a. Reasonable faith

Most Protestant faiths are founded upon the precept that God’s willingness to grant a person salvation from death, thus eternal life, is based solely upon that person’s willingness to accept that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of man. This is referred to as “salvation by faith alone”. It is based upon the concept that the whole of God’s purpose for mankind is that they come to worship Jesus Christ as His Son. I do not agree with this. I say that the whole of God’s purpose for mankind is that people come to know and love God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this is achieved by learning to freely choose God in all things as one experiences life, a God who reveals Himself in all things.

Simply accepting that Jesus is the Son of God is not enough for salvation, and believing that believing that Jesus is God’s Son will guarantee one’s comprehension of God’s will and intent is a dangerous fallacy. One must accept and follow Christ’s teachings as He intended them to be understood, thus one must have an accurate and sufficient understanding as to what His teachings mean. Salvation through Christ is had through love, faith, accurate knowledge and correct action. After all, didn’t Jesus Himself say that “not all who call me Lord will enter the Kingdom, only those who do the will of my Father”? Consequently, God must offer mankind a way to understand Christ’s teachings and the strength to follow these teachings, for not to would be cruel and unfair. This way to understanding Christ’s teachings is offered through the gift of reason that He bestows upon man, in combination with the experience of life, and through the teachings of His Holy Catholic Orthodox Apostolic Church. It is through His Church that God offers full enlightenment in His Holy Spirit, and this brings the salvation through Christ that is promised by God.

Without the guidance of the Apostolic Church a person is susceptible to creating an insufficient and inaccurate view of Christ and His teachings, bringing about the illusion that one is being faithful to Christ and His teachings when in fact one is being faithful only to one’s own illusionary vision of Christ. True faith in Christ does not happen in a vacuum, one must be prepared for it with proper knowledge. As St. Paul points out in the first few chapters of Romans, preparation for faith in Christ is the purpose of both Mosaic Law and natural law. Here Paul establishes a link between faith, and knowledge of and action under the law. The concept of salvation by faith alone severs this link.

Those who advocate salvation by faith alone point to Paul’s letter to the Romans (ch. 3, lin. 28) which states that salvation is by faith, and not by deeds of the law. However, this statement refers to the fact that one must have faith in Christ and God in order to be saved, but this does not preclude the possibility that this faith is related to proper knowledge of and proper actions under God’s law. After all, Paul also states in the same chapter (Romans 3, 30) that Jews are saved by faith while Gentiles are saved through faith. A distinction is made here because Jews already have knowledge of God’s laws but need to acquire faith in Christ in order to be saved, while Gentiles who acquire faith must also acquire a more complete knowledge of God’s laws in order to live in true faith.

Some have put forward the misconceived argument that since the definition of the word faith is “to believe without knowing”, knowledge opposes and undermines faith in Christ and God. This argument reveals a complete misunderstanding of the term faith as it applies in regards to belief in God. Faith in God is always a requirement for man simply because no man can completely know God and thus there is always an element of ignorance and uncertainty for man in his attempt to follow God. Faith then fills the void caused by this ignorance, and this faith, in combination with the knowledge that God makes available to man, enables man to develop a complete relationship with God. Consequently, accurate knowledge of God complements and strengthens the faith that is intrinsically necessary for man in his relationship with God.

The issue of proper knowledge and actions in the acquisition and maintaining of faith is of fundamental concern because it reveals to us something of the nature of God and of man, and what God expects of man. The essential question is; does God hold man, even in the “fallen” state, accountable, at least to some degree, for his actions? It is only if man’s actions are in some way related to his acquisition and maintaining of faith that man can be fairly held accountable for his acceptance or rejection of faith, and then only if God has given man the opportunity for proper preparation, this opportunity given in the life we experience.

Preparation for true faith with proper knowledge is one of the purposes of the Apostolic Church. Also, true faith is affirmed through the enlightenment that faith brings about, this enlightenment manifested with fullness through the experiencing of God’s Holy Sprit, and the Church is meant to assist in bringing this about. If God leaves you with faith alone, it is meant to be only temporarily, in order to demonstrate to you the need to maintain faith no matter what circumstances you find yourself in. If over an extended period of time you feel that all you have is faith then you should re-examine your beliefs, because here will lie the source of your blindness to tangible affirmations of faith.

The concept of “salvation by faith alone” presents some very serious problems in regards to understanding God’s plan of salvation, especially when it is used to set faith against reason and knowledge. It is true that it can be said that a true and sincere faith in the true Christ, as opposed to a faith in a distorted vision of Christ, is all that one needs for salvation, since this true faith will inevitably lead one to do the Father’s will. However, to be able to act according to the Father’s will through faith alone requires that one have a true vision of Christ, but what human being is inherently capable of this true vision, except for Christ Himself? All others need to be given accurate knowledge of Christ in order to acquire true faith, and faith can only grow and become perfected through one’s growth in knowledge of Him.

This problem of the need to grow in one’s knowledge of Christ in order for one’s faith to grow is best reflected in the development of the Apostle Peter’s faith. That he has some faith in Christ is revealed when, at Christ’s behest, he walks on water. That his faith is weak is revealed when he sinks. That the faith that he gains as he partakes in Christ’s ministry is not strong enough to pass a severe testing is revealed when he denies Christ. However, his faith is ultimately restored and strengthened, not only because he witnesses the resurrected Christ, but also because of the simple realization, immediately after his denial of Christ, that Christ had predicted the denial. Thus, through the knowledge gained through his experiences with Christ Peter’s faith is tested, strengthened, and eventually perfected.

Any presumption that true faith can be separated from personal responsibility, both in regards to initially responding to God’s call and in terms of one’s growth in awareness of God’s will and one’s willingness to act in accordance with His will completely undermines God’s plan of salvation, since freely choosing to accept and execute God’s will in all things is God’s goal for all. Choosing to pursue true awareness and correct action are both a factor in bringing about one’s salvation as well as being part and parcel to the fruits of salvation. This goal of correct awareness and actions has always been expressed by God, and it is not God who has not provided the means for man to achieve this goal, but man who has refused, by his own free choice, to accept these means. Thus, when one interprets the phrase “salvation by faith alone” in such a way as to weaken the concept that God seeks for us to understand as best we can His ways and also provides the means by which to achieve this, through the teachings of the Apostolic Orthodox Catholic Church and through the gifts of reason and experience within this world, then one is actually refusing to accept His teachings and is demonstrating a faith in a false vision of God.

This faith in a false vision of God develops when under the pretext of “faith alone” one separates the underlying logic of natural law, that is, laws regarding physical reality and the experiences within the physical world which are understandable through the rational thought processes of the human mind, from the underlying logic of supernatural and religious law, that is, laws regarding metaphysical reality and spiritual experience and religious truth. This separation occurs when this precept leads to the devaluation of all spiritual acts other than the profession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and a reduction in, or a distortion of, the relevance of all acts that are inspired by the rational understanding of natural law, especially in regards to good acts performed by non-Christians. Theologies that put forth the proposition that it is not possible to do an act that is good in the eyes of God until one becomes a Christian and acts in the name of Christ are fundamentally flawed. The goodness of a good act is inherent in it’s nature and is not determined by whether or not it is done in the name Christ. St. Paul makes this point very clearly when in his letter to the Romans (ch.2, lines 14-15) he states that Gentiles, though they don’t have the Mosaic Law, are by nature, through natural understanding, still capable of doing acts that are righteous according to God’s law, this demonstrating that they have God’s law written on their hearts. As pointed out earlier, here Paul establishes a relationship between natural law and Mosaic Law, and in doing so he demonstrates that the righteousness of a good act is inherent in it’s nature.

Doing a good act in the name of Christ does add an extra measure of goodness to the act because it promotes the good name of God, and a bad act by a Christian has an extra measure of demerit because it profanes the name of God and makes it more difficult for people to believe in Christ. It is also true that, by nature, professing the name of Christ as the Son of God is in itself a good act because of the inherent truth of the statement. However, performing an act in the name of Christ does not change the inherent nature of the act, and believing that it does can lead to serious misjudgments.

It is true that true faith in the true Christ will enable a person to more accurately discern what is good and what is not, since one acquires a more complete understanding of the nature of good and evil when these questions are considered in the context of God’s fuller truth. It is also true, though, that an aspect of the goodness of a good act by a non-Christian is that when appreciated properly for what it is it will assist a person on their path to full enlightenment, an enlightenment which will eventually include the knowledge that Christ is the Son of God, since the person of Christ cannot be separated from all that is good. Of course, a person can also become corrupted by overweening pride resulting from the possession of knowledge and the performing of good acts, and this can contribute to their own blindness. However, this does not change the fact that the nature of the acts are good, but simply reveals that some reactions to the performing of good works, such as false pride, are wrong. It is also possible for good acts to be used to promote evil causes, but again this does not change the nature of the acts themselves.

To deny that there is an underlying logic to both natural and supernatural law which determines the nature of an act is to render God unfair, since people are then held responsible for knowing the difference between right and wrong and are held accountable as sinners when they do wrong without actually being given the opportunity by God to discern the difference between right and wrong, in whatever circumstances they find themselves in. This opportunity is given by God in the form of a perfectly logical natural reality, one that is logically integrated with supernatural reality. St. Paul expresses this truth in (I) Romans ch. 1, where he states that God has revealed His deity and power in Creation to the eye of reason from the beginning of the world.

Being given the opportunity to see God’s truth through God’s law and through the logic underlying the structure of reality does not necessarily mean that man at any given time has the capacity to follow the logic of that truth. It is in man’s nature as a created being with limited experience to have difficulty in understanding this logic. This, combined with man’s susceptibility to corruption through pride, or lack of humility, can lead him to false understandings and sin. However, it is man’s lack of humility in the face of God’s truth as revealed in reality, not a discontinuity in the logic of this truth, that blind’s man to the truth of God. If the latter were the case, then God could be blamed for the sins of man. God always gives man the opportunity to learn how not to sin through the logic of natural law and supernatural law and thus can never be blamed for man’s sins. While it is true that man may not always have the capacity to understand how to follow God’s laws, he always has the capacity to understand that he has a limited capacity for understanding, and thus is dependent upon God. This simply requires humility in the presence of truth.

The logic of God’s law is reflected in all things, even though we may not see it very clearly. If this were not so, people would not have the opportunity to learn how to judge right from wrong, and without this opportunity for correct judgment God becomes unfair when he punishes people for their sins, as for example, when he banished Adam and Eve from Paradise (This can be taken in literal and/or figurative terms, whichever you prefer). They were held accountable for their sin because with the perception of reality as presented to them by God, a reality that included the availability of God’s counsel, plus natural law, which could be known to them with the gift of rationality that God had given to them as human beings in combination with their experience in that reality, they had the opportunity to discern the difference between right and wrong.

To show what I mean when I say that they had the gift of discernment through their own reasoning abilities and experience, consider this. Although Adam and Eve had reasoning ability, they were still relatively ignorant because of their limited experience. However, they were in a position to know of their own lack of wisdom, since they had experienced God’s wisdom. Not accepting themselves as relatively ignorant beings was their first mistake, a mistake that could have been avoided if they had simply used their own natural reasoning ability. If they had, they would have turned to God when initially tempted by the Evil One.

Another, even clearer example of their flawed reasoning can be seen in the fact that God had already shown His love and compassion for them in all that He had given them, but along comes a stranger, of whom they know nothing, and who accuses God of treating them unjustly for forbidding them the fruit of a tree which God Himself had created, and they decide to listen to this stranger instead of God, a completely illogical act. Despite their relative ignorance, they did have the opportunity for clear and direct instruction from God because of His willingness to be present with them, this condition usually termed “God’s grace”, but chose not to use this guidance, and instead chose to listen to a complete stranger whom had not demonstrated any reason for deserving respect, and in fact had done just the opposite by making disparaging comments about God’s intent. Of course, there were factors that came into play of which they were ignorant, such as the motivations of the Evil One who tempted them. However, they still could have made the correct choice despite this lack of awareness if they simply had used their own reasoning ability and had the humility to accept their own relative ignorance, and thus dependence upon God. They could have logically deduced their own need for faith in God.

With the fall from grace of Adam and Eve it became impossible for their descendants to follow a sinless path, this being the concept known as “original sin”. This concept is expressed in scripture by Paul in his letter to the Romans (ch.5, lin. 12-19) when he states that sin enters into the world through one man, Adam, and also, that because of the sinful condition of man brought about by Adam, man does not have the strength of will to do what is right even when he knows what is right. Even though this is the case, the opportunity to learn how to follow a sinless path still exists, in that the logic of God’s truth doesn’t change, for it never does, though conditions change. As with Adam and Eve, their descendants do not have the internal capacity to understand how to follow a sinless path without the direct aid of God. God did not offer them His direct aid, through grace, because of Adam and Eve’s rejection of the condition under which it had been offered to them, that is, the requirement of an absolute respect for His word. That their rejection of His rules affects their descendants reflects God’s desire for us to understand that our actions affect the condition of others, and, that despite the sins of the elders, His intent is to teach us through our elders. This is not unfair of God, because he is simply teaching man that no man can know God without God’s assistance, and this assistance is given on His terms.

Although Adam and Eve were the ones who had forsaken God’s grace, they can not be held wholly responsible that grace, or the presence of God, was not offered to their descendants. One must realize that grace is a gift of God, and He bestows it upon whomever He pleases. Nobody can claim a right to it. That He offered it to Adam and Eve is His prerogative, and does not mean that He must offer it to others whom He has created. While it is true that if Adam and Eve had not forsaken the gift of grace it would have been passed on to their descendants, it is not true that their descendants would ever have had a right to it, or that they might not have forsaken it themselves. That He chose not to grant it to the immediate descendants of Adam and Eve was His prerogative, which I’m sure He has good reasons for exercising as He does. I believe that these reasons will be revealed to us, and, in fact, are being revealed in our experiences in this world. This is our reason for living in this world, to learn God’s ways.

The Evil One can be considered to be a being who is older and more experienced than Adam and Eve. For his own purposes he takes advantage of younger beings’ innocence and lack of experience. Since the Evil One chooses, of his own free will, to exert his energies to deceiving people into sinning, inevitably they fall prey to sin unless they are in a state of grace and act in a way that maintains this state and thus have access to clear guidance from God. This is because, as created beings with limited understanding, people do not have the internal capacity to see through the deceptions of the Evil One. This is the same difficulty that children have today when confronted with the bad influences of a clever adult. The child is very vulnerable because of his limited reasoning ability and experience. However, if he does have correct guidance available he can use his limited reasoning ability to turn to that guidance.

God’s withholding of His grace from the immediate descendants of Adam and Eve shows that He intended to pass His grace on to them through Adam and Eve. They were to come to know God through Adam and Eve. That God intended them to have children even if they had not fallen from grace is clear because, after the fall, He declares that the pain of childbirth will greatly increase. Thus, childbirth still would have occurred if there were no fall from grace, though it would have been less difficult. That God intended to pass on His presence through Adam and Eve reveals the magnitude of the gift which He had offered to them. They were to be His instrument through which He dispensed the gift of His presence. This method is very much in evidence today, that is, God revealing His presence to children through parents. However, sin, in the form of ignorance and wrong guidance, is also passed on from parent to child. When God made the declaration on the increase in the pain of childbirth after the first sin, He was also referring to the difficulty of raising children in a world that has a limited respect for God’s truth. All this reveals one of God’s intents for man, our interdependence upon one another. When Adam and Eve took the harder instead of the easier road on their path to learning God’s truths, this ultimately being the consequence of their fall from grace, it inevitably affected all beings. This is something that we all should all keep in mind in making our choices today.

The concept of Adam’s sin affecting the condition of all mankind can best be understood by considering that the souls of all human beings, as descendants of Adam, are in union with the soul of Adam, and thus whatever affects Adam affects all men and woman born into this world. When Adam sinned, he in effect united himself to the Evil One, and this is how the Evil One becomes the prince of this world, for he becomes the overlord of Adam and his descendants, for whom the world was originally created. The solution to this predicament for man is Christ. Man must unify himself with Christ in order to free himself from domination by the Evil One, for only Christ has the power, in His divinity, to control and destroy the Evil One.

One great misconception that many people have in the story of Adam and Eve is the nature of their sin. Their sin was not that they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but that they ate from it at a time when God had forbidden it. I believe that God had planned on eventually giving them permission to eat from it, but only after He had prepared them for it. After all, is it not true that the gift that God gives to us through Christ is the opportunity to become children of God, thus gods in Heaven? And didn’t God put a guard around the tree of life because, as Scripture says, if Adam and Eve had eaten from that tree after eating from the first they would have become like gods in Heaven? That we are now offered deification through Christ shows that God always intended for Adam and Eve to become gods in Heaven, and God putting a guard around the tree of life to prevent them from becoming god-like at that time shows that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and from the tree of life are part of the process of becoming children of God in Heaven. I’m sure that He would have preferred that they had chosen the path of obedience in realizing their destiny as children of God in Heaven, but instead they freely chose the difficult path of disobedience. That God punished them for their disobedience shows God’s wisdom, mercy, and love for them, because gods in Heaven can never disobey the Supreme God, or forever be condemned.

There are some theologies that claim God made it inevitable that Adam and Eve would choose to disobey Him and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that this was intended in order to start the process toward salvation in Christ. To say this is to say that they never really had free choice, and this then shifts the guilt for their bad choice from them to God. This is a false accusation against God. What is many times misunderstood here is that there is a difference between predestination and pre-determination. With pre-determination the choices of man are made beforehand, by God, and cannot be changed. However, destinies can be changed. One may be destined for something, but not come to the fulfillment of that destiny. After all, didn’t the Prophet Isaiah declare that “ours is not a God of fate or fortune”, meaning that our God is not controlled by fate because He can alter fate. Consequently, there must have been an alternative path of obedience which they had a real opportunity to pursue. It would still have required of them to come to acknowledge Jesus Christ as their Messiah and Son of God, for to be children of God you must have an absolute respect for the truth, and this is a fundamental one, as is the concept, “to know the Son is to know the Father”. Their bad choices simply made the path to these realizations more difficult, for everyone involved.

To say that Satan, Adam, and Eve had a real choice in deciding to sin or not necessitates that there be an alternative path to the one that they took path, one which would still result in Adam and Eve becoming children of God in heaven. Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a necessary part of the process of becoming a god in Heaven. It gives one a higher awareness of what is possible as a result of one’s own actions and of what makes those actions are right or wrong. One does not need to sin in order to learn these truths. One does not sin by eating from the tree when God has given permission, and He will give that permission once He’s prepared the person. If Adam and Eve had waited, once God had prepared them He would have had them eat the apple, without sin. They then would have begun learning a wider and deeper understanding of God’s truth while always having God’s presence immediately available to them. This, in fact, was the path to full awareness taken by both Jesus, in His humanity, and His mother Mary.

