On Church and Tradition An Eastern Orthodox View

Revelation,
Philosophy and Theology

This article originally appeared as "Offenbarung, Philosophic und Theologie" in Zwischen den Zeiten, Heft 6 (München, 1931). Translated from the German by Richard Haugh.



*******: I. Revelation. II. Philosophy. III Theology.

I. Revelation

There are two aspects of religious knowledge: Revelation and Experience. Revelation is the voice of God speaking to man. And man hears this voice, listens to it, accepts the Word of God and understands it. It is precisely for this purpose that God speaks; that man should hear him. By Revelation in the proper sense, we understand precisely this word of God as it is heard. Holy Scripture is the written record of the Revelation which has been heard. And however one may interpret the inspired character of Scripture, it must be acknowledged that Scripture preserves for us and presents to us the voice of God in the language of man. It presents to us the word of God just as it resounded in the receptive soul of man. Revelation is theophany. God descends to man and reveals himself to man. And man sees and beholds God. And he describes what he sees and hears; he testifies to what has been revealed to him. The greatest mystery and miracle of the Bible consists of the fact that it is the Word of God in the language of man.
Quite properly the early Christian exegetes saw in the Old Testamental Scriptures an anticipation and prototype of the coming Incarnation of God. Already in the Old Testament the Divine Word becomes human. God speaks to man in the language of man. This constitutes the authentic anthropomorphism of Revelation. This anthropomorphism however is not merely an accommodation. Human language in no way reduces the absolute character of Revelation nor limits the power of God's "Word." The Word of God can be expressed precisely and adequately in the language of man. For man is created in the image of God. It is precisely for this reason that man is capable of perceiving God, of receiving God's Word and of preserving it. The Word of God is not diminished while it resounds in human language. On the contrary, the human word is transformed and, as it were, transfigured because of the fact that it pleased God to speak in human language. Man is able to hear God, to grasp, receive and preserve the word of God. In any case, Holy Scripture speaks to us not only of God, but also of man. Furthermore, God himself speaks in his Revelation not only about himself but also about man. Thus historical Revelation fulfills itself precisely in the appearance of the God-Man. Not only in the Old but also in the New Testament we see not only God, but also man. We apprehend God approaching and appearing to man; and we see human persons who encounter God and listen attentively to his Word — and, what is more, respond to his words.
We hear in Scripture also the voice of man, answering God in words of prayer or of thanksgiving or of praise. It is sufficent to mention the Psalms in this connection. And God desires, expects, and requires this response. God desires that man not only listens to his words but that man also responds to them. God wants to involve man in "conversation." God descends to man — and he descends in order to elevate man to him. In Scripture one is astounded, above all, by this intimate nearness of God to man and of man to God, this sanctification of all human life by the presence of God, this overshadowing of the earth with Divine protection.
In Scripture we are astonished by the very fact of sacred history itself. In Scripture it is revealed that history itself becomes sacred, that history can be consecrated, that life can be sanctified. And, to be sure, not only in the sense of an external illumination of life — as if from outside — but also in the sense of its transfiguration. For Revelation is indeed completed with the founding of the Church and with the Holy Spirit's descent into the world. Since that time the Spirit of God abides in the world. Suddenly in the world itself the source of eternal life is established. And Revelation will be consummated with the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth, with a cosmic and universal transformation of all created existence. One can suggest that Revelation is the path of God in history — we see how God walks among the ranks of men. We behold God not only in the transcendent majesty of his glory and omnipotence but also in his loving nearness to his creation. God reveals himself to us not only as Lord and Pantocrator but, above all, as Father. And the main fact is that written Revelation is history, the history of the world as the creation of God. Scripture begins with the creation of the world and closes with the promise of a new creation. And one senses the dynamic tension between both these moments, between the first divine "fiat" and the coming one: "Behold, I make all things new" (idu, kena pio panda, ιδου καινα ποιω παντα Revelation 21:5).
This is not the place to treat in detail the basic questions of Biblical exegesis. Nevertheless one thing must be unconditionally stated. Scripture can be viewed from a double perspective: outside of history or — as history. In the first case the Bible is interpreted as a book of eternal and sacred images and symbols. And one must then unravel and interpret it precisely as a symbol, according to the rules of the symbolical or allegorical method. In the ancient Church the adherents of the allegorical method interpreted the Bible in this manner. The mystics of the Middle Ages and of the era of the Reformation understood the Bible also in this manner. Many contemporary theologians, especially Roman Catholic theologians, also lean toward such an understanding. The Bible appears then as a kind of Law Book, as a codex of divine commandments and ordinances, as a collection of texts or "theological loci," as a compilation of pictures and illustrations. The Bible then becomes a self-sufficient and self-contained book — a book, so to speak, written for no one, a book with seven seals ...
One need not reject such an approach: there is a certain truth in such an interpretation. But the totality of the Spirit of the Bible contradicts such an interpretation; it contradicts the direct meaning of Scripture. And the basic error of such an understanding consists in the abstraction from man. Certainly the Word of God is eternal truth and God speaks in Revelation for all times. But if one admits the possibility of various meanings of Scripture and one recognizes in Scripture a kind of inner meaning which is abstracted and independent from time and history, one is in danger of destroying the realism of Revelation. It is as though God had so spoken that those to whom he first and directly spoke had not understood him — or, at least, had not understood as God had intended. Such an understanding reduces history to mythology. And finally Revelation is not only a system of divine words but also a system of divine acts; and precisely for this reason — it is, above all, history, sacred history or the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte), the history of the covenant of God with man.
Only in such an historical perspective does the fulness of Scripture disclose itself to us. The texture of Scripture is an historical texture. The words of God are always, and above all, time-related — they have always, and above all, a direct meaning. God sees before him, as it were, the one to whom he speaks, and he speaks because of this in such a way that he can be heard and understood. For he always speaks for the sake of man, for man. There is a symbolism in Scripture — but it is rather a prophetic than an allegorical symbolism. There are images and allegories in Scripture, but in its totality Scripture is not image and allegory but history. One must distinguish between symbolism and typology. In symbolism one abstracts from history. Typology, however, is always historical; it is a kind of prophecy — when the events themselves prophesy. One can also say that prophecy is also a symbol — a sign which points to the future — but it is always an historical symbol which directs attention to future events. Scripture has an historical teleology: everything strives toward an historical boundary-point, upward toward the historical telos. For this reason there is such a tension of time in Holy Scripture. The Old Testament is the time of messianic expectation — this is the basic theme of the Old Testament. And the New Testament is, above all, history — the evangelical history of the Divine Word and the beginning of the history of the Church, which is directed anew to the expectation of Apocalyptic fulfillment. "Fulfillment" is in general the basic category of Revelation.
Revelation is the Word of God and the Word about God. But, at the same time, in addition to this, Revelation is always a Word addressed to man, a summons and an appeal to man. And in Revelation the destiny of man is also revealed. In any case the Word of God is given to us in our human language. We know it only as it resounds through our receptiveness, in our consciousness, in our spirit. And the substance and objectivity of Revelation is apprehended not by man's abstracting himself from himself, nor by depersonalizing himself, nor by shrinking to a mathematical point, thereby transforming himself into a "transcendental subject." It is precisely the opposite: a "transcendental subject" can neither perceive nor understand the voice of God. It is not to a "transcendental subject," not to any "consciousness-in-general" that God speaks. The "God of the Living," the God of Revelation speaks to living persons, to empirical subjects. The face of God reveals itself only to living personalities. And the better, the fuller and the clearer that man sees the face of God, so much the more distinct and living is his own face, so much the fuller and clearer has the "image of God" exhibited and realized itself in him. The highest objectivity in the hearing and understanding of Revelation is achieved through the greatest exertion of the creative personality, through spiritual growth, through the transfiguration of the personality, which overcomes in itself "The wisdom of flesh," ascending to "The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (εις μετρον ηλικιας του πληρωματος του Χριστου Ephesians 4:13). From man it is not self-abnegation which is demanded but a victorious forward movement, not self-destruction but a rebirth or transformation, indeed a theosis (θεωσις). Without man Revelation would be impossible — because no one would be there to hear and God would then not speak. And God created man so that man would hear his words, receive them, and grow in them and through them become a participator of "eternal life." The Fall of man did not alter the original intention of God. Man has not lost completely the capacity of hearing God and praising him. And finally — the dominion and power of sin has ceased. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ... and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). The way of life and light is open. And the human spirit has anew become capable of hearing God completely and of receiving his words.

