1) Introduction: Dogma and spirituality
2) What is faith?
3) The call
4) Conversion to God
5) Philosophy in search of a supreme Good
6) The Old Testament: Divine Revelation
7) The word ‘God’
8) The Divine Names
9) ‘Father’ as a Divine Name
10) Cataphatic and apophatic theology
11) The Mystery of the Trinity
12) How to explain the Mystery of the Holy Trinity?
13) Unity of love
14) God the Creator
15) The angels
16) The origin of evil
17) The evil-doer
18) The universe
19) The six days of creation
20) The human person
21) Image and likeness
22) Soul and body
23) Primordial humanity before the Fall
24) The Fall
25) Consequences of Adam’s sin
26) Jesus Christ, the ‘New Adam’
27) The Christ of the Gospels: God and Man
28) The Christ of faith: one person in two Natures
29) The unity of natures
30) Two actions and two wills
31) Redemption
32) Church as the Kingdom of Christ
33) The attributes of the Church
34) The Church hierarchy
35) Women in the Church
36) The Mother of God and the saints
37) The Holy Icons
38) The Cross
39) Church time
40) The Church and churches: divisions and reconciliation
41) A life in the sacraments
42) Baptism
43) Chrismation
44) The Eucharist
45) Penance
46) Anointing with Holy Oil
47) Marriage
48) Priesthood
49) Monascticism
50) The end of history
51) Death and resurrection
52) The Last Judgment
53) ‘What is Hell?’
54) ‘...A new heaven and a new earth’

INTRODUCTION: DOGMA AND SPIRITUALITY

In our day there is a widely held view that religious dogmas are not compulsory but secondary: even if they still have a certain historical value, they are no longer vital for Christians. Moral and social agendas have become the main concern of many Christian communities, while theological issues are often neglected. The dissociation of dogma and morality, however, contradicts the very nature of religious life, which presupposes that faith should always be confirmed by deeds, and vice versa. Emphasizing this, St James said: ‘Faith apart from works is dead’ (James 2:26). St Paul, on the other hand, claimed that ‘a man is justified by faith apart from works of law’ (Rom.3:28). Under the ‘works of law’ he meant the Old Testament rites and sacrifices which were no longer necessary after Christ’s sacrifice for the life of the world. Good deeds are necessary and essential, yet when separated from faith they do not in themselves save the human person: one is justified by faith, but a faith which is accompanied by moral life.

No less alien to Christianity is the dissociation of dogma and mysticism, or doctrine and spirituality, or theology and spiritual life. There is an essential interdependence between dogma and mysticism: they are inseparable and both, in different ways, lead one to the knowledge of truth. ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’, says the Lord (John 8:32), Who Himself is the only Truth, the Way and the Life (John 14:6). Each dogma reveals truth, opens up the way and communicates life.

Theology ought not to contradict religious experience but on the contrary proceed from it. This has been the theology of the Fathers of the Church for twenty centuries — from St Paul and St Ignatius of Antioch to St Theophan the Recluse and St Silouan of Mount Athos.

Founded on spiritual experience, remaining apart from rationalism and scholasticism, Orthodox theology is a living entity in our day no less than hundreds of years ago. The same questions have always confronted the human person: What is truth? What is the meaning of life? How can one find joy and peace of heart? What is the way to salvation? Christianity does not aim to dot all the ‘i’s by answering all the questions the human spirit has to ask. But it does open up another reality which transcends all that surrounds us in this earthly life. Once this reality is encountered, the human person leaves behind all his questions and bewilderment, because his soul has come into contact with the Divinity and falls silent in the presence of the Mystery which no human word can convey.

WHAT IS FAITH?

Faith is the path on which an encounter takes place between us and God. It is God who takes the first step: He fully and unconditionally believes in us and gives us a sign, an awareness of His presence. We hear the mysterious call of God, and our first step towards an encounter with Him is a response to this call. God may call us openly or in secret, overtly or covertly. But it is difficult for us to believe in Him if we do not first heed this call.

Faith is both a mystery and a miracle. Why does one person respond to the call while another not? Why is one open to receive the voice of God, while the other remains deaf? Why, having encountered God, does one immediately abandon everything and follow Him, but the other turn away and take a different road? ‘As He walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, “Follow Me”... Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. And going on from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John... and He called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him’ (Matt.4:18-22).

What secret hides behind the readiness of the Galilean fishermen to abandon everything and follow Jesus at first encounter? Why, on the other hand, did the rich young man, who also heard Christ’s ‘Come and follow Me’, not abandon everything for Him but instead ‘went away sorrowful’ (Matt.19:21-22)? Is it perhaps because the fishermen were poor, while the young man ‘had great possessions’? The former had nothing other than God, while the latter had ‘treasure on earth’.

Each one of us has treasure on earth, whether it be in the form of money or possessions, satisfactory employment or material wellbeing. But the Lord said, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt.5:3). In St Luke’s Gospel this is put even more simply and directly: ‘Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Luke 6:20). Blessed are they who realize that while they may possess many things, they in fact own nothing. Blessed are they who realize that no earthly acquisition can substitute for God. Blessed are they who go and sell all their wealth in order to acquire the pearl of great price (cf. Matt.13:45-46). Blessed are they who know that without God they are poor, who have thirsted and hungered after Him with all their soul, mind and will.

THE CALL

It has never been easy to hear the message of faith. In our day we are usually so engrossed in the problems of earthly existence that we simply have no time to listen to this message and to reflect on God. For some, religion has been reduced to celebrating Christmas and Easter and to observing a few traditions for fear of being ‘torn away from our roots’. Others do not go to church at all because they are ‘too busy’. ‘He is engrossed in his work’; ‘work is everything to her’; ‘he is a busy man’. These are some of the best compliments that one can receive from friends and colleagues. ‘Busy people’ are a breed peculiar to modern times. Nothing exists for them other than a preoccupation which swallows them up completely, leaving no place for that silence where the voice of God may be heard.

And yet, however paradoxical it may seem, in spite of today’s noise and confusion, it is still possible to hear the mysterious call of God in our hearts. This call may not always be understood as the voice of God. It may strike us as a feeling of dissatisfaction or of inner unease, or as the beginning of a search. For many, it is only after the passing of years that they realize their life was incomplete and inadequate because it was without God. ‘You have made us for Yourself’, says St Augustine, ‘and our hearts are restless until they rest in You’. Without God there can never be fulness of being. It is therefore crucially important for us to be able to hear and to respond to the voice of God at the very moment when God is speaking, and not years later. If someone identifies and responds to the call of God, this may change and transfigure his or her whole life.

