Sunday, July 23, 2023

Excerpts from Dumitru Stǎniloae, The Experience of God, volume 1: The Holy Trinity

  

The Son of God does not unite himself with a man. In that case, the man—in Christ—would be someone other than God, and this would leave human beings outside full communion with the divine person and, through him, with the other persons of the Trinity. The union of the two natures in him does not imply any confusion between the divine nature and human nature, nor does human nature unite itself with the divine nature borne by each divine person in his quality as bearer of the divine nature. In such a case, man would no longer be given the possibility of being, as man, in communion with God as son of God, through the fact that the Son of God became the Son of man. Each divine person would be at the same time also a human person. (Dumitru Stǎniloae, The Experience of God, 6 vols. [trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer; Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994, 2002], 1:69)

 

Even during their earthly life the saints share in a foretaste of the eternity of God. Saint Maximos the Confessor says of Melchizedek, whom the Scripture presents as being “without father or mother” and as one who “has neither beginning of days nor end of life” (Heb 7.3) that “he has raised himself above the time and nature and became worthy to be likened to the Son of God, becoming as far as is possible through habit—that is through grace—what we believe the giver of grace to be by nature.” For the saints in general, “uniting themselves wholly with the whole God to the extent possible for the natural power existing in them have had this quality of his imprinted so much in them that, as in faultless mirrors, they are only recognized now from him—having God’s image which can be seen in them and showing themselves in an unchanged way through his features. For there remained in them not a single one of the old features which displayed their humanity, but all these yielded to the stronger, as light fills the air mixed with it.” (The Ambigua, PG 91.1137C-D, 1137B-C)

 

Saint Gregory Palamas, quoting Saint Maximos, also says that one who has been deified becomes “without beginning” and “without end.” (Third Letter to Akindynos 17, e.d. Christou, vol. 1, p. 308.15-26) He also quotes Saint Basil the Great who says that “one shares in the grace of Christ . . . shares in his eternal glory”; (The Holy Spirit 15.36, PG 32.132B) and Saint Gregory of Nyssa who observes that the man who participates in grace “transcends his own nature, he who was subject to corruption in his mortality, becomes immune form it in his immortality, eternal from being fixed in time—in a word a god from man.” (The Beatitudes, Homily 7, PG 44.1280C) (Dumitru Stǎniloae, The Experience of God, 6 vols. [trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer; Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994, 2002], 1:154)

 

 

Justice and Mercy

 

These two attributes cannot be separated in God’s relations with us. Justice towards creatures has its foundation in the equality of the Trinitarian persons. But it is only by deigning to come down that God creates creatures and makes them share in his happiness according ot a justice which reflects the equality of the divine persons.

 

Gid is not just without being merciful and is not merciful without being just. For it is through his free and merciful descent to us that he is just towards us. “Vindicate me, O Lord, My God, according to thy righteousness” says the Psalmist (Ps 35.24), or “my tongue shall tell of thy righteousness” (Ps 38.28). But he also says: “For thy steadfast mercy is before my eyes” (Ps 26.3), or “O continue thy steadfast mercy to those who know thee and thy justice to the upright of heart!” (Ps 36.10).

 

If he were only just, God would not be fully free; if he were only merciful God would have no regard for human efforts nor would he encourage them. Human beings would be reduced to the state of being passive receptacles of his mercy. The created world would have no true and consistent reality and human beings could not grow through their own effort.

 

In his justice God wishes, on the one hand that all men might be equal among themselves, while on the other hand he wishes to give them all as much of his own blessedness as they are able to receive according to their own efforts. For he made them all capable of these efforts when he himself had given them all capable of these efforts when he himself had given them the capacity of being able to receive in the very highest degree what it is that creatures can receive. Through justice God has reference to us all, but he gives though to each one in a distinctive way within the framework of all. Our yearning for justice begins to form a model or an idea of justice and seeks its realization among all. God does not begin from an idea of justice but from the reality of justice in himself. If sin had not in part covered over our authentic human reality, we should not ourselves have to start from an idea of justice but we could begin from the reality of justice that is given within our own equalty. (Dumitru Stǎniloae, The Experience of God, 6 vols. [trans. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer; Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994, 2002], 1:215-16, emphasis added)