II. Philosophy

But God spoke to man not only so that he would remember and call to mind His words. One can not just keep the "Word of God in his memory. One must preserve the Word of God, above all, in a living and burning heart. The Word of God is preserved in the human spirit as a seed which sprouts and brings forth fruit. This means that the truth of divine Revelation must unfold within human thought, must develop into an entire system of believing confession, into a system of religious perspective — one may say, into a system of religious philosophy and a philosophy of Revelation.
There is no subjectivism in this. Religious knowledge always remains in its essence heteronomous, since it is a vision and a description of divine reality which was and is revealed to man by the entrance of the Divine into the world. God descends into the world — and unveils not only his countenance to man but actually appears to him. Revelation is comprehended by faith and faith is vision and perception. God appears to man and man beholds God. The truths of faith are truths of experience, truths of a face. It is precisely this which is the foundation of the apodictic certainty of faith. Faith is a descriptive confirmation of certain facts — "thus it is," "thus it was," or "thus it will be." Precisely for this reason faith is also undemonstrable — faith is the evidence of experience.
One must distinguish clearly between the epochs of Revelation. And one ought not ascertain the essence of the Christian faith on the basis of Old Testamental precedents. The Old Testament was the time of expectation; the entire pathos of Old Testamental man was directed toward the "future" — the "future" was the basic category of its religious experience and life. The faith of Old Testamental man was expectation — the expectation of that which was not yet, of that which had not yet come to pass, of that which was also "invisible." Indeed the time of expectation came to an end. The prophecies are fulfilled. The Lord has come. And he has come in order to remain with those who believe on him "Always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). He has given man "the power to become children of God" (John 1:12). He has sent the Holy Spirit into the world to lead believers "Into all truth" (John 16:13), and bring to remembrance all that the Lord has said (John 14:26: εκεινος υμας διδαξει παντα και υπομνησει υμας παντα α ειπον υμιν εγω). For this reason the believers have "the anointing by the Holy Spirit, and know all ... and have no need that any one should teach them" (1 John 2:20, 27). They have the "unction of truth," charisma veritatis, as St. Irenaeus states. In Christ the possibility and the path of spiritual life opens itself to man. And the height of spiritual life is knowledge and vision, gnosis (γνοσις) and theoria (θεωρια). This alters the meaning of faith. The Christian faith is not directed primarily toward "the future," but rather toward that which was already fulfilled — more properly expressed, toward that Eternal Present, toward the divine fulness which has been and is being revealed by Christ. In a certain sense one can say that Christ made religious knowledge possible for the first time; that is, the knowledge of God. And this he accomplished not as preacher or as prophet, but as the "Prince of Life" and as the High Priest of the New Covenant. Knowledge of God has become possible through that renewal of human nature which Christ accomplished in his death and resurrection. This renewal was also a renewal of human reason and of the human spirit. That meant again the renewal of man's vision.
And the knowledge of God has become possible in the Church, in the Body of Christ as the unity of the life of grace. In the Church Revelation becomes an inner Revelation. In a certain sense Revelation becomes the confession of the Church. It is very important to remember that the New Testamental writings are younger than the Church. These writings are a book written in the Church. They are a written record of the faith of the Church, of the faith which is preserved in the Church. And the Church confirms the truth of Scripture, confirms its authenticity — verifies it by the authority of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the Church. One should not forget this with regard to the Gospel. In the written Gospels the image of the Saviour is held firm, that same image which lived from the very beginning in the living memory of the Church, in the experience of faith — not just in the historical memory but in the very memory of faith. This is an essential distinction. Because we know Christ not just from memories and accounts. Not only is his image living in the memory of believers — he himself abides among them, standing always before the door of each soul. It is precisely in this experience of the living community with Christ that the Gospel becomes alive as a holy book. Divine Revelation lives in the Church — how else should it be able to preserve itself? It is sketched and strengthened by the words of Scripture. To be sure, it is sketched — but these words do not exhaust the entire fulness of Revelation, do not exhaust the entire fulness of Christian experience. And the possibility of new and other words are not excluded. Scripture, in any case, calls for interpretation.

And the unalterable truths of experience can be expressed in different ways. Divine reality can be described in images and parables, in the language of devotional poetry and of religious art. Such was the language of the prophets in the Old Testament, in such a manner the Evangelists often speak, in such a way the Apostles preached, and in such a manner the Church preaches even now in her liturgical hymns and in the symbolism of her sacramental acts. That is the language of proclamation and of good tidings, the language of prayer and of mystical experience, the language of "Kerygmatic" theology. And there is another language, the language of comprehending thought, the language of dogma. Dogma is a witness of experience. The entire pathos of dogma lies in the fact that it points to Divine reality; in this the witness of dogma is symbolic. Dogma is the testimony of thought about what has been seen and revealed, about what has been contemplated in the experience of faith — and this testimony is expressed in concepts and definitions. Dogma is an "intellectual vision," a truth of perception. One can say: it is the logical image, a "logical icon" of divine reality. And at the same time a dogma is a definition — that is why its logical form is so important for dogma, that "inner word" which acquires force in its external expression. This is why the external aspect of dogma — its wording — is so essential.
Dogma is by no means a new Revelation. Dogma is only a witness. The whole meaning of dogmatic definition consists of testifying to unchanging truth, truth which was revealed and has been preserved from the beginning. Thus it is a total misunderstanding to speak of "the development of dogma." Dogmas do not develop; they are unchanging and inviolable, even in their external aspect — their wording. Least of all is it possible to change dogmatic language or terminology. As strange as it may appear, one can indeed say: dogmas arise, dogmas are established, but they do not develop. And once established, a dogma is perennial and already an immutable "rule of faith ("regula fidei;" o kanon tis pisteos, ο κανων της πιστεως). Dogma is an intuitive truth, not a discursive axiom which is accessible to logical development. The whole meaning of dogma lies in the fact that it is expressed truth. Revelation discloses itself and is received in the silence of faith, in silent vision — this is the first and apophatic step of the knowledge of God. The entire fulness of truth is already contained in this apophatic vision, but truth must be expressed. Man, however, is called not only to be silent but also to speak, to communicate. The silentium mysticum does not exhaust the entire fulness of the religious vocation of man. There is also room for the expression of praise. In her dogmatic confession the Church expresses herself and proclaims the apophatic truth which she preserves. The quest for dogmatic definitions is therefore, above all, a quest for terms. Precisely because of this the doctrinal controversies were a dispute over terms. One had to find accurate and clear words which could describe and express the experience of the Church. One had to express that "spiritual Vision" which presents itself to the believing spirit in experience and contemplation.
This is necessary because the truth of faith is also the truth for reason and for thought — this does not mean, however, that it is the truth of thought, the truth of pure reason. The truth of faith is fact, reality — that which is. In this "quest for words" human thought changes, the essence of thought itself is transformed and sanctified. The Church indirectly testified to this in rejecting the heresy of Apollinarius. Apollinarianism is, in its deepest sense, a false anthropology, it is a false teaching about man and therefore it is also a false teaching about the God-Man Christ. Apollinarianism is the negation of human reason, the fear of thought — “it is impossible that there be no sin in human thoughts” (“αδυνατον δε εστιν εν λογισμοις ανθρωπινοις αμαρτιαν” Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Apollin. II, 6, 8; I, 2). And that means that human reason is incurable — atherapevton esti, αθεραπευτον εστι — that is, it must be cut off. The rejection of Apollinarianism meant therefore, at the time, the fundamental justification of reason and thought. Not in the sense, of course, that “natural reason” is sinless and right by itself but in the sense that it is open to transformation, that it can be healed, that it can be renewed. And not only can but also must be healed and renewed. Reason is summoned to the knowledge of God. The "philosophizing" about God is not just a feature of inquisitiveness or a kind of audacious curiosity. On the contrary, it is the fulfillment of man's religious calling and duty. Not an extra-achievement, not a kind of opus supererogatorium — but a necessary and organic moment of religious behavior. And for this reason the Church "philosophized" about God — "formulated dogmas which fishermen had earlier expounded in simple words" (from the service in honor of the Three Hierarchs), The "dogmas of the Fathers" present again the unchanging ******* of "apostolic preaching" in intellectual categories. The experience of truth does not change and does not even grow; indeed, thought penetrates into the "understanding of truth" and transforms itself through the process.
One can simply say: in establishing dogmas the Church expressed Revelation in the language of Greek philosophy — or, if preferable: translated Revelation from the Hebraic, poetic and prophetic language into Greek. That meant, in a certain sense, a "Hellenization" of Revelation. In reality, however, it was a "Churchification" ("Verkirchlichung") of Hellenism. One can speak at length about this theme — indeed, much and often has this theme been taken up and discussed — indeed, it has been discussed and disputed too much and too often. It is essential here to raise only one issue.
The Old Covenant has passed. Israel did not accept the Divine Christ, did not recognize Him nor confess Him and "the promise" passed to the Gentiles. The Church is, above all, ecclesia ex gentibus. We must acknowledge this basic fact of Christian history in humility before the will of God, which is fulfilled in the destiny of nations. And the "calling of the Gentiles" meant that Hellenism became blessed by God. In this there was no "historical accident" — no such accident could lie therein. In the religious destiny of man there are no "accidents." In any case the fact remains that the Gospel is given to us all and for all time in the Greek language. It is in this language that we hear the Gospel in all its entirety and fulness. That does not and cannot, of course, mean that it is untranslatable — but we always translate it from the Greek. And there was precisely as little "chance" or "accident" in this "selection" of the Greek language — as the unchanging proto-language of the Christian Gospel — as there was in God's "selection" of the Jewish people — out of all the people of antiquity — as "His" People — there was as little "accident" in the "selection" of the Greek language as there was in the fact that "salvation comes from the Jews" (John 4:22). We receive the Revelation of God as it occurred. And it would be pointless to ask whether it could have been otherwise. In the selection of the "Hellenes" we must acknowledge the hidden decisions of God's will. In any case, the presentation of Revelation in the language of historical Hellenism in no way restricts Revelation. It rather proves precisely the opposite — that this language possessed certain powers and resources which aided in expounding and expressing the truth of Revelation.
When divine truth is expressed in human language, the words themselves are transformed. And the fact that the truths of the faith are veiled in logical images and concepts testifies to the transformation of word and thought — words become sanctified through this usage. The words of dogmatic definitions are not "simple words," they are not "accidental" words which one can replace by other words. They are eternal words, incapable of being replaced. This means that certain words — certain concepts — are eternalized by the very fact that they express divine truth. This means that there is a so-called philosophia perennis — that there is something eternal and absolute in thought. But this does not at all mean there is an "eternalization" of one specific philosophical "system."
To state it more correctly — Christian dogmatics itself is the only true philosophical "system." One recalls that dogmas are expressed in philosophical language — indeed, in a specific philosophical language — but not at all in the language of a specific philosophical school. Rather, one can speak of a philosophical "eclecticism" of Christian dogmatics. And this "eclecticism" has a much deeper meaning than one usually assumes. Its entire meaning consists of the fact that particular themes of Hellenic philosophy are received and, through this reception, they change essentially; they change and are no longer recognizable. Because now, in the terminology of Greek philosophy, a new, a totally new experience is expressed. Although themes and motives of Greek thought are retained, the answers to the problems are quite different; they are given out of a new experience. Hellenism, for this reason, received Christianity as something foreign and alien, and the Christian Gospel was "foolishness" to the Greeks (εθνεσιν δε μωιαν 1 Corinthians 1:23).
Hellenism, forged in the fire of a new experience and a new faith, is renewed; Hellenic thought is transformed. Usually we do not sufficiently perceive the entire significance of this transformation which Christianity introduced into the realm of thought. This is so, partially because we too often remain ancient Greeks philosophically, not yet having experienced the baptism of thought by fire. And in part, on the contrary, because we are too accustomed to the new world-view, retaining it as an "innate truth" when, in actuality, it was given to us only through Revelation. It is sufficient to point out just a few examples: the idea of the creaturehood of the world, not only in its transitory and perishable aspect but also in its primordial principles. For Greek thought the concept of "created ideas" was impossible and offensive. And bound up with this was the Christian intuition of history as a unique — once-occurring — creative fulfillment, the sense of a movement from an actual "beginning" up to a final end, a feeling for history which in no way at all allows itself to be linked with the static pathos of ancient Greek thought. And the understanding of man as person, the concept of personality, was entirely inaccessible to Hellenism which considered only the mask as person. And finally there is the message of Resurrection in glorified but real flesh, a thought which could only frighten the Greeks who lived in the hope of a future dematerialization of the Spirit.
These are some of the new vistas disclosed in the new experience, out of Revelation. They are the presuppositions and categories of a new Christian philosophy. This new philosophy is enclosed in Church dogmatics. In the experience of faith the world reveals itself differently than in the experience of "natural man." Revelation is not only Revelation about God but also about the world. For the fulness of Revelation is in the image of the God-Man; that is, in the fact of the ineffable union of God and Man, of the Divine and the human, of the Creator and the creature — in the indivisible and unmerged union forever. It is precisely the Chalcedonian dogma of the unity of the God-Man which is the true, decisive point of Revelation, and of the experience of faith and of Christian vision.
Strictly speaking, a clear knowledge of God is impossible for man, if he is committed to vague and false conceptions of the world and of himself. There is nothing surprising about this. For the world is the creation of God and therefore, if one has a false understanding of the world, one attributes to God a work which he did not produce; one therefore casts a distorted judgment on God's activity and will. In this respect a true philosophy is necessary for faith. And, on the other hand, faith is committed to specific ****physical presuppositions. Dogmatic theology, as the exposition and explanation of divinely revealed truth in the realm of thought, is precisely the basis of a Christian philosophy, of a sacred philosophy, of a philosophy of the Holy Spirit.
Once again it must be stressed: dogma presupposes experience, and only in the experience of vision and faith does dogma reach its fulness and come to life. And again: dogmas do not exhaust this experience, just as Revelation is not exhausted in "words" or in the "letter" of Scripture. The experience and knowledge of the Church are more comprehensive and fuller than her dogmatic pronouncement. The Church witnesses to many things which are not in "dogmatic" statements but rather in images and symbols. In other words, "dogmatic" theology can neither dismiss nor replace "Kerygmatic" theology. In the Church the fulness of knowledge and understanding is given, but this fulness is only gradually and partially disclosed and professed — and, in general, the knowledge in this world is always only a "partial" knowledge, and the fulness will be revealed only in the Parousia. "Now I know in part" — (“αρτι γινωσκω εκ μερους...” 1 Corinthians 13:12).
This "incompleteness" of knowledge depends upon the fact that the Church is still "in pilgrimage," still in the process of becoming; she witnesses to the mystical essence of time in which the growth of mankind is being accomplished according to the measure of the image of Christ. And furthermore: the Church does not endeavor at all to express and declare everything. The Church does not endeavor to crystallize her experience in a closed system of words and concepts. Nevertheless, this "incompleteness" of our knowledge here and now does not weaken its authentic and apodictic character, A Russian theologian described this situation in the following way: "The Church gives no fixed plan of the City of God to her members but rather she gives them the key to the City of God. And he who enters, without having a fixed plan, may occasionally lose his way; yet, everything he sees, he will behold as it is, in full reality. He, however, who will study the City according to plan, without possessing the key to the actual city, will never get to the City" (B. M. Melioranskii, from the Lectures on the History of the Ancient Christian Church, "Strannik," June, 1910, p. 931, in Russian).