CONVERSION TO GOD

Throughout the ages, people have come to God in diverse ways. Sometimes the encounter is sudden and unexpected, sometimes it is prepared by circuitous paths of searching, doubts and disillusion. Occasionally God ‘closes in’ on us, catching us unawares, while at other times we discover God and turn to Him on our own. This conversion may occur sooner or later, in childhood or in youth, in adulthood or in old age. There are no two people who have come to God by identical paths. There is no way that has been followed by more than one seeker. I am a unique traveller; I must take my own road, to discover a personal God, to Whom I can say, ‘O God, Thou art my God!’ (Ps.63:6) God is one and the same for all people, but He must be discovered by me and become mine.

Conversion is always both a miracle and a gift, whether it is sudden and unexpected or gradual. Often a person searches for a long time before coming to God; yet it is not the individual who discovers God but rather God who captures the individual. Nevertheless, there may well be a connection between the endeavours and zeal of the seeker and the object of the search: encounter with God. St Augustine, for example, passed through many trials in the search for truth. He read many philosophical and theological books before coming to understand, in his thirty-third year, that he could not live without God. In modern times people often begin their search for an abstract ‘truth’ through books before coming to a revelation of the Personal God.

Some have come to Christianity in a roundabout way, through other religions and cults, others after experiencing a catastrophe, such as the loss of a loved one, an illness, or a sudden collapse of lifelong expectations. In misfortune we feel our poverty very keenly, through the realization that we have has lost everything and have nothing else or nobody other than God. It is only then that we find ourselves crying to God de profundis, out of the depths (Ps.130:1), from the abyss of profound grief and despair.

Conversion may also happen as a result of meeting a true believer, a priest or a lay person.

There is, finally, what appears to be the most natural way of reaching God: to be a child born into a religious family and raised as a believer. But here, too, faith received through our families must be thought through and suffered by each individual: it has to become a part of his own experience. There are many people from religious families who break with the faith of their ancestors: the miraculous encounter with God does not occur. How this happens, we do not always know. What we do know is that nobody is born a believer. Faith is a gift, though often it is given though the efforts of the person who has sought it.

PHILOSOPHY IN SEARCH OF A SUPREME GOOD

For as long as humans have lived on earth they have striven to find the meaning of their existence. In Ancient Greece the philosophers studied the universe and its laws. They investigated human nature and human reason, hoping to discover knowledge of the first causes of all things. The philosophers not only engaged in rational debate and logic, but also studied astronomy and physics, mathematics and geometry, music and poetry. A diversity of knowledge was in many cases combined with an ascetic life and prayer, without which it was impossible to obtain a katharsis, a purification of mind, soul and body.

In studying the visible world, philosophers came to the conclusion that there was nothing accidental in the universe, that every detail has its place and fulfils its role by being subject to strict laws: the planets never go out of orbit and satellites never abandon their planets. Everything in the world is so harmonious and meaningful that the ancients called it the ‘cosmos’, that is, ‘beauty’, ‘order’, ‘harmony’, as opposed to ‘chaos’ — ‘disorder’, or ‘disharmony’. For them the cosmos is a huge mechanism in which a single unbreakable rhythm is at work, a single regular pulse. But each mechanism must have been created by someone, just as every watch needs to have been constructed and sprung. Thus the philosophers arrived at the idea of a single Author of the Universe. Plato called Him the Creator, Father, God and Demiurge (Maker or Craftsman).

The Greek philosophers also spoke about the Logos (meaning ‘word’, ‘reason’, ‘idea’, or ‘law’), which was originally perceived as an eternal and general law upon which the whole world is constructed. However, the Logos is not only an abstract idea: it is also a divine creative force mediating between God and the created world. This was the teaching of Philo of Alexandria and the Neoplatonists.

Plotinus, a representative of the Neoplatonist school, emphasizes the transcendence, infiniteness, limitlessness and incomprehensibility of the Divinity. No definitions can exhaust it, no attributes can be ascribed to it. In being the fulness of Being, the One, as Plotinus calls the highest Principle, God, engenders all other forms of being, of which the first is the Intelligence and the second the Soul. Beyond the confines of the circle of the Soul lies the material world, that is, the universe, into which the Soul breathes life. Thus the world is a kind of reflection of the divine reality and bears within itself the marks of beauty and perfection. The One, the Intelligence and the Soul comprise in total a Divine Triad (Trinity). Through purification (katharsis) we can be elevated to the contemplation of God. However, the One still remains incomprehensible and inaccessible. He remains a mystery.

With these examples from Plato and Plotinus we can see that the Greek philosophy comes very close to the truths that are finally to be revealed in Christianity: the one God, the Creator of the world, the divine Logos, the Holy Trinity (Divine Triad), the vision of God, the deification of the human person. This is why early Christian writers called the philosophers ‘Christians before Christ’.

THE OLD TESTAMENT: DIVINE REVELATION

The majority of peoples in the pre-Christian world followed various polytheistic beliefs and cults.

There was one chosen people, however, whom God entrusted with knowledge of Himself, of the creation of the world, and of the meaning of existence. The ancient Jews knew God not from books, not from the deliberations of wise men, but from their own age-old experience. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, and the many righteous men and women of Israel did not simply contemplate God and pray to Him — they saw Him with their own eyes, conversed with Him face to face, ‘walked’ before Him.

Each of God’s revelations in the Old Testament bear a personal nature. God is revealed to humanity not as an abstract force, but as a living Being, Who can speak, hear, see, think and help. God takes a vital and active part in the life of the Israelites. When Moses leads the people out of Egypt into the Promised Land, God Himself goes ahead of them in the form of a column of fire. God abides among the people, converses with them and lives in the house that they built for Him. When King Solomon completed the building of the Temple, he called upon God to live there. God, Who abides in darkness, Who is surrounded by great mystery, Whom heaven and earth, that is, the visible and invisible world, cannot contain, comes down to people and lives where they want Him to live, where they have set aside a place for Him.

This is the most striking thing about the religion of revelation: God remains under the veil of a mystery, remains unknown and yet at the same time He is so close to people that they can call Him ‘our God’ and ‘my God’. It is here that we encounter the gulf between Divine revelation and the achievements of human thought: the God of the philosophers remains abstract and lifeless, whereas the God of revelation is a living, close and personal God. Both ways lead us to understand that God is incomprehensible and that He is a mystery; yet philosophy abandons us at the foothills of the mountain, forbidding us to ascend further, whereas religion leads us up to the heights where God abides in darkness, it draws us into the cloud of unknowing where beyond all words and rational deductions it opens up before us the mystery of God.

THE WORD ‘GOD’

The words used to refer to ‘God’ in different languages are related to various concepts. The peoples of antiquity attempted to find in their languages a word to express their notion of God or, rather, their experience of encounter with the Divinity.

