any systematic treatment of Christian ethics, or behavior, but rather innumerable examples of moral exegesis of Scripture, and ascetical treatises on prayer and spirituality. This implies that Byzantine ethics were eminently «theological ethics.» The basic affirmation that every man, whether Christian or not, is created according to the image of God and therefore called to divine communion and «deification,» was of course recognized, but no attempt was ever made to build «secular» ethics for man «in general.» Byzantines were ready to find seeds of the divine Logos in the precepts of ancient philosophers or even occasionally among Moslem Arabs, but these were always understood as dynamically oriented toward the only true incarnated Logos, and were all to be fulfilled in Him. The religious inheritance of Christian Byzantium has frequently defined itself in opposition to the West, and indeed its entire concept of God-man relationships is different from one which prevailed in post-Augustinian Latin Christianity. Contemporary mansearching for a God who would be not only transcendent but also existentially experienced and immanently present in man, and the gradual discovery of man as essentially open, developing, and growingshould be more receptive to the basic positions of Byzantine thought, which may then acquire an astonishingly contemporary relevance. Bibliography This Bibliography, which has been substantially updated for the 1983 reprint, provides the possibility of further reading. It indicates the books and articles which were used and which contain further bibliographical information. An almost exhaustive bibliographyuntil 1959can be found in Hans-Georg Beck " " s Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich. Not all the books and articles referred to in the notes are included here. The general books, under Chapter 1, are not repeated, although these items are obviously relevant to the subject-matter of other chapters as well. |
| The God of the Scholastics and Descartes turns out to be, in the final analysis the product or result of a cognitive self- sufficiency, guaranteed for the subject by ratio, outside or beyond the experience of reality or life, where everything is the experience of relationship. Nietzsche charges Descartes with this blatant, yet unacknowledged contradiction: that logical proofs for the existence of God refute God as an objective, real presence. The logical conclusion of the ‘monism of the subject’ inflicted on European philosophy by Descartes, is not God, but the absolutized subject itself, the ‘superman’ (Ubermensch). 24 Descartes, however, did not dare to push the supremacy of the subject to its final conclusion. He instituted the subject as the absolute determinative source of all knowledge and being, and subjected God to absolutized man, but he failed to see that his position heralded-the ‘death of God’ and the imposition of the ‘superman’. On the contrary, he was of the opinion – and expressed this many times – that he had done service to and strengthened the edifice of European metaphysics. The next major step in the historical development of ‘atheistic theism’ was certainly made by Spinoza, particularly in his book, Ethica ordine geametrico demonstrata (1677). The God of Spinoza is the inner necessity of nature, nature and God being identified (Deus sive natura). They are identified with one, single, eternal, and infinite substantial reality (substantia), that exists absolutely in itself and is conceived by itself (quod in se est et per se concipitur), the cause of its own existence and that existence itself, and distinguished only in creative and created nature (natura naturans, natura natuata). Beings and ideas are the two ways in which the same common substance of nature and God exist and are manifest: they exist in this same substance as its necessary consequences and they are made up of certain – of its transient manifestations. Such an all-encompassing portrayal of the existent, restrained as it is as much by the limitations of the intellect as by sense-experience, allows no room for any existence, divine or otherwise, beyond the limits of terrestrial reality. Hence, it is only by means of sense–experience of beings and intellectual conception of ideas that human kind has knowledge of the two properties of the divine being of the cosmos: thought and extension. Human thought is God’s self-awareness and the extension of- beings is the eternal ‘dimension’ of God. |