III. Theology

Revelation is preserved in the Church. It was given by God to the Church, not to separate individuals. Just as in the Old Testament "the words of God" ("τα λογια του Θεου,” ta logia tu Theu — Romans 3:2) were entrusted not to individuals but to the People of God. Revelation is given, and is accessible, only in the Church; that is, only through life in the Church, through a living and actual belonging to the mystical organism of the Body of Christ. This means that genuine knowledge is only possible in the element of Tradition.
Tradition is a very important concept, one which is usually understood too narrowly: as oral Tradition in contrast to Scripture. This understanding not only narrows but also distorts the meaning of Tradition. Sacred Tradition as the "tradition of truth," — traditio veritatis, as St. Irenaeus stated — is not only historical memory, not simply an appeal to antiquity and to empirical unchangingness. Tradition is the inner, mystical memory of the Church. It is, above all, the "unity of the Spirit," the unity and continuity of the spiritual experience and the life of grace. It is the living connection with the day of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit descended into the world as the "Spirit of Truth." The faithfulness to Tradition is not a loyalty to antiquity but rather the living relationship with the fulness of the Christian life.
The appeal to Tradition is not so much the appeal to earlier patterns as it is an appeal to the "catholic" experience of the Church, to the fulness of her knowledge. As the well-known formula of St. Vincent of Lerins states: quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est — in this formula, to which one so often appeals, there is an essential ambiguity. "Semper" and "ubique" must not be understood literally and empirically. And "omnes" does not include all who claim to be Christian but only the "true" Christians who preserve the right doctrine and interpret it correctly. Those, however, who are "heretics," who are misled, and those who are weak in faith are not included in the concept of "all." The formula of St. Vincent is based on a tautology. The scope of Tradition cannot be established simply by historical research. That would be a very dangerous path. That would mean a complete disregard for the spiritual nature of the Church. Tradition is known and understood only by belonging to the Church, through participation in her common or "catholic" life.
The term "catholic" is often understood wrongly and imprecisely. The katholikos (καθολικος) of kath olu (καθ ολου) does not at all mean an external universality — it is not a quantative but rather a qualitative criterion. “Catholic” does not mean “universal;" katholikos is not identical with ikumenikos (οικουμενικος). The "Catholic Church" can also historically turn out to be the "small flock." There are probably more "heretics" than "Orthodox believers" in the actual world and it can turn out that "heretics" are "everywhere" — ubique — and the true Church is pushed into the background of history, into the "desert." This was often the case and it may happen again. But this empirical limitation and situation does not in any way destroy the "catholic" nature of the Church. The Church is catholic because she is the Body of Christ, and in the unity of this Body the reciprocal co-growth of individual members takes place; mutual seclusion and isolation is overcome, and the true "community" or the "common life" — kinonia or kinovia — is realized. And that concerns thought also. In the unity of the Church the catholicity of consciousness is realized. In this the true mystery of the Church is contained: "that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us...so that they may become perfectly one..." ("ινα παντες εν ωσιν—ινα ωσιν τετελειωμενοι εις εν” John 17:21, 23).
This "fulness of unity" in the image of the Trinity is precisely the catholicity of the Church. In explaining the High Priestly prayer of our Lord, the late Metropolitan Anthony of Kiev stated: "This prayer concerns nothing else other than the establishment of a new, united existence of the Church on earth. This reality has its image not on earth, where there is no unity but only division, but rather its image is in heaven where the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit unites Three Persons in one Being. Thus there are not three Gods but One God who lives One life. The Church is the completely new, particular, unique existence on earth, a unique existence which one cannot define clearly by certain concepts taken from profane life. The Church is an image of Trinitarian existence, an image in which many persons become one being. Why is such an existence, as also the existence of the Holy Trinity, new and, for ancient man, inaccessible? For this reason; because in the natural self-consciousness a person is enclosed within himself and is radically opposed to every other person" (Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitskti, Collected, Works, II, 2; St. Petersburg, 1911, — "The Moral Idea of the Dogma of the Church," pp. 17 and 18; in Russian). Elsewhere Metropolitan Anthony states: "The Christian therefore must free himself, in the measure of his spiritual perfection, from the direct opposition of "I" and "non-I" — to transform from its very foundation the structure of human self-consciousness" (Ibid., p. 65).
Such a transformation of "human self-consciousness" also takes place in the Church, in the "catholic" or "communal" consciousness of the Church. "Catholic" consciousness is not a collective-consciousness, not a universal or profane community-consciousness — neither is it a conglomerate of single conscious individuals; it is not an impersonal "consciousness-in-general." "Catholicity" is the concrete "unity of thoughts" and "community of persons." "Catholicity" is structure and style, "the determination of personal consciousness," which overcomes its limitation and isolation and matures to a "catholic" height — "catholicity" is the ideal standard or boundary-point, the "telos," (τελος) of personal consciousness which is realized in the affirmation, not in the abolition, of personality. And the measure of "catholicity" can only be fulfilled through life in Christ. And not because we realize in our consciousness an abstract "consciousness-in-general" or an impersonal nature of logical thought, but rather "catholicity" is realized by concrete experience or by the Vision of the Truth. Unity is realized through participation in the one truth; it realized itself in the truth, in Christ. And therefore consciousness transforms itself. As the clearest expression of this transformation one must recognize that mysterious overcoming of time which takes place in the Church.
In Christ the believers of all eras and generations unify and unite themselves — meeting each other, as it were, as mystically united contemporaries. In this consists precisely the religious and ****physical meaning of "the communion of the saints" — communio sanctorum. And therefore the memory of the Church is oriented not to the past which has passed away but rather to what has been achieved or "completed" — the memory of the Church is turned toward those of the past as contemporaries in the fulness of the Church of the Body of Christ, which embraces all times. Tradition is the symbol of this "all-time-ness."
To know or perceive through Tradition means to know or perceive from the fulness of this experience of "all-time-ness." And this can be known within the Church by each person in his personal experience, according to the measure of his spiritual maturity. To turn oneself toward Tradition means to turn oneself toward this fulness. The "Catholic transformation" of consciousness makes it possible for each person to know — not in fact for himself only but for all; it makes the fulness of experience possible. And this knowledge is free from every restriction. In the catholic nature of the Church there is the possibility of theological knowledge and not just something founded upon theological "opinions." I maintain that each person can realize the catholic standard in himself. I do not say that each person does realize it. That depends upon the measure of one's spiritual maturity. Each person is, however, called. And those who realize it we call Fathers and Teachers of the Church, for we hear from them not simply their personal opinions but the very witness of the Church — because they speak out of the Catholic fulness. This fulness is unexhausted and inexhaustible. And we are summoned to testify about this and in this the vocation of man is fulfilled. God revealed and reveals himself to man. And we are called to testify to that which we have seen and see.

