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To: Forest Keeper; Kolokotronis
I have never heard this view before and did not know it was part of the EOC

I believe I have clealry stated (in 1534) how we see ourselves in relation to God.

1,661 posted on 01/16/2006 9:16:20 AM PST by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50; Forest Keeper

I really hesitate to come back into this thread but perhaps if you read these writings by three of the Fathers you'll see whence Kosta is speaking. Our Orthodox Christian "understanding" of our Triune God and theosis (salvation) is rather different from that in the West:

"The Spirit does not take up His abode in someone's life through a physical approach; how could a corporeal being approach the Bodiless one? Instead, the Spirit comes to us when we withdraw ourselves from evil passions, which have crept into the soul through its friendship with the flesh, alienating us from a close relationship with God. Only when a man has been cleansed from the shame of his evil, and has returned to his natural beauty, and the original form of the Royal Image has been restored in him, is it possible for him to approach the Paraclete. Then, like the sun, He will show you in Himself the image of the invisible, and with purified eyes you will see in this blessed image the unspeakable beauty of its prototype." +Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 4th century.

"It is my opinion that our intellect does not have a natural power to be moved to the divine vision of Divinity. And in this one deficiency we are the peers of all the celestial natures, for both in us and in them grace moves that which is alien by nature both to the human intellect and to the angelic. For divine vision concerning the Godhead is not to be numbered among the other kinds of divine vision. For we possess divine vision of the natures of things through participation in their twofold nature, because there is a portion of all things in us. But we do not have a portion of the nature of the Divine Essence, and so neither do we have by nature divine vision of it." +Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, 6th century.

and finally this:

"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' (I Cor. 6:17) - 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..." +Gregory Palamas, 14th century.


1,665 posted on 01/16/2006 10:15:27 AM PST by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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