Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Ch 8: God in the Works of the Church Fathers pp.148-179

The Love of God, The Essence and Energies, the Divine Light of God, and the Procession of the Holy Spirit

This chapter ends Part Two with the sections: The Love of God, Essence and Energies, the Divine Light of God, and the Procession of the Holy Spirit. St. Isaac the Syrian says that “the beginning and end of his relationship with us” is love. We can experience love through how God acts in creation and in our hearts. God’s love is seen in how he bears with our mistakes and sins, how he created the world for us, and how he relates to us as a Father to his children, and even the angels keep the rank that they’ve been given. Behind judgment and discipline, says St. Isaac the Syrian, is God the Father’s love and mercy. A drawback to theologies that seek only to safeguard absolute justice is its inevitable collision with the teaching that God is all-merciful. The “just judgment” that must be done cannot be carried out at the same time as mercifulness so that “fairness belongs to the realm of evil,” as St. Isaac teaches. Righteousness goes beyond what people call fair, and it becomes a form of mercifulness, not justice for each weight on the scale of human actions. 

We experience God’s love through his works in the world. That is different from his essence that is both nameless and not understandable through any system of thought or effort. The word “energy” (work) is used from the Greek language to describe how God’s revelation comes to us in a personal way. These energies are not the same as the “emanations” of God or pieces of God as if they exist in some kind of pantheism. His energy is distinct but not separate from His essence, as St. Gregory Palamas teaches. That means that Love is not a separate divinity from the Holy Trinity; rather, it is “God himself” and not a kind of middleman or fourth person added to the Trinity. When we use the word “God,” or theos in Greek, we use it as a word for the energies of God. In 1341 AD, the Council of Constantinople anathematized the leading rival of St. Gregory Palamas, Barlaam of Calabria, who stood against this teaching about the essence and energies of God. This issue, however, did not begin in the 14th c. but in the Old Testament experience of the Jewish patriarchs and prophets in their seeking the name and essence of God. Just as God’s love can be felt through purification and prayer, so can His Light, for which there are no words that can grasp it or circumscribe it. 

Before 1054 AD, the Eastern Church Fathers knew about the teaching of the Filioque, meaning “and from the Son” in Latin, that uncanonically entered into the Creed in the West over time. While Maximus the Confessor did not see a clear break in theology with the filioque, Patriarch Photius drew out the issues with the wording and inconsistencies behind the Filioque. Many of the different liturgical and ascetical practices in the West were also being drawn out among Greek and Syrian Christians. But, overall, the main issue that the Eastern Church Fathers took the hardest was not the differences in liturgical dress, fasting rules or language, but the changing of the wording of the Creed by adding the Filioque, and that disagreement developed over the centuries along with other differences in practice. Metropolitan Hilarion points out an important fact that there is no support from the Holy Scriptures on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. There were a few eastern fathers (St. Cyril of Alexandria) who spoke similarly to Latin theology. In the Council of Florence-Ferrara, they agreed with the Eastern Church Fathers about the procession of the Holy Spirit, although the wording still gave the impression of a different theology. St. Mark of Ephesus stood alone in disagreeing with the identification of the Filioque with Orthodox teaching about the Trinity. He explained that this introduction brought confusion into the idea of the “monarchy” of the Father, and the Latin teaching inevitably brought about “two causes” and “two principles” into the Trinity. For that reason, the Eastern Church Fathers had to reject the Filioque. The procession of the Holy Spirit only is sent from the Father just as the Son is only-begotten so that Personhood remains intact. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Ch 8: God in the Works of the Church Fathers 129-147