Adam and Eve cannot blame God for their sins even though He willingly exposed them to the Evil One. As children of God we must learn to be loyal to God under all circumstances, whatever others do. If Satan had not sinned they may or may not have sinned of their own initiative. Learning to resist sin under all circumstances enables us to be trusted with complete freedom in the realm of God, for then we will never be tempted away from God.

If Adam and Eve had sinned on their own initiative the reality that they experienced after their fall would have been different from the one that they experienced as a result of following the condemned Evil One. They would not have had a powerful spiritual being constantly harassing them and their children, but they still would have had to face obstacles to their happiness, obstacles made more difficult because of their sin. If both they and Satan had not sinned Adam and Eve still would have needed to learn of the nature of good and evil and the effects of sin in order to become a children of God in Heaven. I expect that in this case God would simply create a type of “virtual reality” that mimics a fallen paradise into which Adam and Eve could enter for short periods of time in order to learn the consequences of sin, without sinning. This virtual reality would include their experiencing the pain caused by sin, but in a more limited and controlled manner than the pain caused by actual sin. It could also include the experience of Jesus on the cross, but this would be presented as what would happen to Christ if those whom He is charged to care for commit sin. Since under these conditions people would have perfect faith, there would be no doubting the veracity of God’s presentation of these truth’s, and thus it would not be necessary for Jesus to actually experience the pain of the cross. To those who would say that Jesus not actually experiencing the pain of the cross would lessen the virtue of Christ’s saving presence, I say that this opinion demonstrates a perverse need for God to suffer. In order to appreciate the concept of Christ as our Savior we need only to know that He is willing to suffer whatever is necessary in order that we have the opportunity to become children of God. While this is speculation, I feel that it is important to believe that God has an alternative plan for learning the nature of sin without the need for us to sin, otherwise people, and angels, will attempt to justify their sins by claiming that they are a necessary part of God’s plan, effectively shifting the blame for their sins to God. The possibility of sin is all that is necessary in God’s plan, not it’s actualization.

In the case of Adam and Eve, I speculate that their original sin was sexual activity, initiated by Eve’s curiosity. She succumbs to temptation first, not by having the curiosity, but by disregarding God’s rules in attempting to satisfy this curiosity by enticing Adam to pursue sexual activity with her, to which he submits, this being his sin. That this is a possibility is supported by how God expresses His realization that they had sinned; they had become aware of their own nakedness. Did they become self-conscious after experiencing sexual pleasure? What they should have done to avoid sin was to ask God about their curiosity. He then would have prepared them for sexual union. If you notice, this is the same scenario that many young adults go through when they reach puberty. Could it be that the story of Adam and Eve is simply the story of two children entering into puberty and making the wrong decisions?

While I speculate that Adam and Eve’s temptation was to break God’s rule in regards to sex, I suspect that Satan’s temptation was rooted in a lust for power, born of a jealously of God’s love for man. The motivations of the Evil One are not very difficult to figure out. He saw an opportunity to become the master of the human race. Knowing that God had given Adam and Eve the potential to be the parents of a whole race of beings, and knowing that God had already given him the promise of eternal life, and knowing that God does not allow sinners in His presence, and desiring to be worshipped by man as the supreme god, which could never happen in the presence of God, he decided to inspire Adam and Eve to sin, and thus be banished, along with himself, from the presence of God. Thus, being the most powerful being in this exiled reality he could then act as if he were the supreme god. His challenge then became to make sure that all people born into this reality always commit sin, thus remain exiled from God. This way of thinking can be seen in corrupt, egocentric leaders today. Whether they are aware of it, as the Evil One was, or not, they lead people to untruths that offend God, bringing destruction and death to others, all in an effort to glorify themselves. They come to not want any truth that might deny their self glorification, thus adamantly resist any reprimand by God which is designed to correct their blindness.

The Muslim holy book, the Koran, contains an account of Satan’s revolt against God, and when this is read with Christian sensibilities one can see an underlying meaning to the story which would not be perceived by a person without Christian belief, and this unveils the true nature of the Evil One’s discontent with God. Since God intended from the beginning to become incarnate as a man, His revelation of this intent actually begins to unfold with His creation of man in His image. According to the Koran, after Adam is created God orders the angels to bow down before Adam. Satan refuses to do this, saying that only God is worthy of this form of homage. He then, because of his jealousy of Adam, tempts Adam and Eve to sin, in an attempt to demonstrate to God Adam’s unworthiness. According to Islamic tradition, Satan will be forgiven his transgressions because it was supposedly inspired by his extreme love and reverence for God, a reverence that does not allow him to bow before anyone but God. However, as Christians we know that Satan was missing a bit of information here, and this is that God intended to become incarnate as a man, as Adam’s descendant. With this information we can understand the true meaning of God demanding that the angels bow down before Adam; He is preparing them for the revelation that He will become incarnate as a man. This preparation for the revelation that God planned to become incarnate as a man was also a test, one which Satan failed miserably. The truth of the incarnation of God as a human being is a more complete revelation by God of Himself. Satan rejects this more complete revelation because he cannot accept God as God truly is, as he prefers his own partial vision of God. Satan here reveals that he can only love God when he perceives that he himself represents God’s preferred creature. Satan’s love for his own partial vision of God ultimately leads to a blinding hatred for the fully revealed God. His war on Adam, born of jealousy, develops into a war on God, born of hatred. This is what is not revealed in the Koran, but is what can be deduced with the Christian understanding of God’s intention of becoming incarnate as a human being.

In the story of the temptation, Satan approaches Eve with the idea of rejecting God’s rules. This is not because she is female, as some speculate, but because she is younger than Adam and so more vulnerable. When Adam came into being, the only other being he encountered was God. This helped to instill in him a respect for, and an awareness of, God as the First and Master. When Eve came into awareness, she encountered both God and Adam. This took away some of the uniqueness of God in her eyes and she was consequently less intimidated by God. This happens many times with children in families, the older feeling a stronger sense of responsibility and the younger feeling less inhibited. Thus Eve falls victim to temptation first because she is younger and less intimidated by God.

The nature of their sins is also different. Eve fell victim to the idea that she could get to be a god in Heaven without following God’s rules. That she grasped at something that she did not yet deserve is an act of greed. Adam fell victim to the sin of pride when he decided that it was important to impress upon Eve that he could disregard God’s wishes rather than please Him by obeying Him. Greed and pride are the two fundamental sins that beings are susceptible to. They are each a result of a perversion of natural aspects of our nature. Pride is a perversion of our natural need for dignity and desire for respect. Greed is a perversion of our natural need for security and desire for enjoyment. All other sins can be seen as a particular form and/or combination of these two, even sexual lust. Sexual desire is not a sin, it is natural, but when it is pursued without a willingness to fulfill responsibilities it becomes a form of greed, and when it is pursued in order to inflate one’s ego it becomes a form of pride, and these are what make it lust.

God began the process of restoring His clear and direct instruction to mankind with His covenant with Abraham. With Judaism it became possible to follow God’s truth and to respond to God’s love in a more complete way than before, as the direct link with God is restored to a degree. However, following God’s truth and responding to His love was still very difficult. Eventually, after preparing people to know His ways better through Judaism, He gives us His Son to follow. It is the Christian belief that the restoration of God’s grace is completed with the Incarnation of Christ. Through following His Son we gain the capacity to perfectly follow God’s truth without the need to completely understand the logic behind this truth. We have Christ to understand the logic of God’s truth for us, and when we have faith in Him we follow Him without completely understanding Him and this leads us to complete understanding and perfection. This then is why God the Father is willing to forgive us our past sins when we follow Christ. For what good is the forgiveness of past sins until we gain the capacity to learn how not to sin, this capacity provided through Christ.

With the coming of Christ, the access to God’s grace that Adam and Eve had forsook is restored. However, conditions in this world are still different from what they were in Paradise, and God accounts for this. Whereas Adam and Eve’s sins caused a radical change in their experience of reality, for us the change in our experience of reality due to our sins is more subtle, since we are already situated in a fallen world. Also, after we’ve sinned, we have a chance to restore ourselves to God’s grace through repentance and confession, where they had to wait for God’s offer of redemption, this coming through Christ. The gift of forgiveness through repentance and confession is possible for us because we have Christ, and we have the benefit of our history from which to learn, including Adam and Eve’s experience. However, if we don’t use God’s gifts properly, ultimately the consequences for us can be even worse than were theirs’.

Since Christ is the Son of God, in order to know the truth of God in a complete way it is necessary to know this. However, God does not hold one responsible for this knowledge until Christ is introduced to them. If a person is sinless up to the point of introduction, then accepts the truth of the Sonship of Jesus, even without understanding all the consequences of it, they then continue to be sinless. The Roman Catholic’s example of this is Mary. Mary is God’s proof to mankind that it is not an impossible task to follow Him perfectly, even before the introduction of His Son. Thus she is His proof that He is not unfair when He holds people accountable for their sins. For those who claim that this view means that Mary is not saved from sin by Christ, this is not true, since, in order to preserve her sinlessness, God, through Judaism, had created a reality for her in which His direct and clear instruction was present to a great degree, and then, when Christ was introduced to her, it became her responsibility to believe in Him, which she did. Not believing in Him as the Son of God would have been a sin, for it would have been a rejection of God’s truth. Also, that Jesus is as He is enables Mary to continue to believe in Him. Jesus prevents Mary from sinning through not believing because He consistently proves to her with His actions that He is the Son of God. Thus, He saves her from sin. This situation would also apply to the angels who have stayed loyal to God. In order to maintain their fidelity, they must accept Christ as God’s Son when God the Father introduces Him to them, for this is God’s truth, which they must always respect absolutely. The fact that Jesus acts as He does enables them to believe in Him.

People today have the same problem that Adam and Eve had; the truth of our relative ignorance and our unwillingness to face up to this truth. This truth can be deduced from our experience, thus natural and supernatural law, if we have the humility to face the truth. The correct conclusion deduced from our experiences in life is the realization that we need God. The way to follow God could also be deduced from our experiences in life, thus natural and supernatural law, if we had the internal capacity to perfectly understand God’s law, but because of our limited capacities and experience and because of the nature of reality, including the existence and motivations of malevolent beings such as the Evil One, realizing the path to God and how to follow Him perfectly through the understanding of the logic of natural and supernatural law is impossible. However, God, in His wisdom, gives us a way of following Him perfectly even though we don’t fully understand Him, through faith in His Son. This does not contradict the logic of natural and supernatural law, but complements and completes it, since the conclusion drawn from the study of natural and supernatural law for anyone who takes the study seriously should be the “sanctity” of truth. That God is God and that Christ is His Son is an integral part of this truth, as is that faith in Christ enables us to follow God’s truth perfectly, without fully understanding it.

One of the great injustices against God that inevitably results from the separation of natural law from supernatural law is the devaluation in the worth of the truths which God chooses to teach, in either a direct or indirect way, to non-Christians. It is a Catholic Orthodox belief that God teaches many truths to non-Christians, and these truths can be very important to His purposes even though the people that have been taught these truths don’t know the truth of Christ’s Sonship. This simply means that even when in the state of original sin people are taught many important truths by God. These truths can only have relevance to a person’s salvation if there is comprehensible logic to supernatural law in which everything is not simply reduced to the profession of Christ as the Son of God, and if there is a relationship between this logic and the logic underlying natural law. This is one of the reasons that I personally believe that there is a relationship between the logic of natural law and that of supernatural law. The challenge for us is to realize how they relate. I think that the best approach to this problem is to first realize that the essential attributes of God are love and truth. Consequently, non-Christians who revere love and truth are in fact revering God. By following a path that is rooted in the respect for love and truth, one is indirectly following Christ and will inevitably come to know the fullness of God’s love and truth in Christ, thus come to know Christ as His Son.

b. Salvation through love and faith

The greatest problem that I see with the concept of salvation through faith alone is what this concept actually says, though this may not be clear to most, especially those who advocate it, about the nature of God. It defines God the Father as the greatest of all sadists, and His Son as a masochist, for it renders the experience of Christ on the cross as superfluous. This is because the task of giving people faith in God, that is, making them aware, without understanding, that God is God and Jesus is His Son, can easily be accomplished by God the Father without ever having had His Son suffer in any way. All that need be done is for Jesus to be incarnated as a being 2000 miles tall and then to walk around the earth with the power to bounce people between life and death until they accept Him as their God. It is not done this way because faith alone is not a good enough basis for the relationship that God seeks to develop with us. He seeks to develop a relationship with us that is based upon love. Love, by it’s nature, must be a two way street, given and accepted. For human beings to become capable of loving God as God wants us to love Him we must develop an understanding of both Him and of ourselves. This is an empowerment that He offers to us, one that includes responsibilities. We must come to realize that our actions, both good and bad, have an affect on Him, as well as knowing that His actions, always good, have an affect on us. Our love for Him must be freely given, thus we must be allowed to be free. Any worth that we have to God lays in our capacity and willingness to love Him, of our own free will, as He reveals Himself to us. Any test that He puts us through is to show us and Him that we can and do love Him, and to teach us how to love Him under all circumstances, as He does us. He is always demonstrating His love for us, even though we may not recognize it as such. Free-willed love is the purpose that can make life so difficult, for us, and for Him, as He so profoundly demonstrated on the Cross, for in love we accept the responsibility for the well-being of each other. In life we come to understand that it is only in truth that love can prosper, and come to realize our need for faith in God because of our limitations as created beings in our ability to know truth at any given time. He is our guarantor of truth, thus our guarantor of the garden in which our love can thrive.

There are those who claim that the meaning of “salvation by faith alone” is that if you simply believe that Christ will save you, you will be saved. This is a dangerous fallacy. It takes judgment out of God’s hands and puts it into the hands of the person who seeks to be saved. Christ Himself says that “the Father puts judgment into the Son’s hands, but the Son judges only as the Father tells Him”. St. Paul states that he is not concerned by his own judgments of his own actions or the actions of others, as he is only concerned with God’s judgment. Here he is warning against self-deluding judgments. The notion that you are inevitably saved if only you believe that you are saved opens the door to serious delusion, for when God indicates to you that in order to be saved you must change your ways, you will not listen, for you believe that you are already saved. The truth is, if God decides that you will not be saved, you will not be saved, no matter how strongly you believe that He will save you. Holding on to this belief in the face of God’s condemnation is simply the last refuge of the damned. While I don’t believe that this situation will ever apply to most people, this way of thinking does encourage people to avoid scrutinizing and reforming their own actions. True respect, or fear, of God, means that one is weary of all actions that might offend God. The less mature attitude is to be wary of sinful actions simply to avoid punishment, while the more mature attitude is to be wary of sinful actions because you love God and you realize that they offend Him.

I suppose that the false belief that one does not have to much concern oneself with one’s actions as long as one believes in Christ is derived from Christ saying that “if you believe in me, you will be saved”, and, “those who believe in me will not be judged”. However, one must take these sayings in the context of Christ’s mission, which He clearly states is to preach to and redeem the children of Israel. He also points out that He has not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it. Thus, He is telling Jews, who already have the Law, that they must also believe in Him if they are to be saved. This means that you cannot separate salvation in Christ from the law of God, the two go hand in hand. This concept is also expressed by St. Paul when he states in Romans, ch. 3, that Jews are saved by faith, while Gentiles are saved through faith. What this means is that Jews, who already have the Law, must also accept Christ as their Savior, for only then can they understand and fully realize the meaning and the purpose of God’s law. Gentiles, when they accept Christ as their Savior, must also learn and abide by God’s law, and this is why they are saved through faith and not simply by faith. Consequently, striving to know and follow God’s law is always an integral part of salvation, and while the law doesn’t change, conditions do, such as was the case with the coming of Christ, so how the law applies under these new conditions can change. This is not a change in the law because from the dawn of Creation the law is defined for each and every situation that man might find himself in.

Some may protest and say that God’s love is given unconditionally, and it is. God does love the sinner as well as the saint, and He proves this by His efforts to redeem both saints and sinners. The concept that God’s love is given unconditionally, though, simply means that God’s efforts to redeem us from sin and death are prompted by His love, and not by some special action or actions that mankind has performed. This unconditional initiative by God does not come without conditions, and it’s fundamental condition is that you respond with love to this initiative and be willing to learn to respect God as God and make every effort to follow His ways.

To believe in Christ is to follow Christ, which requires that you grow in your awareness of Christ and conform your actions to God’s ways. For He did say that “not all who call me Lord will enter the Kingdom, but only those who do the will of my Father”. The will of the Father is not only that we profess Christ’s name but also that we follow His teachings, which bring about the spiritual growth and enlightenment necessary for gaining entrance into His kingdom. After all, didn’t He also say that “bringing salvation to mankind is like planting, when seeds are thrown onto rocky soil, they don’t take root, and when seeds are sown in weedy soil, the saplings are choked off by weeds”? The seeds of salvation referred to here are seeds of not just faith, but also of love. In regards to not being judged, this refers to one’s past sins, for if they are not forgiven you are condemned by them, and also, to Christ’s capacity to teach us not to sin. If you sincerely believe in Christ your past sins are forgiven, and, with God’s grace, you will follow Him, and though you may stumble at times, will eventually learn how not to sin, thus avoiding judgment.

In order to follow Christ one must be presented with a true picture of Christ, a view of Him as He truly is, not as we wish Him to be or as we insist that He should be. Scripture, while containing the whole Revelation of Christ, does not in itself enable a person to see the true Christ. One needs to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God to see the true meaning of Scripture, and one of the ways by which the Spirit opens one’s eyes to Scripture’s true meaning is to direct people to those whom He has already taught, His Saints. This is one of the functions of God’s True Church, to guide people to an accurate perception of Christ and His teachings.

It is true that at times some members of Christ’s Church may not, for various reasons, interpret and apply God’s teachings with perfect accuracy. This does not mean that accurate comprehension is not available, but simply means that a perfectly accurate understanding of God’s will and intent on all issues is not always easily obtained. One must have faith that even with these difficulties a sufficient understanding is acquired by the Church and churchmen so that eventually a perfect understanding of all issues is developed. Perfect understanding should be seen as a goal obtained in the fullness of time through the grace of God. It is also true that some churchmen do become genuinely corrupt. However, this does not invalidate the teachings of the Church, but simply subjects these corrupted leaders to a harsher judgment by God. After all, didn’t Jesus say to His followers in regards to the corrupted religious leaders of His day that they should do as these leaders say but not as they do.

If God is willing to save you He will to lead you to do what is necessary in order for you to realize salvation, but you must follow His lead of your own free choice. As you follow this path it will become clearer and clearer to you that you are saved. This is because you come to see that God truly does love you, and, just as importantly, you come to see that you truly love God and have no other desire but to follow Him. This creates a bond that can never be broken and begets a faith that cannot be shaken. Thus, salvation for mankind is by love and faith, not just faith.

