Posts Tagged eastern orthodox theology
St. Porphyrios: “A person can become a saint anywhere”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets on February 20, 2016
St. Porphyrios (Bairaktaris) (1906-1991) – was an Athonite hieromonk known for his gifts of spiritual discernment. He was officially recognized as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2013.
“It is a great art to succeed in having your soul sanctified. A person can become a saint anywhere. He can become a saint in Omonia Square, if he wants. At your work, whatever it may be, you can become a saint through meekness, patience, and love. Make a new start every day, with new resolution, with enthusiasm and love, prayer and silence — not with anxiety so that you get a pain in the chest.” ~ St. Porphyrios
Andreas Andreopoulos: “On Apokatastasis”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets, Universal Restoration (Apokatastasis) on February 13, 2016
Dr. Andreas Andreopoulos (1966- ) – Orthodox priest, studied in Greece, Canada and the UK, obtaining his Ph.D. in Theology and Art at Durham University.
“Alexandrian theology in the second/third century starts a particularly Eastern theological strand of eschatology that leads all the way to Mark of Ephesus in the fifteenth, one which differs from most Western views if not necessarily and officially on the eternity of evil, at least on the question as to where this evil is to be found and therefore comes from – in doctrinal contrast to the views of Western theologians such as Abelard, who saw the torments of hell as a punishment very often more cruel than the sins that warranted it, in a place that had specifically been created by God for this purpose, as it was believed after Augustine. The ancient as well as the late Byzantine position, certainly before the Western influences on Greek and Russian theology after the Renaissance, was that nothing evil can come from God, not even punishment. The punishment and torments of hell are only inflicted from ourselves, both in this world and in the next one. Hell and its fire is not different, essentially, from the benevolent energy of God, when experienced by the sinners. The restoration of all, at best an interesting and possible speculation though not a doctrine, is an idea not too far from all this.”
~ Andreas Andreopoulos from “Eschatology and Final Restoration (Apokatastasis) in Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximos the Confessor”
Yanarras: “Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions.”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets, Theology on January 30, 2016
Christos Yannaras (1935 – ) was Professor of Philosophy at Pantion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. His books include Freedom of Morality and Person and Eros.
“To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance) really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being.”
― Christos Yanarras, from “Variations on the Song of Songs”
Met. Hierotheos (Vlachos): The distinction between the “Person” and the “Individual”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in New Nuggets, Theology on December 30, 2015
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) – (1945- ) is a Greek Orthodox metropolitan and theologian. He graduated from the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki and is one of the finest Patristic scholars living.
“…today a distinction is made between the person and the individual. The term ‘person’ is used to mean the man who has freedom and love and is clearly distinguished from the mass, and the term ‘individual’ characterizes the man who remains a biological being and spends his whole life and activities on his material and biological needs, without having any other pursuit in his life.” ~ from “The person in the Orthodox Tradition”, p. 79
David Bentley Hart: “On Contemplative Prayer”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, New Nuggets on September 5, 2015
“If one is really to seek “proof” one way or the other regarding the reality of God, one must recall that what one is seeking is a particular experience, one wholly unlike an encounter with some mere finite object of cognition or some particular thing that might be found among other things. One is seeking an ever deeper communion with a reality that at once exceeds and underlies all other experiences. If one could sort through all the physical objects and events constituting the universe, one might come across any number of gods (you never know), but one will never find God. And yet one is placed in the presence of God in every moment and can find him even in the depth of the mind’s own act of seeking. As the source, ground, and end of being and consciousness, God can be known as God only insofar as the mind rises from beings to being, and withdraws from the objects of consciousness toward the wellsprings of consciousness itself, and learns to see nature not as a closed system of material forces but in light of those ultimate ends that open the mind and being each to the other. All the great faiths recognize numerous vehicles of grace, various proper dispositions of the soul before God, differing degrees of spiritual advancement, and so forth; but all clearly teach that there is no approach to the knowledge of God that does not involve turning the mind and the will toward the perception of God in all things and of all things in God. This is the path of prayer—contemplative prayer, that is, as distinct from simple prayers of supplication and thanksgiving—which is a specific discipline of thought, desire, and action, one that frees the mind from habitual prejudices and appetites, and allows it to dwell in the gratuity and glory of all things. As an old monk on Mount Athos once told me, contemplative prayer is the art of seeing reality as it truly is; and, if one has not yet acquired the ability to see God in all things, one should not imagine that one will be able to see God in himself.”
~ David Bentley Hart, from The Experience of God.
Essence and Energies of God – 2
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Essence and Energies (series) on August 29, 2015
Thaboric Light
Essence (οὐσία; ousía)
In order to understand God’s essence, we have to spend a little time understanding how to approach an understanding of God!