Translated from the German by
RICHARD HAUGH

Creation and Creaturehood

Translated from Russian

"Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, and thy walls are continually before me" (Isaiah 49:16).


*******:

I

The world is created. That means: the world came out of nothing. That means there was no world before it sprang up and came into being. It sprang up and came into being together with time. Because when there was no world, there was no time. Because "time is reckoned from the creation of the heavens and the earth," as St. Maximus the Confessor said.1 Only the world exists in time — in change, succession, duration. Without the world there is no time. And the genesis of the world is the beginning of time.2 This beginning, as St. Basil the Great explains, is not yet time, nor even a fraction of time, just as the beginning of a road is not yet the road itself. It is simple and uncomposite.3 There was no time; and suddenly, all at once, it began. Creation springs, comes into being, passes from out of non-being into being. It begins to be. As St. Gregory of Nyssa says, "The very subsistence of creation owed its beginning to change,"4 "the very transition from non-entity to existence is a change, non-existence being changed by the Divine power into being."5 This primordial genesis and beginning of change and duration, this "transition" from void to existence, is inaccessible to human thought. But it becomes comprehensible and imaginable from its opposite. We always calculate time in an inverse order, back from the present, retreating into the depths of time, going backwards in the temporal sequence; and only secondarily do we think in terms of consecutive reckoning. And going backwards into the past, we stop at some determinate link, one which is calculated and calculable from within the series, with a clear consciousness that we have to stop. The very notion of the beginning of time is this necessity of stopping, is the very impossibility of an infinite regression into the past. It makes no difference whether we can or cannot compute this limit of retreat in terms of centuries or of days. The prohibition itself remains in full force. A first unit is absolutely postulated in the temporal series, before which there are no other links, no other moments of time, because there was no change, and no sequence whatever. It is not time that precedes time, but "the height of ever-present eternity" transcending duration — celsitudo semper praesentis aeternitatis, as St. Augustine used to say. Time began. But there will be a time "when time shall be no more" — "oti hronos uketi estin" ("οτι χρονος ουκετι εσται” Rev. 10:6). Change will cease. And according to St. John Damascene, "Time, after the resurrection, will no longer be numbered by days and nights; rather, there will be one day without evening."6 The temporal sequence will be broken; there will be a last unit in it. But this end and cessation of change does not indicate the abolition of what began with time, of what was and existed in time; it does not suggest a return or relapse into nothingness. There will be no time, but creation will be preserved. The created world can exist even not in time. Creation began, but it will not cease.7 Time is a kind of line segment, with a beginning and an end. And therefore it is incommensurate with eternity, because time has a beginning. And in eternity there is no change, neither a beginning. The whole of temporality does not coincide with eternity. "The fullness of the times" (omne tempus) does not necessarily mean "always" (semper), as Augustine has pointed out.8 Infinity or endlessness does not necessarily imply beginninglessness. And creation may be compared to a mathematical "bundle of rays," halves of straight lines extending from their point of origin to infinity. Once brought out of nothingness and non-being, the world has in the creative fiat an immutable and final foundation and support for its existence. "The creative word is like an adamantine bridge upon which creatures are placed, and they stand under the abyss of the Divine Infinitude, over the abyss of their own nothingness," said Metropolitan Philaret. "Because the word of God must not be imagined as like the spoken word of man, which, when it has been pronounced, straightway desists and vanishes in air. In God there is nothing of cessation, nothing of vanishing: His word proceeds but does not recede: "The word of the Lord endureth for ever (1 Peter 1:25)."9God "Created all things, that they might have their being’" (Wis. Solomon 1:14). And not for the time being, but for ever did He create: He brought creation into being by His creative word. "For He hath established the world, so that it shall not be moved" (Ps. 93:1).
The world exists. But it began to exist. And that means; the world could have not existed. There is no necessity whatsoever for the existence of the world. Creaturely existence is not self-sufficient and is not independent. In the created world itself there is no foundation, no basis for genesis and being. Creation by its very existence witnesses to and proclaims its creaturehood, it proclaims that it has been produced. Speaking in the words of Augustine, "[It] cries out that it has been created — it cries out that it did not create itself: [I] exist because I am created; and I was not before I came to be, and I could not issue from myself..." — clamant quod facta sunt. Clamant etiam quod seipsa non fecerint: ideo sumus, quia facta sumus; non eramus ante quam essemus, ut fieri possemus a nobis...10
By its very existence creation points beyond its own limits. The cause and foundation of the world is outside the world. The world's being is possible only through the supra-mundane will of the merciful and Almighty God, "Who calls the things that be not, to be" (Rom. 4:17). But, unexpectedly it is precisely in its creaturehood and createdness that the stability and substantiality of the world is rooted. Because the origin from out of nothing determines the otherness, the "non-consubstantiality" of the world and of God. It is insufficient and inexact to say that things are created and placed outside of God. The "outside" itself is posited only in creation, and creation "from out of nothing" [ex nihilo] is precisely such a positing of the "outside," the positing of an "other" side by side with God. Certainly not in the sense of any kind of limitation to the Divine fullness, but in the sense that side by side with God there springs up an other, a heterogeneous substance or nature, one different from Him, and in a certain sense an independent and autonomous subject. That which did not exist springs now up and comes forth. In creation something absolutely new, an extra-divine reality is posited and built up. It is precisely in this that the supremely great and incomprehensible miracle of creation consists — that an "other" springs up, that heterogeneous drops of creation exist side by side with "the illimitable and infinite Ocean of being," as St. Gregory of Nazianzus says of God.11 There is an infinite distance between God and creation, and this is a distance of natures. All is distant from God, and is remote from Him not by place but by nature — u topo alla physi (ου τοπω αλλα φυσει)— as St. John Damascene explains.12 And this distance is never removed, but is only, as it were, overlapped by immeasurable Divine love. As St. Augustine said, in creation "there is nothing related to the Trinity, except the fact that the Trinity has created it" — nihilique in ea esse quod ad Trinitatem pertineat, nisi quod Trinitas condidit...13 Even on the most exalted heights of prayerful ascent and intimacy there is always an impassable limit, there can always be perceived and revealed the living duality of God and creation. "He is God, and she is non-God," said Macarius "the Great" of the soul. "He is the Lord, and she the handmaid; He the Creator, and she the creation; He the Architect, and she the fabric; and there is nothing in common between Him and her nature."14 Any transubstantiation of creaturely nature into the Divine is as impossible as the changing of God into creation, and any "coalescence" and "fusion" of natures is excluded. In the one and only hypostasis and person of Christ — the God-Man — in spite of the completeness of the mutual interpenetration of the two natures, the two natures remain with their unchanged, immutable difference; "without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the specific property of each nature being preserved” (“Ουδαμου της των φυσεων διαφορας ανηρημενες δια τυν ενωσιν σωζομενης δε μαλλον της ιδιοτητος εκατερας φυσεως” the Oros [ορος] of Chalcedon). The vague “out of two natures” the Fathers of Chalcedon replaced by the strong and clear "in two natures," and by the confession of the double and bilateral consubstantiality of the God-Man they established an unshakeable and indisputable criterion and rule of faith. The real existence of a created human nature, that is, of an other and second nature outside of God and side by side with Him, is an indispensable prerequisite for the accomplishment of the Incarnation without any change in or transmutation of the Divine nature.
What is created is outside of God, but is united with Him. The Fathers of the fourth century, moved by the Arian controversy to define the concept of creation in a clear and precise manner, stressed above all else the heterogeneity of the created and Creator in counter distinction to the "consubstantiality" of generation; and they corrected this heterogeneity with the dependence of creation upon the will and volition. Everything created, wrote St. Athanasius the Great, "is not in the least like its Creator in substance, but is outside of Him," and therefore also could have not existed.15 Creation "comes into being, made up from outside."16 And there is no similarity between that which bursts forth from nothing and the Creator Who verily is, Who brings creatures out of nothing.17 Will and volition precede creating. Creating is an act of will [ek vulimatos, εκ βουληματος], and therefore is sharply distinguished from the Divine generation, which is an act of nature [genna kata physin, γεννα κατα φυσιν].18 A similar interpretation was given by St. Cyril of Alexandria. The generation is out of the substance, kata physin (κατα φυσιν). Creating is an act, and is not done out of the creator's own substance; and therefore a creation is heterogeneous to its creator.19 Summarizing the patristic interpretation, St. John of Damascus gives a following definition: "Begetting means producing from the substance of the begetter an offspring similar in substance to the begetter. Creation, or making, on the other hand, is the bringing into being, from outside and not from the substance of the creator, an actor of something, entirely unlike [by nature]." Generation is accomplished "by a natural power of begetting," ("της γονιμοτητος φυσικης”) and creating is an act of volition and will —theliseos ergon (θελησεως εργον).20 Creaturehood determines the complete dissimilarity of the creation and God, its otherness, and hence its independence and substantiality. The whole section of St. John is actually an elaborate rejoinder to arguments of Origin.
Creation is not a phenomenon but a "substance." The reality and substantiality of created nature is manifested first of all in creaturely freedom. Freedom is not exhausted by the possibility of choice, but presupposes it and starts with it. And creaturely freedom is disclosed first of all in the equal possibility of two ways: to God and away from God. This duality of ways is not a mere formal or logical possibility, but a real possibility, dependent on the effectual presence of powers and capacities not only for a choice between, but also for the following of, the two ways. Freedom consists not only in the possibility, but also in the necessity of autonomous choice, the resolution and resoluteness of choice. Without this autonomy, nothing happens in creation. As St. Gregory the Theologian says, "God legislates human self-determination."21 "He honored man with freedom that good might belong no less to him who chose it than to Him Who planted its seed."22 Creation must ascend to and unite with God by its own efforts and achievements. And if the way of union requires and presupposes a responsive prevenient movement of Divine Mercy, "the ancient law of human freedom," as St. Irenaeus once put it, is not undermined by this. The way of disunion is not closed to creatures, the way of destruction and death. There is no irresistible grace, creatures can and may lose themselves, are capable, as it were, of "****physical suicide." In her primordial and ultimate vocation, creation is destined for union with God, for communion and participation in His life. But this is not a binding necessity of creaturely nature. Of course, outside of God there is no life for creation. But as Augustine happily phrased it, being and life do not coincide in creation.23 And therefore existence in death is possible. Of course, creation can realize and establish herself fully only by overcoming her self-isolation, only in God. But even without realizing her true vocation, and even opposing it, thus undoing and losing herself, creation does not cease to exist. The possibility of ****physical suicide is open to her. But the power of self-annihilation is not given. Creation is indestructible — and not only that creation which is rooted in God as in the source of true being and eternal life, but also that creation which has set herself against God. "For the fashion of this world passeth away" (1 Cor. 7:31), and shall pass. But the world itself shall not pass. Because it was created "that it might have being." Its qualities and properties are changeable and mutable, and do change; but its "elements" are immutable. And immutable above all is the microcosm man, and immutable are men's hypostases, sealed as they are and brought out of nothing by the creative will of God. Indeed, the way of rebellion and apostasy is the way of destruction and perdition. But it leads not towards non-being, but to death; and death is not the end of existence, but a separation — the separation of soul and body, the separation of creation from God. In fact, evil "is not an entity."24 Evil has no "substance" — it is anusion (ανουσιον) according to St. John Damascene.25 Evil has a negative and privative character, it is the absence and privation of true being. And at the same time, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “in its very non-being it has its being.” (εν τω μη ειναι εχει)26 The root and character of evil is delusion and error. Evil, in the incisive phrase of one German theologian, is "a mythopoeic lie" ["eine dichtende Lüge" — F. Staudenmeier]. It is a kind of fiction, but a fiction loaded with enigmatic energy and power. Evil is active in the world, and in this actuality is real. Evil introduces new qualities into the world, as it were, adding something to the reality created by God, a something not willed and not created by God, although tolerated by Him. And this innovation, in a certain sense "non-being," is in an enigmatic fashion real and powerful, "For God made not death" (Wis. Sol. 1:13), and nevertheless the whole creation is become subject to futility, and to the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:20-21). By sin death spread to all men (Rom. 5:12), and sin, being itself a fictitious innovation in the world, the spawn of the created will and of human devices, creates death and as it were sets up a new law of existence for creation, a kind of anti-law. And in a certain sense, evil is ineradicable. Yet, because the final perdition in eternal torment provoked by evil in "the resurrection unto judgment" does not mean total annihilation nor the total suppression of evil beings, it is impossible to ascribe to evil such anti-creative power which would overcome the creative power of God. By its devastation of being, evil does not wipe out being. And, such a devastated, distorted, deceitful, and false reality is mysteriously received into eternity, even though in the torments of unquenchable fire. The eternity of torments that will come upon the sons of perdition points out with a special urgency and sharpness the reality of creation as a second and extra-divine reality. It is provoked by a persistent though free rebellion, by a self-assertion in evil. Thus, as in becoming, so in dissolution — as in holiness, so in perdition — as in obedience, so in disobedience — creation manifests and witnesses to her own reality as the free object of the divine decrees.
The idea of creation is alien to the "natural" consciousness. Classical, Hellenistic thought did not know it. Modern philosophy has forgotten it. Given in the Bible, it is disclosed and manifested in the living experience of the Church. In the idea of creation are juxtaposed the motif of the immutable, intransitory reality of the world as a free and active subject (more precisely, as a totality of interacting subjects) and the motif of its total non-self-sufficiency, of its ultimate dependence upon Another higher principle. And therefore any supposition of the world's beginninglessness, the necessity of its existence, and any admission of its elimination are excluded. Creation is neither self-existent being, nor transitory becoming; neither eternal "substance," nor illusory "appearance." In creaturehood a great wonder is revealed. The world also might not have existed at all. And that which might not have existed, for which there are no inevitable causes or bases, does exist. This is a riddle, a "foolishness" for "natural" thought. And hence comes the temptation to attenuate and blunt the idea of creation, to replace it by other notions. Only by the contrary approach can the mystery of creation be clarified, by the exclusion and suspension of all evasive speculation and conjecture.