With the views expressed above, love of God becomes the main criteria that determines whether or not a person is destined to be saved. While love of the truth of God is incomplete without an awareness of His Triune nature, faith without love is barren. God could force anyone to believe that He is God, but He can’t force anyone to love Him. God reveals Himself in life to each person in a manner that assures the best possibility that their love for Him will grow. This gives meaning to the different indirect manifestations of Him to which all beings are exposed. In responding to these we reveal to Him and to ourselves that we are ready for a more complete manifestation of Him. Consequently, anyone positively responding to the presence of God, even if that presence is indirect and that response imperfect, is revealing that they are on the path to salvation. This includes Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, agnostics, and atheists, as well as Orthodox Christians. Whether they continue on that path depends upon whether they grow in their response to His love and presence as He makes Himself more manifest to them.

The importance of faith in realizing the fullness of the gift of sonship that God offers to us should not be underestimated, but faith is meaningless without love. We must learn to love God and others even when it doesn’t seem that they love us. This is faith in love, as well as in God. God says to us that if we have faith in Christ and follow Christ we will be saved. We will follow Christ if we come to love Christ as He is revealed to us. This is in the nature of real love.

Loving Christ must be our choice, a free choice. It is the single meritorious act that we are capable of in the eyes of God. Loving Christ, though, means loving all things of Christ, which includes all things of truth and love. Thus, loving all things of truth and love are meritorious acts in the eyes of God. If we continue to love all things of truth and love, we will eventually come to have a direct awareness and love of Christ, and thus, have faith in Him.

c. The gift

In the first sections of this work I’ve attempted to explain what I believe is the way in which God must present His truth to mankind in order for Him to be considered to be a fair and just god. Now I will try to explain my understanding of what I believe is the gift that He offers to us, a gift that He need not offer us in order to be considered a fair and just god, but one that He offers to us in His graciousness. This gift is the opportunity to become His child, through the process of divination. I will also explain what I believe is the role of the Church in this process.

As Christians, we claim to have a special knowledge of God, one that enables us to have a unique relationship and experience with the Spirit of God. We are called to learn to experience and live with the Spirit, in both a physical and spiritual sense. We must be willing to testify to this opportunity that God offers to us, and in the name of God make this offer available to people. To do this, we ourselves must believe that we are truly experiencing God. We must come to recognize God’s presence in every form that it takes. As Christians we must make it clear that we know, from our own experience, that God has made His presence known to us. But we must also acknowledge that he does this in different ways and to different degrees for each person, for His reasons. We should not reduce the experience of God down to just our own personal experience and our own personal insights. We must recognize our own personal experience as part of the whole experience that mankind has with God. We must also acknowledge that while God will ultimately affirm every Christian’s faith in a very direct way, as of now some people have already experienced this direct affirmation while others have not. Ultimately, though, whether with a confirmed or unconfirmed faith, we are called to testify to the world that God is real and available.

Members of the Catholic Orthodox Church must also believe and testify that we are offered an extraordinary assistance in learning to experience God through the guidance, teachings, and the methods of our Church. This extraordinary assistance presents to us an opportunity to experience God in an extraordinary way, with the real presence of the Body of Christ and a full measure of the Holy Spirit of God. We must make it clear to the world that there are very real reasons for God to structure our Church as He does, and that there are real results from following our practices, the most important result being the experiencing of the living presence of God.

Sometimes the living presence of God is defined as existing for people in indirect and subtle ways, and this is fine when appropriate, as most people do experience God in a relatively indirect way, and few people seem to experience God’s presence in a very direct, overt way. There are a variety of reasons for this. In the Old Testament it is clearly stated that men cannot look directly at the face of God, for if they do, they will die. The reason they will die is because sinners cannot stand in the full presence of God the Father. Guilt drives them out of His presence. God the Father solves this problem by sending us His Son to cleanse us of our sin and guilt. It is our unity with Christ that enables us to be cleansed of sin and guilt and thus stand in the full presence of the Father. However, unifying ourselves with Him and washing away our guilt and sin is a process, since we also need to learn how to conform our actions to His and, in this, learn how not to sin. For what good would it do to be allowed into the presence of the Father only to be driven out again by our guilt when we sin again. This process of becoming capable of standing in the presence of our heavenly Father is what our Church is charged with by God to help us through, and He works each individual through this process as He knows is best. Successfully going through this process opens the door to the full presence and experience of God, an experience that consistently affirms one’s faith. This is the promise that our Church must be willing to make to people, that the Church can help prepare us to experience and live with God. Of course, in making this promise, we must also make it clear that just because one has not had or is not having a direct sense orientated experience with the Spirit does not mean that one is not successfully negotiating the process. We must learn to follow God even when there seems to be no reward or satisfaction in it, and to judge our actions by a higher standard than by what our senses may be perceiving at a particular time. This higher standard is based upon the faith in our hearts and minds that God is good and He loves us, and that His truth is real and He has endowed us with the capacity to respond to and grow in this truth.

One of the important lessons that our Lord calls upon us to learn is that being a Christian necessitates a willingness to forsake what is by justice our due, for the sake of others, as well as ourselves. Our Lord Himself did this in accepting His Cross. However, while Jesus might have to carry His Cross forever, He did not have to hang on it forever. God will fulfill His promises, one of these promises being the experiencing of His presence, and we should not believe that we are meant to be denied the real sense orientated experience of God forever. This sense orientated experience may or may not include an experience of the natural senses or an intellectual insight, meaning that the presence of God is also sensed by the soul in a manner that is beyond our natural senses and intellect. This sensing by the soul produces an unmistakable awareness in one’s heart that God is present. As Catholic Ortodox Christians we must make it clear that this sense orientated experience is available, even in our lives in this world, and worth striving for. We must also realize that God’s plan of salvation is being manifested upon mankind as a whole, of which we and our experiences are but a part, a part as determined for us by God for our sake and for the sake of His plan. Consequently, if we ourselves, by our own personal experience, cannot verify the sense oriented experience of the Spirit to others, and many of us can’t, we still have the great Mystics and Saints of the Church to point to as proof and guides. It is a blessing of our Church that while each individual may not be able to personally attest to all the wonders of God, as a people of God we can, in the Faith of our Fathers.

The flaw in the Protestant approach to understanding salvation is most clearly seen when one considers the Orthodox Church’s concept of salvation through divination. Divination is the process of becoming Holy. It begins at Baptism and continues forever. The Roman Catholic Church’s approach to understanding salvation includes divination, but this is not emphasized as much as is the concept of being saved from sin and damnation. This being the case, it becomes more difficult in the Roman Catholic approach to properly understand the process of divination and the actions required to achieve it’s goal of deification. Central to this understanding is that the Church is meant to assist a person to not only an intellectual appreciation of God’s plan of salvation and judgments, but also to a true spiritual experience of the Divine, in this world, and not just the next. The emphasis in the Roman Catholic approach on the struggle against sin for fear of damnation helped lead to the mistaken Protestant notion that Baptism suffices for salvation, since the Roman approach gives the impression that the process of divination, this defining the actions required of a Christian after Baptism, is nothing but an endless struggle against sin, a struggle that cannot be won in this life but is only won in the next. Since this seems to be the case, the Protestants questioned the worth of actions in this world, and came to the conclusion that salvation comes about only because of one’s Baptism in this life, as all other actions are, in regards to salvation, relatively meaningless. What’s missing here is the understanding that through divination the struggle against sin in this life becomes easier, since it opens one up to a more complete reception of the Holy Spirit. It is in the first stages of divination that the struggle against sin seems unwinable because it is in this stage that we become more aware of the true nature of sin and our vulnerability to it. This increased awareness of sin, though, should lead us to an increased desire to struggle against it. This prepares us for the next stage where we learn that by always turning to God we can win the struggle. Finally we reach a stage where we don’t have to always feel the struggle against sin in order to continue the struggle, as we have a clear sight as to the nature of sin. At this point God feels free to allow a person to feel the joy of the continual sense oriented presence of His Holy Spirit, for now there is no possibility that He will be taken for granted. It is here that the promise of salvation is realized. This is what the Church must teach; that through the process of divination it is possible to come to experience the living presence of God in this life, if one is willing to walk the path which leads to Him.

In a manner of speaking, the process of salvation for each person can be said to begin at the time of their creation. Every action that God takes in regards to us is for the sake of our salvation. His banishment of Adam and Eve from Paradise and His punishment of us for our own sins are actions on behalf of our salvation. If we don’t learn our lessons from these actions we will not be prepared for the process of divination, and if we misuse the gifts that God offers to us, including the opportunity to become a child of God in Heaven, we open up the possibility of eternal damnation.

One of the reasons that God created His Church is to help guide us through the pitfalls that we may encounter on our way to becoming children of God, and to teach us what we must do in order to realize this goal. Protestant theology essentially eliminates the process of divination from God’s plan of salvation by basically declaring that we are deified by baptism and that there is neither a possibility nor need for spiritual development in this world beyond accepting Christ as one’s Savior. This, in my mind, leads to stunted spiritual growth and an undermining God’s plan.

In God’s plan we must transform ourselves through His Grace, and one of the ways He offers us His Grace is through the Sacraments. I feel that His Grace is offered to us in this way in order to ensure true spiritual growth, a growth that enables us to understand the living nature of God and to fulfill His desire for a communal relationship between His children. I also believe that this is one of the reasons why He has given authority to the Apostolic Church. In the Jewish tradition God is referred to as “the living God”. The living nature of God is reflected in the living relationship between Jesus and His Apostles, a relationship of living love. The Incarnation of Christ is in itself a statement by God on the importance of social relationships, for it is in His incarnate life that Jesus develops human social relationships. The Gospels reveal the intimate friendships that Jesus develops with His Apostles, and this reveals the essential nature of interpersonal relationships as part of God’s plan. It’s also true, though, that while it is obvious that there was a close human relationship between Jesus and the Apostles, it is also obvious that even with Jesus among them they had a difficult time understanding and following Him. They needed many lessons before they truly grasped the significance of the presence of Jesus amongst them, and it was not until Pentecost, with the inpouring of the Spirit, an event that Jesus had been preparing them for since the time He called them, that they became competent to carry on His mission. This mission is not only to proclaim the coming of the Christ, but also to prepare people for the reception of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus had prepared them, and part of this preparation includes the reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

It is with the Sacrament of the Eucharist, as understood by the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, that our Lord assures that we are well prepared for a full measure of the Holy Spirit. He assigns to the Church the responsibility of preparing the faithful to receive the Sacrament and to administer it, and, with the Sacrament, we are given the opportunity to receive the Body and Blood of Christ into our own bodies, this making us more capable of receiving a full measure of the Holy Spirit.

One point that is very much lost in the Protestant approach to salvation is that God has given us two distinct methods to receive Christ, in Baptism and in the Eucharist, and this is important because this involves the concept of growth and development of both our spirit and body. John the Baptist baptized in water and declared that Jesus baptizes in the Spirit. Thus, when we are Baptized, we receive Jesus’ Spirit with the Holy Spirit. However, this is an incomplete reception of Christ, since we must also receive the Body of Christ. Christ declares this in Scripture when He states that in order to be saved one must eat of His Flesh and drink of His Blood. Also, after receiving the Spirit, Body, and Blood of Christ, one must still become open to fully receiving the Person of the Holy Spirit. This is because while the Son and the Holy Spirit are always in union with each other, they are also distinct from each other. This distinction is clearly made in the Church’s teachings on the Trinity and is reflected in the fact that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, while Christ is generated by the Father. This distinction is also reflected by the fact the disciples did not come to know the Holy Spirit as a distinct Person until Pentecost, at which time He descended upon them and took up residence within them. It is only by receiving the generated divine Person of Christ, plus the created body and soul of Christ, this provided for us through the Eucharist, that we can complete our reception of Christ, this then enabling us to fully receive the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, to the Son, who is within us and united with us.

The importance of the reception of the body of Christ can be seen in other ways also. St. Paul says that Christians do not need to be circumcised in order to partake in our Covenant with God, as do Jews, because we are “circumcised in our hearts” through our Baptism. I will take this one step further. We are also circumcised in our bodies when we receive the Eucharist because we receive Jesus’ circumcision as our own when we receive His body. In this way the first Covenant that God made with His chosen people is not in any way abandoned, but is expanded, through the Eucharist. Here we see that the two Covenants are in fact one.

The parallels with Jewish tradition are also clear in the concept of the Eucharist meal reflecting the Passover meal, by which death “passes over” us because we partake in the eating the sacrificial Lamb, Christ, and are marked by His blood. At the last supper, where Christ initiated this perfected version of God’s Covenant, the Apostles received the protection of the Lamb from the imminent attack of the Evil One through their ingestion of the Lamb, an ingestion that meant Jesus would be physically with them even when He was soon to be taken from them. He actually entrusted His living body to them while He Himself was about to give it up. Here we see, in fact, that His body never fully dies, because it was alive within the Apostles who partook of the first Eucharist feast.

In giving up His body we see how Jesus, who is God, can die. His soul separated from His body for a time while He descended into hell. This decent into hell conquers death, because those whom He unites himself with in Hell are then reunited with God, thus no longer separated from God, and thus no longer dead. However, this is only a partial resurrection, a spiritual one, while the physical resurrection still must be achieved, and this is done through unification with Christ’s resurrected body, this provided by the Eucharist. This unification is what assures us that we will never really die, for true death is a separation from God, and with the Eucharist we will always have God within us, both physically and spiritually.

While Jesus gave up His body in death, He had also shared His body with His Apostles through the Eucharist. So when Jesus’ body is restored to Him in the resurrection, He is also restored to His Apostles. The concept of Jesus giving custody of His body to His Apostles reveals the process through which all mankind is resurrected. Through Baptism and the Eucharist Jesus’ body lives within mankind. His body in this form can be considered to be like a child developing in the womb. When the time is right, He will be born, this being His second coming. Jesus and the people of His Church will then truly function as one body. Until that time, He has again entrusted His body to the Church and to the faithful.

Becoming a real part of the body of Christ, one worthy of the role, requires preparation and training. This is a long term process requiring growth in an understanding of what it means to be a child of God. This understanding can only be had through the unified efforts of the faithful, an effort that is manifested not only here and now but through all time; the past, present, and future. The efforts of the faithful are required not because God is incapable of teaching us individually, but because it is part of God’s purpose for us is to recognize Him in others and to learn to work with others towards His goals. An especially important part of our role as His Church is to provide the human element of the relationship that God seeks to develop with His people. He calls on us to represent His humanity to people. To do this we must become true imitators of Jesus.

In all this we clearly see the importance of the role which God entrusts to the Apostles in His plan of salvation. It is not just a symbolic role, but a living role, not just in terms of the spirit of Jesus, but also in terms of the physical presence of the body of Jesus. This role continues with the successors to the original Apostles, and it is in the Orthodox and Catholic Traditions that the role of the Apostles is most fully realized and maintained.

II. A Conversion to Orthodoxy

a. The root of the problem

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that the filioque, the clause added by Rome to their Profession of Faith which states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, is a significant error in the Roman Catholic Churches’ doctrine, one that led me to decide to convert to Orthodoxy. This conclusion resulted from a close examination of the causes and consequences of the filioque and how this flawed clause became part of the Roman Profession.

As I’ve come to see it, the main problems in Roman theology, including the filioque, can be traced directly back to a weak Roman ontology which does not properly emphasis the importance of understanding the significance of the difference between that which is uncreated, the Trinity, and that which is created, and this includes Christ’s human nature, including His soul, mind, and body. I believe that this limitation helped to bring about the filioque, and also certain flaws in Rome’s doctrine of grace. These errors would not have flourished though if Rome hadn’t come to believe in it’s own infallibility and had listened to the corrective instructions from the East, this demonstrating to me that Rome’s perception of it’s own infallibility is itself an error.

There are variety of misconceptions that arise when one does not differentiate properly between uncreated and created. In regards to ontology, one can confuse knowledge of what is created with knowledge of the uncreated. Romans have a tendency to do this, focusing on the nature God as a knowable “Being”, when in fact what is mostly knowable about God relates to the fact that God becomes Incarnate as a created human being. That God takes on a human nature does elevate the value of the human condition, including human knowledge, but this does not change the fact that what a created human being can know about the uncreated nature and essence of God is extremely limited. One should not presume to use human conceptions in trying to describe the uncreated nature and essence of God. In regards to Christ, one should not confuse His divine nature with His human nature, an issue which was thoroughly addressed by the early Church Councils.

An example of Roman confusion on this issue can be seen in St. Augustine of Hippo’s attempt to describe man’s nature as being modeled after the Trinity. This is inappropriate because it suggests that Christ’s human nature simply mimics His divine nature, and also obscures the truth that it is the Person of the Son, Christ, who is incarnate, while the Father and Holy Spirit remain uncreated only, partaking in the Incarnation through their unity with the Son. Augustine can be excused for his confusion since he wrote on these issues before they were fully clarified by Ecumenical Councils. The same cannot be said for later Roman theologians.

This confusion also appears in Rome’s doctrine of “created grace”. As I will explain later to a greater degree, this concept presents us with what is essentially an inappropriate “incarnation” of grace, which either gives what is actually uncreated grace created attributes or defines an aspect of a created being as grace itself, all the while simultaneously eliminating the possibility of experiencing uncreated grace within this world. This then has implications in regards to our capacity to tangibly experience the Person of the Holy Spirit in this world, since the Holy Spirit is in truth wholly uncreated.

Finally, this lack of differentiation between uncreated and created contributed to the acceptance of the filioque, not only because in the Roman approach there is obviously a confusing of the term “procession”, which is applicable only to the uncreated Trinity, with the term “sending”, which applies to Christ sending the Holy Spirit to created human beings, but also because it has contributed to the inability of the Romans to understand the importance of not weakening the distinctions between the Persons of the Trinity, this leading to a filioque which confuses the attributes of the Person of the Son with those of the Person of the Father. On the following pages I will give a more detailed analysis of these issues in order to justify these statements.

b. The question of cause

. In earlier writings on the issue of the filioque I stated my belief at the time that I considered it to be flawed, but not heretical. In that paper I did not directly address the issue of “cause” in regards to the meaning of the word “procession”, and this was because I was under the mistaken impression that the Roman position is and always has been that it does not consider cause to be an aspect of the meaning of the word procession. However, through further research I’ve discovered that according to Roman doctrine, cause, sometimes referred to as “immediate cause”, as opposed to the “remote” cause by the Father, is attributed to the Son. This concept of attributing cause to the Son is potentially very detrimental to one’s understanding of the Trinity. While it may be possible to attribute a type of limited passive cause to the Son, a type of cause that results simply from the fact that the Son exists distinct from the Father, with this distinction giving support to the definition of the Holy Spirit as distinct, any suggestion that the Son provides an active cause or inappropriate passive cause of the Spirit seriously undermines the concept of distinctions of Persons within the Trinity, and this can seriously undermine one’s understanding of Christian theology.