The Names of God and the Qualities of God

An outgrowth of the principle of God’s “incomprehensibility” beginning in the Old Testament is the mystifying issue over the “names” of God or how mankind tries to name God. Dionysius the Areopagite developed that idea. He wrote a body of work called On the Divine Names. The Apostle Paul’s preaching on the Areopagus at Athens helped convert Dionysius to Christianity. A person’s name bears a key a feature or likeness, but names are not the same as a person’s nature, as the iconographer Aidan Hart explains how icons relate to the prototypes. St. Gregory the Theologian writes that “our starting-point must be the fact that God cannot be named.” To help understand the meaning of names, St. Gregory ordered them hierarchically in the tradition of Dionysius. The first type bears closely to His essence: I AM, Lord. The second type bears the power of God shown outwardly: All-Powerful and King of Kings, Lord of Sabaoth. The last type bears the ekonomia of God: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God’s actions with His people. How we bear the image of the Holy Trinity in ourselves matters, but we are not able to lower God into our minds by a simple identification or by one word that settles it all. We cannot make God man by our names or philosophies or signs, but God can become man to save His named ones on earth. Many of the so-called human forms of God, like walking, vengeful, regretful, asleep, are to be taken allegorically. St. Gregory of Nyssa presents the namelessness and the ungraspable nature of God as the basic tenet of Christianity in Against Eunomius. Some of the main struggles against Christianity include Arius and Eunomius on the one hand, and Gnosticism and the Manicheans on the other hand, who misunderstood the divine names of the personal, Living God. He explains further that the names that we find in Holy Scriptures are worthy of reverence, but that we must take heed so that we do not think that God needs those names, but rather that we need them to understand God. Dionysius the Areopagite teaches that the divine names come from “the beauty of the processions” of the Holy Trinity, and this essence of “emanations” are beyond our understanding. We can experience them as energies working in the world around us. 

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 8: God in the Works of the Church Fathers pp.111-129

The Incomprehensibility of God, Unity and Trinity, and The Trinity: Formation of Dogma

The Eastern Church Fathers approached the Living God through prayer, purification and the revelation of the God in the Old Testament as the Holy Trinity in the New Testament. There are a handful of important eras in which they worked: the apostolic teachings and apologists of the 1st – 3rd c., the Trinitarian disputes in the 4th c., the Latin disputes in the 11th c. and the “procession” of the Holy Spirit, the essence and energies dispute between St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam of Calabria in the 14th. At the heart all of these disputes and teachings was the revelation of faith that God is One and God is Triune in Persons. The Eastern Church Fathers drew out and contemplated this truth deeply. The first section of this chapter covers the “incomprehensibility” of the Holy Trinity. This key truth can be traced from the Old Testament into the New Testament and contemplated by the Eastern Church Fathers. Although we can now understand the threefold nature of a person (soul, body, intellect/nous), the Trinity is a mystical union that can only be revealed by God Himself. 

St. John Chrysostom writes that “the root of all evil” grew out of the teaching that God is easily understandable, and that we can reach God through rational theology as well as philosophical reasoning, inquiry and argumentation. According to the tradition of the Church, we can experience and pray to God, but that does not imply that we can grasp for the knowledge of God on our own terms and for ourselves. The Enlightenment in Europe had this very notion of God’s comprehensibility or that an individual illumination was possible. Since human reason was already a light, as some argued, this intellectual light was capable of reaching and achieving a kind of mystical knowledge and self-enlightenment through various forms of rationality. Before the “torches of philosophy” searched for rationalistic enlightenment in Europe, St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam of Calabria argued over these similar issues. 

In the 4th c., the Trinitarian formulations occasioned more technical terminology in the East, but they were not required without a need, according to Metropolitan Hilarion. He explains that the early Christians primarily defined themselves by holy communion in the Eucharist rather than identifying themselves according to certain works of theology. The Trinitarian wording, however, became a great help because the Church wanted to distinguish itself from counterfeit Christianity and show true Christianity, mostly since the Holy Trinity is a part of the Church’s mysteries and teachings, such as baptism, chrismation, catechesis and the Creed, liturgical prayers and doxology. The Church Fathers, then, had to untangle the theological mess made by others who say that they are Christians and representing the Church. Before 1054 AD, the Eastern Church Fathers knew about the filioque in Rome. Some of the strong reactions against the Latin teaching of the “procession of the Holy Spirit” may have been due to the fact that the East had already hammered out the terms in councils and disputes dogmatically. On the one hand, western Christians claim that the filioque defended against Arianism, and on the other hand, eastern Christians tended to see the addition as unnecessary and leading to inconsistent teachings. These issues have a very practical application for Orthodox Christians. The teachings of the Eastern Church Fathers show us how to approach and speak about the Holy Trinity so that we might also be purified, pray truthfully and commune with the Living God.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 7: God in the New Testament