II

God creates in perfect freedom. This proposition is framed with remarkable precision by the "Subtle Doctor" of the Western middle ages, Duns Scotus: Procedit autem rerum creatio a Deo, non aliqua necessitate, vel essentiae, vel scientiae, vel voluntatis, sed ex mera libertate, quae non movetir et multo minus necessitatur ab aliquo extra se ad causandum. "The creation of things is executed by God not out of any necessity, whether of essence or of knowledge or of will, but out of a sheer freedom which is not moved — much less constrained — by anything external that it should have to be a cause."27 Even so, in defining God's freedom in creation it is not enough to do away with crude conceptions of compulsion, of external necessity. It is obvious that we cannot even speak of any kind of external compulsion, because the very "outside" itself is first posited only in creation. In creation God is determined only by Himself. But it is not so easy to demonstrate the absence of any internal "necessity" in this self-determination, in the revelation of God ad extra. Here, the thought is beset by alluring temptations. The question may be put in this manner: Is the attribute of Creator and Sustainer to be considered as belonging to the essential and formative properties of the Divine Being? The thought of the Divine immutability may prevent us from giving a negative answer. Precisely so did Origen reason in his time. "It is alike impious and absurd to say that God's nature is to be at ease and never to move, or to suppose that there was a time when Goodness did not do good and Omnipotence did not exercise its power."28 From the perfect extra-temporality and immutability of the Divine Being, Origen, in the words of Bolotov, draws the conclusion "that all His properties and predicates always belong to God in a strict sense — in actu, in statu quo."29 Here, "always" for Origen has the meaning of "extra-temporal eternity," and not only "the whole of temporality." — "Just as nobody can be a father without having a son, nor a lord without holding a possession or a slave," reasons Origen, "so too we cannot even call God Almighty — Pantocrator if there are no creatures over whom he can exercise His power. For if anyone would have it that certain ages, or periods of time, or of Divine Omnipotence — whatever he cares to call them — elapsed during which the present creation did not exist, he would undoubtedly prove that in those ages or periods God was not Almighty but that He became Pantocrator afterward, that He became Almighty from the time when he began to have creatures over whom he could exercise power. Thus God will apparently have experienced a kind of progress, for there can be no doubt that it is better for Him to be Almighty than not to be so. Now how is it anything but absurd that God should at first not possess something that is appropriate to Him and then should come to possess it? But if there was no time when God was not Almighty, there must always have existed the things in virtue of which He is Almighty; and there must always have existed things under his rule, over which He is their Ruler."30 In view of the perfect Divine immutability, "it is necessary that the creatures of God should have been created from the beginning, and that there should be no time when they were not." Because it is inadmissible to think that, in time, God "would pass from inaction to action." Hence it is necessary to recognize "that with God all things are without beginning and are co-eternal."31
It is not simple or easy to escape from Origen's dialectical nets. In this very problematic there lies an incontestable difficulty. "When I think what God was Lord of from eternity, if creation be not from always," exclaimed Augustine, "I fear to affirm anything." Cum cogito cuius rei dominus semper fuit, si semper creatura non fuit, affirmare aliquid pertimesco...32 Origen complicated his question by his inability to extricate himself completely from time as change.
Together with the sempiternal and immobile eternity of the Divine Being, he imagined an endless flow of ages which had to be filled. Furthermore, any sequence in the Divine predicates appeared to him under the form of real temporal change; and therefore, having excluded change, he was inclined to deny any sequence at all to, or interdependence among, those predicates taken as a whole; he asserted more than the mere "co-eternity" of the world with God; he asserted the necessity of the Divine self-disclosure ad extra, the necessity of the revelation and out-pouring of Divine goodness upon the "other" from all eternity, the necessity of the eternal realization of the fulness and of all the potentialities of Divine power. In other words, in order to comply with the notion of the Divine immutability, Origen had to admit the necessity of a conjointly ever-existent and beginningless "not-I" as a corresponding prerequisite to and correlative of the Divine completeness and life. And here is the ultimate sting of the question. It was also possible that the world might not have existed at all — possible in the full sense of the word only granted that God can also not create. If, on the other hand. God creates out of necessity, for sake of the completeness of His Being, then the world must exist; then it is not possible that the world might not have existed. Even if one rejects the Origenistic notion of the infinitude of real past time and recognizes the beginning of time, the question remains: Does not at least the thought of the world belong to the absolute necessity of the Divine Being?
We may assume that the real world came into being together with time, and that "there was when it was not," when there was no temporal change. But the image of the world, does not this remain eternal and everlasting in the Divine knowledge and will, participating immutably and ineluctably in the fulness of the Divine self-knowledge and self-determination? On this point St. Methodius of Olympus had already put his finger, against Origen, stressing that the Divine All-Perfectness cannot depend on anything except God Himself, except on His own nature.33 Indeed, God creates solely out of His goodness, and in this Divine goodness lies the only basis of His revelation to the "other," the only basis of the very being of that "other" as recipient and object of this goodness. But should we not think of this revelation as eternal? And if we should — since God lives in eternity and in unchangeable completeness — would not this mean that in the final analysis "the image of the world" was present, and conjointly present, with God unchangingly in eternity, and moreover in the unalterable completeness of all its particular predicates? Is there not a "necessity of knowledge or will?" Does not this mean that God in His eternal self-contemplation also necessarily contemplates even what He is not, that which is not He, but other? Is God not bound in His sempiternal self-awareness by the image of His "Non-I" at least as a kind of possibility? And in His self-awareness is He not forced to think of and to contemplate Himself as a creative principle and as the source of the world, and of the world as an object of and participant in His good pleasure? And on the other hand, over the whole world there lies imprinted the Divine seal, a seal of permanence, a reflection of the Divine glory. The Divine economy of the world, the unchanging and immutable Providence of God, conveys — to our vision — perfect stability and wise harmony — and also a kind of necessity. This vision hinders our understanding and apprehension of the claim that the world also might not have existed. It seems we cannot conceive the world as non-existing without introducing a kind of impious fortuitousness or arbitrariness in its existence and genesis, either of which is contradictory and derogatory to the Divine Wisdom. Is it not obvious that there must be some kind of sufficient cause for the world, cur sit potius quam non sit? And that this cause must consist of the unchangeable and sempiternal will and command of God? Does it not follow that once the world is impossible without God, God also is impossible without the world? Thus the difficulty is only shelved, but not solved, if we limit ourselves to the chronological beginnings of the actual existence of the world, since, in this case, the possibility of the world, the idea of the world. God's design and will concerning it, still remains eternal and as though con-jointly everlasting with God.