Attributing a type of limited passive cause to the Son can actually enhance our understanding of the distinctions of Persons within the Trinity if we understand this to mean simply that since the Son exists as a Person distinct from the Father, then the Holy Spirit must also exist distinctly, in order to fully establish the distinctive nature of the Son. With this view, the fact that the Holy Spirit proceeds from only the Father helps to establish the Son as distinct, while the fact that the Son is distinct from the Father necessitates that the Holy Spirit exist distinctly from the Father and the Son, and must proceed from the Father and to the Son. This concept is embodied in St. John of Damascus declaring that it is appropriate to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, while it is not appropriate to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. This concept of passive cause attributed to the Son is much more limited than the Roman understanding of cause for the Son.

Active cause or inappropriate passive cause of the Spirit by the Son cannot be reconciled with the views on the filioque as expressed in my previous writings. Although in those writings I did not directly address the issue of cause, if one understands my analysis of the Trinity correctly it can be seen that according to this analysis the Son could not be a cause of the Holy Spirit because of the importance that I place upon the true nature of the relationship between the Person of the Son and the Person of the Holy Spirit and the concept that the Person of the Holy Spirit must have for Himself an appropriate degree of independence from the Person of the Son, and vice-versa. The essential point in my analysis is that while the Person of the Son is of one essence and always in union with the Holy Spirit, the Son must receive the Person of the Holy Spirit from the Father. As St. John of Damascus states, ”the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son.” The Holy Spirit must be defined as caused by only the Father in order for the Spirit and the Son to have this proper degree of independence, and for us to understand the true nature of the relationship between the Spirit and the Son.

There are a variety of problems resulting from attributing active or an inappropriate passive cause to the Son, and even if Rome does not concede that it’s doctrine on the filioque embraces the concept of active cause or inappropriate passive cause, there are indications in a variety of it’s doctrines that it does, or at least does not comprehend the negative consequences resulting from not keeping in mind that the Spirit proceeds from only the Father and is received by the Son. One of the confusing points brought about by the filioque is the issue of source, or origin, of the Spirit. Rome does maintain that the Father is the origin of the Spirit. However, there are some who then go on to say that what this means is that the Spirit originates from the combined essence of the Father and the Son, but since the Father is the origin of the Son, in a sense the Father can be considered to be the sole origin of the Spirit. It is this type of flawed reasoning that undermines the very important concept that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father to the Son, and rests in the Son. Obscuring this truth is the most damaging consequence of the filioque because ultimately this obscures our sight of both the Son and the Spirit, especially since it suggests that the Son does not receive the completed Person of the Spirit from the Father, but instead assists the Father in spirating the Spirit and then projects the Spirit from Himself.

A major problem with attributing inappropriate cause to the Son is that there is an absolute necessity for understanding that the Person of the Holy Spirit must have a proper degree of independence from the Person of Christ, and Christ from the Holy Spirit, as this is essential to the concept of the Incarnation. Attributing inappropriate cause to the Son destroys this proper independence, and ancient Roman theologians seemed to have a preference for emphasizing the unity of the Godhead, this leading to a tendency to diminish the importance of the distinctions between the Persons of the Trinity. Besides undermining the balance between the distinction of Persons and unity, this can lead to an undermining of the concept of the Incarnation because it can destroy the balance in the perfect hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures. If one does not correctly define the nature of Christ’s divinity, one can make it impossible to define Him as fully human. This is what happens when one attributes inappropriate cause to the Son. If Christ is a cause of the Spirit, then He cannot fully “empty” Himself, as St. Paul puts it, to become man, even unto death. It is only because of the Triune nature of the Godhead and this inherent degree of independence of the Person of Christ from the Person of the Holy Spirit that God is able to become fully human while maintaining His divine and transcendent nature.

If Christ is saddled with the role of spirating the Spirit, a role that is exclusively the Father’s, He then becomes incapable of fulfilling the role accorded to Him as Son; that is, becoming incarnate as fully human. This is especially clear when it comes to His death, for if Christ is causing the Holy Spirit, Who is the Giver of Life and the Spirit of Truth, how could He die without His death separating His divine nature from His human nature? It is only because His divine nature is not a cause of the Giver of Life and the Spirit of Truth that He is able to truly give up His life and descend into the realm of darkness and blindness, that is, into death, without separation of His divinity from His humanity. In death one loses one’s vision of God. For Christ to truly die, does He not also have to lose His vision of God?. Isn’t this what He was referring to when, just before dying, He said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? This would mean that as He was slipping into death His humanity was losing not only His vision of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, but also His vision of His divine self. This would then mean that in death His humanity becomes blind to His divinity. During His time in death His humanity, which while blinded to His divinity is not separated from it, regains His vision of His divinity, which then draws the fullness of the Holy Spirit back into His trapped soul and broken body, producing His resurrection. Though speculative, this shows that His active part in His own resurrection is that He overcomes the blindness that has overcome Him in death through His inherent capacity, as the Son of God who is Begotten of the Father, to know the truth of God, including the truth of His own divinity. This overcoming of His blindness occurs over His three days in hell, during which time His recovery of His sight of truth draws the Person of the Holy Spirit to Himself (though the Spirit and the Father were never absent from Him in that He always remains One with Them in His divinity), thus into Hell, resurrecting Him, bursting the gates of Hell and freeing His people. This view, I believe, reflects a proper understanding of how the Persons of the Trinity work individually and in unity. It is consistent with the concept that St. Cyril of Jerusalem puts forth in stating that Christ is swallowed by Satan in death, Satan not knowing what he swallowed, and then Christ and His children in death are regurgitated by the beast when Christ reveals Himself as the Holy One of God. It is also consistent with the view that Christ descends into hell to preach to the dead, for what better way is there for Him to preach than to demonstrate His power to overcome death. For those who claim this is inappropriate speculation, I cite St. Gregory the Theologian’s statement in the last paragraph of his first Theological Oration (Oration 27, Nicene Fathers) which says that it is appropriate to philosophize about Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection.

The nature of the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures that comes about with His Incarnation itself reveals that He cannot be a cause of the Spirit. In this union, neither nature is changed, nor does either lose their individual properties, and also, after the union the two nature’s cannot be separated, as if there exists two distinct persons. They are to be neither confused nor separated. Thus, if Christ is causing the Holy Spirit before the Incarnation, He must also cause Him after the Incarnation. However, the Holy Spirit is a fully uncreated Person and not incarnate, so how could the created aspect of Christ, His humanity, partake in causing the Holy Spirit? And since after the Incarnation Christ’s divinity cannot be separated from His humanity, it cannot be said that His divinity, separate from His humanity, causes the Holy Spirit. Thus, Christ’s Incarnation itself proves that He is not a cause of the Holy Spirit. This problem of needing to separate Christ’s two natures does not exist when He is not considered to be a cause of the Spirit since His two natures in unison can receive the Holy Spirit from the Father, and then, in unison, the two natures can send the Spirit to created beings.

Rome has attempted to explain it’s conception of the procession of the Spirit in terms of the essence of God, claiming that the Spirit proceeds from the common essence of the Father and the Son. However, in doing so, it destroys the unity which it usually cherishes. Besides the fact that the Father is the source of the essence, it cannot be divided in this manner, as it is the unifying principle of the Godhead. Two parts of God’s essence, this concept not even possible according to the Orthodox understanding of essence, cannot be considered to be causing a third. Attempting to explain the procession in this way reveals a lack of understanding of the importance of maintaining a proper balance in describing the Trinity’s unity, embodied in it’s essence, and it’s Triune nature, as embodied in the individual Hypostases. Ironically, in the approach that I’ve presented, which is in accordance with Orthodoxy, I am pointing out the necessity for the Holy Spirit to proceed from only the Father in order to establish distinction between the Father and the Son, but am also allowing that the distinct existence of the Person of the Son can be considered to contribute a limited type of passive cause of the Spirit, one which helps to establish the distinct existence of the Spirit, and this is precisely opposite to the concept of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the common essence of the Father and Son.

c. The consequences

One of the most serious problems with the filioque is that it obscures a person’s sight of the true Christ. It does this by presenting to us not the true Christ, but a fabricated Christ, one created from a synthesis of the hypostases (Persons) of the Father and the Son. Because of this it also obscures the true relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. St. Photius pointed out that the mistake of attributing cause to the Son is paramount to making Christ the father of the Spirit, and God the Father His grandfather. In my opinion Christ should in no way be seen as a parent of the Holy Spirit, but should in fact be seen as the Lover of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit the Lover of Christ. Christ seeks to share His Lover with the world, and the Spirit seeks to testify for and reveal His Lover to the world. In this relationship they glorify the Father. Christ loves the Father as a parent and the Spirit as a Lover, thus partaking in the fullness of that which is love. This concept of Christ and the Holy Spirit as lovers cannot be true if Christ is a cause of the Spirit.

Another aspect of the problem of attributing cause to the Son is that it helps to create an insurmountable difference between His humanity, though, as I’ve pointed out, it is questionable if He could even become human while being a cause of the Spirit, and the humanity of created human beings, this problem amplified when one does not properly distinguish between that which is of an uncreated nature, the Trinity, and that which is of a created nature, which includes Christ’s human nature. This amplified difference between Christ’s humanity and man’s reflects a platonic tendency in the early Roman Churches’ approach to theology, an approach that can lead to an exaggerated separation of man from God, a separation so vast it seems that even Christ cannot overcome it, even with His Incarnation. When one defines this separation as too great, or in an inaccurate manner, Christ never truly becomes our human brother and the Incarnation becomes a lie.

This separation of Christ from humanity as implied by early Roman theology comes about not because of a denial of the existence of Christ’s humanity, but from the confusing of His humanity with His divinity, this occurring when attributes of His humanity, which is created, are implied to be attributes of His divinity, which is uncreated. This problem is especially aggravated when one loses sight of the fact that Christ’s soul and mind are created, and the perfection of Christ’s created human nature means a perfection of His created soul, mind, and body. It is extremely important that in our contemplation of the uncreated Trinity we keep in mind that the Trinity which we, as created beings, experience is the Trinity in which one of the Persons of the Trinity, the Son, is already in hypostatic union with Creation. The nature of Christ’s divinity, which existed before Creation, should be considered to be essentially incomprehensible, except for that which is revealed by Him. One cannot reliably speculate about the nature of His divinity, and should not give it human attributes, such as thoughts and ideas existing within a mind. These are attributes of His humanity, which is created, and to imply that they are also attributes of His divinity confuses His divinity and humanity and gives Him a humanity which is fundamentally different from that of mankind’s. This is not consistent with the decrees of Chalcedon, but is drawn from platonic concepts.

The concept that Christ has a perfected created humanity, as opposed to the platonic concept that perfection only exists in an eternal, abstract ideal, this implying that Christ’s perfect humanity had to pre-exist Creation and then coexist with His created mind, soul, body after Creation, presents to us a different conception of the nature of Christ’s human perfection than that which is presented by those overly influenced by platonic concepts. This different conception of His perfect humanity is a realistic, experiential perfection, as opposed to the imaginary, unattainable perfection of platonic idealism.

It is not that the platonic concept of ideals cannot give us insight into what should be our ideals, and in fact, one of the great contributions of the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo to Christianity is that he recognized the usefulness of platonic modes of reasoning and concepts in explaining Christian ideals and their relationship to the truths of natural and supernatural law. In an effort to repudiate the erroneous teachings of Pelagius, which limited the role of supernatural grace in enlightenment, Augustine demonstrated through reason and Scripture that grace is necessary for true and full enlightenment, and he achieved this without completely detaching enlightenment through grace from both enlightened and unenlightened understandings of knowledge, an accomplishment that the initial Protestants utterly failed to appreciate as they proceeded to completely detach saving grace from knowledge. He understood that grace enabled one to eliminate corruptions of knowledge while preserving the value of true knowledge. It must always be kept in mind, though, that the platonic approach to understanding truth is limited and imprecise, and based upon concepts that to some degree contradict Christian Revelation, in that Revelation tells us that perfection is Incarnate and attainable, in Christ, and that Christ’s humanity, and this includes His soul, mind, and thoughts, are created and corporeal, and should not be confused with His uncreated divinity.

The exaggerated separation of God from man which is characteristic of early Roman theology is also reflected in the reasoning that brought about the filioque. Supposedly, one reason that Rome embraced it was to combat Arianism. However, finding it necessary to enhance Christ’s status by attributing to Him an attribute of the Father simply reflects a tendency of men to create their own criteria for judging what God should be instead of having the humility to accept God’s self-revelation. This, of course, was the root of Jesus’ problem with the religious leadership of His day; they could not accept God as He is, for they wanted a God as they believed He should be, and ultimately this blinded them to seeing God in Jesus. At some point, the Roman Church decided that the Jesus presented to them by Tradition was not adequate, so they decided to “enhance” Him with the filioque. However, this so called enhancement actually defined a diminished Christ, for, if indeed Christ spirates the Spirit, then even He could not overcome the barrier between man and God because He could never become fully human and thus men could never become true divine children of God. This is a point lost on those who attempt to redefine Christ’s divinity according to their flawed notions of what they consider to be the attributes of divinity. It is only because Christ is able to become fully human that the gap between man and God can be bridged, and bridged in such a way that man can become deified. This is the point of the Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection; the successful bridging of the gap between man and God.

To this day when one looks at Roman teachings one gets the feeling that the gap it has created between man and God is never bridged, or even bridgeable, especially in this life. Again, this reflects the influence of platonic teachings which say that the corporeal can never approach the ideal of the idea, a teaching that is directly opposed to the Christian teaching that the ideal exists in the Incarnate, thus corporeal, Person of Christ, and this ideal is made available to all mankind, through Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas did attempt to bring humanity into Roman theology to a greater degree by emphasizing the use of human reasoning in coming to know God, including the concept of knowing God more fully through acquiring a better understanding of His Creation. His was an effort to reconcile faith and reason. It is a flawed attempt though, because it does not recognize the true problem that had developed within Roman theology, which is the barrier that it had constructed between Christ and man, and thus also between man and the Holy Spirit, this barrier solidified when Rome redefined Christ with the filioque in spite of the East’s objections.

Under the influence of Aquinas, Rome developed the concept that the perfecting of man is achieved through the perfecting of his actions through the following of, with the use of reasoning and experience within Creation, an abstract, intangible Holy Spirit. This approach is inadequate because the Holy Spirit is more than just an abstract, intangible concept. He is an accessible, living Being Who can be tangibly experienced by man, and Whom man must experience and develop a relationship with if he ever hopes to become a perfected child of God. While there is no doubt that human reasoning is a method by which God informs us of His truth, it is not the sole method, nor is an intellectual understanding of God’s truth the sole goal of our seeking out God. If human reasoning is not guided by the Holy Spirit and does not lead to a fuller experience of the Person of the Holy Spirit it can lead to erroneous conclusions, distorted judgments, and twisted priorities. Since Rome had already embraced the error of the filioque, thus creating an impediment to it’s experiencing of the Holy Spirit, conclusions drawn from it’s use of reason are inevitably tainted, and tainting, to some degree. This is reflected in the fact that over the last thousand years the experiential nature of man’s interaction with the Holy Spirit has become a less and less important factor in Rome’s faith as it has become a more and more intellectually and materially orientated Church. It has slowly lost it’s direct sight of the Spirit, preferring instead the indirect and incomplete sight of Him as provided by their reasoning. Aquinas himself seems to have had some reservations regarding the overemphasis on human reasoning in pursuing an experience with God, and so did many of his contemporaries. However, I believe it has been the weaknesses in the Roman ontological approach and Trinitarian theology that is the source of the Roman problem, and not the concept of developing human reasoning. These weaknesses simply made it difficult for Rome to maintain a strong enough mystical anchor to complement and counter-balance the rapid development in human reasoning that was inspired by the work of Aquinas and others.

Roman theology does not even provide for the possibility of a direct, tangible experience with the actual Holy Spirit within this world, as it does not accept the Orthodox conception of the “energies” of God. Instead of a direct experience of the grace of the Holy Spirit, it allows for what it calls “habitual” grace, a grace that is created. However, the only aspect of grace that can be considered to be created is that aspect of grace which is the Body and Blood and Mind and Soul of Jesus Christ. Since Jesus is fully human and He receives His humanity from Mary, these are the created aspects of His being, though they are in hypostatic union with His divine nature. The Eucharist, also the Body and Blood of Christ, can also be considered to have a created aspect to it. Thus, the concept of created grace is valid only if it is understood to mean the corporeal mind, soul, and body of Christ, which is hypostatic union with His uncreated divinity. However, the Holy Spirit is not an incarnate Person, as is Christ, thus there is no created aspect to Him. Without the concept of divine energies as expounded by the Orthodox Church there can be no direct experience of the Holy Spirit within this world. Consequently, following the Roman view, man can never develop a complete relationship with God within this world. This is a de facto denial of Christ’s promise to send the Holy Spirit to His followers, and is definitely an impediment to understanding what salvation truly is, and to acquiring it.

Habitual grace as Rome defines it is not sanctifying grace because Rome does not allow that man can experience uncreated grace within this world, and true grace, while having the created element of Christ’s human nature, must also be considered to posses His uncreated divine nature. As habitual grace is defined by Rome, it is but a created manifestation of man’s positive reaction to God’s sustaining grace. It seems to me that what Rome is defining as created grace is actually the created reflections of the platonic universal ideals which we are called to model our actions upon, which, when we do, are then deemed to be “created grace”. However, these universal ideals should not themselves be considered to be attributes of grace unless they are considered to be thoughts of the created mind of Christ, for they then would be in hypostatic union with His divinity, thus fully in union with uncreated grace. Otherwise, they should be considered to be grace inspired concepts that are created within the human mind and soul, by way of Adam, and which are meant to guide us to correct thought and actions.

I think that Rome’s explanation of habitual grace is in fact a good explanation of how God’s sustaining grace operates in this world. God’s sustaining grace has always existed in this world and is meant to lead people to a fuller awareness of God and His truths. Platonic ideals are the result of the affect of God’s sustaining grace upon the human mind, and actually reflect concepts created by God within Adams mind and soul which are meant to guide him and us to a fuller knowledge of God’s truth and will. Since we are free-willed beings, however, we freely choose our response to grace inspired ideas. If we react properly, we will eventually come to know and accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God, become a member of His True Church, and, through sacramental grace, have the opportunity to fully and directly experience the Holy Spirit. Without the sacramental grace offered to us by God through His Church, however, we cannot respond perfectly to the Holy Spirit because our experience of the Spirit is indirect and incomplete. Even with sacramental grace there still needs to be a growth in one’s capacity to experience the fullness of grace, this then culminating in a complete experience with the fully uncreated Holy Spirit. Otherwise, we will have a tendency to view the Holy Spirit as an abstract concept rather than as an actual person whom we can experience.