The “Living God” in the Old Testament does not differ essentially from the “Son of the Living God” in the New Testament. Our experience and understanding through the revelation of Jesus Christ and through the knowledge of faith and personal experience has changed our minds. The previous chapter started with the names of God and the history of the people of Israel. The Israelites were named as a people after Jacob wrestled with an unknown angelic body, which turned out to be God. Jacob asked, “Please tell me your name” and he received no answer. But in a twist of events, the God of the Old Testament bestowed a new name on him, namely, Israel. These stories and real experiences are also personal. But the tension continues to this day between the Creator and created because we keep trying to reveal a hidden God and God keeps revealing who we really are ourselves. We use words and names to try to describe him and know him and reveal him to ourselves, but it’s never enough to say even what we can manage to say about Him. Metropolitan Hilarion starts with God’s revelation to us with all of the same themes of the Old Testament brought to light for us all. A further confirmation that God is Living is witnessed by the Son of God becoming man, dying, and returning from the grave because He is ever living. 

A gradual deeper understanding of God developed as an image of a Father instead of as a master-servant relationship. The Old Testament seems to attribute man-like characteristics to God such as judging, jealous, angry, regretful, war-like, and also merciful and tenderly loving like a spouse or parent. Although those descriptors do not absolutely give us God’s essence or name Him, the Word of God became a man in the New Testament, and He lived among us. That starting point also gives us the deeper revelation of God as a Triunity of Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. However, the fact that Jesus Christ is both God and Man and we say that the name of the “Son of God” is divine does not mean that we now know God’s essence. But the knowledge of God through faith tells us that Jesus Christ is divine and alive; He is the cornerstone of Christianity that causes great minds and nations to trip and totter. Jesus’ name is powerful and works wonders. Just as the Old Testament Israelites were prohibited from misusing the name of God, likewise in the end those who do not believe in Jesus Christ and suffer for His name we will be prohibited from entering the promised land too. And still the perfect unity of the Son of God and God the Father and the Holy Spirit is a unity we can strive to imitate, even though we are hidden from the essence of the Trinity. The hiddenness and namelessness of God does not leave us in the realm of nominalism or irreverence. Metropolitan Hilarion explains that the apostles preached and endured everything difficult, even to death, because of Jesus’ name; we are baptized into life through the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The mysterious ending on the idea of divine names and humankind’s attempt at finding who God is by name is hinted at in Revelation. St. John the Theologian tells us that Jesus’ name will triumph in the battle against the Accuser, the Anti-Christ. The Lamb will also be at the center of the kingdom of God where all the saints will have new names written on them while they all “sing out his name” in victory. 

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 6: God in the Old Testament

Our forefathers in the Old Testament sought to see God’s face and know His name; it is essentially a personal, not an abstract seeking of God. It’s not a philosophical system that the mind constructs in order to ascend to God. When Moses asked to see God’s glory and he saw His “back,” he experienced a revelation of God’s name, YHWH, in His glory. The holy name of YHWH, however, was never an answer to the question that Jacob had asked after he wrestled with God, which he himself named “Penuel” (face of God), nor was it a direct answer to Moses’ question after he saw the burning bush and asked for God’s name. Names were important for the people in the Old Testament because it revealed the essential characteristic of a person so that a bond could be created, such as making covenants and prayers. God comes to us personally in different actions and experiences at our human level through names. For example, the Lover of Mankind, the Merciful, the Savior, the Lord of Hosts. Even so, our words fail to label exactly who God is by name. We cannot classify God into our categories, and our eyes are not entirely capable of seeing God directly. We can experience God’s presence in many ways on earth. In the Old Testament, this mystical presence of God was often called the kabod of God (the glory of God) or Shekhina in Hebrew. This glory was shown as the burning bush, the whispering wind, the pillar of clouds in the desert, a thundering storm, the fire of the holy mountain, and the tabernacle’s mercy seat of God. Solomon’s temple was, in fact, built around the worship of God’s name, YHWH. Much of Orthodox liturgical worship is built around a person’s name too. We hymn that God’s presence has come to dwell in the Most Holy Theotokos and Virgin Mary, and now we are the temples of God and the tabernacles where He dwells. In this way, the names of God begin to stand in for His glory and mysterious appearances to mankind, which deserve our utmost reverence. The divine names all foreshadow the ultimate appearance, Jesus Christ Himself, the Word Incarnate. On a more profound theme, the Old Testament examples of seeking God’s name, face, and presence shows us that humanity has forgotten God; but, the Lover of Mankind, has not forgotten our names and our world. The Holy Trinity spoke even to Moses in the burning bush as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” This passage recalls that God is not of the dead, but that He fills all things with His living presence. In addition, it recalls that Moses was also still living and not forgotten when he appeared at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. 