In the languages of Germanic origin the word Gott comes from a verb meaning ‘to fall to the ground’, to fall in worship. This reflects an experience similar to that of St Paul, who, when illumined by God on the road to Damascus, was struck by divine light and immediately ‘fell to the ground... in fear and trembling’ (Acts 9:4-6).

In the Slavic languages the word Bog (‘God’) is related to the Sanskrit bhaga, which means ‘dispensing gifts’, and which in its turn comes from bhagas, meaning ‘inheritance’, ‘happiness’, ‘wealth’. The Slavonic word bogatstvo means ‘riches’, ‘wealth’. Here we find God expressed in terms of the fulness of being, perfection and bliss. These properties, however, do not remain within God, but are poured out onto the world, onto people and onto all living things. God dispenses the gift of His plenitude and endows us with His riches, when we turn to Him.

According to Plato, the Greek word for God, Theos, originates from the verb theein, meaning ‘to run’. St Gregory the Theologian identifies a second etymology beside the one of Plato: he claims that the name Theos comes from the verb aithein, meaning ‘to be set alight’, ‘to burn’, ‘to be aflame’. St Basil the Great offers two more etymologies: ‘God is called Theos either because He placed (tetheikenai) all things, or because He beholds (theasthai) all things’.

The Name by which God revealed Himself to the ancient Israelites was Yahweh, meaning ‘The One Who Is’, that is, the One Who has existence and being. It derives from the verb hayah, meaning ‘to be’, ‘to exist’, or rather from the first person of this verb, ehieh — ‘I am’. This verb has a dynamic meaning: it does not simply denote the fact of existence, but signifies a living and actual presence. When God tells Moses ‘I am who I am’ (Ex.3:14), this means ‘I live, I am here, I am together with you’. At the same time this name emphasizes the superiority of God’s being over all other beings. He is the independent, primary, eternal being, the plenitude of being which is above being.

Ancient tradition tells us that after the Babylonian captivity, the Jews refrained out of reverential awe from uttering the name Yahweh, the One Who Is. Only the high priest could do so, and this once a year on the day of Yom Kippur, when he went into the Holy of Holies to offer incense. If an ordinary person or even a priest wanted to say something about God, he substituted other names for Yahweh, usually the name Adonai (the Lord). In script the Jews indicated the word ‘God’ by the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH. The ancient Jews knew well that there was no name or word in human language that could convey the essence of God. In refraining from pronouncing the name of God, the Jews showed that it is possible to be at one with God not so much through words and descriptions, but through a reverential and trembling silence.

THE DIVINE NAMES

‘How can we speak of the Divine names? How can we do this if the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge..? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?’, says Dionysius the Areopagite. At the same time, God, being totally transcendent, is present in the created world and revealed through it. All creation longs for God, and more especially, we humans crave for knowledge of Him. Therefore God is to be praised both ‘by every name’ and ‘as the Nameless One’. Nameless in His essence, God is variously named by humanity when He reveals Himself to us.

Some of the names attributed to God emphasize His superiority over the visible world; His power, dominion and kingly dignity. The name Lord (Greek, Kyrios) signifies the supreme dominion of God not only over His chosen people, but also over the whole world. The name of Almighty (Greek, Pantokrator) signifies that God holds all things in His hand; He upholds the world and its order.

The names Holy, ‘Holy Place’, Holiness, Sanctification, Good and Goodness indicate that God not only contains within Himself the whole plenitude of goodness and holiness, but He also pours out this goodness onto all of His creatures, sanctifying them.

In Holy Scripture there are other attributions to God: Wisdom, Truth, Light, Life, Salvation, Atonement, Deliverance, Resurrection, Righteousness, Love. There are in Scripture a number of names for God taken from nature. These do not attempt to define either His characteristics or His attributes, but are rather symbols and analogies. God is compared with the sun, the stars, fire, wind, water, dew, cloud, stone, cliff and fragrance. Christ Himself is spoken of as Shepherd, Lamb, Way, Door. All of these epithets, simple and concrete, are borrowed from everyday reality and life. But, as in Christ’s parables of the pearl, tree, leaven and seeds, we discern a hidden meaning that is infinitely greater and more significant.

Holy Scripture speaks of God as a being with human form having a face, eyes, ears, hands, shoulders, wings, legs and breath. It is said that God turns around and turns away, recollects and forgets, becomes angry and calms down, is surprised, sorrows, hates, walks and hears. Fundamental to this anthropomorphism is the experience of a personal encounter with God as a living being. In order to express this experience we have come to use earthly words and images.

‘FATHER’ AS A DIVINE NAME

‘Father’ is the traditional, biblical name for God. His children are the people of Israel: ‘For Thou art our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us; Thou, O Lord art our Father, our Redeemer from of old is Thy name’ (Is.63:16). The fatherhood of God is, of course, not a matter of maleness for there is no gender in the Divinity. It is important to remember, however, that the name ‘Father’ was not simply applied by humans to the Divinity: it is the very name with which God opened Himself to the people of Israel. Male imagery was not therefore imposed on God, rather God Himself chose it in His revelation to humans (cf. 2 Sam.7:14; 1 Chron.17:13; Jer.3:19; 31:9). The three Persons of the Holy Trinity bear the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit, where the name Son belongs to the eternal Logos of God, Who was incarnate and became man. In Semitic languages where the word for Spirit (Hebrew ruah, Syriac ruha) is feminine, female imagery is applied to the Holy Spirit. Both the Hebrew and the Greek terms for the Wisdom of God (Hebrew hokhma, Greek sophia) are feminine: this opens the possibility of applying female imagery to the Son of God, Who is traditionally identified with the Wisdom. With this exception, for both Father and Son exclusively male imagery is used in the Eastern tradition.

The Orthodox normally oppose modern attempts to change traditional biblical imagery by making God-language more ‘inclusive’ and referring to God as ‘mother’, and to His Son as ‘daughter’, or using the generic terms ‘parent’ and ‘child’. For the Orthodox, the full understanding of motherhood is embodied in the person of the Mother of God, whose veneration is not merely a custom or cultural phenomenon, but a church dogma and an essential part of spirituality. It is therefore not a matter of cultural difference between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics on the one hand, and the Protestants on the other, that the former venerate the Mother of God, while the latter pray to ‘God the Mother’. It is a serious dogmatic difference. Moreover, it is not simply stubbornness on the part of the Orthodox when they reject changing biblical God-language, but rather a clear understanding of the fact that the entire spiritual, theological and mystical tradition of the Church undergoes irrecoverable alterations when the traditional set of the divine names and images is changed.