The roots of the barrier created by Rome between God’s grace and man again can be traced back to ancient Roman teachings which emphasize the unity of the Trinity to a great degree and which do not emphasize the difference between uncreated and created sufficiently. This tendency is reflected in the acceptance of the filioque, which partially resulted from assuming that since Christ sends the Holy Spirit to created man He must also give procession to the Spirit, and also in Augustine’s attempt to describe man’s nature as being modeled after the Trinity, this reflecting an inappropriate confusing of the created with the uncreated. These problems reflect limitations in Rome’s ontology. Rome doesn’t properly distinguish between the essence of God and His operations and thus cannot provide an adequate explanation as to how the Holy Spirit can be directly experienced within this world, then claims that it can’t be, and is experienced only in the form of a created grace. But according the Orthodox view, since the Holy Spirit is fully uncreated He cannot be experienced as a created grace. If one then says that this created grace is the created soul of Christ, this is fine, but, if one says that even when experiencing the soul of Christ one cannot experience the uncreated energies of the Holy Spirit but instead simply experiences the Holy Spirit in Christ, then one is inappropriately confusing Christ and the Spirit in such a way as to not allow the Spirit His own Personhood, while simultaneously creating a barrier between Christ’s soul and the uncreated Holy Spirit, since in this case experiencing Christ’s soul does not enable one to experience the Person of the Holy Spirit. This is the deficiency that leads Rome to keep man separated from the Holy Spirit within this world. Rome then claims that in Heaven man will experience the essence of God, which, according to Orthodox understanding is impossible, since the essence of God is unapproachable, even in Heaven. But since Rome does not distinguish between God’s essence and His operating energies, it has no choice but to believe that the essence of God is experienced in Heaven, otherwise there would never be a direct experiencing of the Spirit for man, not even in Heaven. Again this line of reasoning reflects Rome’s emphasis on the separation of God and man, a separation that cannot be overcome in this world, even through Christ, and, because it has redefined Christ with the filioque, it does not see Christ accurately, so it does not understand that through Christ the Person of the Holy Spirit can be fully experienced. It is through our unity with Christ that we are able to directly experience the Holy Spirit as He proceeds from the Father, but to know this one must experience this, and to experience this one must know the true Christ.

Not understanding the distinction between God’s essence and His operations is one factor that has helped led Rome to confuse created and uncreated reality. This is true in it’s understanding of grace, and is also true in it’s understanding, or lack of understanding, of the relationship between supernatural and natural reality. Rome has a tendency to treat certain aspects of supernatural reality, such as Heaven, Hell, and souls, and this includes Christ’s soul, as if they are uncreated, when in fact, they are created, and though invisible, corporeal. As pointed out by St. John of Damascus, only the uncreated Trinity is truly incorporeal. Again, the heart of Rome’s problem is that it doesn’t emphasis the importance of distinguishing between created and uncreated as they should. This then leads them to sometimes confuse the two, as in the case of grace, and also, in not seeing that supernatural and natural reality are actually a single created reality. Recently Pope John Paul II claimed that Heaven and Hell are not physical places. This reveals to me that he is neglecting the fact that Heaven and Hell are created, not uncreated, realities that could well have physical attributes that are not unrelated to the physical attributes of this world. After all, if man is made in the image of God, and if God becomes incarnate as a human being in this world, and if there is to be a bodily resurrection, then why wouldn’t the Heaven that God creates resemble in some ways the world which we, including the Incarnate Son, already inhabit? Here again we have the Roman tendency to separate man from God, defining God’s dwelling place, Heaven, as completely detached from man’s.

It is my opinion that the main problems in today’s Roman Church can be traced directly back to a weak Roman ontology which helped to bring about the filioque. The filioque inevitably defines either a monophysitic Christ, because it undermines the possibility that Christ takes on a truly human nature, or, a nestorian Christ, if one attempts to say that His divine nature, separate from His human nature, causes the Holy Spirit. The former gives us a Christ, and a God, who is so distant from us in both body and spirit that we have difficulty in relating to Him, and this, I believe, is reflected in the early Roman Church and in some aspects of the Church even today. As stated earlier, it is my belief that Thomas Aquinas attempted to bring humanity closer to God with his theological approach, but it was a flawed attempt because it did not recognize the fundamental problem of Roman doctrine, which is the barrier that it had created between man and God with it’s Trinitarian doctrine and it’s doctrine of grace. Ironically, though, his approach to theology helped to bring about a new modern day Roman Christ, a humanist Christ, developed as a model for Christians to follow while living out their lives in this world. This is a Christ who is created in the image of man, one who uses all the same attributes that we as human beings use in partaking in life. This would be good if it weren’t for the fact that the barrier between man and God found in the early Roman theology still exists, but now also becomes manifested as a barrier between Christ’s human nature, as defined by modern Roman theology, and His divine nature, as defined by ancient Roman theology. Consequently, the early Roman Christ evolves into a nestorian Christ, one in which His divine nature is detached from his human nature because His human nature, living in the world through humanity, is uninformed, or indirectly informed, by His divine nature.

This nestorian Christ is reflected in many ways in the modern Roman Church, but it’s seeds are clearly seen in the Roman conception of grace. Since according to Roman doctrine uncreated actual grace is not physically available to us in this world, as all grace which we directly experience is a created grace, would not this then mean that when we partake of the Eucharist we only directly experience the created aspect of Christ’s being, His humanity, comprised of His Body, Blood and Soul? Also, when Christ walked the Earth two thousand years ago and a person touched Him, was that person touching both His created body and His divinity or was he touching just His created body? If we say that he was touching only Christ’s created human body then are we not inappropriately separating His divinity from His humanity. Are we not called by the Council of Chalcedon to neither separate nor confuse Christ’s humanity and divinity? I suppose that the Roman response to this would be that when one touches the body of Christ one also touches His created grace, thus His divinity. Then the issue becomes whether or not it is true that to function in this world as a human being God must create not only a human body and soul for Himself, but also a new form of grace. But at Chalcedon, where did the Fathers explain that the perfect hypostatic union between Christ’s divinity and humanity includes the creation of a new form of grace? When it is said that Christ is incarnate as a human being, does this not mean that He becomes human as we are human, though without sin. Is Christ’s humanity not sufficient to enable us to experience His divinity, or must there also be some type of addition to the Incarnation, an “incarnation of grace”? With the Roman approach, it seems that Christ’s grace needs to be considered as created more and above His created body and soul. This is not what Chalcedon says.

This problem of needing to define an additional “incarnation of grace” over and above that of Christ’s incarnation as a human being is the same problem that exists when one considers the Holy Spirit from the Roman perspective. The Roman view necessitates that if we are to experience the Holy Spirit He must have a created element to Him; but He is not an incarnate person so one cannot say that He has a created element to Him, except in His relationship to the created body, soul and mind of Christ. If one accepts that the created aspect of His grace is the body and soul of Christ, then why don’t they give us access to the uncreated Spirit? These problems all reflect an unclear understanding of the relationship between Christ’s divinity and humanity, and the resulting separation of His humanity from ours that inevitably comes about in a Roman approach to the Trinity which incorrectly defines Christ’s divinity with the filioque.

On might ask that if it is true that the only created element of God’s grace is the body and soul of Christ and this is the only way through which the uncreated energies of God operate and are experienced in Creation, then how did God operate in Creation before the Incarnation of Christ? I think the answer to this lays in understanding the purpose of Creation. Some people have the mistaken notion that Christ’s Incarnation is a response to Adam’s sin, but this is not true. Whether Adam sinned or not, Christ was destined to be incarnated in the body (This idea was also expressed by St. Maximos the Confessor). It must be understood that the purpose of Creation has always been to the Incarnation of God; the two cannot be separated. The consequence of Adam’s sin was the Crucifixion of Christ, not His Incarnation. It can be said that in a particular manner the Incarnation of Christ really begins with the creation of Creation, for it is here where the substances that were to become His body and soul were created. After all, according to a present-day scientific understanding of the creation of the Universe, the substances, matter and energy, that were to become His body, as was all matter and energy in an altered form, were created at the creation of the Universe. Of course, this is even true for Adam’s body according to Genesis, since it is formed from pre-existing clay. So isn’t it also reasonable to assume that the substance that was to comprise created souls was also created at Creation. Doesn’t psalm 138 in the Septuagint state, “you knew my unwrought substance”, indicating that the substance of a body and soul exists before it is formed? Consequently, the created element through which the uncreated energies of God operated before the physical Incarnation of Christ could well be the substance that was to comprise His soul.

This conception of pre-existence can also be understood in terms of the creation of Adam. The creation of the body and soul of Adam embodies and includes the creation of all his descendant’s bodies and souls, including Christ’s, who becomes one of his descendants. But in reality it is the creation of Christ’s body and soul, or at least the substances that are to comprise His body and soul, that embodies the creation of all men’s souls, and the Incarnation of His physical body and soul are simply the culmination of His entering into Creation, this having begun with the Creation. It is then through the substances that comprise Christ’s created body and soul, this substance included in Creation from the beginning within the Universe and within Adam’s soul, by which sustaining grace operates. After all, it is through Christ that all things are made, and, man is made in the image of God, so God’s image and substance must exist before or simultaneously with man’s.

Evidence in Scripture that the soul is created before it’s physical conception in the womb is in Jeremiah, Ch. I, line 5, where God says to Jeremiah, “before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee”. Also psalm 138 in the Septuagint states, “you knew my unwrought substance”, thus implying that there is something to know of a person before a person is formed. If one disagrees with the concept that Christ’s soul, or at least the substance of His soul, must have been created at Creation, then one must accept the Roman concept of created grace, but with this grace being created at Creation. This is because if after the Incarnation it is required by man to have the created soul and body of Christ incorporated within him in order to interact with the uncreated energies of God, then surely man must have required some type of created element of grace in order to experience these uncreated energies before the Incarnation. Of course, I believe that what Rome actually means by created grace is the created soul and mind of Christ, though they themselves might not be to clear on this. It is my view that it is only through the created soul of Christ that any man can interact with the uncreated energies of God, since Christ is the bridge between the created and the uncreated. Thus, Christ’s soul, or at least it’s substance, must be created at Creation. This then would be the only way, for example, by which Moses, even though he lived in this world before Christ was born, could see God in the burning bush, this made possible by the intrinsic unity that would exist between the soul of Moses and the created substance that would become Christ’s soul, this unity reflected in the fact that both Moses and Christ are descendants of Adam. Otherwise one could say that Moses interacted with the uncreated energies of God through His own created faculties and did not need the created soul of Christ to do so. This then undermines the Incarnation, and Christianity itself, as it denies that Christ is the only bridge between the uncreated and created.

It is also my belief that the early Church’s tendencies toward a monophysitic Christ contributed to the development of the modern Papacy. Since man is defined as thoroughly detached from God, he needs the Pope to know God, and the Pope lays claim to being the bridge between God and man. In the post Aquinas Church, the Pope then also becomes the definer of the humanist Christ. This has also led to the development of a Church in which it’s worldly structure has to a degree become a substitute for the Holy Spirit, who has become somewhat alienated from the Roman Church through it’s theology. While this may be an overly simplified and exaggerated characterization of the Roman Church, none the less it points out the problems that can result when a church does not stay strictly loyal to the true spirit of apostolic authority in defining it’s doctrines

It is my view that today the Roman Church has two different Christs; a monophysitic Christ, created by early Roman theology and the filioque, and a nestorian Christ, created by the grafting of a humanist Christ onto the monophysitic Christ, a graft that didn’t quite take. The net result is a schizophrenic Christ. Today the modern Roman Church struggles to reconcile these two Christs, as the conservatives in the Church, who prefer a monophysitic Christ who depends upon them to keep the unholy masses in line, seek to maintain a tight centralized control over the Church, while the humanists in the Church struggle to open it to new ideas, but don’t seem to realize that without the proper method of discerning the Holy Spirit’s intent this could lead to serious errors, and that the Church has already impeded it’s ability to discern the Spirit with the filioque and it’s notion of papal infallibility.

d. The ontological issue

As stated earlier, an important difference between Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology lays in their approaches to understanding and describing the nature of the Triune Godhead. Many in the Orthodox Church believe that the Roman approach in this matter is the root of the problem with Roman theology, while I believe it is not the approach itself, but mistakes made within the approach, and also, an unwillingness to supplement and circumscribe the approach with the Orthodox approach, that is the problem.

The Orthodox base their explanation of the Triune Godhead on three concepts; God’s Essence, which is completely unknowable, His operating energies, through which He directly acts and reveals Himself in Creation, and the distinct Hypostases of the Father, who is defined as the source of the Godhead and Unbegotten, the Son, who is defined as Begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who is defined as proceeding from the Father. The Roman approach attempts to incorporate all these concepts into one concept, the “Being” of God. In my view the Orthodox approach is more accurate and precise, while the Roman approach is more primitive and less precise, and, while not in itself wrong when interpreted properly, is more prone to causing errors in understanding a variety of related issues.

One of the problems with the Roman approach is that attempting to describe the nature of God by emphasizing only His “knowable” attributes can lead to the inappropriate circumscribing of God with human conceptions. One should not ignore the concept that God also has an “unknowable” quality to Him, an aspect that cannot even be considered to have existence, since it is beyond existence. One could say that this non-existence, or, non-being aspect of God, is implicitly included within the Roman understanding of the term “Being”, thus bringing the Roman approach closer to the Orthodox approach. If we say this then we can parallel this unknowable “non-being” aspect of the term “Being” to the Orthodox concept of Essence, and also parallel the “being” aspect of the term “Being” to the combination of what the Orthodox term the operating energies of God, and the Hypostases of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When one makes these parallels, it is easier to see why the Romans feel that they can legitimately consider the Hypostases in terms of relations within the “Being” of God, an approach the Orthodox don’t care much for. This approach does have pitfalls, and the Romans fall into a serious one, this leading directly to the filioque.

An inherent problem with this approach is that it does not define the distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity as clearly as does the hypostatic approach. For this reason, while if applied properly it can be considered to be a complementary approach to the hypostatic approach, it should not be seen as a replacement. But Rome ended up both making a mistake within the approach itself, and also, replaced, or at least revised, the hypostatic approach with it.

The “relations” approach says that the Persons of the Trinity can be defined in terms of their relation to each other. This is true, but then one must describe the relationships properly. The Roman version of the relations approach says that the nature of the Father is defined by the fact that He is the Father to the Son, and the nature of the Son is defined by the fact that He is the Son to the Father. This is fine. But then it says that the nature of the Holy Spirit is defined by the fact that He is the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. However, this ignores the fact that He is also the Spirit of Himself. The Holy Spirit is a full-fledged Person of the Godhead, not just the spiritual substance of the other two Persons. This, I feel, is the fatal misunderstanding of the Romans. It is a mistake that is not inherent in the “relations” approach; it is a mistake of neglecting to recognize the Personhood of the Holy Spirit in the definition of the relationships. This ultimately helped lead to the filioque.

While this mistake may not be inherent in the “relations” approach, the imprecision’s within this approach helped to bring about this mistake. Not distinguishing between God’s energies and His hypostases helps to bring about the problem, since there is unity in His energies and distinction in His hypostases. Also, ignoring the significance of the unknowable essence of God aggravates the problem, since there is unity in the essence. And finally, this approach will inevitably bring about error if one tries to use it to integrate into Christian theology the neo-platonic concept that all existence must reduce down to a single unity. In the Christian Godhead there is always unity and trinity, in perfect balance. The Trinity should never be reduced down to just unity. These are of the reasons that the relations approach can only work properly when supplemented and circumscribed by the hypostatic approach.

As stated earlier, one of the problems with the Roman approach is that in emphasizing the “knowablity” of the nature of God it tends to lead to a circumscribing of God with human conceptions. Again, I feel that this inappropriate circumscribing is not inherent in the approach, but the approach does lend itself to the problem when it itself is not circumscribed by the concept of the unknowable aspects of God. This problem can been seen in various aspects of Roman theology. For example, when one compares the Roman and Orthodox conceptions of how the Being of God exists relative to and interacts with His Creation; the Roman conception of Being implicitly includes form and structure, while the Orthodox conception of operating energies does not. Of course, part of this difference results from the fact that the Roman term “Being” incorporates the concept of “Hypostases” in it’s definition, while the Orthodox term “energies” does not. In my mind this reflects the greater precision and flexibility of the Orthodox approach, one that allows for the elimination of inappropriate or unnecessary human preconceptions from one’s descriptions of God and His activity. This is reflected in it’s approach to describing God’s creation. The Roman approach has led to the idea that the structure of Creation is an imperfect replica of a perfected creation that exists within an uncreated, eternal, mind of God. This implies a duel reality where the imperfect created struggles to imitate the perfect uncreated, and inappropriately attributes a mind to the uncreated Godhead when the only mind that God can be said to have is the created mind of Christ. In the Orthodox approach, the structure of reality is determined by the union of the Divine energies of God with His Creation. There are not two separate structures, but one structure, in which the structureless Divine energies are fused with Creation, which has a structure, as created by God. The structure of reality is no doubt influenced by the Divine energies, and Creation provides a structure through which Divine energies operate, but there is an organic synthesis of these two elements into one, as opposed to the ordered separation of the Roman approach. In the Orthodox approach it is sufficient that God has a mind, in Christ’s, after Creation, and it is unnecessary and inappropriate to say that God had a mind before Creation, since this constitutes an inappropriate circumscribing of the nature of the uncreated Godhead.

This is not to say that some Roman conceptions might not be useful when applied properly. While the previous example of God’s mind should not be applied to the relationship between the uncreated and created, it can be applied when considering the relationship between the perfected created reality of Christ’s mind relative to the imperfect, sinful, created reality of a sinner. Then it can be said that the imperfect created mind of the sinner, this imperfection caused by sin, can only reach perfection by being imbued with the uncreated energies of God, which will only come about by imitating the one who has a perfect created mind, Christ.

The previous example reveals one of the real problems with the Roman approach which does not emphasize the difference between uncreated and created as it should; it lends itself to a tendency to take a concept that might be applicable to created reality, here the contrasting of perfect and imperfect reality, and to inappropriately apply it to the relationship between the uncreated Godhead and Creation, resulting in a circumscribing of God with concepts that apply only to His creation and not to His uncreated Being. This can lead to the acceptance of erroneous concepts, as in this example, which is derived from the Platonic concept that all that exists now in Creation must have existed before Creation within the Being of God. When one considers this concept of pre-existing forms in the context of the Orthodox view of Creation it can be seen that they are unnecessary and redundant, since necessary forms already exist sufficiently within created reality. A serious consequence of this misapplication of the concept of duality is that it trivializes God’s Creation, for Creation becomes either an imperfect imitation of, or temporary substitute for, uncreated reality. Our understanding of Christ as divine and human does not allow this. The perfect balance and union that exists between the divine and human natures of Christ should guide us in our understanding of the perfect union between the uncreated and created.