And it must be said at once that any such admission means introducing the world into the ultra-Trinitarian life of the Godhead as a co-determinant principle. And we must firmly and uncompromisingly reject any such notion. The idea of the world, God's design and will concerning the world, is obviously eternal, but in some sense not co-eternal, and not conjointly everlasting with Him, because "distinct and separated," as it were, from His "essence" by His volition. One should say rather that the Divine idea of the world is eternal by another kind of eternity than the Divine essence. Although paradoxical, this distinction of types and kinds of eternity is necessary for the expression of the incontestable distinction between the essence (nature) of God and the will of God. This distinction would not introduce any kind of separation or split into the Divine Being, but by analogy expresses the distinction between will and nature, the fundamental distinction made so strikingly explicit by the Fathers of the fourth century. The idea of the world has its basis not in the essence, but in the will of God. God does not so much have as "think up" the idea of creation.34 And He "thinks it up" in perfect freedom; and it is only by virtue of this wholly free "thinking up" and good pleasure of His that He as it were "becomes" Creator, even though from everlasting. But nevertheless He could also not have created. And any such "refraining" from creation would in no way alter or impoverish the Divine nature, would mean no diminution, Just as the very creation of the world does not enrich the Divine Being. Thus by way of opposites we can come close to an understanding of God's creative freedom. In a sense, it would be "indifferent" to God whether the world exists or not — herein consists the absolute "all-sufficiency" of God, the Divine autarchy. The absence of the world would mean a kind of subtraction of what is finite from the Infinite, which would not affect Divine fulness. And conversely, the creation of the world would mean the addition of what is finite to the Infinite, which in no way affects Divine plenitude. The might of God and the freedom of God must be defined not only as the power to create and to produce but also as the absolute freedom not to create.
All these words and presuppositions, obviously, are insufficient and inexact. They all have the character of negations and prohibitions, and not of direct and positive definitions; but they are necessary for the testimony to that experience of faith in which the mystery of Divine freedom is revealed. With a tolerable inexactitude, one could say that God is able to permit and tolerate the absence of anything outside of Himself. By such a presumption the whole immeasurability of the Divine love is not diminished, but on the contrary is thrown into relief. God creates out of the absolute superabundance of His mercies and goodness, and herein His good pleasure and freedom are manifest. And in this sense, one could say that the world is a kind of a surplus. And further, it is a surplus which in no way enriches the Divine fulness; it is, as it were, something "supererogatory" and superadded, something which also could not have existed, and which exists only through the sovereign and all-perfect freedom and unspeakable good pleasure and love of God. This means that the world is created and is "the work of" God's will, theliseos ergon (θελησεως εργον). No outward revelation whatever belongs to the "necessity" of the Divine nature, to the necessary structure of the intra-Divine life. And creative revelation is not something imposed upon God by His goodness. It is executed in perfect freedom, though in eternity also. Therefore it cannot be said that God began to create, or "became" Creator, even though "to be Creator" does not belong to those definitions of Divine nature which includes the Trinity of Hypostases. In the everlasting immutability of God's Being there is no origination whatsoever, nor any becoming, nor any sequence. And nevertheless there is a kind of all-perfect harmonic order which is partially knowable and expressible on the level of the Divine names. In this sense St. Athanasius the Great used to say that "to create, for God, is secondary; and to beget, primary," that "what is of nature [essence]" is antecedent to "what is of volition."35 One has to admit distinctions within the very co-eternity and immutability of the Divine Being. In the wholly simple Divine life there is an absolute rational or logical order [taxis, ταξις] of Hypostases, which is irreversible and inexchangeable for the simple reason that there is a "first principle" or "source" of Godhead, and that there is the enumeration of First, Second, and Third Persons.36 And likewise it is possible to say that the Trinitarian structure is antecedent to the will and thought of God, because the Divine will is the common and undivided will of the All-Holy Trinity, as it is also antecedent to all the Divine acts and "energies." But even more than this, the Trinity is the internal, self-revelation of the Divine nature. The properties of God are also revelations of the same sort, but in their particular disclosure God is free. The unchanging will of God freely postulates creation, and even the very idea of creation. It would be a tempting mistake to regard the "thinking up" of the world by God as an "ideal creation," because the idea of the world and the world of ideas are totally in God, εν τω Θεω, and in God there is not, and there cannot be, anything of the created. But this ambiguous notion of an "ideal creation" defines with great clarity the complete distinction between the necessity of the Trinitarian Being on the one hand and the freedom of God's design — His good pleasure concerning creation — on the other. There remains an absolute and irremoveable distinction, the denial of which leads to picturing the whole created economy as made up of essential acts and conditions which disclose the Divine nature as though of necessity, and this leads to raising the world, at least the "intelligible world" [kosmos noitos, κοσμος νοητος] to an improper height. One might, with permissible boldness, say that in the Divine idea of creation there is a kind of contingency, and that if it is eternal, it is not an eternity of essence, but a free eternity. We could clarify the freedom of God's design — His good pleasure — for ourselves by the hypothesis that this idea need not have been postulated at all. Certainly, it is a casus irrealis, but there is no inherent contradiction in it. Certainly, once God "thought up" or postulated such an idea, He had sufficient reason for doing so. However, one thinks that Augustine was right in prohibiting any search for "the cause of God's will."37 But it is bound by nothing and preordained by nothing. The Divine will is not constrained by anything to "think up" the world. From eternity, the Divine Mind, rhapsodized St. Gregory the Theologian, "contemplated the desirable light of His own beauty, the equal and equally-perfect splendor of the triple-rayed Divinity... The world-creating Mind in His vast thoughts also mused upon the patterns of the world which He made up, upon the cosmos which was produced only afterwards, but which for God even then was present. All, with God, lies before His eyes, both what shall be, and what was, and what is now... For God, all flows into one, and all is held by the arms of the great Divinity."38
"The desirable light" of the Divine beauty would not be enhanced by these "patterns of the world," and the Mind "makes them up" only out of the superabundance of love. They do not belong to the splendor of the Trinity; they are postulated by His will and good pleasure. And these very "patterns of the world" are themselves a surplus and super-added gift or "bonus" of Him Who is All-Blessed Love. In this very good pleasure of His will to create the world the infinite freedom of God is manifest.
So St. Athanasius says, "The Father creates all, by the Word, in the Spirit,"39 — Creation is a common and indivisible act of the All-Holy Trinity. And God creates by thought, and the thought becomes deed (κτζει δε ενοων και το εννοημα εργου υφισταται), says St. John Damascene.40 "He contemplated everything from before its being, from eternity pondering it in His mind; hence each thing receives its being at a determinate time according to His timeless and decisive thought, which is predestination, and image, and pattern” (κατα την θελητικην αυτου αχρονον εννοιαν ητις εστι προορισμος και παραδειγμα).41 These patterns and prototypes of things that are to be constitute the "pre-temporal and unchangeable counsel" of God, in which everything is given its distinctive character [echarakterizo, εχαρακτειριζετο] before its being, everything which is preordained by God in advance and then brought to existence (η βουλη αυτου η προαιωνιος και αει ωσαυτως εχουσα).42 This "counsel" of God is eternal and unchanging, pre-temporal and without beginning — [anarhos, αναρχος] — since everything Divine is immutable. And this is the image of God, the second form of the image, the image turned towards the creation.43 St. John Damascene is referring to Pseudo-Dionysius. These creative patterns, says the Areopagite, "are creative foundations pre-existent together in God, and together compose the powers that make being into entities, powers which theology calls ‘predestinations,’ Divine and ‘beneficient,’ decisions which are determinative and creative of all things extant, according to which He Who is above being has preordained and produced all that exists" (Παραδειματα δε φαμεν ειναι τους εν Θεω των οντων ουσιοποιους και ενιαιως προυφεστωτας λογους, ους η Θεολογια προορισμους καλει, και Θεια και αγαθα θεληματα, των οντων αφοριστικα και ποιητκα καθ ους ο Υπερουσιος τα οντα παντα και προωρισε και παρηγαγεν).44 According to St. Maximus the Confessor these types and ideas are the Divine all-perfect and everlasting thoughts of the everlasting God (νοησεις αυτοτελεις αιδιοι του αιδιου Θεου).45 This eternal counsel is God's design and decision concerning the world. It must be rigorously distinguished from the world itself. The Divine idea of creation is not creation itself; it is not the substance of creation; it is not the bearer of the cosmic-process; and the "transition" from "design" [ennoima, εννοημα] to "deed" [ergon, εργον] is not a process within the Divine idea, but the appearance, formation, and the realization of another substratum, of a multiplicity of created subjects. The Divine idea remains unchangeable and unchanged, it is not involved in the process of formation. It remains always outside the created world, transcending it. The world is created according to the idea, in accordance with the pattern — it is the realization of the pattern — but this pattern is not the subject of becoming. The pattern is a norm and a goal established in God. This distinction and distance is never abolished, and therefore the eternity of the pattern, which is fixed and is never involved in temporal change, is compatible with temporal beginning, with the entering-into-being of the bearers of the external decrees. "Things before their becoming are as though non-existent," said Augustine, utiquae non erant. And he explains himself: they both were and were not before they originated; "they were in God's knowledge: but were not in their own nature" — erant in Dei scientia, non erant in sua natura.46 According to St. Maximus, created beings "are images and similes of the Divine ideas,"47 in which they are "participants."48 In creation, the Creator realizes, "makes substantial" and "discloses" His knowledge, pre-existent everlastingly in Himself.49 In creation there is projected from out of nothing a new reality which becomes the bearer of the Divine idea, and must realize this idea in its own becoming. In this context the pantheistic tendency of Platonic ideology and of the Stoic theory of "seminal reasons" [spermatiki logi, σπερματικοι λογοι] is altogether overcome and avoided. For Platonism the identification of the "essence" of each thing with its Divine idea is characteristic, the endowment of substances with absolute and eternal (beginningless) properties and predicates, as well as the introduction of the "idea" into real things. On the contrary, the created nucleus of things must be rigorously distinguished from the Divine idea about things. Only in this way is even the most sequacious logical realism freed from a "pantheistic flavor; the reality of the whole will nevertheless be but a created reality. Together with this, pan-logism is also overcome: The thought of a thing and the Divine thought-design concerning a thing are not its "essence" or nucleus, even though the essence itself is characterized by logos λογος, [logikos, λογικος]. The Divine pattern in things is not their "substance" or "hypostasis;" it is not the vehicle of their qualities and conditions. Rather, it might be called the truth of a thing, its transcendental entelechy. But the truth of a thing and the substance of a thing are not identical.50