Indeed, any name can be applied to the Divinity, while none can describe it. All names used for God in biblical and Orthodox traditions are aimed at grasping the mystery which is beyond names. Nevertheless, it is crucially important to remain with biblical God-language and not replace it with innovative forms. All names for God are anthropomorphic. Yet there is a difference between biblical anthropomorphism, which is based on the experience of the personal God in His revelation to humans, and the pseudo-anthropomorphism of modern theologians who, by introducing the notion of gender into the Divinity, speak of God as ‘He-She’, or ‘Our Mother and Father’.

CATAPHATIC AND APOPHATIC THEOLOGY

When discussing the names of God, we inevitably conclude that not one of them can give us a complete idea of who He is. To speak of the attributes of God is to discover that their sum total is not God. God transcends any name. If we call Him being, He transcends being, He is supra-being. If we ascribe to Him righteousness and justice, in His love He transcends all justice. If we call Him love, He is much more than human love: He is supra-love. God transcends all attributes that we are capable of ascribing to Him, be it omniscience, omnipresence or immutability. Ultimately we arrive at the conclusion that we can say nothing about God affirmatively: all discussion about Him remains incomplete, partial and limited. Finally we come to realize that we cannot say what God is, but rather what He is not. This manner of speaking about God has received the name of apophatic (negative) theology, as opposed to cataphatic (affirmative) theology.

The traditional image of Moses ascending Mount Sinai to God, surrounded in darkness, inspired both St Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite to speak about the divine darkness as a symbol of God’s incomprehensibility. To enter the divine darkness is to go beyond the confines of being as understood by the intellect. Moses encountered God but the Israelites remained at the foot of the mountain, that is, within the confines of a cataphatic knowledge of God. Only Moses could enter the darkness; having separated himself from all things, he could encounter God, Who is outside of everything, Who is there where there is nothing. Cataphatically we can say that God is Light, but in doing so we liken God to sensible light. And if it is said about Christ transfigured on Mount Tabor that ‘his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light’ (Matt.17:2), then the cataphatic notion of ‘light’ is used here symbolically, since this is the uncreated light of the Divinity that transcends all human concepts of light. Apophatically we can call the Divine light, the supra-light or darkness. Thus the darkness of Sinai and the light of Tabor are one and the same.

In our understanding of God we often rely upon cataphatic notions since these are easier and more accessible to the mind. But cataphatic knowledge has its limits. The way of negation corresponds to the spiritual ascent into the Divine abyss where words fall silent, where reason fades, where all human knowledge and comprehension cease, where God is. It is not by speculative knowledge but in the depths of prayerful silence that the soul can encounter God, Who is ‘beyond everything’ and Who reveals Himself to her as in-comprehensible, in-accessible, in-visible, yet at the same time as living and close to her — as God the Person.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY

Christians believe in God the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not three gods, but one God in three Hypostases, in three personal beings. What mathematics and logic consider an absurdity constitutes the cornerstone of our faith, namely that 1=3 and 3=1. Christians participate in the trinitarian Godhead not through logic but through repentance, that is, through a complete change and renewal of the mind, heart and feelings (the Greek word for ‘repentance’ — metanoia — literally means ‘change of mind’). To touch upon the mystery of the Holy Trinity is impossible unless the mind changes from a rational way of thinking and becomes illumined by divine grace.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not an invention of theologians, not a teaching which gradually developed within the Church, but divinely revealed truth. At the Baptism of Jesus Christ, God reveals Himself in all clarity to the world as Unity in three Persons: ‘Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven: Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased’ (Luke 3:21-22). The voice of the Father is heard from the heavens, the Son stands in the waters of the Jordan, and the Spirit descends upon Him.

Jesus Christ repeatedly speaks of His unity with the Father, and of His being sent into the world by the Father. He also promises to send His disciples the Spirit, the Comforter, Who proceeds from the Father (John 14:16-17; 15:26). Sending His disciples out into the world to preach, He says to them: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matt.28:19), which becomes the baptismal formula of the early Christian Church. The apostles themselves refer to the three Persons: ‘There are three witnesses in the heavens; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and these three agree’ (1 John 5:7).

At the Incarnation of the Word God revealed Himself to the world as One in three Persons. The Jews, who had preserved their sacred faith in the one God, would have been unable to grasp the idea of a Divine Trinity as this would unmistakably have been taken to mean polytheism. At a time when polytheistic religion ruled the world, the mystery of the Trinity was hidden from human gaze. It was hidden as if it were in the very depths, in the very heart of the dogma of the divine unity.

HOW TO EXPLAIN THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY TRINITY?

One of the simplest ways of explaining the mystery of the Trinity is that reportedly given by St Spyridon of Trimithund at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325). According to tradition, when asked how it is that Three can simultaneously be One, St Spyridon responded by taking up a brick and squeezing it. From the soft clay in his hands a flame showed up while simultaneously water flowed downwards. ‘As there is fire and water in this brick’, said St Spyridon, ‘in the same way there are three Persons in the one Godhead’.

Another version of the same story (or it may be a different story) is found in the Acts of the Council of Nicaea. One philosopher argued long and hard with the Fathers of the Council, trying to prove logically that the Son cannot be consubstantial with the Father. Exhausted by long debates and eager to leave, the Fathers were suddenly confronted by a simple elderly shepherd (identified as St Spyridon), who announced that he was prepared to argue with the philosopher and disprove his arguments. Turning to the philosopher, the shepherd looked at him severely, and said: ‘Listen, O philosopher, God is one, the Creator of heaven and earth, Who has created all things through the power of the Son and the operation of the Holy Spirit. This Son of God became incarnate, lived among people, died for us and rose again. Do not labour in vain to seek evidence for that which is comprehended by faith alone, but answer me: do you believe in the Son of God?’ Struck by these words, the philosopher could only say, ‘I do’. The shepherd said: ‘If you believe, then let us go to the church and there I will bring you into communion with this true faith’. The philosopher immediately stood up and went with the shepherd. On his way out, he said to those present: ‘When people tried to convince me with words, I countered words with words; but when a divine power came forth from the mouth of this old man, then words were no match for this power, as man cannot contend against God’.

We have already faced a very similar dilemma when discussing the doctrine of God: human words cannot convey the divine reality. God’s enlightenment and His grace are needed, for us to comprehend trinitarian theology. No terminology or formulation is adequate to communicate the mystery of the Trinity. Yet the Christian faith is above all trinitarian, and it is crucially important for every Christian to partake fully in this mystery. For an Orthodox Christian, the Trinity is not an abstract theological concept: it is a reality which is to be lived through. The Trinity is Someone to Whom we pray, but it is also Community, the Communion of three in one, the Family in Whose image we build up our own human community.