| Maximus the Confessor used to call «natural contemplation» (physik theria) or the new state of created being in Christ. Barlaam–and also mediaeval Latin tradition–tends to understand this created habi tus as a condition for and not a consequence of illumination by grace. Palamas, on the contrary, proclaims the overwhelming novelty of the Kingdom of God revealed in Christ, and the gratuitous character of the divine and saving acts of God. Hence, for him, vision of God cannot depend on human «knowledge.» Of course, in Greek patristic terminology, and particularly in St. Maximus, «nature» presupposes divine presence in man, that is, «grace». No opposition between «nature» and «grace» is therefore possible. 35 But salvation itself begins by a divine act providing direct knowledge of God, which restores «nature» to its original state and also allows for a truly «natural» contemplation of God through His creatures. Palamas always remains basically faithful to the thought of St. Maximus who, together with Ps. Dionysius, is the patristic author most frequently quoted in the Triads. Knowledge beyond Knowledge The philosopher Barlaam " s debate with Palamas on the subject of Greek philosophy and its relevance to Christian thought had inevitably to confront the nature of Christian experience itself, which was described by Palamas as being «beyond nature». Barlaam, on the contrary, seems to have clung to the Aristotelian approach, defining all human knowledge as being based on perception by the senses, also admitting the possibility of a positive illumination of the mind, transcending the senses, but remaining within «the nature of the mind». Of course, Barlaam also knew the apophatic or «negative» theology of the Greek Fathers, and particularly Ps. Dionysius, but he used this theology mainly to maintain the limitations of the human mind, whose knowledge of God, according to Barlaam, could be only symbolic, or relative. Indeed, the meaning of negative theology consists precisely in saying only what God is not, but not what He is. |
| Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk greets 23d International symposium on Orthodox spirituality Source: DECR On September 9, 2015, the 23d International Symposium on Orthodox Spirituality was opened at the Bose monastic community, Italy, under the theme ‘Mercy and Forgiveness’. It is attended by representatives of Local Orthodox Churches, the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant communities as well as prominent theologians and specialists in church history. With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church led by Bishop Mitrofan of Severomonrsk and Umba takes part in the symposium. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR), has sent the following message of greetings to the participants in the symposium. Very Reverend Father Enzo Bianchi, Dear organizers and participants of the symposium: On behalf of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, I would like to cordially greet all the participants in the 23d International Symposium of Orthodox Spirituality organized by the Bose community and held under the theme ‘Mercy and Forgiveness’. The good news of our Lord Jesus Christ has revealed to the whole creation the boundless mercy and absolute forgiveness of our God the Heavenly Father. The Creator’s love of His created world enslaved by sin was expressed in the self-denial of the Son of God Who gave Himself for the sins of the world ‘so that all people be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim. 2:4). How inscrutably profound is the forgiveness of God given to the sinful man without any condition even before he repents (cf. Rom. 5:8)! God, like the loving father from the parable of the lost son, stands in anticipation on the way of he who ‘was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found’ (Lk. 15: 20:24). ‘Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful’, says the Saviour to His disciples (Lk. 6:36). In these words there is a testimony to the highest dignity of man called to co-work with God. But is ‘the crown of the creation’ always equal to his calling? The natural environment of man, destroyed by irresponsible and consumer attitude to it, needs love and care for its salvation. According to St. Paul, ‘the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed’, for ‘the whole creation has been groaning right up to the present time, not only so, but we ourselves…’ (Rom. 8; 19:22-23). |
| All this means that grace is not merely an idea about God’s forgiveness in Christ. It is not a change in God’s “attitude” toward a person. It is not a mere release from “guilt.” It is the very life-giving, transforming, divine power and uncreated energies of God Himself. It is always received as a gift of God (never “earned”) by those who open their hearts and lives to receive it. And this grace saves inasmuch as it brings one into intimate union with the One who is Salvation. Kevin: Was there a common teaching on grace in the East and the West prior to the Great Schism? What teachings in the West changed the understanding of grace? Fr. Michael: To my knowledge, yes, as with all doctrines of the faith, there was a common understanding of grace. Some would say that Saint Augustine opened the door for later, innovative teachings that infiltrated the West. But this happened gradually. By the fourteenth century, the Roman Church generally rejected the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas about God’s grace being the uncreated energies of God. The heretic, Barlaam, who taught that man cannot truly know God except through the intellect and that God’s grace is created, found a home in the Roman Church. The scholastic theology of the West had adopted a new speculative and philosophical approach that pursued the knowledge of God through reasoning rather than the way of knowing that comes from the experience and revelation of God. The West adopted Aristotelian logic and lost the patristic distinction between the essence and