The Romans have also applied their understanding of duality to contrasting created metaphysical reality with created natural reality. I think this is appropriate when done properly. However, since the Romans have a tendency to confuse created metaphysical reality with the uncreated Being of God, this creates a problem, one that naturally results from accepting the concept of the uncreated pre-existence of forms, since if forms already existed in an uncreated mind of God, the forms of perfected created metaphysical reality simply become the same as those uncreated forms. The net result is that this trivializes created reality, and also implies that the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures a temporary condition. This is unacceptable to an Orthodox Christian.

The proper way to look at the concept of pre-existing forms is to simply restrict their application to created reality. We can say that all possible forms, perfect and imperfect, are created at Creation and that there is a real difference between the perfect and imperfect, though the imperfect retains some attributes and qualities of the perfect. Adam and Eve experienced a perfect form of reality when they were created, but descended into an imperfect form when they sinned; an imperfect reality that had already existed, at least as a possibility, since the Creation. To ascend back to the perfect, the imperfect must learn to perfectly imitate the perfect, and this is only possible with an infusion of the uncreated Divine Energies, which can only be obtained through Christ, who, despite our imperfections, is perfectly willing to lead us to perfection, if only we are willing to follow.

This line of reasoning can also help us to understand our God-given free-will more clearly. It can be said that at Creation God created not only all things, but all possible things. He then, while advising us to choose only what is right in His eyes, allows us to choose from all choices that are possible for us at each point in time, and these choices determine His response to our choices. It is not that He must respond to our choices after we have made them, for His responses are already made before we make our choices, since all possible choices and His perfect responses to those choices are already created, at Creation. Our choices then determine only the nature of the reality that we perceive and experience as a consequence of our choices and not which reality is created, since all possible realities are already created. It should also be understood that in this approach God does not need to know what choices we will make before we make them since His perfect responses to what ever choices we make are already made. But from the time we first begin to make our free-willed choices we reveal to Him which attitudes are developing within our hearts, so we become predictable in our choices. It then becomes clear to Him as to who is developing a love for Him and who is developing a hatred for Him, of their own free choice.

It is clear that with this structure for Creation our experiences are made by our own, as individuals and as a people, free-willed choices. When we learn to make the right choices we inevitably become one with Christ, are filled with the Holy Spirit, and experience Creation as Heaven. If one persists in making wrong choices, though still existing in the same Creation as those who experience Heaven since this is the same Creation that was first created by God, they will experience Creation as Hell. With this plan for Creation, nobody could believe Satan’s attempts to justify his own evil with the claim that, “it’s the way God made me”, and nobody can blame God if they end up in Hell.

e. The Roman problem - conclusion

Many people don’t believe that there is a significant difference between Orthodox Catholic and Roman Catholic theologies, and I must confess to having been one of those people until the Holy Spirit led me to take a closer look. The differences at first may seem to be subtle and only in details, but ultimately they produce different visions of God, of salvation, and of what our priorities should be in the practice of our Faith. In Orthodoxy, emphasis is placed upon the availability to us of the experience of the real presence of the Holy Spirit, this being what St. Isaac the Syrian refers to as acquiring the “third degree” of knowledge, right now in this world. We can transcend this world by being transfigured by the Holy Spirit through Christ. In Roman Catholicism, while it is acknowledged that the Holy Spirit works with us in this world, the emphasis is placed upon the need to have faith that He is working, since a tangible experiential confirmation of His real presence is not likely to happen in this world. Consequently, a greater emphasis is placed upon understanding the work of the Spirit in the abstract and intellectual sense, with an emphasis on the hope for salvation, and a direct experience of Him, after death. What we have here is the difference between knowing from our own experience that Christ has been resurrected and the fruits of that resurrection are within our grasp, and hoping that He will be resurrected to us. In a symbolic sense, the Orthodox faith reflects a post-Pentecost mentality, one filled with the Holy Spirit, while the Roman faith reflects a pre-Pentecost mentality, one that struggles to understand and maintain it’s faith, one that needs more material confirmations of faith, such as the Papacy. This to me reflects the distance that the Romans have put between themselves and the Holy Spirit with their theological conceptions of the Trinity and Grace.

The basic problem with Roman Trinitarian doctrine and it’s doctrine of grace is probably best understood by considering the nature of the differences in the Judaic and Christian view of God. The Judaic view can only acknowledge the oneness of God because before Christ’s incarnation the triune nature is not clearly revealed. It is Christ who clearly reveals the triune nature of the Godhead, and this revelation is the beginning of man’s access to the interior life of God. We partake of the interior life of the Trinity by acquiring the Holy Spirit, and partaking in this interior life clearly reveals to us the Person of the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Person of Father. It is our unity with the Person of Christ, this unity only possible because of His taking upon Himself our humanity, which enables us to fully experience the Person of the Holy Spirit as He proceeds from the Father. The Roman view, while accepting the Trinity intellectually, leaves man outside the Trinity looking in, revealing that the Roman man is not fully united with Christ, for if he were, he would see the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father. As it is, the Roman man perceives the Spirit as proceeding from the Son, this mistaken view only possible when one is perceiving the Son from the outside. In truth, if one is united with Christ and of the same Body, the Spirit can never be seen as proceeding from the Son, but only through the Son, since the Spirit remains resting in the Body of the Son even as He comes to rest in you.

The Roman doctrine of grace also reveals this lack of participation in the interior life of the Trinity. As was pointed out before, to fully experience the Person of the Holy Spirit one must be able to experience the uncreated energies of God, since the Holy Spirit is fully uncreated and not incarnate. Without this capacity to experience the uncreated energies of God man is left to only an indirect experience of the Spirit.

These differences are reflected in the atmospheres of their public worship. With worship, the Orthodox prepare themselves for an intimate and immediate encounter with God. They prepare the place of worship in such a way as to invite the Holy Spirit to make His presence known, creating a vortex in which the real presence of God can be palpably experienced. Icons depict visually what is present spiritually. The Roman Church seems to present worship as a either a demonstration to the world of the glory of the Church or as an obligation that must be fulfilled as quickly and painlessly as possible so that everybody can get on to doing more important things, like maybe good charitable work, or maybe watching a football game. I realize that this characterization may be harsh and exaggerated, as there are many in the Roman Church who approach worship in a sincere and proper way, but these mistaken attitudes toward pubic worship, as a public demonstration of the glory of the Church or as an inconvenient obligation, seem to have found their way into the Roman Church to a greater extent than into the Orthodox Church. I can’t help but feel that this is at least in part due to the differences in their theologies and the expectations that each puts forward in their teachings.

Differences also come through in their spirituality. Roman spirituality is more darkly orientated and dominated by spiritual struggle. I think that this is partly because they don’t profess the Spirit properly, and don’t acknowledge the possibility of experiencing the uncreated energies of God in this world. Thus, when a person of the Roman Faith enters into their spiritual experiences, they are in a weaker position and more vulnerable to attacks by the Evil One. Also, because they don’t differentiate between created and uncreated properly, in the spiritual realm they have greater difficulties in discerning the difference between that which is inspired by the Spirit of God and that which is inspired by the spirit of evil. Since they see both as only created, thus similar in nature, and don’t believe that the uncreated energies of God are available to us in this life, they don’t reap the advantage of the knowledge of the availability of these energies in their struggle against evil. This is a reflection of the concept that what you believe influences what you experience, so if what you believe is not exactly accurate, the inaccuracy will color the experience.

I believe that this concept of being in a weakened spiritual condition when entering into a spiritual experience is reflected in the medieval Roman spiritual writings, during the period soon after the great Schism. These writings seem to me to reflect the experience of a soul that is not completely purified, thus vulnerable to spiritual pain. This well could be the source of the Roman teachings of Purgatory, emphasizing the need to be purged of one sins after death, and ultimately contributed to the dissatisfaction with Roman teachings that brought about the rebellion of the Protestants.

There is an irony brought about for a Roman spiritualist because of the barrier that Rome has constructed between the uncreated and created. When any person living in this world has a religious experience or vision of Heaven, according to Roman thought the vision is but a reflection of a reality that only exists in the uncreated mind of God, since there is a barrier between that person and the uncreated mind of God, where all perfect visions exist. Thus, Heaven is always understood to be somewhere else, outside the reality that you experience in this world, so one must leave this reality in order to experience the actual reality which the vision reflects. The irony is that there are no visions in the uncreated mind of God because there is no uncreated mind of God, only a created one, Christ’s, imbued with divine energies. You don’t need to leave the reality that you exist in now to experience the reality of this created mind of God, you must simply gain access to His divine energies. Once your mind is imbued with His divine energies, you’ll experience Heaven. Thus, the barrier for the Roman visionary is an illusion based upon a false belief, and this illusion inspires the illusion that you must go somewhere else to find Heaven. The truth is, if you take Christ and the Holy Spirit into your heart you will be imbued with the divine energies and Heaven will come to you. This will also eventually bring about the complete unification of the soul and body, and thus resurrection in Heaven.

Despite Rome’s deficiencies, and because of them, God has compensated by teaching the Roman Church to have a strong sense of duty and moral responsibility in the development of their earthly church and society, bringing about much material success and growth in their understanding of human nature and the workings of this world. This reflects the fact that Rome has come to emphasize the importance of an enlightened understanding of human knowledge, this accenting the importance of the concept that since Christ took on a fully human nature, human nature and knowledge cannot be trivialized. The problem is that sometimes these successes have become a rationalization for perpetuating blindness, with a claim that they are evidence of correctness and righteousness. The compensations to deficiencies, though, are actually meant to enable the Roman Church, and the world, to learn that if one has a sincere heart and desire for truth, all truth leads to God. If one does not have a sincere heart, what will be learned is the meaning of Christ’s words, “what good is it for a man to gain the world and lose his soul”.

What has brought Rome to it’s erroneous doctrine and schizophrenic Christ? The answer is simple; it’s presumption that it can unilaterally override the authority of Ecumenical Councils. If it had not made this presumption it would have listened to the warnings of the Eastern Church and would not have allowed it’s wayward tendencies to blossom into significant errors. And because of these errors Rome has partially lost sight of it’s mission, which is to witness the true Christ to the world, and, through this witness, assist souls in acquiring the Holy Spirit, thus enabling them to partake of the Divine Vision. In order to correct itself Rome must face up to it’s mistakes, especially in regards to the filioque, and accept that primary doctrinal authority resides in the Ecumenical Councils of the True Church and not with the Pope of Rome.

f. An Orthodox problem

I’d now like to say something about the Orthodox Church’s understanding of Christianity, especially some Orthodox people’s vision of Christ and His human nature and how this relates to the human nature of mankind. Freedom of choice in one’s interactions with God is a central precept of Orthodox theology. This means that even though one may have correct theology, one may not choose to react correctly to the grace that God offers to us through His Church. A limitation that I see in some people within the Orthodox Church is a tendency to diminish the importance of human reason, action, and experience within this world, sometimes treating these as aberrations that need to be disposed of, confusing the concept of “not being of this world” with not being human, when in fact this phrase should be taken to mean, as St. Basil points out in his writings on the Holy Spirit, “not partaking of the corrupt ways of this world”. If we dispose of our humanity, we also dispose of Christ, who is fully human. If we deny our own humanity and deny that God informs us through our humanity we deny Christ’s humanity and become de facto monophysites or monophylites, no matter what our doctrine says, for then we would not be practicing our faith according to true doctrine. This is especially true in regards to some Orthodox persons’ views on the place human reasoning has in informing us of God’s truth. St. Paul clearly states in (1) Romans that man is responsible to God’s truth simply because God has revealed Himself in creation to the eye of reason since the beginning of the world. This applies not only for non-Christians, but for Christians as well. Thus, if God reveals a truth to a Christian with the expectation that the Christian will use the God given gift of reason to discern that truth, but the Christian rejects that truth because of his distaste for the use of reason, then that Christian will be held responsible for denying God’s truth; responsible to an even greater degree than a non-Christian since the Christian also has all the gifts of God’s Divine Revelations to guide him to truth. It is imperative that we use every gift of humanity which God gives to us in order to share Him with the world. To not do so is to squander these God given gifts, as Jesus warns us not to do in the parable of the man who buries the coins given to him by his master instead of investing them in profitable ventures. This is especially relevant when it comes to our efforts to reach and teach and lead non-Christians to the true God. In catechetical lecture 18, paragraph 10 (Nicene Fathers), St. Cyril of Jerusalem beseeches us to use reason and demonstration only when explaining God’s truth to those who do not have Scripture and the Prophets. He can say this because He knows and respects the truth of St. Paul’s words to the Romans.

While most Orthodox acknowledge that there is a place for human reasoning in coming to know the truths which God wishes us to know, it seems to me that some inaccurately define human reasoning in such a way as to make it trivial and irrelevant. In my mind this leads to an inaccurate understanding of human nature, since human reasoning is an inherent part of human nature, and, consequently, an inaccurate understanding of Christ’s human nature, since we are formed in the image of Christ. This then undermines our understanding of the perfect hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures, since one must have an accurate perception of human nature in order to properly comprehend the meaning and significance of this union. Central to the problem is that when we trivialize the importance of using our human reasoning in following God’s will we then trivialize Christ’s use of human reasoning in His conforming His human will to His divine will, since human reasoning is a fundamental component to exercising one’s will. This leads to practices and attitudes which reflect a belief in a monophylitic Christ, even if our doctrine says otherwise.

For those who point to Adam and say that his sin was to exert his own will, I say that his sin was not that he exerted his own will, but to choose to set his will against God’s. Adam and Eve are given the freedom to exert their own wills and are also given the opportunity and knowledge to correctly choose to exert those wills in such a way as to not displease God. Whatever their choices be, God responds appropriately, in an effort to teach them the importance of making correct choices in the use of their free will. Learning to reason properly is fundamental to this goal.

I think that the core of the problem for some Orthodox is that they can become confused in applying the concept of unknowability, which legitimately applies to the uncreated nature and essence of God but does not apply to the truths of creation, these encompassing all that is not uncreated. Ironically, this is almost an inversion of the error the Romans make when they imply that certain knowable truths of created reality are actually knowable truths of the uncreated Godhead. Having already expounded upon the consequences of the Roman problem, the problem of treating knowable created truths as if they are unknowable in the same sense that the nature and essence of the uncreated Godhead is unknowable and unapproachable can also lead to serious misjudgments and erroneous conclusions. While it is surely true that man does not completely understand all that is of a created nature, this not mean that he cannot. When you use the reason of unknowability as an excuse to neglect true knowledge and advances in knowledge you put yourself in danger of not accepting knowledge which God seeks to impart to you, and you also insult the concept of the unknowable and unapproachable essence of God.

An example of this problem with properly perceiving and appreciating created knowledge can be seen in regards to how some Orthodox view the Roman Church’s use of platonic concepts and reasoning in it’s theological approach. As far as I’m concerned, the central issue in question here is whether or not the platonic approach to reasoning accurately reflects human reasoning, and if it does, what is it’s place in bringing us to a clearer sight of God’s plan of salvation and divination. It is my view that it is an accurate reflection of human reasoning, and since it is, when used properly, it is a useful and necessary tool for obtaining a clearer sight of God’s plan. It is necessary because if it is an accurate reflection of human reasoning then it can not be disregarded or ignored when considering the created truths of God because to do so would be to deny a truth of human nature, thus undermining both our understanding of, and the importance of, Christ’s human nature. Of course, that it is necessary for clearer sight of particular truths of God’s creation does not rest in the fact that it is “platonic reasoning” per se, but that it reflects true reason, as do other modes of reasoning. Also, it is true that the truths which platonic modes of reasoning work well at clarifying are not necessarily the most important truths that one needs to know in coming to know God.

Some Orthodox believe that this view reveals the taint of vain human philosophy. I find this to be hypocritical. It is clear to me that many of the Orthodox clarifications concerning the nature of God are related to ideas that were first expounded by neo-platonist philosophers. These include the contrasting of the knowable with the unknowable aspects of God, divine energies, and the different degrees, or levels, of knowledge. For those who say that the Orthodox clarifications which employ these concepts pre-date neo-platonism, I’d like to point out that the philosopher Philo, who died in approximately 50 A.D., presented ideas similar to those of the neo-platonists, and that these ideas themselves had their roots in platonic mysticism which dates back hundreds of years before Christ. My point here is not that the Orthodox appropriation of these concepts for the purposes of clarification is wrong, but that it is hypocritical to claim that platonic logic cannot be used for clarification of Christian doctrine simply because it has pagan roots. It is well accepted that pagan concepts can be useful when properly circumscribed by Christian principles.

If one accepts platonic rationalization as a valid reflection of human reasoning, the issue then becomes it’s proper use in clarifying our sight of God’s truth. Blessed Augustine of Hippo presented a particular approach, and though there are some errors in his theological writings, I don’t believe that his use of platonic rationalization is one of them. In fact, I would say that his most important contribution to the clarification of Christian doctrine is his insight that many knowable truths of God are rationally ordered along the lines of platonic rationalization. As mentioned earlier, St. Augustine was able to explain very clearly the difficult concept of how God’s grace opens one’s eyes to an accurate understanding of knowledge, especially in terms of properly understanding the place of an enlightened understanding of created supernatural and natural truths in God’s plan of salvation. He did not turn grace against knowledge, as some are wont to do, but understood that grace restores our capacity to discern the difference between accurate knowledge and corrupted knowledge. He also understood that this proper discernment is necessary if we are to realize the fruits of salvation because of the necessity for us to learn how to differentiate between what is a sin and what is not a sin so that we become more able to properly use our God given free will to chose not to sin in what ever circumstances we find ourselves in. A very important aspect of this proper discernment is the need to learn to avoid making false judgments of both our own actions and the actions of others, as these false judgments produce false guilt, which then impedes our ability to do God’s will. While I don’t agree with the Augustinian notion that mankind is held guilty by God for Adam’s first sin, for this would make God unfair, I do believe that as Adam’s children we are vulnerable to feeling Adam’s guilt, but this is a false sense of guilt due to the ignorance brought about by our fallen nature. Consequently, faith and grace enable us to overcome not only the true guilt of our sins, but also false guilt caused by our fallen condition. Thus, accurate knowledge in these matters is essential to true enlightenment and salvation.

St. Augustine and his ideas have been condemned by some contemporary Orthodox. I find this very disturbing. Where in traditional Orthodoxy is Blessed Augustine condemned? This is not a valid Orthodox position. Blessed Augustine was not only not condemned by the Church, he’s been venerated as a saint, not only by the early Church, but also by the post-schism Orthodox Church. Anyone condemning him defames one of God’s Saints, one who has been accepted as such by Orthodox Tradition.