Since the writings of St. Dionysius the Areopagite in the 5th century (e.g., “Concerning Mystical Theology”), apophatic theology, or the via negativa, has enjoyed undisputed authority in the theological tradition of both the Christian East and West (Lossky).
Vladimir Lossky tells us that, “Dionysius distinguishes two possible theological ways. One – that of cataphatic or positive theology – that proceeds by affirmations; the other – apophatic or negative theology – by negations. The first leads us to some knowledge of God, but in an imperfect way. The perfect way, the only way which is fitting in regard to God, who is of His very nature unknowable, is the second – which leads us finally to total ignorance.” Lossky does not leave us with that depressing thought, but goes on to explain that, “All knowledge has as its object that which is. Now God is beyond all that exists. In order to approach Him it is necessary to deny all that is inferior to Him, that is to say, all that which is. It is by unknowing (ἀγνωσία) that one may know Him who is above every possible object of knowledge. Proceeding by negations one ascends from the inferior degrees of being to the highest, by progressively setting aside all that can be known, in order to draw near to the Unknown in the darkness of absolute ignorance.”
Fr. John Meyendorff makes the same point as Lossky, “The writings of the Fathers – and particularly Dionysius – emphasized, as the starting point of any Christian discourse about God, the affirmation that God is not any of the creatures and that, therefore, the created mind, which “knows” only creatures, can conceive of God only by the method of exclusion. The most frequently repeated liturgical prayers, familiar to all, were using the same apophatic approach to God: “Thou art God ineffable, invisible, incomprehensible,…”. Later, Meyendorff remarks on “… the apophatic theology of the Greek Fathers, which affirmed absolute transcendence of the divine essence, inaccessible to the angels themselves.”
Eastern Christianity teaches that the essence, being, nature and substance (ousia) of God is uncreated and incomprehensible. Lossky finally summarizes all apophatic descriptions by defining God’s essence as “that which finds no existence or subsistence in another or any other thing”.
To be continued…
Essence and Energies of God – 3
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Essence and Energies (series) on August 28, 2015
Thaboric Light
Energies (ἐνέργεια; enérgeia)
In our discussion on God’s energies, I will rely heavily on the writings of the greatest expositor on the Essence and Energies of God, St. Gregory Pálamas (1296–1359). Palamas was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece and later the Archbishop of Thessaloniki. He is known as the preeminent theologian of Hesychasm (Greek: silence, stillness, or quietude), the ancient Christian tradition of contemplative prayer and theosis, or union with God, dating back to the 2nd century.
In the 1330s and 1340s Palamas defended the theology and doctrine of Hesychasm against Barlaam the Calabrian, a theologian trained in Western Scholastic tradition of reason and logic, who attacked the doctrines and practices of the Hesychasts, accusing them of heresy and blasphemy.
In response to Barlaam’s attacks, Palamas wrote nine treatises entitled “Triads For The Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred Quietude [Hesychasts]”. The treatises are called “triads” because they were organized as three sets of three treatises. Ultimately, Palamas prevailed and his theology was endorsed in a series of six patriarchal councils held in Constantinople between 1341 and 1351. Barlaam was anathematized, returned to Italy, and joined the Roman Catholic Church where is views received a more sympathetic reception.
Most of what follows comes from Fr. John Meyendorff’s 1983 publication of St. Gregory Palamas’ “Triads”.
Myendorff observed that, “The distinction in God between “essence” and “energy” – that focal point of Palamite theology – is nothing but a way of saying that the transcendent God remains transcendent, as He communicates Himself to humanity.” Unpacking this idea a bit further, he explains, “…for Palamas, this transcendent essence of God would be a philosophical abstraction if it did not possess “power”, that is, “the faculties of knowing, of prescience, of creating”. In other words, the God of Palamas is a living God…”
“The real communion, the fellowship and – one can almost say – the familiarity with the “One Who Is” [God] is, for Palamas the very content of the Christian experience, made possible because the “One Who Is” [God] became man.”
“After the coming of Christ … God enters into immediate communion with humanity.” So, for Palamas the Incarnation of Christ, the Logos, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, is absolutely central. Indeed, true “deification” (theosis) became possible when, according to the expressions of St. Athanasius, “God became man in order that man might become God in him”.
To be continued…
Essence and Energies of God – 5
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Essence and Energies (series) on August 26, 2015
Thaboric Light
In the context of this affirmation of God’s real manifestation of his energies to creatures, Palamas, following Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, refers to the New Testament accounts and references to the Transfiguration of Christ on the mount (Mt. 17:1-9; Mk. 9:2-9;Lk. 9:28-36; 2 Pet. 1:17-21). This idea of “God as Light” recurs throughout Patristic literature including the aforementioned Maximus and John, plus the likes of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, St. Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas himself.