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 5: The Revelation of a Personal God. Theology and Knowledge of God

In the summer of 2020, English Catholics renewed their devotion to the Theotokos, whom they call “Our Lady” at a shrine in Walsingham. That feudal term harkens to the Middle Ages when English Christians believed that England was “Mary’s Dowry.” That personal language and relationship is what helps us to keep close to each other and it deepens our knowledge of God and our faith. Marriage can be treated as simply a business contract, a wise economical choice for the common good of the family, or the fulfillment of our own personal desires. Friendships can be sought after on Facebook or other media outlets. These aren’t very personal revelations. But Orthodox theology preaches a personal God, who gave us not an organization or earthly kingdom, but a personal place to worship the Holy Trinity called His Church. Likewise, when we pray to God for the deliverance of our most personal problems, we call the Most Holy Virgin Mary in the Akathist “Our Lady of the Inexhaustible Cup.” 

 The three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have different degrees of divine personalness, while the most impersonal of beliefs could be considered atheism and agnosticism, which became increasingly popular even among the learned Greeks and Roman. Metropolitan Hilarion starts with Abraham because of the personal nature of his experience with God and the content of prophecies and promises that were given to him, which were traced genealogically to Jesus Christ Himself. Orthodox Christianity has always held the seemingly paradoxical belief that God became man in Jesus Christ. That was a cornerstone kerygma that caused philosophical and religious bewilderment among Jews, Greeks and Muslims. In the scholastic tradition of the west, Thomas Aquinas exemplifies the approach of tending to resolve and answer all difficult theological questions and paradoxes through logical proofs and argumentation in the style of Socratic dialogues or Aristotle’s dialectics. Scholasticism was also a method for proving God's existence to Muslims and pagans. Western theologians became aware of apophatic (via negativa) and cataphatic theology. Orthodoxy, however, teaches that the faith, like that of Abraham and of our own, is of a kind “exceeding both thought and reason,” says St. Maximus the Confessor. Existential poet and writer, Søren Kierkegaard argues similarly that as Abraham had so much faith that he could suspend the ethical dilemma of sacrificing his only son, Isaac. Christians too who have much faith let the rational tensions and thoughts of the mind dangle in front of God. If Abraham had deliberated too much, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to make an act of faith. Orthodox Christians, therefore, are called to enter the mystical realm of prayer and listen to God ex silentio so that we might experience the Holy Trinity by faith just as our spiritual forefathers have done for millennia. Prayer that waits in faith for God to reveal Himself is one approach. Rational inquiry that seeks to unravel the mysteries is another approach. 

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 4: The Contents and Authority of Tradition. The Legacy of the Holy Fathers

Texts do not impart understanding or enlightenment in themselves, automatically, to people who read them. We aren’t required to live in a different history to understand them. But they are central in the liturgical tradition of the Church, and they are “dogmatic” and authoritative. Christ Jesus imparted the traditions and founded both worship in the Church, which we receive as the liturgy, and the Church itself. Elder Joseph (Francis), for example, searched for eldership, since he realized that becoming a monk and living on Mt. Athos wasn’t enough. He needed some person to teach him the ways of noetic prayer. Jesus Christ did not come to revise texts or sift through translations of manuscripts, although he did preach and read from the Hebrew Scriptures, especially concerning the prophecies made about him and the people of Israel. Prophets experienced God first and wrote down the visions later, and prophecy never ended with the New Testament. It was even a “gift” to be used for building up the Church. 