Some have attempted to set the early Eastern Father’s teachings against those of St. Augustine. A clear reading of St. Gregory the Theologian’s orations on theology discredits this line of reasoning. In his first and second orations on theology (Nicene Fathers, oration 27, 28), St. Gregory addresses the issue of the types of knowledge which can properly be pursued. One of his purposes for these writings is to refute the notions of the Eunomians, who were claiming that man, while in this world, can completely apprehend and understand the essence and nature of God. St. Gregory denies this, pointing out that man’s capacity to understand the uncreated Godhead is extremely limited, and that man must depend upon faith and Revelation in these matters. However, in reading these orations some may become confused as to what St. Gregory deems to be knowable, because of the method he uses to make his point. He points out how difficult it is to obtain knowledge of even the most obvious and theoretically knowable things of the world, such as nature, and since this is the case it is absurd to believe that one can obtain complete knowledge of the uncreated Godhead. He does not claim, however, that things of a created nature are unknowable and unapproachable in the sense that the uncreated nature and essence of God is unknowable, and in the last paragraph of his first oration on theology (Nicene Fathers, oration 27) he clearly states that there are legitimate pursuits of knowledge that can be useful, and these include seeking to understand this world and other worlds, issues of the soul and the nature of right and wrong, the sufferings of Christ, and the Resurrection. He also encourages the faithful to use their dialectic abilities to refute heresies and foolish beliefs. Another point that he makes, when justfying the Church’s teaching on the uncreated nature of the Holy Spirit (oration 32, Nicene Fathers), is that while Scripture is not very clear on this particular point, the Spirit enlightens the Church to a clearer understanding of this matter, giving her the right to expound upon and clarify the issue. It seems to me that if St. Gregory were teaching today some Orthodox Christians might label him a scholastic heretic who advocates doctrinal development.

The truth is that St. Gregory, like St. Augustine, is rather unclear in a particular regard when distinguishing between what is knowable and unknowable about the uncreated Godhead, and this is revealed when in his second oration on theology (oration 28, par. 17, Nicene Fathers) he makes a mistake when stating that in his opinion the nature and essence of God, while unknowable in this world, will be known by man in the next. Obviously this shows that the necessity for more precisely distinguishing between created and uncreated is better recognized by later Orthodox theologians such as St. Maximus and St. Gregory Palamas, this pointing to the truth that the actual problem with Rome has been that it has not accepted these important clarifications, as these clarification help to reveal the flaw of the filioque.

I have expressed the belief that some of Augustine’s ideas must be circumscribed by the theology of the full Church in order to purge them of there wayward tendencies and to guarantee that they don’t lead others into developing seriously erroneous ideas. This can also be said in regards to the teachings of any of the Church Fathers. It seems to me that some Orthodox ought to make sure that they keep the teachings of St. Isaac the Syrian in the context of the full teachings of the Church. Many of St. Isaac’s ideas, like St. Dionysius’ writings before him, are similar to those of the neo-platonists. If one does not properly circumscribe neo-platonist ideas with Christian principles, one can fall into significant error. This is especially true in regards to the concept of the knowledge of God and His truths. If one does not give proper respect to the acquisition of knowledge through human faculties, and these include the capacity to use reasoning, then one can be led to beliefs that diminish the importance of our human nature, thus Christ’s human nature, consequently undermining the Incarnation and the perfect hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures. One becomes a de facto monophysite or monotholite, giving lip-service to Christ’s human nature by defining human nature, human faculties, and human experience as trivial.

St. Isaac the Syrian’s teaching about the three “degrees” of knowledge are sometimes sighted to point out how unimportant human reasoning is in coming to know God. However, when one trivializes what St. Isaac refers to as first and second degree knowledge, which are knowledges of the created world and of the revealed truth of God, respectively, in an effort to emphasize the importance third degree knowledge, which is direct knowledge of God through experiencing His uncreated energies, one falls into the trap of trivializing our human nature, and thus, Christ’s human nature. In my mind you would be making the false presumption that the final goal for us as Christians is to continuously experience only third degree knowledge, thus no longer requiring any first and second degree knowledge. To me, this is not Christianity, it is neo-platonism.

There is also another potentially serious problem with trivializing first and second degree knowledge, and this is the trap which ensnared the first Protestants. St. Isaac writes that knowledge and faith are opposed to one another, since faith is by definition belief without knowledge. However, one should not take this statement out of the context of the full Orthodox Tradition. Faith in the true God cannot be had without at least some knowledge of God, since otherwise you could not even say that God is one, and that God has a triune nature. The issue then is really what is correct knowledge, and how much of this correct knowledge is necessary for true faith. With St. Isaac, his point should be understood as actually meaning that when one is filled with third degree knowledge, first and second degree knowledge become less relevant for oneself because one of the main purposes of proper first and second degree knowledge is to bring one to the experience of third degree knowledge. In fact, the purpose of faith itself is to bring one to third degree knowledge, but third degree knowledge, according to it’s name, is also a form of knowledge, thus an affirmer of faith. Consequently, true faith can never be set in opposition to true knowledge. There is no question that faith is always necessary in relating to God because there is always an unknowable essence to God. However, while at particular times we may be left with only faith, we are ultimately meant to come to know God in a very complete way. Faith and proper first, second and third degree knowledge should never be set against each other. It is especially true that one who experiences third degree knowledge should not then dismiss proper first and second degree knowledge as irrelevant, because this can create roadblocks for others who seek third degree knowledge of God.

It has been stated that when one is experiencing third degree knowledge of God one loses one’s self-will, since one has no desire to be in any other condition, and this is true. However, attaining and maintaining this condition is not just dependent upon one’s willingness to give up one’s self-will. It is only by God’s will that one has the opportunity to experience this condition, and if God’s will is that you don’t experience this condition, you won’t. It is my belief that God, for eternity, will only allow us into this condition at appropriate times, as He sees fit, no matter that we desire to always experience it. He will insist that we at times be in states that require us to exercise our self-will and use first and second degree knowledge. If one needs evidence of this, one only has to read the final chapters of ‘Revelations’. John is told to measure the new Jerusalem, revealing that it has spatial existence. It also says that kings of the world bring tribute to God. In other words, there is still an active human life.

The simplest way to express my understanding of the relationship between third, and first and second degree knowledge, is that, in my view, experiencing third degree knowledge in full entails experiencing three, and only three, things; the Trinity, the Incarnation, and love. First and second degree knowledge entail experiencing an additional four things; self-will, faith, hope, and reasoning. When one is experiencing third degree knowledge to a full degree self-will disappears because one has no desire to be in any other state. Strong faith is not necessary because the presence of God and his love is fully confirmed. Hope doesn’t exist because it is completely fulfilled. Reasoning isn’t necessary because there isn’t any self-will. However, I believe that God will repeatedly expel His children from this condition, explicitly to the purpose of them using their self-will in order that they continually contribute to the creation of Creation. Once expelled, one will always desire and hope to return to the condition of the complete bliss of third degree knowledge, so one must maintain faith that God will allow you back into that state, and one must use reasoning in order to use first and second degree knowledge properly so that one can exert one’s self-will in such a way as to ensure that God will allow you back into the complete bliss brought about by third degree knowledge. To me, this would be the state of being for a fully human, deified child of God.

This view gives a fundamentally different meaning to our humanity and to our lives and purposes as human beings, and to Christ’s humanity, than that given by neo-platonists and Christians who taint their views with false applications of neo-platonic ideas. We must see enlightened first and second degree knowledge not as inferior, but as complements, to third degree knowledge, even though they are of a different nature. Just as Christ’s humanity, though of a different nature than His divinity, cannot be separated from His divinity, enlightened first and second degree knowledge, which pertain to our humanity, cannot be separated from third degree knowledge, which pertains to our capacity to experience the uncreated energies of God. The created element to God’s grace, Christ’s humanity, shows us that we cannot and should not divorce ourselves from our own humanity. We need only to separate ourselves from sin, and this is possible with God’s grace. What we must eliminate is the corruption of our understanding of first and second degree knowledge, not the knowledge itself, in order that we can understand these things as Christ, the Uncorrupted, does. We must learn to recognize and respect God’s truths even when they are presented to us in an indirect manner, and accept that we are meant to learn to function perfectly, without sin, even when we are exerting our self-will. Our goal of deification then is not an attempt to escape our humanity, but to perfect it, and this requires that we learn to exert our free-will perfectly, without sin, in whatever conditions God chooses to put us in. Once we achieve this, through the grace of God, we can truly claim to be children of God.

This view definitely suggests that some criticisms of Rome by some Orthodox are exaggerated. While on particular issues Rome has made mistakes, the ramifications of those mistakes aren’t always as great as is claimed. For example, while the Romans sometimes make the mistake of confusing uncreated and created natures in their approach to ontology, they maintain a proper respect for the importance of understanding created truth, including God’s law, in seeking to do God’s will. On the other hand, some Orthodox, while understanding the differences in uncreated and created natures, then trivialize all that is created, inadvertently trivializing the Incarnation and blinding themselves to the will of God. Knowing the teachings of the Church is very important in comprehending the truth which God seeks to impart to us, but just as important is an accurate understanding, and execution, of God’s intent.

III. In Conclusion

a. Christianity today

It is clear from what I’ve written thus far that I am asserting that there is an underlying logic to God’s truth, an assertion that many Orthodox and Protestants might not feel comfortable with, being too scholastic in tone. However, Jesus Himself reveals that there is an underlying unifying principle and logic to God’s law when He answers, in response to the question of what is the most important law, that all the law is contained in two laws; love God first, and love your neighbor as yourself. It is the existence of an underlying logic to God’s truth which holds us responsible for embracing and upholding God’s truth, in whatever form it is presented to us and in whatever condition we might find ourselves. God has created us and the world in the way that He has for a reason, and the fact that he has endowed us with reason and has given us the opportunity to use this reason in order to know His will more fully demands that we accept the responsibility of using reason in full.

Rejecting true reasoning as an informing principle in coming to know God’s truths and God’s will is a serious problem and an offense to God. It is one of the four major theological problems with Protestantism; the others being the denial of free-will, the rejection of Apostolic authority, and the reduction of Apostolic Tradition to simply Scripture. In the first three chapters of his Epistle to the Romans St. Paul clearly states that the purpose of both natural law and Mosaic Law is to prepare people for faith in Christ. This only has meaning if God has constructed Creation in such a way that it reveals something about God to man, which St. Paul affirms in (I) Romans ch. 1, where he states that “God has revealed His deity and power from the beginning of the world, in Creation, to the eye of reason”, and if God has endowed man with the capacity to respond to what is revealed, for otherwise, in what way is man prepared for faith? Is it that man is prepared by coming to know that he has absolutely no capacity or free-will to respond to God, as some would have us believe? Absolutely not! Natural and Mosaic law prepare humanity for faith not only through their exposition of man’s limits and sins, but also through their exposition of the goodness and benevolence of God, an exposition that He is willing to preserve and amplify, with faith. This goodness is embodied in such things as love for one’s family and friends, and the beauty of truth. God knows that those with a good heart will fall in love with the goodness that they encounter in life, and when they learn that the experience of this goodness is preserved and amplified by faith they will rejoice in faith. This is how God fishes for souls, and this is the bait that He uses.

Embracing the concept that God has not endowed us with the capacity to freely choose to respond to His truth and does not offer His truth through reasoning and Apostolic Tradition is paramount to declaring God to be an unfair and cruel being who holds us responsible for every sin while giving us neither the capacity nor the opportunity to choose not to sin, and who allows us to suffer under the burden of sin when there is no hope for us to learn from the consequences of our sin the need and the way to not sin, rendering the suffering a sadistic, useless punishment. It is none other than Satan who wishes us to believe that God could be so cruel and unfair.

After embracing faith there is still a purpose for reason and Tradition, and this is for the affirmation of faith through assisting the growth of both one’s knowledge and experience of God. This affirmation of faith is what God promises us throughout Scripture, and what He delivers on in full when He sends His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to those who have faith. The Comforter though is only fully received when the faithful are properly prepared, through reason and through the teachings of Holy Tradition.

Some Protestants would protest that they don’t reject reason but embrace it, and don’t reject the truths of Apostolic Tradition, just it’s errors. However, to say this is to ignore the fact the first Protestants attempted to claim that people are saved by faith alone, and this faith is separate from human will, reason, and the teachings of an Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church. They claimed that to say that our will, reason and works are related to our salvation is vanity. This claim in effect takes away any personnel responsibility in one’s salvation, and thus inevitably denies any importance to reason and works, as they become superfluous. This reflects what is actually an extreme monophysitism, because by separating man so far from Christ, which is the net result of their definition of man’s relationship with God, Christ’s humanity becomes totally irrelevant. While it may be true that some later Protestants began to reinstate the use of reason in coming to know God’s plan of salvation, it is usually in an effort to demonstrate that nothing but faith matters. Also, some have gone in an opposite direction, attempting to use reason without the guidance of Apostolic Tradition to develop so-called rational explanations for Biblical revelations, maintaining all the time, though, that only a limited, vague, understanding of God’s intended meaning can ever be acquired. The Christ these Protestants present to us is basically nestorian, one who, like their version of man, is capable of only a vague perception and experiencing of the Divine. The conclusions they draw from this approach to knowing God reveal that they haven’t experienced the Holy Spirit in a tangible way and thus cannot interpret Scripture in an accurate way. Theirs’ is a flawed reasoning resulting from a lack of enlightenment, an enlightenment that is both nurtured by Tradition and explanatory of Tradition, especially the concept that teachings which result from this enlightenment are true not only in a rational way but also in a mysterious way, beyond human comprehension. An aspect of this truth is that enlightened truth can have significance far beyond what is comprehended at the time that it is acquired, this significance becoming obvious only gradually, with time and prayer. A great example of this enlightened truth is the conclusions and the teachings of the first seven Ecumenical Councils, which not only answered the heresies of the time, but also all future heresies. The bottom line is that without the informing and guiding principles of reason and Apostolic Tradition one cannot acquire a full and direct experience of the Holy Spirit and one becomes vulnerable to flawed reasoning and the influence of false spirits. This is exactly what Satan strives for.

By rejecting Apostolic authority Protestants in effect reject the authority of the Holy Spirit, since the Spirit, since Pentecost, has exercised His authority through the Apostolic Church. This rejection, and the rejection of reasoning as an informing principle of God’s truth, including metaphysical truths, has led the Protestants to forsake God’s revelations about His law, with the excuse that it is vanity to believe that in this world man can gain the capacity to understand and keep God’s law. They then misuse the Apostle Paul’s words and claim that faith in Christ saves you from condemnation under God’s law even while you continue to transgress His law, when in fact faith saves you from condemnation under Mosaic law while simultaneously opening you to a fuller knowledge of God’s law, this knowledge acquired from the Spirit by way of the Sacraments, true reasoning, and by the embracing of the teachings of an Apostolic Church which is guided and taught by the Holy Spirit. This leads to a direct, complete, and constant experience of the Holy Spirit, and this gives one the strength to keep God’s laws under all circumstances. This is what saves a person, and this only comes through a faith in Christ that includes a willingness to continually seek to follow Christ with the humility to accept the necessity of continually learning what one must do in order to truly follow Him. Claiming to have faith in Christ and then not respecting God’s truths and laws while claiming that they are unknowable and unkeepable leads to condemnation under God’s law. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “not all who call me Lord shall be saved, only those who do my Father’s will. If He requires that you do His Father’s will then you’d better believe that He provides the means to discern and perform the Father’s will. To say otherwise is to declare Him to be an unfair liar.

God has done and does everything possible to inform us as to what He expects of us if we expect to attain the honor of being called His child. If we reject this opportunity that He affords us, we have no one to blame but ourselves. For those who claim that since God is all powerful, He can, if He chooses, make anyone His child, I say yes, this is true, but only if He redefines the criteria by which He defines His children. As it is, He defines His children as those who freely choose to love Him as He reveals Himself to them. This necessity of freely choosing God is the reason that not all are chosen by God, for He only chooses those who choose Him as He reveals Himself as He chooses to reveal Himself. This requirement of free choice will never be discarded by God because to do so would be to defeat His purpose of raising beings who are worthy of the name, ”child of God”, this because the elimination of this requirement of free choice renders the title meaningless. This degradation of the title “child of God” is in fact what Satan has attempted to achieve through Protestant theology, because in denying that man is free to choose a God who has fairly revealed Himself in Tradition and in Creation to the eye of reason it denies the glory due to a child of God, reducing the honor of being called a child of God to a humiliation at the hands of an unfair and cruel God. In this way Satan mocks God and His children, and Protestant theologians have unwittingly become Satan’s accomplices in this mockery.

Ironically, the redeeming quality of many Protestants is that they seek to act in a truly ethical manner while living in this world. Using common sense and practical ethics, they reveal that they do have God’s law in their hearts, and this keeps the door of salvation open to them. However, they must still, of their own free will, walk through that door if they are to fully realize this salvation, and this requires the acceptance of the authority of the teachings of the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church.

It is my belief that the central threat facing true Christianity today is the Protestant notions that God has not granted man free-will and has not offered man through reason, through the teachings of the Apostolic Church, through one’s experiences in life, and through the possibility of experiencing His uncreated energies while in this world, the opportunity to learn how to use this free-will to choose to act correctly, in a way that pleases God. Over the last one thousand years the Roman Church has moved away from the concept that the Holy Spirit can be tangibly experienced in this life, the loss of this concept a natural result of the limitations brought about by the filioque, with the evidence of this loss reflected in their flawed doctrine of created grace and their inordinate dependence upon the Papacy, intellectualism, and materialism. These flaws have limited their access to the Divine Vision, and this has opened up the Church to an assault by the Protestants and their ideas. The New Calendar Orthodox have shown that they do not understand the nature of the threat and have made themselves vulnerable to compromising correct theology while seeking reconciliation with other churches. Evidence of the failure of their approach to ecumenism is that they have not led their ecumenical partners to repentance. The Old Calendar Orthodox recognize the threat, but some do not seem to understand that when they reject the concept that correct reasoning is an integral part of the method by which God informs us of His truths they are falling victim to one of the same corruptions that engulfed the first Protestants and thus deny themselves an essential tool in the struggle to preserve and witness to the True Faith. This lack of rational discernment is reflected in their unwillingness to discriminate between Roman and Protestant theology in their criticisms, as they condemn Roman scholasticism when in fact the problem isn’t the principle of scholasticism but a flawed execution based upon a weak ontology. They also consistently reveal that they do not comprehend that while Rome’s errors may have helped to bring about Protestant errors, the nature of their respective errors are fundamentally different and the degree of error of the Protestants is far greater than that of Rome’s.

The misinterpretation by Rome of what actually constitutes Orthodoxy and the misapplication by some Orthodox of Orthodox theology in regards to some issues has contributed to the inability of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches to properly deal with a variety of issues, issues which many Protestants have ultimately dealt with better. An example of this in regards to civil government. I feel history shows that Roman and Orthodox Catholic societies have been slow to embrace the concept that the responsibilities of civil government are meant to become shared by all members of a society as those members progress in their capacity to handle said responsibilities. Societies are meant to educate it’s members in preparation for taking on these responsibilities, and this education goes hand and hand with their spiritual growth. Roman Catholic leaders of the past have had a tendency to distrust the notion of egalitarian government, probably because of a perceived threat to their own authority. Orthodox leaders have had a tendency to trivialize the value of good civil government, sometimes inappropriately labeling these concerns as matters of this world, not worthy of the attention of holy people. These attitudes were probably rooted in the tendency of both the Romans and Orthodox to sometimes attempt to elevate the importance of Christ’s divine nature at the expense of His, and ultimately our, human nature, this leading at times to the neglect of humanitarian concerns, one being the development of proper civil government. That God insists that we properly deal with our own humanity within the world of humanity is fundamental to a proper understanding of Christianity. If we fail here we fail as Christians, and we have no excuse for failure because God has provided all we need to succeed.