UNITY OF LOVE

God the Trinity is not a frozen entity, not something static or lifeless. On the contrary, within the Trinity there is the plenitude of life and love. ‘God is love’, says St John the Theologian (1 John 4:8; 4:16). Yet there can be no love without the beloved. A lonely, isolated monad can love only itself: self-love is not love. An egocentric unit is not a personality. As the human person cannot experience his personhood save through communion with other persons, so in God there can be no personal being save through love for another personal being. God the Trinity is the plenitude of love, each hypostatic Person exists in a relationship of love for the other Persons.

The Trinity is therefore a relational entity. The relations between the three Persons are relations between ‘I’ and ‘Thou’, or ‘I’ and ‘He’. ‘Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee’, says Christ (John 17:21). Concerning the Holy Spirit, our Lord says, ‘All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that he will take what is Mine and declare it to you’ (John 16:15). We read in St John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God’ (John 1:1). The Greek text actually says ‘and the Word was towards God’ (pros ton Theon). This underscores the personal nature of the relationship between God the Word and God the Father: the Son is not only born from the Father, He not only exists with the Father, He is turned towards the Father. Thus each Hypostasis in the Trinity is turned towards the other Hypostases.

The icon of the Holy Trinity by St Andrei Rublev portrays three angels sitting at a table upon which is a Cup, the symbol of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice; the three Persons of the Trinity turn simultaneously to each other and to the Cup. The icon has captured the divine love which reigns within the Trinity. The greatest manifestation of this love was the incarnation of the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. Orthodox Tradition regards Christ’s saving sacrifice as a common act of love and self-emptying of all three Persons of the Trinity. It is in this sacrifice that the love which exists within the Trinity was given and became known to humans. As St Philaret of Moscow said, it is the ‘crucifying love of the Father, the crucified love of the Son, and the love of the Holy Spirit triumphing through the power of the Cross’.

GOD THE CREATOR

A fundamental difference between the biblical account of creation on the one hand, and that of the Hellenistic on the other, is that the latter never affirmed a creation ex nihilo. Plato’s Demiurge produces everything from primordial matter; the biblical Creator constructs the world out of nothing: ‘Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed’ (2 Macc.7:28). Everything that exists received its being from the free will of the Creator: ‘for He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood forth’ (Ps.33:9). God had no need to create the world. Even His love, which, like any true love, needs an object to love, could not constrain Him to create. His love already found its perfection in the communion of the Hypostases of the Holy Trinity where each Hypostasis is both subject and object, lover and beloved. God created the world because He wanted the superabundant life and goodness within Himself to be shared by other beings that would become partakers of divine beatitude and holiness.

Creation was an act which involved all three Persons of the Holy Trinity: ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth’ (Ps.33:6). At the beginning of his Gospel St John speaks of the creative role of God the Word: ‘All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made’ (John 1:3). The Bible also has this to say about the Spirit: ‘The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’ (Gen.1:2). The Word and the Spirit are, to use an image of St Irenaeus of Lyons, the ‘two hands’ of the Father. This denotes the co-operation, the working together of the three persons: Their will is one, but each has a specific, different action. ‘Originator of all things is one: He creates through the Son and perfects through the Holy Spirit... Perceive these three: the Lord Who commands, the Word Who creates, and the Spirit Who strengthens’, says St Basil the Great. In other words, in the act of creation the Father is the First Cause of all things, the Word (Logos) has the role of Demiurge-Creator, and the Holy Spirit brings to perfection all things that have been created.

It is not without reason that when speaking of the creative role of the Son, the church Fathers prefer the name ‘Word’ above all other names: the Word makes known the Father and reveals the Father to the created world. Like any word, the Word-Logos is addressed to someone, in this case to the whole of creation. ‘No one has ever seen God; the only Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made him known’ (John 1:18). The Son has made known the Father to all creatures; it is because of the Son that the love of the Father has been poured out upon creation and has given it life.

Why did God create all things? Patristic theology answers the question in this way: ‘out of the abundance of His love and goodness’. ‘Because the good and transcendently good God was not content to contemplate Himself, but by a superabundance of goodness saw fit that there should be some things to benefit by and to participate in His goodness, He brings all things from nothing into being and creates them’, writes St John of Damascus. In other words, God desired that there should be something else taking part in His blessedness and partaking of His love.

THE ANGELS

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen.1:1). Traditionally these verses of the Bible are understood as pointing to the two worlds created by God — one invisible, spiritual and intelligible, and the other visible and material. We have already said that there are no abstract concepts in biblical language and spiritual realities are often expressed by the word ‘heaven’. Christ speaks of the Kingdom of heaven, and in the Lord’s prayer we say, ‘Our Father Who art in heaven... Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt.6:9-10). It is obvious that reference is not being made to visible material sky. The Kingdom of God is a spiritual, not a material, Kingdom in which God abides, for by nature He is Spirit. And when we read that He ‘created the heavens’, this means the spiritual world and its inhabitants, the angels.

God created the angelic world before the visible universe. The angels are incorporeal spirits who possess reason and free will. St John of Damascus speaks of them being ‘ever in motion, free, incorporeal, ministering to God’, of their rational, intelligent and free nature. He calls the angels ‘secondary spiritual lights, who receive their brightness from the first Light which is without beginning’. Located in direct proximity to God, they are sustained by His light and convey this light to us.

Angels are actively engaged in the unceasing praise of God. Isaiah describes his vision of God around whom the seraphim stand and proclaim: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Is.6:1-3). Yet the angels are also heralds sent by God to people (the Greek word aggelos means ‘messenger’, ‘herald’): they take a vital and active part in the life of every person. Thus the archangel announces to Mary that she will bear a Son called Jesus; angels come and minister to Jesus in the wilderness; an angel supports Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Christ Himself indicates that every person has his own guardian angel (cf. Matt.18:10) who is his companion, helper and protector.

According to the traditional teaching of the Church, not all angels are equal in dignity and closeness to God: various hierarchies exist among them. In the treatise The Celestial Hierarchy, attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the author counts three angelic hierarchies, each of which is divided into three ranks. The first and highest contains the seraphim, cherubim, thrones; the second, dominions, powers, authorities; the third, principalities, archangels, angels.