Palamas was quick to point out the difference between any other light-experience and that of the vision of God as Light that appeared to the disciples during the Transfiguration on Mount Thabor and that, in Christ, has become accessible to the members of His Body, the Church. The following quote from Palamas (Triad I, 3, 38) uses the image of the illumination of the disciples by Christ on Mount Thabor to explain how we, in Christ, can be illuminated from within.
“Since the Son of God, in his incomparable love for man, did not only unite His divine Hypostasis with our nature, by clothing Himself in a living body and a soul gifted with intelligence… but also united himself,,, with the human hypostases themselves, in mingling himself with each of the faithful by communion with his Holy Body, and since he becomes one single body with us (cf. Eph. 3:6), and makes us a temple of the undivided Divinity, for in the very body of Christ dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9), how should he not illuminate those who commune worthily with the divine ray of His Body which is within us, lightening their souls, as He illumined the very bodies of the disciples on Mount Thabor? For, on the day of the Transfiguration that Body, source of the light of grace, was not yet united with our bodies; it illuminated from outside those who worthily approached it, and sent the illumination into the soul by an intermediary of the physical eyes; but now, since it is mingled with us and exists in us, it illuminates the soul from within.” ~ Palamas Triad I, 3, 38
“It is precisely because Palamas understands illumination in the framework of Orthodox Christology that he insists on the uncreated character of divine light: This uncreated light is the very divinity of Christ, shining through his humanity. If Christ is truly God, this light is authentically divine.” (Meyendorff)
To be continued
Essence and Energies of God – 6
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Essence and Energies (series) on August 25, 2015
Thaboric Light
The same Christological framework makes it inevitable to distinguish between the transcendent essence, or nature of God, and His energies. Indeed, in Christ His two natures – so precisely defined at Chalcedon as both “inseparable” and “unconfused” – remain distinct. Therefore deification of communion between divinity and humanity does not imply a confusion of essences or natures. It remains nevertheless real communion between the Uncreated and His creature, and real deification – not by essence, but by energy. The humanity of Christ, “enhypostasized” by the Logos, is penetrated with divine energy, and Christ’s body becomes the source of divine light and deification. It is “theurgic”, that is, it communicates divine life to those who are “in Christ” and participate in the uncreated energies active in it.” (Meyendorff)
Theologian Christos Yannaras uses an analogy from Maximus the Confessor to further explain the distinction between essence and energies:
St. Maximus the Confessor uses as an image and an example of such communion the human voice, which being one is participated in by many, and is not swallowed up by the multitude. If by taking this example we can arbitrarily consider human reason as essence, then we can say that the voice represents the energy of the essence of reason, the possibility for us to participate in the essence of reason as the voice reveals and communicates it, to participate, all of us who hear the same voice, in the same essence of the one reason — without this communion becoming our identification with the essence of reason, and without the fragmentation of the essence in as many parts as there are participants in the reason through the voice. Reason, expressed personally, remains unified and indivisible, while at the same time, it is singularly participated by all.” ~ From “The Distinction Between Essence and Energies and its Importance for Theology”
To be continued…
Essence and Energies of God – 7
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Essence and Energies (series) on August 24, 2015
Thaboric Light
An understanding of God’s energies allows humankind to experience God directly through a personal relationship with the Persons of the triadic Godhead; the divine persons in communion and relationship with humanity as persons. That aligns with and supports every human being achieving their purpose in life; having been created in the image of God, to attain to His likeness, partaking of the divine nature, in this life.
Without an understanding the distinction between God’s Essence and Energies we cannot reconcile the reality of a totally transcendent, ineffable, and unknowable God with the reality of the intensely personal relationship with Christ inherent in the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit within us. Christos Yannaras described the problem:
“The West rejected the distinction, desiring to protect the idea of simplicity in the divine essence, since rational thought cannot accept the antinomy [paradox] of a simultaneous existential identity and otherness, a distinction that does not mean division and fragmentation. For the western mind…God is defined only in terms of His essence; whatever is not essence does not belong to God; it is a creature of God, the result of divine essence.”
Without this theology of the Essence and Energies of God, the praxis of the Renewal Movement, the indwelling presence and power of God in intimate personal relationship within us, is left with no complementary supporting theology or doctrine. It is left without its complementary, supporting doxis. We are left with a religion with a split personality, with no continuity between its belief and action; its doxis and praxis.
You will note that the Western Latin (Roman Catholic and Protestant) Church, embodied in the person of Barlaam of Calabria, does not recognize the Essence-Energies doctrine. Hence, Western theology and doctrine have no means of explaining and dealing with the transcendence of God and with the simultaneous indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit which animates Renewal Movement Christians. The West has no orthodoxis which complements and supports a spirit-filled orthopraxis.
This orthodoxis is only found in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
End
First Thoughts 