energies of God; something that has primarily persisted to this day. Kevin: Could you briefly define the Roman Catholic teaching of grace? Fr. Michael: What we know as “Western Christendom” today has rarely focused on the question of what grace is. Rome has been most interested in defining and categorizing how grace acts. It has defined many “kinds” of grace: actual, habitual or sanctifying, gratuitous, prevenient, etc. Although the phrase “created grace” has also been used, Catholic apologists today deny that it meant that God’s grace is created. In general, however, the philosophical approach to defining grace has fallen short and distorted the patristic teaching. The fact that until very recent times the Roman Church rejected the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas on grace (which is the Orthodox teaching) speaks loudly. |
| Our Church welcomes everyone who is sincerely seeking the Kingdom of God and desires to live a life of purity and holiness, regardless of their own personal struggles. We all have our own sins. By the Grace of God, we continue to repent daily and struggle to become what the Lord created us to be. Website of the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania,(OCA) Bishop Thomas (Joseph) Auxiliary Bishop Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic (Antiochean Orthodox Archdiocese of America): Beloved in Christ, May God bless you always. On June 26, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision that effectively defines “marriage” as legal between any two consenting adults throughout our country, regardless of their biological sex, a decision that will no doubt have sweeping effects in our society, not just for these couples but for children, families, churches, other religious organizations and all people of faith. This action by the Court attempting to redefine marriage is deeply wrong, but it gives us an opportunity to reiterate for ourselves and also for our whole country the unchanging, timeless teaching of the Holy Orthodox Church regarding marriage and sexuality. With the creation of marriage by God for Adam and Eve, the first human bond was instituted. This bond preceded all the other social bonds of humanity, including not just governments but even the covenants that He Himself instituted. It is fundamental to human nature that marriage consists of one man and one woman in a lifelong, exclusive bond. Marriage is therefore not about private desire but about the complementary, conjugal bond of family, as created by God and blessed by Him. It is only within that blessed bond that sexuality finds its proper expression. All other sexual behavior—whether between a homosexual couple, an unmarried heterosexual couple, multiple people, a person by himself, or anything else—is sinful, meaning that it distorts our relationship with God, each other and ourselves. Yet such actions, including their sanction by entering into one of these new legal unions, which are not truly marriages, can always be repented of. No one is a lost cause. No one is our enemy. |
| St. Gregory also develops this teaching at other places in the Triads. The vision of God, theoria of the uncreated light, is not a sensory vision but a deification of man. Speaking of Moses’ vision of God “face-to-face and not in enigmas”, he recalls the passage in St. Maximus the Confessor that says: “Deification is an en-hypostatic and direct illumination which has no beginning but appears in those worthy as something exceeding their comprehension. It is indeed a mystical union with God, beyond nous and reason in the age when creatures will no longer know corruption” (3,1,28;CWS p.84). So the vision of the uncreated light is man’s deification. He sees God through deification and not through cultivating intelligence. The vision of uncreated light is called a deifying gift. It is not a gift of created human nature, but of the Holy Spirit. “Thus the deifying gift of the Spirit is a mysterious light which transforms into light those who receive its wealth. He not only fills them with eternal light but also grants them knowledge and life appropriate to God” (3,1,35;CWS p.90). Thus the vision of God is not external but comes through deification (2,3,25). This deification is union and communion with God. According to St. Gregory, “Vision of the uncreated light is not simply abstraction and negation, it is a union and a divinisation which occurs mystically and ineffably by the grace of God, after the stripping away of everything from here below which imprints itself on the nous, or rather after the cessation of all noetic activity; it is something which goes beyond abstraction” (1,3,17;CWS p.34f). The contemplation of uncreated light is “by the divinising communion of the Spirit” (1,3,5;CWS p.33). “So the contemplation of this light is a union, even though it does not endure in the imperfect: but is the union with this light other than a vision?” (2,3,36;CWS p.65) St. Gregory speaks of ecstasy. But this ecstasy, in patristic teaching, has nothing to do with the ecstasy of Pythia and the other religions. |
| Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson Скачать epub pdf THEOLOGY THEOLOGY. Theology in the Orthodox tradition has a considerably broader meaning than philosophical discourse about divinity. The latter applies, to be sure, when Christian thinkers were obliged to express and defend the faith in language borrowed from the Greek philosophical tradition of Plato and Neoplatonism (qq.v.). Nor, it must be added, did they feel the latter to be entirely at variance with the revelation in Christ. The history of Orthodox theology (as of Roman Catholic [qq.v.] and Protestant theology) is in great part the struggle against and in alliance with the inheritance of the great pagan Greeks. Borrowing a phrase from Fr. Georges Florovsky (q.v.), it is a wrestling with concepts in order to discover the words “most adequate” to the mystery of God (q.v.) become man (theoprepeis logoi). In this struggle one may discern two basic approaches in Orthodox Church Fathers, as the former were categorized by Dionysius the Areopagite (qq.v.). There is first and primarily apophatic theology. This phrase goes beyond the mere negation of concepts. It denotes the fact that the transcendent God (q.v.) is, indeed, transcendent, other, and thus “known,” in Dionysius’s famous phrase, only “by unknowing.” Classically apophatic theology insists on a particular content to this “unknowing,” i.e., the possibility of a genuine experience of the unknowable God revealed in the Incarnate Word and communicated to the believer in the action (energeia) of the Holy Spirit (q.v.). This is therefore the real mystical theology, the union beyond word and concept. The experience of the divine leads to the other approach of classical Eastern theology, affirmative or cataphatic theology. The Unknowable is revealed in his creation, in the words of the Scriptures (q.v.), and finally in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. These givens constitute the realm of the oikonomia, God’s self-extension into the universe for humanity’s creation and salvation. On the one hand, words and concepts must be assigned and accorded their full seriousness, though always with the proviso that they carry within themselves and point toward a presence that finally transcends both them and every artifice of the created intellect. On the other hand, certain concepts, or “names,” do carry a particular weight because they are revealed images, “notional icons” one might say, beyond which the believer cannot go. This applies with particular force to the names accorded the persons of the Trinity (q.v.). In the Trinity, and in the formulations of the Ecumenical Councils concerning Christology (qq.v.), apophatic and cataphatic can be seen to meet and fuse: not a man and a god, but the God-man, not One and not Three, but both, and beyond the categories of one and many. |
| The eschatological state, however, is not only a reality of the future but a present experience, accessible in Christ through the gifts of the Spirit. The Eucharistic canon of the liturgy of John Chrysostom commemorates the second coming of Christ together with events of the pastthe cross, the grave, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. In the Eucharistic presence of the Lord, His forthcoming advent is already realized, and «time» is being transcended. Similarly, the entire tradition of Eastern monastic spirituality is based upon the premiss that now, in this life, Christians can experience the vision of God and the reality of «deification.» This strong emphasis on an «already realized» eschatology explains why Byzantine Christianity lacks a sense of direct responsibility for history as such. Or if it acknowledges such a responsibility, it tends to rely on such institutions as history itself may produce, particularly the Christian empire. The Christian state, and the Church as such, assume a responsibility for society as a whole, receiving guidance and inspiration from the Christian Gospel. But the dynamic «movement,» which characterizes the «new humanity in Christ,» and for which the Church is responsible, is not the movement of history but a mystical growth in God, known to the saints alone. The movement certainly occurs in the midst of history and may, to a degree, influence the historical process, but it does not belong to history essentially because it anticipates the end of history. It is, indeed, the «movement» of nature, and of the natural man, but natural humanityhumanity as originally conceived and created by Godpresupposes communion with God, freedom from the world, lordship over creation and over history. It must, therefore, be independent from what the world understands as history. Existing in history, the Church expects the second coming of Christ in power as the visible triumph of God in the world and the final transfiguration of the whole of creation. Man, as center and lord of creation, will then be restored to his original stature, which has been corrupted by sin and death; this restoration will imply the «resurrection of the flesh,» because man is not only a «soul,» but a psychosomatic whole, necessarily incomplete without his body. Finally, the second coming will also be a judgment, because the criterion of all righteousnessChrist Himselfwill be present not « " in faith» only, appealing for man»«s free response, but in full evidence and power. |
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