In is celestial hierarchy the upper ranks are illumined by the Divine light and partake of the mysteries of the Godhead directly from the Maker, while the lower ranks receive illumination only by devolution through the higher ranks. According to Dionysius, the angelic hierarchy finds its continuation and reflection in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of sacraments, clergy and the faithful. Thus, the ecclesiastical hierarchy partakes of the Divine mystery through the mediation of the celestial hierarchy. Biblical tradition speaks of the number of angels in general terms: there are a ‘thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand’. The angels certainly outnumber human beings. St Gregory of Nyssa sees in the image of the lost sheep the entire human race, while he takes the ninety-nine sheep who stayed in the hills to be the angels.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

At the dawn of creation, before God made the visible world, but after the creation of the angels, there was a great catastrophe, of which we have knowledge only by its consequences. A group of angels opposed itself to God and fell away from Him, thereby becoming enemies of all that was good and holy. At the head of this rebellion stood Lucifer, whose very name (literally meaning ‘light-bearing’) indicates that originally he was good. By his own will he changed from his natural state into one which was unnatural; he opposed himself to God and fell away from good into evil. Lucifer, also called the devil (Greek diabolos — ‘divider’, ‘separator’, ‘slanderer’), belonged to one of the highest ranks in the angelic hierarchy. Together with him other angels also defected, as the Book of Revelation tells us metaphorically: ‘And a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch... and a third of the stars was struck, so that a third of their light was darkened’ (Rev.8:10, 12). Some commentators therefore say that along with the morning star a third of the angels fell away.

By exercising their own free will the devil and his demons found themselves in darkness. Every reasonable living creature, whether angel or human being, possesses free will: the right to choose between good and evil. Free will is the property of everyone so that we can, by practicing good, become an ontological part of that good. In other words, goodness was never meant to be granted externally to us but must become our very own possession. If God imposed goodness as a necessity or an inevitability, then no one could ever become a perfectly free person. ‘Nobody has ever become good by force’, says St Symeon the New Theologian. Through unceasing growth in virtue the angels were meant to ascend to the plenitude of perfection, to the point of utter assimilation to the God of supreme goodness. Yet some of them chose to reject God and thereby sealed their own fate and the fate of the universe, which from that moment onwards became an arena for two contending polar (yet not equal) principles and powers: the Divine and the demonic, God and the devil.

The problem of the origin of evil has always been a challenge for Christian theology as it has often had to contend with overt or hidden manifestations of dualism. According to some dualistic sects, the entirety of being is made up of two realms which have forever existed together: the kingdom of light filled with many good aeons (angels), and the kingdom of darkness, filled with evil aeons (demons). Spiritual reality is subject to the god of light, while the god of darkness (Satan) has unlimited dominion over the material world. Matter itself is a sinful and evil entity: the humans should by all means possible mortify their bodies in order to be liberated from matter and return to the non-material world of good.

Christian theology viewed the nature and origin of evil differently. Evil is not a primeval essence that is coeternal and equal to God; it is a falling away from good, it is a revolt against good. In this sense it would be wrong to call evil a ‘substance’, as it does not exist in its own right. As darkness or shadow are not independent beings but are simply the absence or lack of light, so evil is merely the absence of good. ‘Evil’, writes St Basil the Great, ‘is not a living and animated substance, but a condition of the soul which is opposed to virtue and which springs up in the slothful because of their falling away from Good. Do not, therefore, contemplate evil from without; and do not imagine some original nature of wickedness, but let each one recognize himself as the first author of the vice that is in him’.

God did not create anything evil: both angels and humans, as well as the material world, are good and beautiful by nature. However, rational creatures, possessing free will, can direct their freedom against God and thereby engender evil. This is precisely what happened: the light-bearing morning star (Lucifer), originally created good, abused his freedom, defaced his own virtuous nature and fell away from the Source of goodness.

THE EVIL-DOER

Without intrinsic substance or being, evil materialized into an active agent of destruction when it was ‘hypostasized’, that is, when it became a reality in the form of the devil and the demons. Fr Geogres Florovsky speaks of evil as ‘nothingness’, as ‘a pure negation, a privation or a mutilation’. Evil is primarily a lack, an absence of goodness. Compared with the Divine being, the operation of evil is illusory and imagined: the devil has no power where God does not allow him to operate.

Yet, as being a slanderer and a liar, the devil uses falsehood as his main weapon: he deceives his victim into believing that within his hands are concentrated great power and authority. The truth is that he does not have this power at all. As Vladimir Lossky emphasizes, in the Lord’s Prayer we do not ask God to deliver us from a general evil, but to deliver us from the evil one, from the evil-doer, a concrete person that embodies evil. This ‘evil-doer’, whose nature was originally good, is the bearer of that deadly non-being, non-life, which leads to his own death and the death of his victim.

Most assuredly, God is not a party to evil, yet evil is somehow under His control: it is God Who sets the boundaries in which evil can operate. As the opening of the book of Job shows, there is a certain direct and personal relationship between God and the devil (cf. Job 1-2); the nature of this relationship is, however, unknown to us. According to the mysterious ways of His Providence, and for purposes of edification, God allows evil to act as a means of setting people aright. This is evident from those parts of Scripture where God is recorded as visiting evil upon people: thus God hardened the heart of Pharaoh (Ex.4:21; 7:3; 14:4); God visited Saul with an evil spirit (1 Sam.16:14; 19:9); God gave the people ‘statutes that were not good’ (Ezek.20:25); God gave the people up to ‘impurity’, ‘dishonourable passions’ and a ‘base mind’ (Rom.1:24-32). In all of these instances it is not God Who is the source of evil: in possessing utter power over both good and evil, God can allow evil to operate in order to transform it into a source of virtue and to direct it towards good consequences. He can also use it to deliver people from a yet greater evil.

The obvious question still remains: why does God allow evil and the devil to exist? Why does He permit evil? St Augustine confessed that he could not answer this question: ‘I am unable to penetrate the depths of this ordinance and I confess that it is beyond my powers’, he wrote. St Gregory of Nyssa answered the question in a more optimistic manner: God permits the devil to act for a certain time only, yet there will come a time when evil will be ‘finally obliterated by the long cycle of ages’ and when ‘nothing outside of good will remain, but the confession of Christ’s lordship will be unanimous even from the demons’. The belief in the final restoration of the demons and the devil into their initial state was held also by St Isaac of Nineveh, as well as by some other early church writers. However, this opinion has never become a magisterial teaching of the Church.

The Church knows that evil is neither co-eternal with God nor equal to Him. That the devil rebelled against God and even became the king and ruler of hell does not mean that his kingdom will last for ever. On the contrary, Christian eschatology, as we shall see later, is profoundly optimistic and strongly holds faith in the final victory of good over evil, God over the devil, Christ over the Antichrist. Yet, what this victory will entail and what the final outcome of the existence of evil will be still remains unclear in Christian teaching. Pondering on this, the human mind once more falls silent in the presence of the mystery, powerless to delve into the depths of Divine destinies. As God says in the book of Isaiah, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways’ (Is.55:8-9 in Septuagint translation).