Metropolitan Hilarion makes several other important points. First, people, or more specifically a genealogy, has authority, not simply texts alone. The holy Fathers of the Church are linked to the holy apostles. Second, this apostolic and patristic tradition in Orthodoxy does not focus on “preservation” but on a living witness of the Gospel that continues to produce holy Fathers. There were no golden ages that ceased. The Holy Spirit works through the Church in all ages, which is a cosmic and whole view of the world. Third, the holy Fathers wrote down theological opinions called in Greek theologoumena that are not dogmatic.  Lastly, the writings of modern Orthodox theologians as well as the “Confessions” that appeared in the 17th c. in response to Catholics and Protestants must be checked against the patristic tradition of the Church. 

 The Gospel never simply stood alone as a text, though texts were written down most importantly by the apostles and continued in the writings of the holy Fathers, as they received it. The apostles received Jesus Christ. The content of the Bible is as much important as the form. This “legacy” means that the tradition and teachings of the church fathers is the continuation of the apostolic church. They are teaching the same Gospel. Just as the apostles received Jesus Christ, so too the fathers of the church receive the contents and authority of tradition. The liturgy is authoritative because it is the worship founded by Jesus Christ. Texts, then, “become authoritative” because the written words are a part of worship. It is the texts that conform to the Gospel and tradition, not vice versa. The genealogy that runs from the laity, clergy, monastics to the holy Fathers to the Apostles to Jesus Christ forms authority. Texts can be added by the Church as long as they conform to the Gospel and tradition of Orthodoxy, whether eastern or western in perspective. The true author, a Latin word etymologically related to authority and action, of the Gospel and traditions of the Church is Christ Jesus. Genuine authority, then, is identified with a people who follow Christ Jesus’ Gospel; He can even speak through dreams, visions, worship, poetry, animals, fathers, mothers, children, and elders. Texts, as well as sacred objects in the liturgy, become sacred when they are used in liturgical worship and when they help Christians to live the contents of Holy Scripture. 

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 3: The Contents of the Bible and Biblical Criticism

The previous chapters have laid the groundwork for understanding the details of Orthodox Christian doctrines in scripture and tradition. Christ Jesus founded the Church and the Church proclaims the Gospel publicly and within its liturgy. We find that Orthodox teaching is of divine origin. These teachings can only be interpreted and understood within the context of Orthodox Church. The Holy Spirit guides us in the Church to know and teach the spiritual meaning and application of scripture and tradition, which have different levels of meaning established by the holy fathers of the Church (literal, allegorical, anagogical). All of this is based on the experience of God and it is given according to the degree that we ascend closer to God and not based on speculation or a purely literary framework like classical literature. Important prophetic elements are a part of the written and unwritten traditions of the Church. The order and the content of the Bible with a canonical status already distinguishes Orthodoxy, Catholics, and Protestants in their worship and in teachings; however, all three groups have no major differences in terms of the New Testament Scripture tradition, although the Revelations of John is a controversial book that distinguishes Protestant doctrines from the interpretations of Roman Catholics and Orthodox Church.

 In 90 A.D., the Sanhedrin established the Jewish canon in Jamnia, Galilee. For Orthodox Christianity, the primary criterion that determines the canonicity of the Bible’s contents is the books that are incorporated into liturgical worship. For Protestants, some may vary between ancient manuscript traditions and Masoretic text or for others a form of biblical criticism or scholarship. For Catholics, it is the apostolic tradition and what has been approved for instructing the faithful such as catechesis, homily, and pastoral preaching (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2nd ed., Article 3, Libreria Editrice Vaticana).