III

The acceptance of the absolute creatureliness and non-self-sufficiency of the world leads to the distinguishing of two kinds of predicates and acts in God. Indeed, at this point we reach the limit of our understanding, all words become, as it were, mute and inexact, receiving an apophatic, prohibitive, not a cataphatic, indicative sense. Nevertheless, the example of the holy Fathers encourages a speculative confession of faith. As Metropolitan Philaret once said, "We must by no means consider wisdom, even that hidden in a mystery, as alien and beyond us, but with humility should edify our mind towards the contemplation of divine things."51 Only, in our speculation we must not overstep the boundaries of positive revelation, and must limit ourselves to the interpretation of the experience of faith and of the rule of faith, presuming to do no more than discern and clarify those inherent presuppositions through which the confession of dogmas as intelligible truths becomes possible. And it must be said that the whole structure of the doctrine of faith encourages these distinctions. In essence, they are already given in the ancient and primary distinction between "theology" and "economy." From the very beginning of Christian history, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church endeavored to distinguish clearly and sharply those definitions and names which referred to God on the "theological" plane and those used on the "economical." Behind this stands the distinction between "nature" and "will." And bound up with it is the distinction in God between "essence" [usia, ουσια] and "that which surrounds the essence," "that which is related to the nature." A distinction, but not a separation.
"What we say about God affirmatively shows us," as St. John Damascene explains, "not His nature, hut only what is related to His nature" (ου τυν φυσιν, αλλα τα περι τυν φυσιν),52 "something which accompanies His nature" [u physin, alla ta para physin, τι των παρεπομενων την φυσει].53 And "what He is by essence and nature, this is unattainable and unknowable." 54 St. John expresses here the basic and constant assumption of all Eastern theology: God's essence is unattainable; only the powers and operations of God are accessible to knowledge.55 And as matters stand, there is some distinction between them. This distinction is connected with God's relation to the world. God is knowable and attainable only in so far as He turns Himself to the world, only by His revelation to the world, only through His economy or dispensation. The internal Divine life is hedged by "light unapproachable," and is known only on the level of "apophatic" theology, with the exclusion of ambiguous and inadequate definitions and names. In the literature of the ante-Nicene period, this distinction not seldom had an ambiguous and blurred character. Cosmological motives were often used in the definition of intra-Trinitarian relations, and the Second Hypostasis was often defined from the perspective of God's manifestation or revelation to the world, as the God of revelation, as the Creative Word. And therefore the unknowability and inaccessibility were assigned primarily to the Hypostasis of the Father as being un-revealable and ineffable. God reveals Himself only in the Logos, in "the spoken Word" [logos prophorikos, λογος προφορικος], as "in the idea and active power" issuing forth to build creation.56 Connected with that was the tendency to sub-ordinationism in the ante-Nicene theological interpretation of the Trinitarian dogma. Only the Fathers of the fourth century obtained in their Trinitarian theology the basis for an adequate formulation of God's relation to the world: the whole entire and undivided "operation" [energie, ενεργειαι] of the consubstantial Trinity is revealed in God's acts and deeds. But the single "essence" [usia, ουσια] of the undivided Trinity remains beyond the reach of knowledge and understanding. His works, as St. Basil the Great explains, reveal the power and wisdom of God, but not His essence itself. 57 "We affirm," he wrote to Amphilochius of Iconium, "that we know our God by His energies, but we do not presume that it is possible to approach the essence itself. Because although His energies descend to us, His essence remains inaccessible." And these energies are multiform, yet the essence is simple.58 The essence of God is unfathomable for men, and is known solely to the Only-begotten Son and to the Holy Spirit.59 In the words of St. Gregory the Theologian, the essence of God is "the Holy of Holies, closed even to the Seraphim, and glorified by the three ‘Holies’ that come together in one ‘Lordship’ and ‘Godhead.’" And the created mind is able, very imperfectly, to "sketch" some small "diagram of the truth" in the infinite ocean of the Divine entity, but based not upon what God is, but upon what is around Him [ek ton peri avton, εκ των περι αυτον].60 "The Divine essence, totally inaccessible and comparable to nothing," says St. Gregory of Nyssa, "is knowable only through His energies."61 And all our words concerning God denote not His essence but His energies.62 The Divine essence is inaccessible, unnameable, and ineffable. The manifold and relative names referring to God do not name His nature or essence but the attributes of God. Yet the attributes of God are not just intelligible or knowledgeable signs or marks which constitute our human notion of God; they are not abstractions or conceptual formulae. They are energies, powers, actions. They are real, essential, life-giving manifestations of the Divine Life — real images of God's relation to creation, connected with the image of creation in God's eternal knowledge and counsel. And this is “that which may be known of God” (το γνωστον του Θεου, Rom. 1:19). This is, as it were, the particular domain of the undivided but yet “many-named” Divine Being, “of the Divine radiance and activity,” — η Θεια ελλαμψις και ενεργεια, as St. John Damascene says, following the Areopagitica.63 According to the Apostolic word, "the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His everlasting power and Godhead" (η τε αιδιος αυτου δυναμις και Θειοτης, Rom. 1:20). And this is the revelation or manifestation of God: "God hath shewed it unto them" (Rom. 1:19; ephanerosen, εφανερωσεν). Bishop Silvester rightly explains in commenting on these Apostolic words: "The invisible things of God, being actually existent and not merely imaginary, become visible not in a kind of illusory way, but certainly, veritably; not as a mere phantom, but in His own eternal power; not merely in the thoughts of men, but in very fact — the reality of His Divinity."64 They are visible because manifested and revealed. Because God is present everywhere, not phantasmally, not in remoteness, but really present everywhere — "which art in all places, and fillest all things, the Treasury of good things, and Giver of life." This providential ubiquity (different from the "particular" or charismatic presence of God, which is not everywhere) is a particular "form of existence" for God, distinct from the "form of His existence according to His own nature."65 And furthermore this form is existentially real or subsistent — it is an actual presence, not merely an omnipraesentia operativa, sicut agens adest ei in quod agit. And if we "do not particularly understand" (in the phrase of St. Chrysostom66) this mysterious omnipresence, and this form of the Divine Being ad extra, nevertheless it is indisputable that God "is everywhere, whole and entirely,” “all in all,” as St. John Damascene said (ολον ολικως πανταχου ον, ολον εν πασι).67 The life-giving acts of God in the world are God Himself — an assertion which precludes separation but does not abolish distinction.68 In the doctrine of the Cappadocian fathers concerning "essence" and "energies" we find in an elaborate and systematic form the mysterious author of the Areopagitica that was to determine the whole subsequent development of Byzantine theology. Dionysius bases himself on the strict distinction between those "Divine Names" which refer to the intra-Divine and Trinitarian life and those which express the relation of God ad extra69 But both series of names tell of the immutable Divine reality. The intra-Divine life is hidden from our understanding, is known only through negations and prohibitions,70 and in the phrase of St. Gregory the Theologian "one who by seeing God has understood what he has seen, has not seen Him."71 And nevertheless God really reveals Himself and acts and is present in creation through His powers and ideas — in "providences and graces which issue from the incommunicable God, which pour out in a flooding stream, and in which all existing things participate,"72 "in an essence-producing procession," [usiopion proodon, ουσιοποιον προοδον], in "a providence that works good things," [agathopion pronian, αγαθοποιον προνοιαν], which are distinguishable but not separable from the Divine entity "which surpasses entity," from God Himself, as St. Maximus the Confessor says in his scholia.73 The basis of these "processions" and of the, as it were, procession of God in His providences out of Himself — [eks eavtu genete, εξω εαυτου γινεται] — is His goodness and love.74 These energies do not mix with created things, and are not themselves these things, but are only their basic and life-giving principles; they are the prototypes, the predeterminations, the reasons, the logi (λογοι) and Divine decisions respecting them, of which they are participants and ought to be "communicants."75 They are not only the "principle" and the "cause," but also the "challenge" and beckoning goal which is beyond and above all limits. It would be difficult to express more forcefully both the distinction between and the indivisibility of the Divine Essence and the Divine energies than is done in the Areopagitica (το ταυτον και το ετερον).76 The divine energies are that aspect of God which is turned towards creation. It is not an aspect imagined by us; it is not what we see and as we see it, but it is the real and living gaze of God Himself, by which He wills and vivifies and preserves all things — the gaze of Almighty Power and Superabundant Love.