THE UNIVERSE

According to the Old Testament, the visible world was created in six days. It is difficult to imagine that reference is being made to a conventional six-day period. The biblical six days of creation are not six ordinary days but rather six consecutive stages which unfold gradually to form the epic picture of the great Artist.

The biblical account of creation opens with the words, ‘In the beginning’ (Gen.1:1), a phrase also used by St John the Theologian to describe the eternal existence of the Word of God (John 1:1). This ‘beginning’ therefore refers to what had existed before time began. It is not yet finite time: it is infinite eternity, from which time is to be born. The ‘beginning’ is that first reality which links time with eternity, since from the moment when time is set into motion the universe must subject itself to its laws. According to the laws of time, the past is already over, the future is yet to come, and the present exists as an elusive and forever fleeting second which ends once it has hardly begun. And although time appears simultaneously with the universe, that timeless ‘beginning’ when the universe was poised to begin but not yet began, is a pledge of the fact that creation has been allied with eternity and that upon the completion of its history will once again become part of eternity.

Eternity is the absence of time; outside of time there is no temporal being, but an eternal being, a supra-being. The universe, which has been called out of non-being into temporal being through the creative word of God, will not disappear at the end of time, it will not slide away into non-being, but will become part of the supra-being; it will become eternal. Biblical revelation, however, puts the universe in the perspective of both time and eternity, so that even when time disintergates the universe will remain. Time is an icon of eternity and time will be sublimated into eternity, while the universe will be transformed into the kingdom of the age to come.

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters’ (Gen.1:1-2). Other ancient translations of the Old Testament present the earth as ‘empty and nothing’ (Theodotion), or ‘idle and indistinguishable’ (Simmachus); that is, as a formless pre-matter out of which the world was to be created. The ‘earth’ of the first day is, to use St Philaret of Moscow’s expression, an ‘astonishing emptiness’, a chaotic primary substance containing the pledge of future beauty and cosmic harmony. The ‘darkness’ and the ‘deep’ underscore the disorganization and formlessness of matter, while the water denotes its plasticity. It is said that the Holy Spirit was ‘moving’, fluttering over the water. Elsewhere in the Bible this same verb is used to signify the hovering of birds over the nest of their young: ‘The eagle stirs up its nest and flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, and bearing them on its pinions’ (Deut.32:11). The Holy Spirit, as a loving mother, protects and animates the material world, ‘fluttering’ over it and breathing into it the ‘spirit of life’.

THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION

‘And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good’ (Gen.1:3-4). The light of the first day is neither sunlight nor moonlight (these appeared on the fourth day), but is the light of the Godhead reflected in created being. The words ‘said’ and ‘saw’ are anthropomorphisms and both have profound meaning. The term ‘said’ points to the operation of the Word of God, while ‘saw that it was good’ indicates the state of perfection to which material creation is brought by the Holy Spirit. These biblical expressions point to the consciousness and the expediency of God’s creative activity, to the Artist’s satisfaction that the Cosmos which He has created is truly beautiful.

On the second day God created the ‘firmament’, an expanse possessing firmness and stability. On the third day He formed the dry land and the sea, separating one from the other. On the fourth day He made the sun, the moon and the other lights: it was from this moment that the mechanism of the day was put into motion, the rhythmic changing cycle of day and night. On the fifth day, at God’s command, the waters brought forth fish and creeping things, while the air became the habitation of the birds. Finally, on the sixth day appeared the animals and humanity.

We shall not compare the biblical story of creation with modern scientific theories of the origin of the universe. The protracted dialogue between science and theology has not yet come to any definitive conclusions about the connections between biblical revelation and scientific developments. It is, however, very clear that the Bible does not aim to present a scientific account of the origin of the universe, and it is rather naive to polemicize on the biblical narrative understood in its literal sense. Sacred Scripture regards all of history from the perspective of an interrelationship between the human and the divine. The authors of biblical stories often use metaphorical and symbolic language and they often rely on the scientific knowledge of their own time. This, however, does not diminish the significance of the Bible as a book through which God speaks to humanity and reveals God in all His creative power.

The universe as created by God is a book which reveals the Creator to those who can read it. Those of no faith, when observing the material world, cannot see in it the reflection of a higher non-material Beauty; for them the world contains nothing miraculous, everything is natural and conventional. But for the believers, the beauty and harmony of the universe is a most powerful testimony to the existence of God, the Creator of all. St Anthony, the fourth-century Egyptian hermit, was once visited by a famous philosopher and was asked: ‘Father, how can you endure to live here, deprived as you are of all consolation from books?’ Anthony answered: ‘My book, O philosopher, is the nature of created things, and whenever I wish I can read in it the works of God’.

THE HUMAN PERSON

Human beings constitute the crown of creation, the peak of the creative process of the Divine Trinity. Before creating Adam, the three Persons took counsel together: ‘Let Us make man in Our own image, after Our likeness’ (Gen.1:26). The ‘Pre-eternal Counsel’ of the Three was necessary first because humans were a higher creature with reason, will, and dominion over the visible world, and second, because, being free and independent, humanity would break the commandment and fall away from the bliss of Paradise. The Son’s sacrifice on the Cross would then be required to show humans the way back to God. In creating human beings God knew their subsequent destiny, for nothing is hidden from the gaze of God Who sees the future as much as He sees the present.

God formed Adam ‘of dust from the ground’, that is, from matter. Thus he was flesh of the flesh of the earth from which he was moulded by the hands of God. Yet God also ‘breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being’ (Gen.2:7). Being material or earthly, Adam received a Divine principle, a pledge of his communion with the Divine being. ‘The breath of life’ can be taken to mean the Holy Spirit. The human person partakes of the divine nature by the very act of creation and is thereby utterly different from other living beings: he does not simply assume a higher position in the hierarchy of animals but is a ‘semi-god’ set over the animal kingdom. The church Fathers call the human being a ‘mediator’ between the visible and invisible worlds, a ‘mixture’ of both worlds.

As the heart of the created world, combining within himself both the spiritual and the corporeal, the human being in a certain sense surpasses the angels. It was not the angel but the human being who was created by God in His own image. And it was not angelic, but human nature that was assumed by God in the Incarnation.

IMAGE AND LIKENESS

‘So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them’ (Gen.1:27). Because a solitary egocentric monad is incapable of love, God created not a unit but a couple with the intention that love should reign among people. And because the love of the couple is not yet the perfection of love and being, God commands: ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen.1:28). From two human beings the third, their child, must be born: the perfect family — husband, wife and child, is the reflection of divine love in three Hypostases. Indeed one cannot but notice the affinity of the interchange between the singular and plural when the Bible speaks of God (‘Let Us make man in Our image’ — ‘God created man in His own image’) and the singular and plural when it speaks of humans (‘created him’ — ‘created them’). This interchange emphasizes the unity of the nature of the human race even when there is a distinction between the hypostases of each individual person.