I consider the main weakness in Christianity today, and this applies to almost all Christians, is the tendency to believe that God has not provided for us in this world the means to come to know Him in a very full way, through faith, enlightened reason and knowledge. The Roman Church, by distorting the concept of Apostolic authority, has followed a path which has led them to a diminished capacity to lead people to an experience of third degree, or direct experiential knowledge of God. The Eastern Orthodox Churches have had a tendency to distrust human reasoning, even the reasoning of those illuminated in the Spirit, this reflected most clearly in an under appreciation of St. Augustine’s teachings, and this has led to a neglect of enlightened understanding and use of first degree, or human nature orientated, knowledge. The initial Protestants essentially rejected the concept that an enlightened understanding of first degree knowledge is possible and useful in regards to salvation, reduced second degree, or ecclesiastically orientated knowledge to Scripture alone, and then claimed ignorant faith is sufficient to lead one to third degree knowledge of God. This has inevitably led to a faith without accurate spiritual knowledge, and this then led, for some later Protestants, to an elevation in the value of first degree knowledge, but in a corrupted form, because to have a truly enlightened understanding of first degree knowledge one must have an enlighented understanding of second degree knowledge and also have acquired at least some experience of third degree knowledge. One of the great tragedies of Christianity today is that this Protestant approach to faith has become the main modern Western mode of religious thought, not only for Protestants, but for many Orthodox and Catholics, mainly because it is perceived to be the most comfortable, unintrusive, least threatening way to perceive God. It is true that this approach to faith can be comfortable and unintrusive, but this is also an indication of spiritual death.

Other Protestants, the fundamentalists, have followed a different path while rejecting the Apostolic Church, one in which blind faith has led them to not only delusional reasoning but also to delusional spiritual experiences which they claim are indications of an enlightened knowledge of God. This is the most dangerous path of all because it cuts them off not only from correct reasoning but also from reprimands by the Holy Spirit, for they label things of the Spirit, such as true knowledge, to be evil, and evil things, such as greed in the name of economic progress and militarism in the name of national pride as pleasing to God.

Ultimately, the Protestant approach to faith has helped lead man to a world where true knowledge of God is ignored and false visions of truth dominate, this brought about by the rejection of Catholic Orthodox Tradition and the consequential lack of awareness that without proper second degree knowledge of God’s Revelations and third degree knowledge of God Himself the unbridled pursuit of first degree knowledge, that is, worldly knowledge, while producing certain intellectual advances and material wealth, can lead to unmitigated disaster. This is a central issue that must be addressed by true Catholic Orthodox Christians, and correct reasoning is an essential tool that must be utilized. I believe that the best way to achieve progress in this area is to use proper reasoning to convince Roman Catholics of the true nature and significance of their errors in order to empower them so that they can use their resources to promote true Catholic Orthodox Christianity. This however also requires a willingness by Orthodox Christians to recognize that the foundations of Roman belief, while containing serious cracks, are not fundamentally different from the foundations of Orthodox belief, and that it is Protestant theology which is truly undermining the Christian Faith.

One must have faith that God has revealed Himself to us to as full a degree as is necessary for our salvation in, and only in, His Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, and that correct reasoning will always support this assertion. This does not mean that Catholic Orthodox Christians automatically have a clear sight of God’s truth, nor does it mean that God is not teaching those outside His Church truth, but does mean that His Holy Church shall persevere and prevail in it’s struggle to maintain the True Faith and shall be given the strength and wisdom to witness this Faith to the world.

appendix

Non-Christian Religions

a. Introduction

In the previous sections of this work I’ve explained my views as to what is proper Christian belief. Here I will give a brief explanation of my view on how four major non-Christian religions, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism relate to Catholic Orthodox Christian theology.

It is the Catholic Orthodox view that non-Catholic Orthodox religions and belief systems can and do contain some truths of God, but that there are inherent limitations in these belief systems’ capacities to enable a person to acquire and to know in fullness the truth that God offers to us. Obviously if one is a Christian according to the common understanding what this term means, which is, believing that Christ is by nature uniquely the Son of God, one would also believe that those who do not believe this are, at least in this regard, deficient in their understanding of God and His truths. The question then becomes; how does this deficiency affect a person’s capacity to acquire and understand other aspects of God’s truth?

As I’ve stated previously, it is my view that true Christian belief necessitates that God gives non-Christians opportunities to know and follow His ways at least partially, with this partial knowledge useful for the future development of a more complete vision of God as the triune God of Abraham. I feel the best approach to this issue of how knowledge within non-Christian religions prepares people for Christian Revelation is to briefly explain some essential differences between the beliefs of some the worlds major religions and Orthodox Catholic belief and to demonstrate how these differences can be interpreted in such a way as to be consistent with Catholic Orthodox theology. This is not meant to be an exhaustive study of the subject, but instead a demonstration of the logic underlying the wisdom of God’s multi-leveled revelation of His truth.

b. Judaism and Islam

Judaism is the foundation from whence Christianity sprang, and is recognized as such by Christians. The two main points of divergence between the religions are the Christian concepts of God as Trinity and God as incarnate. Jews claim that belief in the doctrine of the Trinity transgresses the first commandment, which states clearly that God is One. Christians claim that the doctrine of the Trinity does not violate the first commandment because while it declares that there are three distinct persons of the Godhead, the three are intrinsically united, thus one. For a Christian this difference in understandings results because of the more complete revelation of God brought to mankind by Christ. Before Christ, man could only perceive God from “the outside”, not being privy to His interior life, thus perceiving only the “oneness” of God. With Christ, man gains a degree of access to God’s interior life, thus perceives God as Trinity. According to Christian understanding, the foundation of unity for the Trinity is laid out in Judaism in order to prepare man for the revelation of the triune nature of God, specifically so that there will be no discarding of the oneness of God when the Trinity is revealed. This oneness of God defines the intrinsic unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The revelation of God as Trinity explains to us how a transcendent God can also be tangible as Spirit and become Incarnate as a human being, without losing His transcendent nature. The Incarnation reveals how man can be truly said to be made in the image of God, and how he can have the opportunity to become a true child of God through unification with the Incarnate God. For a Christian this opportunity is the fulfillment of the promises made by God in the Old Testament.

In general, Christians have a difficult time understanding Islam’s place in God’s plan of salvation for the world. The main sticking point that Christians have with Islam is the denial of Christ’s divinity. In my view Islam has a similar function as does Judaism in God’s plan of salvation; the preparation of it’s followers for a more complete revelation of God, one which reveals to Muslims that Jesus is in fact God Incarnate. It might seem odd that God would prepare a people for this revelation with a previous interpretation of a revelation that denies the new revelation, but there are a variety of possible reasons for this. After all, Judaism also seems to deny the possibility that Christ is Divine, and in fact, this became the central issue which led to Christ’s death on the Cross and the split between Jews who believed in Christ and those who didn’t.

According to Christian understanding, knowledge and acceptance of the divinity of Christ can only be acquired by man and angels through the grace of God. The truth of Christ’s divinity cannot be known until it is revealed by God Himself, and He chooses to reveal it to whomever He chooses at a time when He knows is best. Thus, for a Jew or a Muslim, or anyone else for that matter, the truth of Christ’s divinity and the capacity and willingness to accept this truth is offered to people at a time of God’s choice. The offer of salvation through Christ is partially presented to Muslims through Christ’s Church, partially not because the whole truth is not given to the Church, for it is, in the Holy Spirit whom resides in the Church, but because of deficiencies of people within the Church which can and do cloud the offer. Until the members of the Church make more perfect their response and testimony to Christ’s grace and truth in both teachings and actions, there will be difficulty in bringing Muslims and other non-Christians to the truth of Christ’s divinity.

God will inevitably overcome any obstacles to perceptions of His truth caused by the ignorance of angels and the obstinacy of man. The only issue in question is whether this will be a pleasant or unpleasant process. Christian fidelity to Christ’s teaching is one determining factor as to the degree of difficulty that non-Christian have in accepting Christ, and so is a non-Christians disposition towards truth, a factor which is influenced by the religion or belief system that the person is exposed to during their lifetime. If the precepts of any belief system is rooted to at least some degree in the pursuit of genuine truth, a proper disposition towards truth will develop and this will ease a person’s embrace of the truth of Christ.

If a non-Christian does not accept the truth of the divinity of Christ while they are actively alive in this world, they will be confronted with this truth as they enter into death. If they have not blasphemed against the Holy Spirit up until this point in their lives, they will be offered, and will accept, though possibly with great difficulty depending upon their spiritual condition and disposition towards truth, Christ before being lost to eternal death. The essential point here is that Christians must witness to Christ’s truth properly and non-Christian belief systems must nurture a desire for authentic truth so that a person’s path to full truth is as uncluttered as possible. When this is not the case, those responsible will answer to God, and under these circumstances His revelations to them will not be pleasant.

Muslims claim that the teachings of Islam were revealed by the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed. As Christians we can accept this, but we also know that angels are not all knowing and only know what God has revealed to them. Thus, it is possible that not all angels at any particular time are themselves clear as to the divinity of Christ. St. Peter states, in his first epistle (ch.1, line12), that which the Holy Spirit has given unto man the angels seek to inquire. Thus, perhaps God ordered Gabriel to teach Mohammed the truth as he, Gabriel, knew it at the time, in order to enlighten Mohammed to the truth as the angels knew truth. This would also serve to eventually reveal to the world the limits to angelic knowledge at any given time. This then would explain why the Koran contradicts the Gospels.

It might seem odd the truth of Christ’s divinity had not been revealed to Gabriel by the time he made his revelations to Mohammed, especially since in the Gospels he seems to posses this knowledge. However, one should not presume a linear nature for time in regards to God’s revelations through angels. As expressed earlier, I believe all souls were created simultaneously with the creation of Adam’s soul. Thus, God could well have ordered Gabriel to impart his knowledge to the soul of Mohammed before Gabriel himself was granted knowledge of God’s triune nature and before the incarnation of Christ, well before Mohammed’s earthly experience of the revelation.

The concept that angels must learn through man the theology of the Trinity is perfectly natural in the context of a reality where God becomes incarnate as a man. Christ’s incarnation as a man is a more complete revelation by God of Himself, one which angelic beings would inherently have difficulty in comprehending and one that both tests their fidelity to God and also instructs them as to His nature and intent in regards to His actions within Creation.

When one reads with Christian sensibilities the Koran’s account of the creation of Adam, and Satan’s reaction to this event, one can see an underlying meaning to the story which would not be perceived by a person without Christian belief. Since God intended from the beginning to become incarnate as a man, His revelation of this intent actually begins to unfold with His creation of man in His image. According to the Koran, after Adam is created God orders the angels to bow down before Adam. Satan refuses to do this, saying that only God is worthy of this form of homage. He then, because of his jealousy of Adam, tempts Adam and Eve to sin, in an attempt to demonstrate to God Adam’s unworthiness. According to Islamic tradition, Satan will be forgiven his transgressions because it was supposedly inspired by his extreme love and reverence for God, a reverence that does not allow him to bow before anyone but God. However, as Christians we know that Satan was missing a bit of information here, and this is that God intends to become incarnate as a man, as Adam’s descendant. With this information we can understand the true meaning of God demanding that the angels bow down before Adam; He is preparing them for the revelation that He will become incarnate as a man. The preparation for the revelation that God planned to become incarnate as a man was also a test, one which Satan fails miserably. The incarnation of God as human is a more complete revelation by God of Himself. Satan rejects this more complete revelation because he cannot accept God as God truly is, as he prefers his own partial vision of God. Satan is ultimately revealing that he can only love God when he perceives that he himself represents God’s preferred creature. Satan’s love for his own partial vision of God ultimately produces a blinding hatred for the fully revealed God. His war on Adam, born of jealousy, develops into a war on God, born of hatred. This is what is not revealed in the Koran.

This interpretation of Satan’s fall from grace serves as a lesson for all who claim to love God, the lesson being that one must always approach God and the apprehending of His truths with genuine humility. To do otherwise can lead to a love of a false perception of God and His truths which could well lead you to set yourself against God while claiming a love of God. This is what happened to Satan, and also to those who sought the death of Christ on the cross.

c. Hinduism and Buddhism

From the Catholic Orthodox Christian’s perspective Hinduism and Buddhism are considered to be natural religions, meaning that they are not based upon direct revelations from the God of Abraham, but instead upon truths imbedded in Creation by God at Creation. These truths are of both a natural and supernatural nature, remembering that according to Catholic Orthodox Christian belief only the uncreated triune Godhead is eternal and uncreated, while all other supernatural phenomena are created and everlasting. Here again we see the importance of the concept of distinguishing the difference between what is uncreated and what is created, in that with this concept it becomes perfectly natural that man can acquire legitimate knowledge and experience of created aspects of metaphysical reality without direct revelations from God. This then enables Christians to recognize, accept, and respect the genuine truths that are contained within the teachings of these religions while also recognizing the inherent limitations that exist in any belief system that does not include direct revelations from the God of Abraham.

As expressed earlier, it is my belief that all souls that will ever be born into this world are intrinsically related to Adam’s soul and are created simultaneously with Adam’s soul, who can be called the “great soul”. All souls then have a certain degree of “common consciousness” of reality, this consciousness imprinted upon Adam’s great soul, thus all souls, at Creation, this imprint constituting the primordial mind of a each person. These minds gradually perceive, both consciously and unconsciously, universal archetypes that are created by God at Creation and which are meant to educated a soul to those truths of reality which God seeks for a soul to know, this preparing the soul for future lessons that it will experience as an incarnate being. When a soul becomes an incarnate being these lessons through archetypes continue, though now in tandem with the lessons acquired through the experiencing of created natural reality.

Primordial archetypes and natural physical reality can easily be seen as unified phenomena when one considers Creation to be a unified entity in which time is simply the sequential perceptions of the whole Creation by time oriented beings. Creation’s unity becomes more clearly perceived by time oriented beings through the development of their capacity to more completely interconnect their sequential perceptions. This will then lead to a greater capacity to perceive the “wholeness” of reality and other “levels” of reality of Creation, supernatural reality being one of these. This, I believe, is the perspective of Creation that Hindus and Buddhist acquire through their practices. This knowledge itself will not bring a soul salvation, since unity with the uncreated triune God of Abraham, acquired through unity with Christ, is necessary for this. However, if the knowledge gained through Hindu and Buddhist practices is understood in the proper light and with proper humility it can prepare a soul well for it’s inevitable encounter with the uncreated God of Abraham.

Perceptions and insights gained through natural religions are inevitably limited until their is an embrace of the God of Abraham, and corrupted to a degree, because of the fall of all human’s ancestors, Adam and Eve. Thus, perceptions of archetypes, some of which in Hinduism are perceived as Gods, though they are not, are distorted perceptions of the images and ideas which God originally created as an aid to the enlightenment of the soul to the truths that He intends man to know. The striving for these perceptions by Hindus is simply the natural desire of a soul to return to it’s primordial state, a state of innocence in which God educates the soul through the experiencing of primordial archetypes. This is, I believe, one reason why Hindus mistakenly refer to all reality as a dream like illusion; they seek to enter into a state where this seems to be true.

In Buddhism, the goal of reaching nirvana by achieving “nothingness” is simply taking the desire for the return to the primordial state one step further, to the point of the soul’s creation, before the imprints of the archetypes begin to be perceived by the soul. This is then why there is a sense of loss of form and of dissolving into nothingness, since nothingness is from which God created the “great soul’ of Adam, and hence, all souls. This is also why the soul will believe that it is experiencing eternity as it experiences it’s approach to it’s own beginning. It senses it’s return to complete undifferentiated unity with all souls in Adam’s soul, and also, as it approaches the experience of the beginning of time, it’s sense of itself in time expands. This is because, while it experiences smaller and smaller time periods as it approaches the beginning of Creation, it is simultaneously permanently existing in the constant sized fullness of Creation. Consequently, the soul perceives it’s constant sized fullness in time as apparently expanding, since the moment in time which it is experiencing as it’s approaches the beginning of time is contracting relative to it’s permanent existence in the fullness of time. This then means that the sense of eternity achieved through the soul’s approach to the nothingness of it’s origin is actually an illusion produced by the soul’s perception of it’s own everlasting and permanent nature relative to it’s perception of it’s own creation from nothing.

Awaking to the truth of the eternal uncreated Trinity will change a Hindu’s and Buddhist’s perceptions of metaphysical reality in a variety of ways. For the example just given in regards to a Buddhist’s soul’s perception of time as it approaches it’s origin, the everlasting soul, since, though it has become permanent still posses a beginning, will recognize it’s own smallest relative to the eternal Godhead when it is exposed to the uncreated and truly eternal Trinity. It then will loss it’s sense of infinite existence. In order to regain it’s sense of infinite existence it will need to become unified with the uncreated Trinity, this accomplished through unification with Christ. I believe an opportunity for unity with Christ will be offered to and accepted by truly humble Buddhists as they are exposed to the Trinity either in their active life or as they approach the experience of eternal death.

In regards to Hindus, exposure to the uncreated Godhead will reveal more accurate perceptions of archetypes, so the true and full purpose of the archetypes will be recognized. A truly humble Hindu will embrace this fuller truth provided by God, and will be comforted in knowing that this greater enlightenment provided through coming to know the uncreated God of Abraham who became incarnate as Christ does not destroy the knowledge gained through the practice of Hinduism, but instead perfects it.

d. Conclusion

The previous explanations emphasize both the importance of the understanding the difference between what is uncreated, God, and what is created. We are meant to worship only the uncreated, but we are called upon to utilize the truths of Creation and our capacity to perceive these truths in order to elevate our consciousness of God.

Here I’d like to reiterate my criticism of the Roman Catholic Churchs’ lack of emphasis upon precise differentiation between that which is uncreated, God and that which is created, everything else. In my view this shortcoming limit a Roman theologian’s capacity to clearly explain both the virtues and deficiencies of non-Christian religions. In regards to Orthodox theologians, while they have a clear understanding of the importance of precise differentiation between the uncreated and created they have a tendency to undervalue the worth of created reality, especially the usefulness of utilizing the understanding of God’s design of Creation for the purposes of bringing people to the acceptance and experiencing of the uncreated Trinity. My strongest criticism though is of Protestant theology, which under the guise of “faith alone” completely undercuts the proper understanding of the relationship between the of the truths of God’s Creation and the acquisition of salvation in Christ.