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 2: The Holy Scripture in the Orthodox Church

We experience the Holy Scriptures as the “living breath” through the Holy Spirit. Written accounts came after personal encounters with the living God over the course of thousands of years. As the Word became flesh, so the Holy Spirit gives life to the letter of the word and the written accounts of experiencing God. In a similar way, the letter of the Law, that once guarded Jewish tradition, was made alive through the Word that became flesh, the Incarnate Jesus Christ who gives all meaning to the Holy Scriptures. The connection between the letter and Spirit, the Law and the Messiah, the whole New Testament and Jesus Christ is like the inner and outer workings between our flesh and spirit. For us, both are born at once. But the spirit is eternal, and the flesh decays. We could even venture to say that, as Orthodox Christians, the body is in the spirit, rather than the spirit being in the body, as Jean-Claude Larchet describes that interrelationship in the patristic tradition. Likewise, the written word doesn’t necessarily limit the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures. The spirit expresses itself through the word. Christ is the cornerstone of interpretation and “liturgical worship,” and the Gospels are even used as a representation of Christ Himself in the healing rites of the Church, for instance. 

 The historical, philological, and textual criticism approach may add some useful bits of information to the cultural context of Holy Scriptures, but those disciplines ultimately lack the Church’s spiritual interpretation that is required for knowing what it means. To take a purely historical analysis of Scripture to arrive at spiritual meaning would fall short of the truth because the Church not only has continued the traditions and teachings of Christ, but the Church has the Holy Spirit as her guide. Whereas former methods attempt to eliminate, crystalize and organize complexity from the bottom up, the latter approach, in the Church’s experience, calls on the Holy Spirit to illuminate, enlighten and enliven not only our intellectual understanding of scriptural truths but to clarify how we should live and act in a chaotic and complicated world below. 

Three major approaches to understanding Holy Scripture developed early on by the church fathers: the literal application, allegorical, anagogical method. These interpretive methods require that the Scriptures contain the mysteries, that the prophecies about Jesus are true, and that the Holy Spirit by grace leads us toward salvation, when we deepen our understanding through reading the Scriptures. So, all three methods are in a sense literary, requiring the reading or hearing of these books and letters, and are applicable to our lives directly. 

Orthodox Christianity Vol II, Chp 1: Scripture and Tradition

In today’s written and high-tech culture, our experience of Holy Scripture and Tradition, both of divine origin, can differ from the experience of previous generations of Christians. Before the advent of new forms of media, Christianity passed on the physical form of the Scriptures by manuscript (writing books by hand) and Christians were attuned to the Scripture through the hearing of the word, either in the liturgy or whenever books or letters were read aloud to others as it was the norm in antiquity, and even read aloud to oneself. Before the widespread tradition of manuscripts, oral tradition was the main vehicle for the apostles and the first Christians until the writing of the Gospels was taken up. Memory and the hearing of the words of Christ were normative for a long time before portable, personal Bibles were widely available. By the creation of that gap between a modern, technological culture and an oral and manuscript culture, where writing and listening were very important skills, this false opposition between Scripture and Tradition is brought up by Metropolitan Hilarion in this chapter. 

From what St. Basil the Great says, teachings were preached out loud to all, called a kerygma, or were kept by Christians in the “household of faith,” called dogmata, both originating within the Church. Another essential aspect of Scripture and Tradition is the prophetic connection between the Old Testament and the Gospels. This “typological” interpretation, also known as foreshadowing or predicting events, is how a reader can make sense of the Old Testament, which sees the events of the New Testament as fulfilling prophecies made a long time ago. That may be a hindrance to some readers today because it requires a belief in miracles, and not only eye-witness accounts of Jesus and the biblical events. In this way, all dogmas of the Church are contained in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testament, and the Scriptures originate from the Church. The memory of oral tradition is also an integral part of the Gospel teaching as it was given to the apostles in unwritten form by Jesus Christ Himself and written down in the Church. In all, then, Scripture isn’t simply a matter of literary acquisition and Holy Tradition isn’t an unnecessary addition to the Gospel in Orthodoxy. Other rival claims to interpret Jesus Christ, Tradition or Scripture outside the Church’s own interpretation would be considered a distorted plagiarism to the early Church.