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To: kosta50; Kolokotronis
“”STA, we may never become sharers of the divine nature lest we become divine. We can become like God through grace but never through nature (essence).””

It's not that we become Divine,it's that God uses our Human nature to accomplish His Will.

We see this in the lives of the the Saints in the Miracles God works through them.Some examples are..Saint John Chrysostom, Irenaues, Padre Pio,Aquinas etc...

These miracles are physical heeling's, miracles of virtue and intellectual miracles -when the Holy Spirit enlightens the human mind

Of course we cannot provide a miracle,only God can do this and use our human nature if He wants. Thus we are sharing in this by God using our human nature and being “divinized” like the energizer bunny is being energized(sorry if this is a bad analogy,it's all me pea brain could think of)

Of course we cannot ever become Divine though.

Here is what the Catechism says...

CCC 1993 Justification establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom. On man's part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:

When God touches man's heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God's grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God's sight.

I would like to add a Eucharistic example from Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint John Chrysostom....

“Material food first changes into the one who eats it, and then, as a consequence, restores to him lost strength and increases his vitality. Spiritual food, on the other hand, changes the person who eats it into itself. Thus the effect proper to this Sacrament is the con­ver­sion of a man into Christ, so that he may no longer live, but Christ lives in him; conse­quent­ly, it has the double effect of restoring the spiritual strength he had lost by his sins and defects, and of increasing the strength of his virtues.” St. Thomas, Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences, d.12, q.2, a.11

“How many in these times say: would that I could gaze upon His form, His figure, His garment, His shoes! Lo! Thou seest Him, touchest Him, eatest Him. He gives Himself to thee, not merely to look upon, but even to touch, to eat, and to receive within... Consider at whose table thou eatest! For we are fed with that which the angels view with trepidation and which they cannot contemplate without fear because of Its splendor. We become one with Him: we become one Body and one Flesh with Christ.”... “Jesus, for the burning love He bore us, wished to unite Himself so closely to us that we should become one and the same with Him for such is the dream of true lovers.”... “Holy Communion makes us eager for virtue and prompt to practice it, at the same time imparting deep peace, and thus rendering sweet and easy the road to holiness.” -Saint John Chrysostom

5,704 posted on 05/21/2008 7:44:44 AM PDT by stfassisi ( ("Above all gifts that Christ gives his beloved is that of overcoming self"-St Francis Assisi))
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To: stfassisi; kosta50

You’ve missed Kosta’s point. Your comment about “sharers in the divine nature” is classic Latin theology and is a product of what we believe to be the false concept of created grace which marks a divide between Orthodoxy and the Latin Church in a whole host of areas but it pops up most usually in sacramental theology and popular concepts of indulgences and purgatory. Until the Middle Ages and before the Great Schism, The Church NEVER EVER taught that we become sharers in the divine nature. Indeed the consensus patrum taught quite the opposite. +Gregory Palamas struggled with this Western innovation and expressed the belief of The Church well thusly:

“Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases. As we have seen, those privileged to be united to God so as to become one spirit with Him - as St. Paul said, ‘He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him’ are not united to God with respect to His essence, since all theologians testify that with respect to His essence God suffers no participation.

Moreover, the hypostatic union is fulfilled only in the case of the Logos, the God-man.

Thus those privileged to attain union with God are united to Him with respect to His energy; and the ‘spirit’, according to which they who cleave to God are one with Him, is and is called the uncreated energy of the Holy Spirit, but not the essence of God.”

What the West translates as “nature” is the Greek word “ousia” which in the above quote is translated as “essence”. The implications of what you have written are potentially devastating to our shared Christian theology.


5,705 posted on 05/21/2008 8:34:21 AM PDT by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated)
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To: stfassisi; Kolokotronis
Kolo said it much better (5705) then I could. In order for us to share of the divine nature, we must be divine. We can become one with God in spirit but not in essence or nature. We can share God's holiness through grace, but not in essence, unless we are God as well. The Holy Trinity is one in essence.
5,706 posted on 05/21/2008 10:26:41 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: stfassisi; Kolokotronis
Kolo said it much better (5705) then I could. In order for us to share of the divine nature, we must be divine. We can become one with God in spirit but not in essence or nature. We can share God's holiness through grace, but not in essence, unless we are God as well. The Holy Trinity is one in essence.
5,707 posted on 05/21/2008 10:27:13 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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