The theme of image and likeness is central to Christian anthropology: to a greater or lesser extent it was addressed by nearly all early church writers. The Fathers of the Church usually equated ‘the image of God’ to the rational and spiritual nature of the human person. ‘What is after the image if not our intellect?’ asks St John of Damascus. ‘We are created in the image of the Maker, we possess reason and the faculty of speech, which comprise the perfection of our nature’, writes St Basil the Great.

‘The image of God’ has been understood by some Fathers as our free will and self-determination. ‘When God in His supernal goodness creates each soul in His own image, He brings it into being endowed with self-determination’, says St Maximus the Confessor. God created the person absolutely free: in His love He wishes to force him neither into good nor evil. In return, He does not expect from us blind obedience but love. It is only in our being free that we can be assimilated to God through love for Him.

Other Fathers identified as ‘the image of God’ the human person’s immortality, his dominant position in the world and his striving towards good.

Our ability to create, as the reflection of the creative ability of the Maker Himself, is also regarded as being ‘in God’s image’. God is the ‘worker’: ‘My Father is working still, and I am working’, says Christ (John 5:17). The human person was also commanded to ‘till’ the garden of Eden (Gen.2:15), that is, to labour in it and to work the land. While the human person is unable to create ex nihilo (‘out of nothing’), he can create from material given to him by God, and this material is the entire earth, over which he is lord and master. The world has no need to be improved by people; rather, humans themselves need to apply their creative abilities in order to be assimilated to God.

Some church Fathers distinguish ‘image’ from ‘likeness’ by identifying the image as that which had been originally fixed by the Creator in the human person, and the likeness as that which is to be attained through a life of virtue: ‘The expression according to the image indicates that which is reasonable and endowed with free will, while the expression according to the likeness denotes assimilation through virtue, in as far as this is possible’ (St John of Damascus). The human person is called upon to realize all of his creative abilities in ‘tilling’ the world, in creativity, in virtue, in love, so that he can be assimilated to God. For, as St Gregory of Nyssa says, ‘the limit of a life of virtues is the assimilation of God’.

SOUL AND BODY

All ancient religious tradition maintain that humans are composed of both material and spiritual elements; but the correlation between the two has been understood in different ways. The dualistic religions view matter as originally evil and hostile towards humanity: the Manichaeans even believed that Satan was the maker of the material world. Classical philosophy regards the body as a prison in which the soul is kept captive or incarcerated. Indeed Plato deduces the word soma (body) from sema (tombstone, tomb): ‘Many people believe that the body is like a tombstone concealing the soul buried beneath it in this life... The soul endures punishment... while the flesh does duty as its fortress so that it can be healed, while located in the body as in a torture chamber’.

The ancient Indian philosophies speak of the transmigration of souls from one body to another, even from a human being to an animal (and vice versa). The doctrine of metempsychosis (reincarnation) was rejected by early church tradition as incompatible with divine revelation. It was proclaimed senseless and erroneous on the basis of the assertion that a human being, who possesses reason and free will, cannot be transformed into an unintelligible animal, since all intelligible being is immortal and cannot disappear. Moreover, what is the point of someone’s being punished for sins committed in an earlier life if he does not know why he has to endure it (after all, it is impossible to recollect one’s previous ‘existence’)?

The church Fathers, basing themselves on Scripture, teach that the soul and the body are not foreign elements united temporarily in the individual, but are bestowed simultaneously and for all time in the very act of creation: the soul is ‘betrothed’ to the body and is inseparable from it. Only the totality of soul and body together comprises a complete personality, a hypostasis. St Gregory of Nyssa calls the unbreakable link between soul and body an ‘inclination of affection’, ‘commixture’, ‘community’, ‘attraction’ and ‘acquaintance’, which are preserved even after death. Such a concept is far removed from Platonic and Eastern dualism.

Christianity is quite falsely accused of preaching that the flesh should be despised and the body be treated with contempt. A contempt for the flesh was held by a number of heretics (the Gnostics, Montanists, Manichaeans), as well as by some Greek philosophers, the views of whom were subjected to rigorous criticism by church Fathers.

In Christian ascetical literature, whenever we encounter questions of enmity between flesh and spirit — beginning with St Paul: ‘For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh’ (Gal.5:17) — they concern sinful flesh as the totality of passions and vices and not the body in general. Also, when we read in monastic sources of the ‘mortification of the flesh’, this is about the putting to death of sinful proclivities and ‘lusts of the flesh’, not contempt for the body as such. The Christian ideal is not to debase the flesh, but to purify it and transfigure it, to liberate it from the consequences of the Fall, to return it to its primordial purity and make it worthy of assimilation to God.

Christian tradition has always held an exceptionally elevated view of the human person. What is a human being from the point of view of an atheist? An ape, only with more developed abilities. What is a human being as perceived by a Buddhist? One of the reincarnations of the soul, which before its abode in a human body could have existed in a dog or a pig, and which following bodily death could again find itself within an animal. Buddhist teaching denies the very concept of personal existence: the human being is regarded not as the totality of body and soul, but as a type of transient stage in the wandering of the soul from body to body.

Christianity alone presents an exalted image of the human being. In Christianity each of us is regarded as a personality, a person created in the image of God, an icon of the Creator.

When God created human nature, He created it not only for us but also for Himself, since He knew that one day He would Himself become a human being. Thus, He fashioned something adequate to Himself, something possessing an infinite potential. St Gregory Nazianzen calls the human person a ‘created god’. The human person is called to become god. In his potential man is a god-man.

PRIMORDIAL HUMANITY BEFORE THE FALL

Materialists claim that in the early developmental stages of the human race people were like animals and led a bestial way of life: they neither knew God nor did they possess concepts of morality. Opposed to this are the Christian beliefs in the bliss of the first humans in Paradise, their subsequent fall and their eventual expulsion from Eden.

According to the Book of Genesis, God creates Adam and brings him into Paradise, where he lives in harmony with nature: he understands the language of the animals, and they obey him; all of the elements are subject to him as if to a king.

God brings to Adam all of the animals ‘to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name’ (Gen.2:19). Adam gives a name to every animal and bird a name: by doing so he demonstrates his ability to know the meaning, the hidden logos (reason) of every living creature. By giving Adam the right to name to the whole of creation, God brings him into the very heart of His creative process and calls him to co-creativeness, to co-operation.