The doctrine of the energies of God received its final formulation in the Byzantine theology of the fourteenth century, and above all in St. Gregory Palamas. He bases himself on the distinction between Grace and Essence, "the divine and deifying radiance and grace is not the essence, but the energy of God" (η Θεια και Θεοποις ελλαμψις και χαρις ουκ ουσια αλλ ενεργια εστι Θεου)77 The notion of the Divine energy received explicit definition in the series of Synods held in the fourteenth century in Constantinople. There is a real distinction, but no separation, between the essence or entity of God and His energies. This distinction is manifest above all in the fact that the Entity is absolutely incommunicable and inaccessible to creatures. The creatures have access to and communicate with the Divine Energies only. But with this participation they enter into a genuine and perfect communion and union with God; they receive "deification."78 Because this is "the natural and indivisible energy and power of God," (φυσικη και αχωριστος ενεργεια και δυναμις του Θεου)79 "it is the common and Divine energy and power of the Tri-Hypostatic God."80 The active Divine power does not separate itself from the Essence. This "procession" [proiene, προιεναι] expresses an "ineffable distinction," which in no way disturbs the unity "that surpasses essence."81 The active Power of God is not the very "substance" of God, but neither is it an "accident" [symvevikos, συμβεβηκος]; because it is immutable and coeternal with God, it exists before creation and it reveals the creative will of God. In God there is not only essence, but also that which is not the essence, although it is not accident — the Divine will and power — His real, existential, essence-producing providence and authority.82 St. Gregory Palamas emphasizes that any refusal to make a real distinction between the "essence" and "energy" erases and blurs the boundary between generation and creation — both the former and the latter then appear to be acts of essence. And as St. Mark of Ephesus explained, "Being and energy, completely and wholly coincide in equivalent necessity. Distinction between essence and will [thelisis, θελησις] is abolished; then God only begets and does not create, and does not exercise His will. Then the difference between foreknowledge and actual making becomes indefinite, and creation seems to be coeternally created."83 The essence is God's inherent self-existence; and the energy is His relations towards the other [pros eteron, προς ετερον]. God is Life, and has life; is Wisdom, and has wisdom; and so forth. The first series of expressions refers to the incommunicable essence, the second to the inseparably distinct energies of the one essence, which descend upon creation.84 None of these energies is hypostatic, nor hypostasis in itself, and their incalculable multiplicity introduces no composition into the Divine Being.85 The totality of the Divine "energies" constitutes His pre-temporal will, His design — His good pleasure — concerning the "other," His eternal counsel. This is God Himself, not His Essence, but His will.86 The distinction between "essence" and "energies" — or, it could be said, between "nature" and "grace" [physis, φυσις and haris, χαρις] — corresponds to the mysterious distinction in God between "necessity" and "freedom," understood in a proper sense. In His mysterious essence God is, as it were, "necessitated" — not, indeed, by any necessity of constraint, but by a kind of necessity of nature, which is, in the words of St. Athanasius the Great, "above and antecedent to free choice."87 And with permissible boldness one may say: God cannot but be the Trinity of persons. The Triad of Hypostases is above the Divine Will, is, as it were, "a necessity" or "law" of the Divine nature. This internal "necessity" is expressed as much in the notion of the "consubstantiality" as in that of the perfect indivisibility of the Three Persons as They co-exist in and intercompenetrate one another. In the judgment of St. Maximus the Confessor, it would be unfitting and fruitless to introduce the notion of will into the internal life of the Godhead for the sake of defining the relations between the Hypostases, because the Persons of the All-Holy Trinity exist together above any kind of relation and action, and by Their Being determine the relations between Themselves.88 The common and undivided "natural" will of God is free. God is free in His operations and acts. And therefore for a dogmatic confession of the reciprocal relations between the Divine Hypostases, expressions must be found such as will exclude any cosmological motives, any relation to created being and its destinies, any relation to creation or re-creation. The ground of Trinitarian being is not in the economy or revelation of God ad extra. The mystery of the intra-Divine life should be conceived in total abstraction from the dispensation; and the hypostatic properties of the Persons must be defined apart from all relationship to the existence of creation, and only according to the relationship that subsists between Themselves. The living relationship of God — precisely as a Triad — to the creation is in no way thus obscured; the distinction in the relations of the different Hypostases towards the creation is in no wise obscured. Rather, a fitting perspective is thus established. The entire meaning of the dogmatic definition of Christ's Divinity as it was interpreted by the Church actually lay in the exclusion of all predicates relative to the Divine condescension which characterize Him as Creator and Redeemer, as Demiurge and Saviour, in order to understand His Divinity in the light of the internal Divine Life and Nature and Essence. The creative relationship of the Word to the world is explicitly confessed in the Nicene Creed — by Whom all things were made. And "things" were made not only because the Word is God, but also because the Word is the Word of God, the Divine Word. No one was as emphatic in separating the demiurgical moment in Christ's action from the dogma of the eternal generation of the Word as St. Athanasius the Great. The generation of the Word does not presuppose the being — and not even the design — of the world. Even had the world not been created, the Word would exist in the completeness of His Godhead, because the Word is Son by nature [Yos kata physin, υιος κατα φυσιν]. "If it had pleased God not to create any creatures, the Word would nevertheless be with God, and the Father would be in Him," as St. Athanasius said; and this because creatures cannot receive their being otherwise than through the Word.89 The creatures are created by the Word and through the Word, "in the image" of the Word, "in the image of the image" of the Father, as St. Methodius of Olympus once expressed it.90 The creation presupposes the Trinity, and the seal of the Trinity lies over the whole creation; yet one must not therefore introduce cosmological motifs into the definition of the intra-Trinitarian Being. And yet one may say that the natural fulness of the Divine essence is contained within the Trinity, and therefore that the design — His good pleasure — concerning the world is a creative act, an operation of the will — an abundance of Divine love, a gift and a grace. The distinction between the names of "God in Himself," in His eternal being, and those names which describe God in revelation, "economy," action, is not only a subjective distinction of our analytical thinking; it has an objective and ontological meaning, and expresses the absolute freedom of Divine creativity and operation. This includes the "economy" of salvation. The Divine Counsel concerning salvation and redemption is an eternal and pre-temporal decree, an "eternal purpose" (Eph. 3:11), "the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God" (Eph. 3:9). The Son of God is from everlasting destined to the Incarnation and the Cross, and therefore He is the Lamb "Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world" (1 Pet. 1:19-20), "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). But this "purpose" [prothesis, προθεσις] does not belong to the "essential" necessity of the Divine nature; it is not a "work of nature, but the image of economical condescension," as St. John Damascene says.91 This is an act of Divine love — for God so loved the world ... And therefore the predicates referring to the economy of salvation do not coincide with those predicates by which the Hypostatic Being of the Second Person is defined. In Divine revelation there is no constraint, and this is expressed in the notion of the perfect Divine Beatitude. Revelation is an act of love and freedom, and therefore introduces no change into the Divine nature.92 It introduces no change simply because there are no "natural" foundations for revelation at all. The sole foundation of the world consists in God's freedom, in the freedom of Love.